Before the Chicago Bulls’ Derrick Rose took the NBA by storm and became the youngest Most Valuable Player in league history, he earned his basketball chops at Simeon Career Academy, a vocational public high school on the South Side of Chicago.
As you likely know by now, roughly 25,000 Chicago teachers and other school workers went on strike Monday, with teacher evaluations and “recall rights” for laid-off teachers remaining as the primary sticking points, according to our Teacher Beat blogger, Stephen Sawchuk.
Rose hasn’t been shy about speaking out about the strike on his Twitter account, which was only created one month ago. On Monday, Rose tweeted:
Hope the CPS gets a deal done soon...we need our kids in school! #TheReturn — Derrick Rose (@drose) September 10, 2012
Then, Tuesday night, he expounded upon his thoughts:
I'm sitting here just thinking how sad it is that my city got to go through this. I love my city and everyone in it even my haters! — Derrick Rose (@drose) September 12, 2012
I don't like that fact that OUR kids are not in school and that's the only thing we have to SAVE these kids. — Derrick Rose (@drose) September 12, 2012
I pray everyday for US for real. I know I shouldn't be saying this because I hoop and it's not my lane but I feel like ppl should hear this. — Derrick Rose (@drose) September 12, 2012
To Chicago’s credit, 144 “Children First” schools remain open for a half a day (Sawchuk visited one on Tuesday, in fact), and school sports teams are still allowed to practice, under certain conditions laid out by the Illinois High School Association.
It doesn’t change the fact that around 400,000 Chicago public school students are left to roam freely around a city that had more than 250 murders in the first six months of the year, according to .