Even as CPS opens more new schools, children with special needs have a tougher time finding options. Placements in private therapeutic schools are scarce, and some charters are reluctant to enroll them.
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NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
By: Alexander Russo / June 03, 2009
Wow. According to this press release from the IFT, yesterday the NLRB declared that Civitas charter school teachers are PRIVATE employees and must go through a separate process to gain collective bargaining privileges. Wow.
Charter School
Teachers Ready for Union Election
NLRB
Rules Civitas Is a Private Sector Employer
Chicago—Teachers and
staff at three Civitas charter schools are confident as they focus on
their next steps to get their union officially certified. The National
Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled yesterday that Civitas is a private
employer, a finding that requires the employees now to hold a union
election, even though the union already had been certified based on
majority sign-up.
In April, three-quarters of
the Civitas teachers and staff at the three schools signed cards stating
they wanted the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago
ACTS) to represent them as a union. Under state law, that was enough
for the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to automatically
certify Chicago ACTS as the union representative, which the board did.
But school officials filed a petition with the NLRB, claiming Civitas
was a private entity that required an NLRB-supervised election.
“We continue to believe that
these charter schools are public schools because they are funded with
taxpayer dollars,” said Brian Harris, a special education teacher
at CICS/Civitas Northtown Academy and a member of Chicago ACTS. “We
are prepared to proceed with an election as soon as possible and are
confident that our union will prevail.”
Civitas argued that its charter
schools are essentially private schools not accountable to the public,
despite receiving taxpayer dollars. In the brief Civitas submitted to
the NLRB, it claimed it is a for-profit company not required to provide
any type of annual presentation to any government body to justify its
annual expenditures, and that it has no “direct personal accountability”
to any government public officials.
“We urge Civitas administrators
to work with the teachers and staff at the school to ensure the election
is conducted fairly and quickly,” said Martha Biondi, chair of Chicago
Workers’ Rights Board and an associate professor of African American
studies and history at Northwestern University. “We applaud the teachers
and staff at the school for working to have a say in their school in
order to improve learning and teaching conditions that will ultimately
benefit the children.”
Chicago ACTS is a joint project
of the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers
and the Chicago Teachers Union. Chicago ACTS is an affiliate of the
IFT.
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Because now that they've transferred nearly a trillion dollars of our money to save Wall Street's finance capitalists and those Hedge Fund "monarchs" who were lining up to get their picture taken with The Candidate at the Regency Hyatt last July (during the American Federation of Teachers union convention, when The Candidate had told the union he couldn't make it to talk to the people who had put him into power in the US Senate and were about to secure his nomination at the Democratic National Convention), they already have the money to create as many entities as possible to parrot their various party lines.
They're one of the reasons why Catalyst continues to exist, after all. But that's small potatoes compared with all the thingies they're inventing to push their Party Line here in Illinois and in every state in the USA. With unemployment among college graduates as high as it is, there is an infinite supply of Greg Richmonds, Phyllis Locketss and Josh Edelmans (and their various Buffies and Muffies) to do their bidding. The going rate seems to be (a) an unlimited expense account to travel from conference to conference and (b) a pay package (total pay and benefits) in six figures.
And now the corporate types don't have to go to Patrick Henry University (or even Wheaton College) for well-trained cadre.
This is only the beginning.
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
I believe your should read, critically, the books written by visionary charismatic leaders, whether here in the USA today or 80 years ago in Europe. They usually leave out a lot of acts, but circle around their central ideas fairly well. When they get absolute power, they strike. It's why we should always study history before we go into sociology or macroeconomic theory.
'Dreams from my Father' was an interesting work, but one of the big unanswered questions is "Who paid for college?" Most of us faced that problem, and many of us qualified to get into Columbia and Harvard (but couldn't afford it) all the way back to the 1960s and definitely through the times in that book.
Does anyone believe that Barack Obama saved his money working in Chicago as a "community organizers" (which schools were involved in those quasi-fictional realities?) so he could afford Harvard Law School?
But that touching tome was really the warm up for the one everyone should be reading with an eye towards the future of public schools in the USA.
Now go to that teacher bashing public, school trashing, union busting "Audacity of Hope." Barack Obama means, ultimately, to privatize all public schools. The Obama administration has just begun with the urban ones, leading with Chicago because Chicago could impose mayoral (i.e., corporate) dictatorship through the Amendatory Act (1995). Similarly, the Amendatory Act mandated massive privatization (beginning with custodial work, and the busting of the old SEIU Local 46) slowly over time. "First they came for ..." custodians and lunchroom workers, but they weren't teachers, so...
And then finally they came for...
At no point during his careers in Illinois and USA government did Barack Obama oppose mayoral control in Chicago or all the teacher bashing, public school trashing, and union busting (privatization) that flowed out of mayor control.
Nor did Obama oppose the lies that have been spread like Swine Flu out of Chicago since all this nonsense began. He sat at Dodge with Joe Biden and Arne Duncan last December without a thought in that beautiful mind for the hundreds of former Dodge children who were being destroyed being moved around the West Side (to Grant, then to... etc.) like ping pong balls until they were finished. Now (Tuesday, page one, New York Times) we have another Chicago fairy tale (with "Rev." Charlie Walker serving up helpings of well funded support to AUSL) -- the "success" of the "turnaround" at Orr (even though a year ago Orr was still in the final days of its second reconstitution, small schools. The previous one had been under Vallas -- remember.
Oh, and remember, we also tried "Intervention" didn't we?
But don't worry, this time the corporate script will surely "work."
Because it does by definition.
I guess the moral of the story is that anyone who fabricates, fictionalizes, and otherwise lies (that is really the only word I can think of) about his own life will surely double cross anyone who trusts him and break any promise to exalt himself.
So here's what's going to happen.
Once states agree to identify and close "failing schools" (notice how quickly The New York Times shifted that term from Duncan's recent "underperforming") the demands will always increase, since everyone and every entity is "underperforming" (except those that are using a completely different standard -- like the charters and the Catholics).
Of course they are going to parochialize, privatize, and destroy as much of public education in the USA as possible. These guys are revolutionaries in a way very much known in the previous century. And their social Darwinisn ideology was hatched to a large extent here in Chicago (like their nastier counterparts on the Dearborn Independent, the University of Chicago's Chicago Boys in the 1930s were very popular with their eugenicist versions of reality until a few events discredited the whole project for a couple of generations)...
But that's another story for another time.
The short answer to the question was "Yes." First they will attack the urban and rural (unionized) public schools serving the poor, and once they have their cadre of teacher bashing, union busting privatizers trained and rewarded (like those in "New Schools" and the charter school groups here in Chicago and Illinois), they'll have enough muscle and cadre to go after everybody.
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
George says: "We can even have a "Book of the Month" club, producing a 300-page book every month for the next four years based on the narratives of children and parents who were abused by Chicago's charter school scams."
You know, you can also have a book of the month club of stories from CPS (not talking about the charter schools, but the CPS non-charters) schools & admins that abuse the rights of children with disabilities. (Hooray for those in CPS who don't!)
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
George asks: "...will the people pushing the Obama charterization program admit that the objective of Arne Duncan's U.S. Department of Education is the massive privatization of public education across the USA -- just as was done in Chicago?"
- I wonder if privatization is being pushed almost exclusively for (large or small) metro areas with high poverty. What's your sense of it?
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
from Kyle: "In the brief Civitas submitted to the NLRB, it claimed it is a for-profit company not required to provide any type of annual presentation to any government body to justify its annual expenditures, and that it has no “direct personal accountability†to any government public officials"
- Can charters say that in light of IDEA regs? Are charters bound to follow IDEA as public schools must?
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Parking meters, airports, parking garages, and now they have decided to stop the cover up and freely admit that charters are private companies. Just like any other private company they have to make a profit to stay in business and they can't do that with employees that have collective bargaining rights.
Now that this quote is out there and part of the public record we need to remind our board and CEO that while they may think they have some oversight of charters, the charters don't seem to think so. "In the brief Civitas submitted to the NLRB, it claimed it is a for-profit company not required to provide any type of annual presentation to any government body to justify its annual expenditures, and that it has no “direct personal accountability†to any government public officials"
pay to play, pay to park, pay to learn....
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
George.....Could you post some data on the CPS 8th Grade Writing Assessment? I'm curious to know if that data is made public. I wonder how the charters compare to the neighborhood schools.
Thanks
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Does this mean that Civitas will eagerly return all of the public money they have stolen from the public school children of the City of Chicago?
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Now that the Obama administration (the NLRB is part of the federal government, yes?) has ruled that charter schools are private schools, will the people pushing the Obama charterization program admit that the objective of Arne Duncan's U.S. Department of Education is the massive privatization of public education across the USA -- just as was done in Chicago?
At least that cat's out of the bag. Every time a kid was kicked out of Noble Street and sent to Wells, or out of one of the "campuses" of CICS, etc., everyone knew what the game was.
Let's just make it front and center in this discussion, now that everyone (including the CTU leadership) is also on the same page about the hypocrisies of the charter school corporate masters (CICS being just one of five major ones in Chicago).
We can even have a "Book of the Month" club, producing a 300-page book every month for the next four years based on the narratives of children and parents who were abused by Chicago's charter school scams. At least Bernie Madoff's victims had some resources. Most Chicago charter schools are ripping off the city's poorest and least protected children to begin with.
My nomination for the first chapter of that "Chicago Charter School Hoax" book?
The stories of the three young men murdered by North Lawndale College Prep up on the Fox River las year. After that we can go to the victims of the various sex criminals who've worked in Chicago's charters (from Joseph Nurek's testimony praising charter schools at the House Committee on Education and Labor to those cute little quips from that teacher at Perspectives who proved her "love" for the "children" literally was true)...
Etc.
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
only parents can if they pull their children out and leave the school
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Such arrogance by Civitas reminds me of Daley, Stroger, Ryan, Blago, and any machine politician. Is that true Chicago Public Schools, no one holds them accountable! Civitas said it!!!
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
thanks for the link, john --
meantime, i've talked to the AFT folks in DC and they tell me that this issue has come up a dozen or so times in other regions and the decision is, while new to Chicago, not entirely unprecedented.
It sounds like the NLRB decisions have gone both ways and aren’t numerous enough to declare a trend. And it seems like the IFT and AFT both want to keep the focus on moving forward, not on the public/private issue.
That’s apparently why the somewhat muted language is in the IFT press release, and why AFT president Randi Weingarten isn’t putting out a release.
now you know.
- alexander
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
Catalyst has posted a short article, noting the connection between the NLRB ruling and pending charter legislation. http://tinyurl.com/pe7rzh
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
http://www.chicagoacts.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&...
link to nlrb filings