Keep Talking. At Your Own Risk.

How do I do it? Magic mom, right? Nope. Regular mom. Magic kids! Nope. Regular kids.

Set aside for a minute that my kids work damn hard for every bit of their success. They practice, read, write, blow off their friends to work, and keep their eyes on the prize. Nobody here is a genius, but we do have some darn hard workers and I'm prouder of that than anything. But no matter how hard they work, and how much we support, none of that goes anywhere with out one thing.

Public school. Public school does it. Same as the other 34 kids who were at UC with Lucy. Same as all the kids on the math team circuit who are headed to some of the best schools in the country. Same as the other two children from our neighborhood - not magnet, not selective enrollment, neighborhood - elementary school who received full-tuition scholarships for university this year alone (and those are only the three I know about). My kids are friends with children whose parents come from all over the world, who have all kinds of income levels and no income levels, who have extraordinary abilities and disabilities, who sing, paint, write, compute, design, dream.

Who do you think is going to public schools? Some of the most wonderful, interesting, ambitious, hard-working kids ever go to Chicago Public Schools.

My kids, like all the city's kids, deserve and are eager to take advantage of outstanding public education. When children are given the opportunity, and teachers are supported in their efforts to teach children, the possibilities are endless. To borrow a phrase,  public education is what makes America great.

So when my public school is threatened, I am threatened, my children are threatened, all our children are in danger. Word to the wise on this issue? It's a dangerous thing to threaten a person's children. That's the kind of thing a fella might think twice about before he keeps talking.