Posts tagged ‘teachers’

UNO Charter School Profiteer Juan Rangel Wants to Bust Chicago Teachers Union

by , posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 at 2:00 pm

from the Chicago Teachers Union

Why does Rangel want to starve neighborhood schools to feed his UNO charters?

Share

Investors Seek To Profit From Privatizing Public Schools

by , posted on Friday, August 31st, 2012 at 9:45 am

from The Real News

Activists at “People’s Education Convention” demand an end to excessive testing

Share

Chicago Teachers Union Files Strike Notice

by , posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 6:57 pm

from the Chicago Teachers Union

For Immediate Release: August 29, 2012
Contact: STEPHANIE GADLIN stephaniegadlin@ctulocal1.com

Chicago Headed Toward First Teachers Strike in 25 Years

CTU files 10-day strike notice with labor board; strike date has not been set

CHICAGO – Today, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) filed a 10-day notice with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board indicating more than 26,000 public school teachers, clinicians and paraprofessionals may go on strike in coming days. The notice is a legal requirement defined by state law. No date for a strike has been set by Union leaders. The House of Delegates will meet Thursday at 4:30 p.m. to talk next steps.

Should CTU members call for a work stoppage, this will be the first “teachers’ strike” in Chicago since 1987. “This is a difficult decision for all of us to make,” said union President Karen Lewis. “But this is the only way to get the Board’s attention and show them we are serious about getting a fair contract which will give our students the resources they deserve.”

“CPS seems determined to have a toxic relationship with its employees,” Lewis said. “They denied us our 4 percent raises when there was money in the budget to honor our agreement; they attempted to ram a poorly thought out longer school day down our throats; and, on top of that they want us to teach a new curriculum and be ready to be evaluated based on how well our students do on a standardized test. It has been insult after insult after insult. Enough is enough.”

CTU has been in contract negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) since November 2011. Teachers have been without a contract since June of this year after its five-year agreement with the District expired without a new agreement in place. Labor leaders have said they are negotiating for a “better day, job security and fair compensation for employees.”

Labor talks have been productive on some fronts such as winning provisions for nursing mothers, ensuring textbooks will be available on day one, teachers will have access to functioning computers and counselors and social workers will have appropriate, private workspaces to serve students. But the bigger issues such as wages, job security and evaluations are on the table and the two sides remain far apart. “We will have a contract,” Lewis said, “and it will come the easy way or the hard way. If our members are on the picket-line, we will still be at the negotiating table trying to hammer out an equitable agreement. There’s a larger picture here.”

Teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians have been vocal in their opposition to CPS’ draconian policies. In May, nearly 10,000 of them marched in downtown in preparation for a strike authorization vote which drew a 98 percent approval from CTU membership. Only 1.82 percent of CTU members voted against authorizing a strike. Member angst was driven by CPS’ overly aggressive push for a longer school day without indicating how the District would staff and pay for the program. Educators were angry that the Board made no commitments to offering students the much needed art, music, physical education and world language classes they needed.

In July, and much to CPS’ chagrin, a much anticipated “Fact Finder’s Report” recommended, in part, that CPS’s longer school day amounts to a 19.4% increase on average that teachers will have to work, and he determined that CPS cannot expect its employees to work nearly 20% more for free or without fair compensation. Accordingly, the Fact-Finder’s report recommends both a general wage increase and an additional increase due to the length of the school day: A general wage increase of 2.25% for School Year 2012 — essentially a cost of living increase — without any changes to existing steps and lanes. He also recommends an additional increase of 12.6% to compensate teachers for working a longer school day and year representing a combined first-year increase of 14.85%, plus existing step and lane adjustments. Both the CTU and the Board rejected the findings.

“We have chronic underfunding and misplaced priorities in the system,” said high school teacher Jen Johnson. “CPS would rather shut down schools rather than give them the resources they need. Thousands of students have been displaced by CPS’ school actions. Teachers are losing their jobs and parents have no choice but to keep their child in an under-resourced neighborhood school or ship them off to a poor-performing charter operation.”

Lewis said members are also concerned about the Board’s plan to close over 100 neighborhood schools and create a half public-half charter school district. “This education crisis is real especially if you are Black or Brown in Chicago,” she explained. “Whenever our students perform well on tests, CPS moves the bar higher, tells them they are failures and blames their teachers. Now they want to privatize public education and further disrupt our neighborhoods. We’ve seen public housing shut down, public health clinics, public libraries and now public schools. There is an attack on public institutions, many of which serve, low-income and working-class families.”

Share

Chicago Teachers Union Informational Picketing, Day 2

by , posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012 at 8:13 pm

from the Chicago Teachers Union

On August 21, 2012 CTU members and supporters engaged in informational picketing at schools across the city to discuss contract negotiations with the communities we serve.

Share

Chicago Teachers Union members and supporters take their case to the streets

by , posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2012 at 11:02 pm

from the Chicago Teachers Union

On August 20, 2012 CTU members and supporters engaged in informational picketing at schools across the city to discuss contract negotiations with the communities we serve.

Share

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.

Share

PDA-IL: Kristine Mayle of the Chicago Teachers Union on the current state of contract negotiations

by , posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 at 10:06 am

from PDA-IL

Chicago Teachers Union Financial Secretary Kristine Mayle speaks on the current state of Chicago Public Schools and contract negotiations.

August 13, 2012

Share

PDA IL: John Laesch on austerity measures in Illinois

by , posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2012 at 9:51 am

from PDA-IL

John Laesch of Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice (NIJWJ.org) speaks about austerity measures in Illinois.

Share

CTU: Explaining the strike authorization vote at Ray School

by , posted on Monday, June 11th, 2012 at 7:00 am

from the Chicago Teachers Union

Visit ctunet.com/parents for information on the strike authorization vote.

Share

We’re a Country Needing Heroes

by , posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 at 7:49 pm

We’re a country needing some heroes. And we really need them here in Illinois where for decades politicians have joined with the rest of our country’s politicians in selling out the middle class, starving the funding for our public schools and communities, and protecting large corporations and the One Percent.

For forty years, at the state and federal level, politicians have worked for big business interests attacking our labor unions, pension plans, small farms and businesses. Big business interests lobbied politicians, sometimes people in them became politicians or formed “Think Tanks” to lobby politicians. They ended regulations (Glass-Steagall) and opened up the banking system to gambling. They’ve gambled 401 Ks and mortgages. They lobbied for corporations to become monopolies. They lobbied for tax breaks, loopholes, and subsidies.

This has been a systematic, well thought out plan carried out by large moneyed interests and big business. A corporate lawyer named Lewis F. Powell in 1971 first outlined the plan on paper. Powell wrote a long memo to Eugene Sydnor, Jr. the then Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Called the Powell Memo, it outlined the plan for advancing corporate influence by deregulating corporations, building an array of institutions to push for unbridled corporate capitalism, and to diminish individual’s interests. It targeted unions and schools.

(more…)

Share