The Chicago Public School system has long been in a state of decline, with poor student scores and massive budget deficits. Teacher pensions in Chicago have threatened to bankrupt the state after politicians yielded to demands from the powerful teachers’ union. Despite the budget crisis, however, school administrators are burning through money on woke programs and resulting litigation. The latest example is the over $2.6 million in damages that will be paid to students who were forced to participate in a Transcendental Meditation program during classes. Teachers ignored the religious objections to the Hindu-based program, and the school subsequently litigated the case, incurring even greater costs to the system.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly approved the settlement with the Chicago Board of Education and the New York-based David Lynch Foundation to pay $100,000 to the lead plaintiff and between $3,000 and $9,500 to each of the other students in the lawsuit.
Attorney John Mauck, partner at Mauck & Baker, said that students were coerced to go through a Hindu initiation ceremony with offerings to a guru and were told to repeat mantras with the names of Hindu deities.
He further recounted how “[one] student was told, ‘If you don’t kneel before the picture of the guru during your initiation ceremony, it could affect your eligibility on the girls basketball team.’” Mauck claimed that students were instructed not to tell their parents, especially if the parents were religious.
In the litigation, counsel was able to confirm 773 of the students who were required to participate in the program. More than 200 filed claims for damages.
Chicago is now facing bankruptcy and the unpopular mayor Brandon Johnson is calling for massive “progressive tax” hikes to keep the city solvent. Yet, the Chicago school system (which has contributed significantly to the budget crisis) prefers to spend money on these programs and then litigate ill-conceived cases.
The state must come up with $154.3 billion to pay its retired educators. It is $86.3 billion short of that amount. Illinois is ranked as having “the lowest funding ratio for state pensions in the nation at 52%. The Teachers Retirement System is even lower, funded at 45.8%, making it the second-worst funded state teacher retirement system in the nation. Only New Jersey is worse.”
Illinois leaders like Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Johnson are closely aligned with the teachers’ union and have signed generous contracts with crippling pension allotments. The political benefits of such contracts are obvious, but there comes a point when you cannot continue to kick the financial can down the road on the costs.
What is clear from this case is that, despite the financial crisis, school officials are still spending time and money on unnecessary programs. In the meantime, fewer than one in three school kids in Chicago read at applicable proficiency levels.
I have been a strong supporter of public schools throughout my life. While my parents could afford private schools, they helped form a group to keep white families in the public school system in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. They wanted their kids to be part of a diverse school environment. I also sent my kids to public schools for the same reason. I view our public schools as important parts of our society as we shape future citizens.
Teachers and boards are killing the institution of public education by treating children and parents more like captives than consumers. They are force-feeding social and political priorities, including passes for engaging in approved protests.
As public schools continue to produce abysmal scores, particularly for minority students, board and union officials have called for lowering or suspending proficiency standards or declared meritocracy to be a form of “white supremacy.” Gifted and talented programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.”
The school administrators in Chicago would prefer to spend time on eliminating high-achieving programs to erase the gap between students.
It is crushing to see the continued failure of Chicago schools, particularly for poor and minority kids who are locked into cycles of poverty. This case simply highlights the disastrous sense of priorities for school officials in Chicago.
A Union’s structure in the least of terms: starting with the Individual who is represented by the Local Union, who then is represented by the National Union, then you reach the top of the pyramid a Labor Federation. Each juncture has a structure similar to any company with a CEO down to Committee chairs and each acquires their revenue from the Individual. The largest Federation the AFL-CIO represent some 60 divergent unions with +/- 15 million members. On the surface this structure looks like a Democracy but is Socialism through-out.
One for all, all for one! This statement could apply to the Federal, State and Local governments? If the majority of bureaucrat employees are represented by a Union, then what entity would negotiate a bargaining agreement with the Union? If the arbiters are affiliated with any federation or its sub-parts, we could call that a Cabal. (arbiter: defined as from the Courts to a local union member). This in my humble moment is one of the reasons that governmental costs have exploded and rules of discipline or dismissal have handicapped management.
Oh brother, this is nothing but fearmongering by a law firm making a mountain out of a molehill because some Christians are freaked out about meditation techniques to help students focus. There are good intentions behind this and some parents, Christian parents, who got all worked up about the issue and claimed their kids were being forced to convert into another religion without a real understanding of what the program is about is the height of ignorance.
It’s notable how the whole issue is described by the law firm and not the parents or students. The evidence is pretty much hearsay and hyperbole. The Professor will not acknowledge it but this was brought on by Christians opposed to exposing their kids to meditation, which is not a religious exercise. It’s not worship of Hindu gods. Ironically in Oklahoma their education department is pushing for Christian indoctrination in the name of “historical precedent” and they are dead last in education rankings. Maybe we should leave religion out of schools. There are already private schools that allow parents to choose what religious teachings their kids can get. Note; Oklahoma is looking to get rid of its standardized tests in favor of more “targeted” tests to improve its national rank. This means cooking the books a little to give them a leg up.
X as the article makes clear what was done to these students was not just about “focus” it was government forced obesance to a specific religion. That is barred by the constitution.
You can do this all you want in a private school
But the govenrment can not participate.
While it should be obvious why – as you appear to be historically ignorant, the bars against state sponsorship of religion are in the constitution because of the experiences of our founders – who to a large extent were fleeing the state persecution of those who deviated from state religion. They were also a response to hundreds of years of religious wars in Europe, and before that a millenia of state violence between muslims and christians sweeping from the mideast through to england.
For much of my life communists have persecuted people for their religious beleifs, Even today China is openly hostile to various groups with diverrgent religious beleifs such as Falun Gong or the Uigers.
John Say,
“ X as the article makes clear what was done to these students was not just about “focus” it was government forced obesance to a specific religion.”
No, it was not. The only persons saying it are the law firm and a few obviously Christian parents freakinbg out about the practice. In other articles descrbing the practice and the reaction of some parents finding out shows why these parents are overreacting and adding assumptions not in evidence.
The constitution does not bar the use of meditation in schools. The religious component of this practice is being overrepresented by zealoous or panicky christian parents as some scheme to convert their children. Claims of forcing ONE student as proof is clealry an attempt to lable the entire program as a religious intrusion.
Meditation is not religous. Just because it is based on Hindu tradition does not meant it requires Hindu adherence or conversion. Let’s not forget that Christians are doing the same thing. Calling the posting of the 10 commandments and using bibles to use as “historical references” has been successfully argued to be constitutional by Christians pushing it.
This issue of offering meditation for students has nothing to do with religion. It’s the Christian parents and the law firm alluding to the practice as some form of conversion into Hinduism which is preposterous. This is about a few ignorant Christian parents freaking out about their kids being shown meditation. This is no different than kids practicing quiet time to clear their heads.
*. X, you really haven’t any idea what you’re saying. Leave it alone.
The article is unclear if this is State adopted curriculum or simply a crackpot individual teacher or school district.
Perhaps I’ve missed something. It’s completely within my prerogative to not want your God nor anyone’s God near me. If I MUST share a classroom, as in compulsory, with your disgusting beliefs because I’m poor I can at least demand these things are kept away from me.
Thank you
*. You’re wrong x. It’s a bona-fide religion with magic and spirits. Meditation can be done by repeating the poem Mary had a little lamb over and over or any other repeated words.
Focusing on nonsense syllables prevents the intrusion of thoughts. It’s absurd. You appear to imagine there aren’t actual spiritual attachments to these mantras, gurus and teachers and spirits. You’re wrong.
Try counting sheep.
Even if you leave out the coercion part, the students were instructed to kneel to a picture of the guru, make an offering to it, be initiated into his worship, and chant the names of idols. That is an establishment of religion, which everyone except Clarence Thomas believes is incorporated into the 14th amendment. (I think Thomas has the better textual argument, but he’s very much a minority on this.)
“. . . which is not a religious exercise.”
Why did you choose to ignore this fact about the story? —
“. . . repeat mantras with the names of Hindu deities.” (JT)
Hinduism is a religion, a rather large one. And the deities the students were compelled to worship are Hindu gods.
“. . . making a mountain out of a molehill . . .”
Why do you make the same point about every one of the countless molehills?
The answer to the first is that, whatever your username, you are intellectually dishonest.
The answer to the second is that you are a chronic deceiver and manipulator.
Oops. Forgot to sign in.
Republicans and Democrats view institutions differently. Republicans think they should perform the services for which they were founded: teaching for teachers; law enforcement for police; medical care for doctors; adherence to law by judges. But Democrats see all institutions as a means of creating a one party state governed by the Democrats.
They also see those institutions are performing roles that are just not the business of govenrment.
I know little about TM – except that it has no place in a public school.
But that is universally true of democrats.
Whether what they value is good or evil – they see govenrment as the vehicle for forcing that value on all of us.
Within a very narrow domain government REFLECTS the near universal values citizens – Thou Shalt not kill.
Government does NOT exist to SHAPE our values – the OPPOSITE is true. Government REFLECTS ONLY our near UNIVERSAL values.
That is one of many reasons why religion – as well as many many other things have no place in govenrment.
The advocates or adherents of TM are free to persuade people of its value. Govenrment is NOT EVER free to decide what values we SHOULD have and force them on it.
Again Govenrment is shaped by OUR near universal Values – not the other way arround.
Res Res Est sez:
Unions are the logical result of public workplaces, not because they evolve naturally, but rather because they become subject to unions, like a body becomes subject to a virus when it reaches a certain stage of deterioration.
I also sent my kids to public schools for the same reason.
SMH. You failed to mention you live in the 5th wealthiest county in America
In 2020, Fairfax County’s median household income of $127,866 was the fifth-highest in the United States.
– Wiki
As a matter of reference, City of Richmond, VA, public schools are abysmal
Richmond’s Crime-Infested Neighborhoods, Terrible Public Schools and Equity
19 schools serve ten neighborhoods where it may not be safe to walk down the street in the daytime. Or park a car.
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/richmonds-crime-infested-neighborhoods-terrible-public-schools-and-equity/
I view our public schools as important parts of our society as we shape future citizens.
out of touch much?
Public schools are a cesspool of all that is wrong in America. If it isnt crime it is Marxist “equity” Woke curriculum threatening kids. Parents should have school choices for their kids just like you did. You chose (and were able) to live in a wealthy county with wealthy schools. Let parents choose where their children attend schools as well regardless of their income.
Catholic schools exist in no small part to give poor and minority families a choice, often at charity prices as was in my case.
Catholic schools >>>>>>> public schools
No brainer
*. Public schools are as good as their clientele.
“Without the presence of class warfare, trade unions would be hard put to justify their existence.”
– Karl Marx
______________
“The theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
– Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
*. Chicago is Al Capone 2.0. These are crooks, thugs, hoods, gangsters and the United States will address places like Chicago, DC, California, Washington, Oregon and others as crime. It’s rotten.
The Chicago Public School system is the Communist Party Chicago Teachers Union school system.
Unions are illegal and unconstitutional criminal organizations whose only bargaining power is the “strike,” which is comprised of criminal acts including, but not limited to, breach of contract, trespassing, intimidation, harassment, vandalism, property damage, assault, battery, mayhem, bodily injury, etc., without which members would simply not present for work and be immediately and irrevocably removed for cause.
Public workers may be hired, fired, directed, and compensated by elected officials only.
Would a referendum in Chicago to decertify the Chicago Teachers Union be possible and, if so, be legally binding? If successful, could similar referendums to decertify and void other public sector unions be presented to voters and be binding? Now THAT would be an example of democracy in action.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Politicians in black robes.
Politicians who are zealously bent on wholly anti-American and unconstitutional central planning, control of the means of production (i.e. unconstitutional regulation), redistribution of wealth, and social engineering.
Politicians who have actually effected and achieved communization in large part.
😂. Too funny. Try it. Bring in the teachers to serve their communities as racist SOBs. Latin want Latin teachers and blacks want blacks teachers and blah blah blah. Thye all just , simply, merely WANT your freaking money and land.
Taxpayers, pay for minimum ed from 8AM-12 PM. Hire your own freaking baby sitters for lunch to 5. They won’t do it BECAUSE they want your MONEY. Not the teachers, the clientele want your money as in tax EVERYONE but especially the rich.
They’ve removed American history as curriculum. School choice will give them a new clientele for the drug pushers and pedophiles. That’s exactly what happened.
*. ^^^ corrections–> Latin speakers want Latin teachers, blacks want black teachers
Thye–> they
Move to the idea of BASIC education. Cut days and hours. Parents can reach into their own pockets for more. Why? The public has been abusive of the charitable education given to all by the wealthy. The public is bleeding taxpayers dry.
It’s quite amazing as governors and superintendents siphon money from other programs and do whatever is the program du jour.
😂 😂… I haven’t read a single comment that addresses the behemoth administration, managers all the way up to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and Board.
Let’s clarify what we’re talking about in Chicago, a sanctuary city engaging in de facto secession. Their ideological allies are not at the top of this page; they are in Cuba, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and the like. Only 35% of the population is American. It’s less in Los Angeles. Occupiers in Chicago, L.A. et al. don’t share the same values as the people at the top of this page did. In fact, they’re determined to “fundamentally transform” the whole place; typically that’s referred to as adverse if not outright inimical.
*. I was censored. 😂 long live 1A.
Was it due to the Civility Rule?
*. Most likely it was due to hard truth.
We have gone from a society in which a poor, barefoot boy attending lessons taught by a school marm in a one-room school house could become the man to write the Gettysburg Address only to arrive at a society spending billions on education to produce students who can barely read it.
Perhaps we aren’t spending wisely.
Perhaps all the money has attracted too many grifters and ‘experts’ and snake oil peddlers.
Silly rabbit, the purpose of spending billions is not education; it is to “steal from the rich and give to the poor.”
Public worker unions exist to facilitate communist redistribution of wealth—social engineering is a corollary.
Particular unions strike, and every other public employee enjoys “comparable pay.”
Management compensation is pushed up from the bottom without even having to ask or justify; they love it.
The Second Amendment is by far the most important right we have.
Without it, the federal government would be able to use the military to occupy our streets, arrest and imprison people without due process, ship dissidents off to foreign gulags without a hearing and things of that nature.
Thankfully. the NRA and all the gun owners of America stand ready to prevent this from happening
Ohhh, wait …………..
For years, the NRA has claimed that this is their sole purpose.
So where are they now ?????
Those same folks are going to be surprised when the man they elected comes for their guns.
A dictator cannot risk having a well armed civilian militia.
A duly elected patriotic president who supports his country at every turn and was shot by a lunatic communist, the ideology that is replacing the Constitution and the population, not necessarily in that order.
There’s nothing in the constitution against using the military for law enforcement, let alone what they are actually doing, which is merely supporting law enforcement.
There’s certainly nothing in the constitution against arrested criminals, or against deporting people who have no right to be here.
No “dissidents” are being shipped off anywhere. Dissident remains completely free, as evidenced by the fact that none of you are afraid to tell such brazen lies about the President. If he were actually doing anything to dissidents you’d all be scared to open your mouths.
We’ll resort to 2nd amendment solutions when WE see a problem, not when YOU see one.
I really respect and Professor Turley and I read his book, watch his comments on Fox and read this column “religiously”, but it is past time that this very bright master of all things legal realize that he can no longer be a Democrat and that his support for the public schools is harming those he wants to help.
There are millions of ex-Democrats but there needs to be millions more. The party is gone, it is now the Democrat-Socialist party and they are globalist, illegal immigrant supporting, criminal coddling, pro-trans/anti-women, anti-growth, pro-antifa, pro-terrorists and Jewish hating radicals. It is over for the Democrat party but they just don’t know it yet.
Hullbobby, it might be over for the Democrat party, but is it over for the fascists and communists? No. We can never stop pushing for classical liberalism and freedom— the tide runs in the opposite direction.
There is nothing democratic about socialism. It robs the person of ambition, of one’s individuality, and, ultimately, of one’s self worth.
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The phrase keeps ringing in my mind. “Think about the children.” What’s really happening in Illinois is the sacrifice of the children for monetary gain. It’s no different than the doctors who are getting rich by performing sex change operations on underage children. The illusion of doing it “for the children” to justify their lust for the dollar provides a healing ointment for their infected souls. The children be damned. They’re just the cost of doing business.
@Thinkingitthrough: Or maybe the “sacrifice of the children” is an unrecognized evolutionary principle whereby one subconsciously works to disadvantage children other than ones own so that one’s genes, via one’s progeny, are the fittest to survive and thrive. The president of the Chicago teachers union sends her children to private school.
The American fertility rate is in a “death spiral,” more Americans die than are born.
The communists are replacing the American population with foreign hyphenates.
Women vote; women don’t bear children.
Where’s the future in women’s suffrage, that the Founders didn’t allow?
You are not a customer unless someone has to compete for your business. In a monopoly where participation is required by law you are a captive. Only universal school choice can save public schools by forcing them to compete in an open marketplace. Competition from superior Japanese imports is what saved the U.S. auto industry in the ’70s.
‘I have been a strong supporter of public schools throughout my life.’
Likewise, but my feelings are for what public schools *used* to be. They haven’t been that for some time. And honestly, the situation at our universities that is creating the teachers and admin responsible will have to be repaired too, as will the special interests, the ending of entitlements etc. or it’s moot. Frankly, it’s a big, big mess.
It’s a tough one – this particular area has been fully captured, top to bottom, though I still believe with enough time and the right leadership we could turn it around. The will to do that does not exist anymore in blue places. Those born and or raised during the Obama years have no idea it was ever any other way, and their parents still fancy themselves ‘hip’ in their faux liberalism even though they’ve paid attention to literally nothing for 30+ years. Again, it’s a tough one.
James, it is not going to be turned around unless teachers unions are banned or enough states allow non-unionized schools, money following students for private schools and vouchers for anyone interested.
*. What’s the dollar amount on the “voucher” , hullbobby? Let’s pretend each pupils cost in public allotment is 20 thou. Teacher salary is 60 thou. 3 pupils leave and delete 1 teacher? Is that your thinking? What are the remaining 27 pupils to do for a teacher?
I’m not following you? Maybe you’re thinking the vouchers value is 2 thou? Is that right?
Explain your dream of voucher, please.
“He further recounted how [one] student was told, ‘If you don’t kneel before the picture of the guru during your initiation ceremony, it could affect your eligibility on the girls [sic] basketball team.’”
Imagine the cruelty! A boy having to become Hindu so he can play on the girls’ basketball team. Actually, I’m just kidding–or maybe it’s true. This is Chicago after all.
The Left is becoming self-parody. If anyone still believes these lunatics, they aren’t sentient. They’re just parrots on their nutty professor’s shoulder.
@Diogenes
Indeed, modern liberals fear looking bad or being out of lockstep or having an original thought the way some people are afraid of heights or spiders or dying. It is beyond parody, and it’s something to behold.
Huh? What made you imagine the student in question was a boy?
Because she couldn’t play on the boys’ basketball team.
Huh? You’re making no sense. The student was told that if she didn’t do as she was told she might jeopardize her position on the girls’ basketball team. Obviously that means she is a girl! How could you possibly have assumed she was a boy? What in the story gave you that impression?
“I have been a strong supporter of public schools throughout my life…I view our public schools as important parts of our society as we shape future citizens….”
I admire you greatly, Prof. Turley, but not in this instance. Shaping future citizens (can easily become indoctrination) runs counter in many ways to education (mastery of a broad set of concepts).
Peter Drucker was not only the Dean of Management, but also an astute observer of human nature. One observation he made decades ago has pertinence here. I am paraphrasing, here, “When an organization is highly competent at a certain set of tasks, and one forces that organization to engage in tasks outside its competence, this generally ruins the organization.” I recall he specifically pointed to using the public school system as a vehicle for desegregating society as the task outside its competence which ruined it.
I’m not saying parts of our society should have remained segregated, but that we went about it in a way that resulted in 1) effectively continued segregation of society, 2) destruction of the curriculum, 3) the invasion of the “mind snatchers” (take over by progressive zealots) into the public school system. In other words, it didn’t accomplish its goal and wrecked everything else — proof positive of a stupid plan.
It’s completely unimaginable in this society that after decades of the government at all levels proving to the public beyond a shadow of a doubt that in the majority of states the government cannot be trusted to successfully run a bi-peddle hotdog stand at Coney Island, people would, in droves mind you, mindlessly send their most precious love trusts to a government run school!?!
One could not do worse by sending them to China or Uganda for an education. And yet, day in and day out, there go the government run big yellow buses (cattle cars lacking even seat belts in all but a handful of states), that our former prestigious Democrat border czar is so fond of. Wouldn’t occur to any of them that perhaps they would benefit from having a plan to improve things. Maybe beginning with the safety of the kids lives, and then progressing to what exactly they are not being taught.
“What States Require Seat Belts on School Buses?”
Published Aug 16, 2025
“Federal Guidelines on School Bus Safety”
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) plays a significant role in setting national standards for school bus safety. NHTSA’s primary safety design for large school buses is known as “compartmentalization.” This design involves closely spaced, high-back, energy-absorbing seats that create a protective envelope around passengers, reducing injury during crashes. While NHTSA requires three-point seat belts on school buses weighing less than 10,000 pounds, it allows individual states to decide whether to require seat belts on larger school buses.”
“NHTSA now recommends all new school buses have three-point seat belts, emphasizing they can enhance protection from compartmentalization. Despite this, federal regulations do not universally mandate seat belts on all large school buses, leaving the decision to state and local jurisdictions.”
https://legalclarity.org/what-states-require-seat-belts-on-school-buses/
Note the Feds “recommend”, life saving safety devices for the little children, but hey if your little government council would rather spend your tax dollars on social justice cultural experiments so be it. Common logic and actual compassion if not the ability to spend tax payer dollars on something besides enriching themselves are the missing elements.
So no only do the parents risk all manner of threats in sending their kids to a government run school system, but blindly risk their kids lives in trusting a government run cattle car system to take them to the government education camps.
————————————————
–Oddball
“Take it easy Big Joe, some of these people got sensitive feelings.
Please explain to me why the rest of America should be obligated to pay for the decades of gross malfeasance in Illinois ? Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article. Greg