New Union Contract - You Better Act Now

From The Reinvention The Truth Blog Site - Thanks Pearl

Out of the blue, the full-time teachers and professionals of the City Colleges of Chicago began receiving in the mail on Saturday, August 25 notification about a tentative contract they did not know was being negotiated and which they were being asked to ratify in less than a week. Their current contract does not expire until July 12, 2013. Why the rush?

Represented by AFT Local 1600, these educators were suddenly brought into the vortex of the struggle between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and their sister union, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which represents 30,000 teachers and educational support staff at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

The Machiavellian strategy of the Mayor was on display for anyone who can see. He commanded CCC Chancellor Cheryl Hyman to extract from Local 1600’s leadership a signed promise to deliver a yes vote by September 3, the day before classes are scheduled to start at CPS:

“Local 1600 will recommend a “Yes” vote to all voting Local 1600 members to ratify this agreement. Local 1600 will conduct the contract ratification vote before Monday, September, 3, 2012.” [CCC-1600 tentative 2013-2018 collective bargaining agreement]

And to make sure that he could extract maximum advantage from these developments, Emanuel wanted to schedule a press conference for Friday, August 24 to inform Chicago about the tentative agreement. To show how he had managed to obtain a swift contract with a group of “reasonable” Chicago teachers who could then be diametrically opposed to the recalcitrant and unreasonable CTU. When Emanuel’s minions communicated to Local 1600’s president, Perry Buckley, that he wanted to hold the press conference on the 24^th, Buckley responded in embarrassment that he needed the Mayor to wait longer because he needed more time to notify his union members. He did not want his members to first find out about the agreement from the press.

A tentative contract full of harmful concessions

As revolting as this is, it is not the whole story. The “reasonable” CCC teachers and professionals are being asked to ratify a contract that is extremely damaging to them and their families. And that is the second important reason for shoving this contract down their throats at rocket speed. They don’t want to give people enough time to analyze, discuss and propose alternatives to this miserable contract, and most importantly to prevent them from organizing to reject it. The chickens always come home to roost, and they are doing it with a vengeance. The logic of Reinvention has overtly come to exact its price from the flesh of these teachers and professionals who are the frontline of the education efforts at the CCC.

First, the contract surrenders the decades-old pay scale established in the form of a “steps” table. Every contract until now had a table that clearly specified the pay rate according to the degree of academic preparation (Masters, Ph.D.) acknowledging every year of experience (in steps). In the second year of the contract the steps will disappear. And with them any recognition of years of teaching experience. It is also path for completely doing away with seniority. This is precisely what CPS is demanding from the CTU, except that CTU’s leadership is standing firm in opposing it.

Instead the CCC got away with replacing the steps with a cost of living allowance (COLA), language that had never existed in previous 1600 contracts. The product of hard-won years of teaching experience replaced with the malleable notion of COLA. And what is the teacher’s COLA worth to the Chancellor who makes over $275,000 per year? 2.50 percent per year. Because the step system will be removed in the same contract, this 2.5 percent will actually amount to about a 0.5 percent pay increase in relation to prior contracts. It’s a very poor deal for union members taking away not only seniority but their only real guarantee of a base pay raise over time.

Teachers asked to consent to performance pay

But this is not yet the whole story. The harmful practice of merit pay is also inserted into this collective slap in the face. The administration has inserted into the contract a potential 1% bonus which they have called “student success pay.” So instead of offering a 3.5% COLA, they are holding back 1% as a carrot that if granted will not become part of the base pay of the employees, it is merely a “commission”. But not every 1600 employee would partake in the “bonus.” Only teachers and the professionals charged with face-to-face contact with the students (e.g., the advisors) would be eligible for this 1%. The other professionals will be held to the 2.5% COLA. Initially, the 1% bonus will be granted on a District-wide basis, if the whole college system surpasses still unspecified criteria. This is abominable. Acceptance of this scheme amounts to acknowledgement by the union that the students are not successful enough because the teachers are not working hard/smart enough and therefore need the market-based corrective of an economic incentive to work harder/smarter. Contrast this surrender to merit pay with CTU’s firm opposition to it. Yet, the worst of merit/performance pay is still in the works.

The tentative agreement establishes as a legitimate procedure, that would be sanctioned by a yes vote, the post-contract-ratification development of individual merit pay schemes that would be legitimized through mechanisms such as a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would be put together between the union leaders who are recommending this deplorable contract and the administration that is imposing it:

“Draft an MOU to form joint CCC-union committee to address…additional ways to measure individual merit, such as assessments that go across the departments.”

The formation of joint committees between the union and the administration is not a rare event. They do not need to be ratified in a contract. The specification of a MOU protocol for the formation of a joint committee to discuss any issue does not require a contract vote either. Why then insert and highlight such language in the very skimpy body of the tentative agreement? We are afraid that it is to establish facts on the ground, to have inscribed on the ribs of an approved contract that the CCC teachers have agreed in principle to let themselves be caught in the poisoned broth of individual performance pay. The CCC already extracted this concession earlier this year from their adult educators, who appear to us to have been sacrificed by their AFSCME local.

The CCC wants to introduce individual merit pay and they want it bad. Acceptance of the principle of performance pay is very damaging to educators and to students. It is like pregnancy; you are either pregnant or you are not. There are no degrees of pregnancy. Either you stand firm in rejecting any kind of performance pay or you succumb to it.

Surrendering pension benefits without a fight

Another set of very damaging concessions relate to the retirement benefits. The pensions of public employees in the state of Illinois have been under severe attack for years by a coalition of politicians (Gov. Quinn, House Speaker Madigan) and the billionaires of Illinois represented by the Commercial Club Of Chicago. The public employee unions have been fighting to oppose these unconstitutional changes ever since. However, the contract that Local 1600’s leadership recommends gives up these benefits without a fight:

“CCC pays premiums only for current retirees.”

“Sick days cannot be used for retirement enhancement if pension cost are shifted to CCC.”

It is absurd that just when the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the legislation signed by Gov. Quinn last May allowing the government to renege on the constitutionally guaranteed contract provisions of our pensions, specifically the health care premiums, the tentative contract surrenders them in a particularly treacherous way. Only the premiums of the current retirees are preserved, reinforcing the unfortunate longstanding practice of Local 1600 of privileging their veterans and retired members at the expense of the rest of the union membership.

The second item is as insulting. Any sick days remaining in an employee’s sick days bank will be lost (or more properly stolen, even the cash out allowance has been thrown overboard) when he/she files for retirement. Again, those lucky enough to retire or have retired before July 12, 2013 will not have to pay the price, for there is very little doubt that the pension costs will be shifted to the CCC and all other individual state agencies as promised by Gov. Quinn and his partners in crime. Disgustingly enough, 1600’s leadership didn’t even secure a match to the agreement reached for District Office potentates who were allowed to grandfather in their sick days accumulated until this year. Sadly, the battle was over before it started.

Finally, there are additional concessions meant to further squeeze the income of the union’s membership under the perennial excuse that money is scarce. The hypocrisy of this statement is unbelievable. There are over 50 top-level administrators at District Office making well over $100,000 per year according to Carol Marin’s News 5 recent exposé. There are over $250 million allocated for Emanuel’s pet project, College to Careers, to build a new Malcolm X College building. There are millions of dollars spent in frivolous offices at District Office. But there is not enough money for the teachers and professionals healthcare insurance, increasing their premium contributions from 13 to 16 percent over the life of what will turn out to be a very long, 5-year contract. (Chipping away at the 2.5% COLA!)

Add to this the fact that the tentative agreement commits Local 1600 “to participate” in the Mayor’s Wellness Program (WP). This is extortion. The WP is a Trojan horse. Under the guise of looking after the health of city employees, the WP forces an employee to surrender to the “monitors” enough personal medical information to certify that the employee is having satisfactory progress (i.e., losing weight, cease smoking). Many have such hectic lives that finding time and energy to participate in such programs will be impossible. The end result is that those unable to participate in these programs will have their premiums jacked up $50 per month. But this is precisely the goal of the Mayor, to have workers pay an additional $600 per year in healthcare premiums. This is why the CTU is also rejecting this alleged “Wellness” Program. Tell you what Mayor, want to help workers improve their health? Stop overwhelming them with work, stress and pay and benefit reductions. Then they’ll have plenty of time to join a gym.

Future of education in Chicago at stake

And there are many other things wrong with this tentative contract that we don’t have time to go into. Such a lousy contract offered in exchange for betraying their union brothers and sisters at CTU is unconscionable. This is inexplicable. We could understand (but not condone) if the leadership of Local 1600 would have come to its membership with a juicy bribe to have them ignore CTU’s current fight, but not with this pathetic collection of concessions that damage the working conditions, standard of living and self-respect of the teachers and professionals of the CCC.

This is very unfortunate and ironic. When Local 1600 went on strike back in 2004, a significant factor propelling the strike was that the old, corrupt leadership of the CTU refused to fight back, rolled over and sacrificed their members in their contract negotiations the year before. The onus was placed then on 1600 to hold the line, which they did then despite numerous shortcomings. Roll the film forward to 2012. Now CTU has a leadership and a membership ready to fight. The same types of disgusting concessions are being demanded from both unions. The best chance they stand to win this fight is by joining together, shoulder to shoulder. There is no good reason why Local 1600 should be voting on a new contract ahead of the outcome of the CTU contract fight. Particularly because its current contract doesn’t expire for another 10 months. A victory by CTU, will only make it harder for Emanuel to impose onerous concessions on1600.

The lives of CCC teachers and professionals and those of their CTU brothers and sisters, as well as the future of education in Chicago are on the line. We urge you to vote NO on this disgraceful contract and get your comfortable sneakers out of the closet to join the CTU on the picket line!

PEARL

Keep the Tips Coming!

If you have any tips on the mismanagement of Cheryl Hyman, district office employees, or the new "campus" presidents:  please call NBC News at 312-836-5821.

City College Budgets Balloon, But Why?

NBC Chicago News:

Investigation

More than 100,000 students return to classes this week at one of the seven community colleges known collectively as the City Colleges of Chicago.  But as the new school year looms, one group of professors says there are systemic problems, including bulging classrooms, problems obtaining supplies and a District Office which is more focused on marketing than education.

The $659 million budget for City Colleges this year shows a 300-percent increase in money allotted for travel, a newly created Central Office department with a budget totaling just nearly $7 million, almost all of that for salaries, according to the FY2013 budget, and a teaching staff made up largely with adjunct or part-time professors.

“The real problem is that the District Office exists at all,” said Professor Sheldon Liebman, Chair of the Humanities Department at Wilbur Wright College since 1996.

This is the 101st year for the City Colleges.

They spread throughout the city like the spokes on a bike:  Richard Daley, Harold Washington, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, Olive-Harvey, Harry Truman and Wilbur Wright.

At the center is the District Office, headed by Chancellor Cheryl Hyman.

Hyman, handpicked by former Mayor Richard Daley in 2010 to lead City Colleges, launched a new program to improve student’s experiences and increase graduation rates.  The program is called “Reinvention.”

“It is a collaborative, student-focused effort,” she said. “To try to reverse declining trends that we have not only seen at City Colleges of Chicago, but that many community colleges are faced with.”

And in two years Hyman says graduation rates have edged up from seven- to 10-percent.

“Now that’s not a statistic that we’re happy with, but it does show that the things that are happening are working,” said Hyman, who is a graduate of the City Colleges system.

Five professors, including Liebman, agreed to speak to Unit 5 about on-going concerns at City Colleges. All have tenure with the exception of Sociology professor Claire Boeck.

When asked how big a risk Boeck takes in speaking publicly, due to the fact that she could lose her job at any time, Professor Sonia Csaszar replied, “Tremendous. And all her students love her.”
Bulging classrooms, with 35 to 40 students, is one concern.

“Sometimes we don’t have enough chairs in the classroom for our students,” Boeck said.

Requisitioning supplies, like new markers, is another problem they cite.

“We have to submit a request to central,” she said. “And then hopefully a month from now we’ll get our markers.”

Asked how things have changed during Hyman’s two-plus-year tenure, Julius Nadas, a co-chair of the Mathematics Department who has taught at Wright, located on Chicago’s northwest side, since 1976 replied: “It appears to be more marketing-oriented.”

Hyman says over the last two years her administration has saved millions in unnecessary spending and reallocated those dollars to new technology.

“When I became Chancellor,” Hyman said. “There were many non-student faced functions that were duplicated seven times across this District.”

Earlier this year Unit 5 began asking the chancellor’s office a number of questions about budgets, staffing and travel at the district office.

For instance:  Last year travel expenses increased seventy-five percent.  Hyman says that was for, among other things, professors and students.

“Now our student governments have a presence in Springfield, they have one in D.C. representing City College students.” she said.

But this year the travel budget jumps again -- nearly 300 percent -- to more than $2.7 million. 

When asked if Unit 5 could look at individual travel receipts in the District Office Hyman replied, “Oh, sure.”

Hyman said that on August 2.  To date, we have not been allowed access to the records.

Also part of the City Colleges’ “Reinvention”:  A new department called the Office of Strategy and Institutional Intelligence. It has, according to the budget, a Vice Chancellor, an Associate Vice Chancellor, and Executive for Operational Excellence, and a Director of Strategy and External Affairs. It’s nearly $7 million budget goes primarily for salaries and benefits.  When asked if the positions are necessary?”

“They are absolutely necessary,” Hyman said. "They are a big part of why we’ve seen a three percent increase in graduation rate.”

Many of the jobs at the District Office pay six-figures. In fact, Unit 5 counted more than 50 positions which pay $100,000 or more.

But for many professors, whose mandate under the Emanuel Administration is to turn out graduates who make middle class salaries … it’s a different story:

“I’ll make around $17,000 this year,” said Claire Boeck.

Boeck will teach nearly a full load of courses this year – but will earn barely more than poverty-level wages – and no benefits.

To make ends meet, she waits tables at a Hyde Park restaurant.  The overwhelming majority of City Colleges’ professors are adjuncts, like Boeck.

Citing contract negotiations, Chancellor Hyman would not discuss salary specifics but said: “I’ll tell you we value and we know that we will look at fair compensation for everybody.”

As a part of Reinvention, the Central Office mandated that all schools change their colors. In some cases it was a very minor change. Malcolm X for instance went from one shade of red to another shade of red. (See the adjacent chart to compare)   The total cost---plus a new slogan: $50,000. Or about the same as three adjunct professors at the current rate.

The Chancellor said the color changes provided an uptick in website traffic and more interest at the information centers.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/City-College-Budget-Balloon-But-Why-167100765.html#ixzz24OQJz9vQ

Your action is needed in 2012

Next year is a big year for City Colleges of Chicago... the 3 year contract for Cheryl Hyman will be up for renewal in April 2012.  I have provided you with information demonstrating her lack of leadership and integrity. 

Now it's up to you!

1 - If you are aware of any wrongdoings from Cheryl Hyman or the District Employees you can submit a tip to the BGA:  http://www.bettergov.org/tips/ or make a FOIA request at  http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/progs/foia.html

2 - You can share your thoughts with Rahm Emanuel and the City of Chicago College Board by writing a letter. Mayor's Address: 121 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago City Hall 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60602.  

3 - You can keep informed by frequently visiting: the Reinvention Truth Website at: http://citycollegeschicagoreinvention-truths.blogspot.com/

To Save City Colleges of Chicago in 2012 - it's up to everyone to do their part.

Top City Colleges official resigns after sham move to city

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/7293416-418/top-city-colleges-official-resigns-after-sham-move-to-city.html
BY ROBERT HERGUTH Better Government Association August 26, 2011 7:16PM

A top administrator at the City Colleges of Chicago recently resigned under pressure, leaving a $120,000-a-year job but taking away a valuable life lesson: Don’t play games with the city’s residency requirement.

Ronny C. Anderson, who was hired last year to the new position of chief of staff to Chancellor Cheryl Hyman, quietly “retired” several weeks ago amid an investigation by the City Colleges inspector general’s office, which concluded that Anderson’s self-proclaimed “move” last spring from south suburban Glenwood to Chicago’s South Side was effectively a sham.

Anderson, who was with the system for 14 months at the time of his July 28 resignation, didn’t respond to several requests for an interview by the Better Government Association.

But in an e-mail, Hyman said she knew nothing about the situation until “late July as a result of the Inspector General’s independent investigation.”

“All rules and regulations apply equally to everyone who works for the City Colleges of Chicago,” Hyman said in the statement. “Last year, I ordered that our part-time inspector general be upgraded to a full-time position and that investigators be added to bolster compliance and efficiency.

“As part of his office’s annual audit of residency status, Inspector General John Gasiorowski discovered that my chief of staff, Ron Anderson, was in violation of the City of Chicago’s residency rule. As the Inspector General’s process followed its course — a course that always includes presenting the employee with allegations and any evidence to support them — Mr. Anderson chose to retire.”

Hyman and Anderson have known each other for years, since well before she took the helm of the system that includes seven campuses and more than 100,000 students.

Anderson, 61, was living in Glenwood when he started at City Colleges in May 2010.

Hyman granted waivers allowing him to keep living there for a year. By the time the waivers expired, he was supposed to have moved into the city if he wanted to keep his job as Hyman’s top aide.

Earlier this year, Anderson submitted a copy of a lease indicating that, as of May 1, he was paying $1,200 a month to rent a unit in Chicago, according to documents obtained by the BGA under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

Anderson also changed his driver’s license from Glenwood to the South Side on June 15, state records show.

The BGA visited the gated three-story building and a female answering the buzzer said Anderson was not there and asked a reporter to leave a business card.

The BGA also later called the woman listed on the lease as Anderson’s landlord. She said she was busy but promised to call back. She didn’t, and in a subsequent call, the woman answering the phone said it was the wrong number.

The BGA visited Anderson’s Glenwood home — which as of Aug. 10 is again the address listed on his driver’s license, state records show — but he did not answer the door.

Cook County property records indicate that Anderson has owned that home for years.

Chicago Teachers are feeling the same pain

Chicago teachers are being asked to work 29% more and get paid only 2% more.  I found the CTU state of address very interesting -

http://vimeo.com/22625871

The Reader Exposes Reinvention Inconsistencies

http://m.chicagoreader.com/gyrobase/city-colleges-of-chicago-cheryl-hyman-vocational-school-intellectual-inquiry/Content?oid=4360284&showFullText=true

On April Fool's Day 2010, Cheryl L. Hyman—Mayor Richard M. Daley's controversial choice for chancellor at the City Colleges of Chicago—stepped into her new job. A 41-year-old Commonwealth Edison executive, Hyman had never been a college teacher and her experience as an academic administrator was zero. Her most striking qualification for the top job at the huge, seven-college institution seemed to be the fact that she was an up-by-the-bootstraps product of the system she would now rule. A onetime high school dropout, Hyman graduated from Olive-Harvey College and the Illinois Institute of Technology, then earned two master's degrees (from North Park and Northwestern) while fast-tracking through the ranks at ComEd, where she wound up as vice president of operational strategy and business intelligence. Daley gave her the job with a mandate for serious change. It may turn out to be a good thing, but it hasn't been totally welcome.

Blame Obama. And his education czar, former CPS head Arne Duncan. With other countries outstripping the U.S. in the number of college graduates among their citizens (the U.S. ranked 12th in one 2010 study), they're campaigning to get us back into first place. In 2009, noting that the majority of community college students wind up as degree-less dropouts with nothing to show for their college experience but student loan debt, Obama declared "The American Graduation Initiative." He promised to fund programs that will strengthen the nation by keeping students on track. The bulk of the funding never came through, but Daley got the message that "a skilled workforce is necessary to compete in the global economy" and challenged Hyman to turn the City Colleges—Harold Washington, Harry S. Truman, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, Olive-Harvey, Richard J. Daley, and Wilbur Wright—into "an economic engine for the city." Mayor Rahm Emanuel has kept her on, regularly praises her efforts, and refers to the City Colleges as the "front line of our new economy."

And that's what's making some people nervous. "Economic engine" seems to run counter to the long-time mission of the City Colleges of Chicago, which will celebrate its hundredth birthday this year and has been, since its founding, a gateway not just to a job but to broad educational and intellectual opportunity, regardless of social or economic status.

The question of whether the "People's College" (its original name) should be a vocational school was chewed over at its birth by the likes of Jane Addams and William Rainey Harper—and discarded. In America, and in Chicago, city colleges would ensure a democracy of the mind. Vocational training was eventually added without changing that principle, at least in theory. But there's a new, results-oriented trend in education that looks like it could turn community colleges into glorified job-training centers, providing a skilled workforce but "tracking" low-income students into dead-end jobs. These institutions would be run like businesses, with the decision-making power in the hands of executives rather than academics and an emphasis on efficiency. Serendipitous intellectual inquiry and academic autonomy would be luxuries and scarce.

There are logical reasons for this trend, including the ever-higher costs of higher ed, and a flurry of studies supporting it—among them, a November 2010 report by McKinsey & Company, a Washington-based consulting firm that's playing a major role in the changes at City Colleges. Titled "Winning by Degrees," it tells how to "improve productivity in higher education's core process of transforming freshmen into degree-holders."

The five practices the McKinsey report promotes for building "degree productivity" include "redesigning the delivery of instruction" (by, for example, "substituting full-time faculty with part-time faculty") and "reducing non-productive credits," which "may give students extra educational benefit," but add to the cost. If these strategies are fully and widely adopted, the report says, "the nation could produce a million more degrees by 2020" without spending any more money.

CHERYL HYMAN HAS A COOLLY COMPOSED veneer and a reputation for being forceful—qualities that likely helped her survive a punishing Chicago childhood. She was born and grew up on the city's west side, mostly in public housing at the Henry Horner Homes. An only child whose parents were drug addicts (she says they're both recovered now), she left an unbearable home at the age of 16, dropping out of high school and taking a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken to support herself before concluding that fast food wasn't a great career route for somebody pining for high tech. She returned to high school and graduated, and then made what she says is a common mistake for a young person.

"Sometimes, when you're growing up and you're faced with very tough circumstances, like I was, you look for those quick fixes: How can I quickly get educated and just get a job? That was the mind-set I was in, and I went to a six-month trade school. After six months the school closed, and I was left with a student loan and no job to pay it back."

Hyman says she promptly came to the realization that "there are no short cuts in life."

Moving in with her grandmother, she enrolled at the City Colleges's far-south-side campus, Olive-Harvey, where a math teacher and a counselor helped her carve a path to a computer science major at IIT. She joined ComEd in 1996. She's now riding herd on a City Colleges budget (for 2012) of $651 million.

Hyman says she was "humbled" by her appointment and did need some time to visit the colleges and learn about them. She was assisted by consultants from McKinsey & Company and the Civic Consulting Alliance (the consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago) who worked, initially pro bono, to "dig into the metrics" with her. By midsummer she'd hired former McKinsey consultant (and Renaissance 2010 Fund official) Alvin Bisarya as vice chancellor of strategy and institutional intelligence. In March 2011, Donald Laackman, a principal at the Civic Consulting Alliance, was installed as president of Harold Washington College. And last January, McKinsey was awarded a half-million-dollar contract for work on City Colleges changes this year.

More consultants were hired to help Hyman craft her vision, and at a November 18, 2010, press conference with Daley and new board president Martin Cabrera Jr. (appointed to the board a month earlier), the trio rolled out the plan, branded in current business jargon as "the Reinvention." City Colleges, previously focused on access, would now be focused on something more elusive: student success.

The reinvention had four broad goals:
(1) More students earning college credentials of economic value.
(2) More students transferring to four-year schools after graduating from City Colleges.
(3) Drastic improvement in remediation outcomes.
(4) More students in GED, ESL, and basic skill classes moving into college-level courses.

To achieve these goals, a "collaborative" process was set up: task forces managed by Bisarya's office and made up of appointed (and paid) constituents from the college community (faculty, staff, and students) would spend a semester studying one of eight predetermined areas. By the end of the semester they would come up with recommendations that would, according to a slick, 44-page "Reinvention" brochure, be evaluated by "CCC leadership." Sixty task force members were selected from 300 volunteers; each task force worked with an external "advisory council" made up primarily of businesspeople.

The four goals quickly became a mantra, though no numerical targets were attached to them. What was spelled out in hard numbers was a case for change that made it clear that the City Colleges—at least in recent years—have been stupendous failures. One of the biggest community college systems in the country, CCC has 120,000 students on seven campuses and seven satellite locations. But, according to data cited by Hyman, very few CCC students who are seeking a degree or certificate actually get it. The City Colleges graduation rate, calculated by following first-time, full-time students for three years, is just 7 percent.

That's the most controversial figure in the reinvention story, but it's not the only bad news CCC's been spreading about itself. A video on the official reinvention website, backed by a bouncy score, notes that more than half of first-year students drop out during or after their first semester. The reinvention brochure points out, among many statistics it cites, that only 16 percent of CCC students manage to transfer to a four-year university and a mere 4 or 5 percent wind up with a bachelor's degree.

And then there's the stat that explains a lot of those dismal numbers: more than 90 percent of CCC students require remedial work. Among those coming from Chicago Public Schools, it's 97 percent.

Every faculty member I spoke with took issue with the way the graduation rate, cited frequently by both the chancellor and the mayor, was calculated. They say limiting the group to first-time full-time students, with a deadline of three years, can't be representative of schools where the majority of students are part-timers, holding down jobs and/or juggling families, and where many (at CCC about half) are in noncredit classes, not necessarily aiming for an associate's degree. And they say claims of declining enrollment, also prominently cited in the arguments for reinvention, are misleading and "erroneous," tilted by huge programs that have been phased out (including one on military bases that served 32,000 students). On the contrary, they say, relevant enrollment actually increased between 2006 and 2010 by more than 13,000 students.

One of those pissed-off profs is Wright College humanities department chair Sheldon Liebman, who notes that the same district research office that put out the 7 percent figure conducted a six-year study concluded in 2008 that had CCC's graduation rate at about double Hyman's figure: 13.3 percent. (When Hyman's team, in response to this argument, lengthened the time span to six years, they got 13 percent as well.)

"Here we are, working hard, in many cases for half the salary of university professors, teaching five courses instead of three, an earnest, dedicated staff," Liebman says. "I'm afraid that when you bring in businesspeople, they just don't understand it. There's a real disconnect between the dedication and seriousness and ability on one side, and a kind of distrust and lack of experience on the other." Meanwhile, Liebman says, "decisions that have been made supposedly in the interest of improving education have been wrongheaded."

Among them, a corporate-style push for centralization that, among other things, replaced individual graduations this spring with one unwieldy combined ceremony at the UIC Pavilion, and an expensive rebranding effort, including an arbitrary change in each school's logo and colors that many perceive as an attempt to diminish the individual identities of the colleges. Then there was the new zero-based budgeting, introduced with a nearly zero time frame.

But the most startling was the simultaneous dumping of four of the seven college presidents. (Only Laackman and another relatively recent hire, Daley College president Jose Aybar, were given a pass; the former head of internal audit at the district office is serving as interim president at Kennedy-King.) Told in February that they'd need to reapply for their jobs because of a "new job description," they were all replaced in June.

Hyman says she saved $30 million by making cuts this year. She laid off 225 "non-instructional" employees (about 40 from the district office) and is adding advisers, financial aid counselors, and 66 full-time faculty. But she's also added to the upper echelons of her staff. The Central District Office operating budget for 2012 is nearly $62 million, about the same as the budget for Truman College or Wright. And Hyman's top officials now include nine vice chancellors, a chief of staff, a chief operating officer, and a "chief advisor to the board of trustees," all drawing $100,000-plus salaries.

"Meanwhile," says Liebman, "we have classrooms of 35 to 40. And the average ACT score is 17. Reading levels are [often] fourth, fifth, or sixth grade. As far as we're concerned, we're quite successful when somebody comes back the next year."

At the June meeting of the board, with the discarded presidents lined up in front of the trustees like so many sitting ducks, All-College Faculty Council president Polly Hoover reported on the "profound disappointment of the faculty" about the process of the presidents' replacements and the "erosion" of shared governance. "We support the goals of reinvention if they reflect a nuanced understanding of the complexities of the issues," Hoover said, noting that "the faculty have been here before; we've undergone waves of reforms with little substantive change. Consequently, we are profoundly skeptical and cautious. We hope this is a brave new world. We fear it is Huxley's brave new world."

A new provost, Kojo Quartey, was hired last month without input from the faculty. Quartey is an economist and former dean of the business school at Davenport University, a private, nonprofit institution in Michigan with an enrollment of about 13,000 students. At press time, the list of task force recommendations had not yet been posted, but it's a safe bet that the reinvention will show positive results. From the baseline that's been drawn, there's nowhere to go but up. Whether the numbers will be meaningful for students is another question. Hoover says, for example, that students who are transferring to a four-year college don't really need everything that's required for the two-year degree, which is why many of them haven't bothered with it. The graduation rate went up this year, she says, "simply because we were out there pushing it."

And if those fears of colleges being turned into factories, cranking out degrees like so many widgets—faster, faster, cheaper, cheaper—seem overblown, consider the remarkable new tutoring program developed under Aybar at Daley College that's said to be doubling pass rates for remedial courses.

Its official acronym is CASH-to-ROI.