Posts tagged ‘Jonah Edelman’

Chicago Teachers Union vs. Astroturf Billionaires

by , posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2012 at 2:04 pm

from the Chicago Teachers Union

The Chicago Teachers Union is currently on the front lines of a fight to defend public education. On one side the 30,000 members of the CTU have called for a contract that includes fair compensation, meaningful job security for qualified teachers, smaller class sizes and a better school day with Art, Music, World Language and appropriate staffing levels to help our neediest students.

On the other side, the Chicago Board of Education—which is managed by out of town reformers and Broad Foundation hires with little or no Chicago public school experience—has pushed to add two weeks to the school year and 85 minutes to the school day, eliminate pay increases for seniority, evaluate teachers based on student test scores, and slash many other rights.

Teachers, parents and community supporters in Chicago have fought valiantly—marching, filling auditoriums at hearings and parent meetings, even occupying a school and taking over a school board meeting. Most recently, 98 percent of our members voted to authorize a strike. But now we find ourselves facing new opponents—national education privatizers, backed by some of the nation’s wealthiest people. They are running radio ads, increasing press attacks, and mounting a PR campaign to discredit the CTU and the benefits of public education.

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TRS Pension Rally at the State Capitol

by , posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2012 at 8:55 am


The Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice Coalition held a rally in front of the Illinois State Capitol Building on Tuesday May 29th. The purpose of the rally was to point out the failure of Gov. Quinn, Speaker Madigan and the Democratic Party to lead the state toward a positive solution to the teacher pension issue. In addition, the speakers also pointed out that no one in the House or Senate are broaching the subject of the only real solution to the debt problems of the State-new revenue. The Coalition has put forward several proposals to generate the revenue needed to fund our States’ budget. They include a “graduated income tax”, a “transaction tax” on the Commodities Exchange among other solutions. For more information please contact: www.nijwj.org.

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