Questions spending while CCC cuts programs and staff

By La Risa Lynch
Students and staff marched on the City Colleges of Chicago’s downtown headquarters on April 15 demanding that Chancellor Cheryl Hyman be fired over what protesters claim is “pinstripe hiring” and fiscal mismanagement that undermines students’ services.

Nearly 30 protesters took to the street, holding signs and chanting ‘Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Hyman got to go” outside CCC’s district office, 226 W. Jackson Blvd.

Protesters contend Hyman is cutting staff and programs to bankroll a $120,000-a-year chief of staff, $87,000-a-year spokesperson and two former consultants, one of whom became Harold Washington College president, to the tune of $130,000 and $140,000 respectively.

Meanwhile CCC has cut 200 support staff and eliminated programs, including a travel abroad program and nursing programs at Kennedy-King College and Olive-Harvey College citing budget constraints, the protesters claim.

“We want to know exactly how hiring these people would facilitate the end goal of City Colleges and the chancellor, which is the improvement of student outcomes,” said Theodore Fabriek, Kennedy-King College student government president and student council district chair. “How does the provision of a chief of staff to the chancellor help improve student outcomes

A CCC official responded to the students’ claim.

“The City Colleges of Chicago is a half billion dollar institution, which requires an appropriate management structure to ensure the achievement of our students’ success, goals and efficient operating practices, and new positions have been added to achieve those goals,” said Katheryn Hayes, CCC’s director of external communications.

The protest comes as CCC continues to roll out its Reinvention initiative. Begun last year, Reinvention is an effort to increase student graduation and transfer rates. CCC has the lowest completion rates of all the state’s community colleges. Only seven percent of CCC’s 120,000 students graduate while 54 percent dropout within the first six months of school.

Under the plan six of the seven college presidents must reapply for their jobs, which now hold them accountable to students’ academic success. College presidents’ job descriptions will be tied to educational benchmarks that include increasing student transfer rates to four-year colleges and improving outcomes of students needing remedial education.

When asked about the students’ demonstration, Hayes noted that change is hard.

“We are in a period of transition that we think it is going to be really positive,” Hayes said. “We have a really great opportunity to transform our institution to best in class for a community college system. Once we start to see more and more of the results, people will embrace the change. But we are still very early in the process.”

Many protesters, however, likened Reinvention to outgoing Mayor Daley’s Renaissance 2010 plan, which aimed to create more charter and contract schools that do not require unionized teachers.

Jessi Choe, a tenured professor at Wright College, said the true motives behind Reinvention are to privatize education and destroy collective bargaining rights for teachers.

She said real reform within CCC won’t happen until board  members and the chancellor position are elected by students, faculty and community members, not “political pinstripe patronage” appointed by the mayor.

Choe was also critical of Hyman’s hiring plan for college presidents. Even though CCC has selected a firm to oversee the search for new presidents, Choe said it is still under Hyman’s purview and will be political appointees.

Students blasted CCC proposals to consolidate graduation into one event, discontinue school colors and dismantle colleges’ individual names. Students claim CCC wants to roll all community college under the banner of City Colleges of Chicago. CCC officials deny that.

However, Wright College student Viviana Moreno said the decision has yet to be announced, but student government leaders know that to be the case.

“We’re just waiting for them to come to our schools and take the names down,” Moreno said. “Our schools are being robbed of our autonomy and their individuality. Even the history that each of those names represent is going to be lost to us.”

While changing the names of colleges seems cosmetic, Moreno noted it demonstrates CCC’s move to centralize power away from students and schools.

“They are trying to control everything from district and robbing students’ voices,” she added. “They are taking power from the faculty, from the staff, from the students to make any decisions whatsoever. All the decisions are being made in this (district office) building.”

Students want a public meeting on April 27^th with the Board of Trustees, CCC Chair Martin Cabrera and Mayor–elect Rahm Emanuel. Fabriek said more actions are planned until students’ voices are heard.

“No one should translate this as aberrant behavior on the part of students,” he said.  “This is not something that is going to happen and just go away.”