The Chicago Way: School Students Are Political Pawns

Armed and Safe did a better job with this story than I did.

As a school teacher, I wanted to write an angry rant about this, but what can I say that would embarrass people who haven't resigned after finding out that 49% of their students drop out before graduation? Arne Duncan is a fool, but he doesn't seem to mind being a fool. He appears to have embraced his inner fool, if you will. Chicago's schools have been giving kids the day off from school on the condition that they accept a free bus ride to an anti-gun protest (and protest on the desired side, of course) for years. Now they're going to bus them down to Springfield, on a school day, for the same purpose.
How in the hell do you pull this kind of stunt and not get fired? I don't care how anti-gun the board or the parents are--don't any of them give a damn whether their kids get an education? I know the answer to that, but I don't like it, so I keep asking the question. It's an irrational quirk; please excuse it.
It burns, it does. Apparently it's my fault and yours that there's so much violence in Chicago schools. Nothing to do with gangs, or with the complete failure of their educational mission, or gangs, or a total lack of parents who actually want an education for their kids, or gangs. Nope. Legal gun owners who follow every Illinois law, no matter how asinine they may become, are to blame.