As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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Strike authorization vote to start Wednesday
By: Rebecca Harris / June 01, 2012
The Chicago Teachers Union officials will kick off a strike-authorization vote this Wednesday, and allow it to continue “until there is a clear result one way or the other.”
Holding the vote over a multiple-day period will help the union garner more participation. Under a new law, at least 75 percent of all union members must authorize a strike potential strike.
Any final decision on a walkout would be made by the union’s House of Delegates. By law, though, that can’t happen until after an independent fact-finding panel has recommended a settlement and publicized its findings. The panel’s findings are due in mid-July. For a timeline of the negotiations so far, click here.
CPS released a statement Friday evening saying that a vote “would only hurt our kids and our community.” CPS officials have emphatically argued that a strike authorization vote should not happen until after the fact-finder releases his report and the process is allowed to play out.
But CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey has said the requirement that 75 percent of all members approve a strike, rather than the majority of voters, has pushed the union to call a vote early.
During the summer, it would be difficult to pull in all members to vote, he has said.
"This is a vote that essentially puts 30,000 members at the bargaining table with us,” Sharkey said. “It’s a reaction to what we see as unreasonable proposals.”
Further, union president Karen Lewis pointed out Friday that the fact-finding panel can only make recommendations about a limited number of issues, primarily compensation. She said that CTU asked CPS to let the panel deal with broader educational issues, but CPS said no. If either side rejects the settlement proposed by the panel, the union must wait 30 days before it can strike.
At a CTU press conference on Friday, parents stood with teachers and noted a wide range of issues they said CPS had been unwilling to address in contract negotiations. They included a lack of funding for longer-day recess aides (possibly forcing teachers to take on that duty); oversize classes; schools’ lack of air conditioning; a shortage of social workers and other clinicians; and a dearth of money for more art, music, physical education and library teachers.
Trish O’Shea, a preschool teacher at Dunne Tech Academy in Roseland, said that “there are days when learning in our classroom is almost impossible” because the temperature reaches 100 degrees or above.
“The union has proposed air conditioning all schools for all kids, and the Board has rejected that,” she said.
Becky Malone, of 19th Ward Parents, said her group supported the union.
“They are expected to guide our brightest young minds, but their hands are tied by a city that does not respect them or what they do,” she said.
But Mary Anderson, executive director of Stand for Children Illinois, reiterated her group’s past criticism of a strike authorization vote. She says the union is “holding our students’ education hostage in order to score political points.”
“Asking teachers to decide right now whether to strike, when they have no information… is completely unfair to those teachers and it’s unfair to students,” Anderson says. “It’s completely against the spirit of Senate Bill 7. This is a process CTU agreed to; they were at the table.”
Stand for Children has started an online petition against the strike authorization vote and a “Collective Bargaining 101” website for parents. Stand for Children leadership lobbied for Senate Bill 7 which established the new process that the union must undertake before calling a strike.
Lewis fired back at criticisms of the vote at the press conference. “State law does not prohibit us from taking a strike authorization vote now, and does not require us to wait until after fact-finding,” she said.
She also blamed Senate Bill 7 for increasing teacher strikes around the state, saying it has emboldened districts to enforce “draconian” policies against teachers.
Adam Geisler, a delegate at Bateman Elementary, says part of the problem is that CPS is asking teachers to try too many new initiatives, too quickly, without proof that they will work. He says the extended day and year, the Common Core State Standards, network reorganizations, and new teacher evaluations that will factor in student performance are all adding to teachers’ workload.
“Teachers are, frankly, overwhelmed, and feel like they’re not being treated with professional respect in terms of these decisions,” Geisler says. “The strike-authorization vote is simply a way for us to exert our influence… (at a time when) teachers and students are being used as pawns in education reform that has no research behind it.”
Smart Move
It is a smart move from the union to take the vote before teachers go every which way for the summer. Even just the logistics of taking a vote during the summer make this a better time to do it. Mr. Brizard's argument that teachers need to wait and hear the final proposal is not valid - he thinks this early vote shows disrespect. As opposed to what teachers think, that his offer of 2% for 1 year and NOTHING after that is the greater disrespect. When he offered that in the Fall, only 13 schools went for it, and some of those under suspicious circumstances and with 150K extra thrown in. WHY would he think we'd think better of it now in the summer of 2012?
Mary Anderson is a Pinhead!!
Mary Anderson from Stand for Children is a absolute pinhead!! How in the hell do you push for legislative changes in Illinois but bitch and moan when CTU uses every avenue to defend itself against those changes?? Mary Anderson, Rauner and all the other croonies who support Rham are begining to see it won't be so easy to overthrow CTU. We're not going to take it. When Mary Anderson said a strike vote is “completely against the spirit of Senate Bill 7" I almost threw up my dinner. These people are NUTS!! Everyone is trying to muster up some kind of way to prevent the authroization vote. Rham is defeated!! A 2% raise is a slap in the face. Let's strike..........I'm ready!!
Springfield discrimination and the rantings of the Astroturfers
Just about every indication (capped by the May 23 rallies and march) shows that the CTU will easily surpass the odious 75 percent hurdle established by law in 2010 and 2011 (SB7). The legislation was virtually dictated by Stand for Children, Advance Illinois, and the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club. All of them believed that the CTU would never be able to get a 75 percent vote of the membership.
(By the way: retirees such as myself, who are not affected by the active duty teachers' contract and strikes, do not vote either on these referenda or in the House of Delegates on these matters).
When Karen Lewis and Jesse Jackson use the word "apartheid" to describe the current situation in Illinois, the word doesn't just apply to the fact that Chicago has more than 250 all-black public schools (more than a half century after Brown).
The odious double standard in Illinois has existed since the passage of the Amendatory Act of 1995, which singled out Chicago's teachers (the Chicago Teachers Union and the Cook County College Teachers Union) for separate and unequal treatment under Illinois law. For two years (1995 - 1997) the CTU and the CCCTU were barred by law from striking, while all other Illinois teachers (from pre-kindergarten through higher education) were permitted to bargain and strike based on a reasonable collective bargaining standard.
As the apologists for this double standard become better known to the public, they will begin to face more challenges for their apartheid views. Robin Steans of Advance Illinois joined forces with Etoy Ridgnal (now departed) of Stand for Children in pushing SB7. They were joined briefly in a hysterical performance by R. Eden Martin of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club testifying about why Chicago teachers should be forced into a straight jacket, with strikes and other collective bargaining options barred by law.
Now these Astroturf groups are back, complaining not about the fact that the Chicago Board of Education has 160 schools without libraries or the fact that class sizes in some school remained — all year! — at more than 40. Joined by the newest Astroturf grouplet on the block ("Democrats for Education Reform") are utilizing their power within the plutocracy to prattle talking points against the city's 25,000 CTU members.
One of the most wonderful things of recent weeks has been the ability of the Chicago Tribune, with a straight face, to find one "teacher" to denounce the CTU and the possibility of a strike. And after that, we see the same expert pop up on "public" TV and elsewhere as the expert on all things CPS.
The wonder is that after her brief and less than luminous career in a public school classroom, Robin Steans of Advance Illinois would even think to remind her former colleagues of her brief time at Sullivan High School. I guess this just shows how far you can get when your Daddy has three quarters of a billion dollars, some of which gets pumped into corporate "education reform." Readers and viewers should probably demand to know why Tribune, WTTW and others quote Steans with a straight face.
But as one of my colleagues used to say regularly: OIC...
"Only in Chicago..."
But that's another delightful story for another time.
Mary Anderson and the Astroturfers
A year ago, when Stand for Children was pushing SB7, Mary Anderson was working with Lisa Madigan at the Illinois Attorney General's office. Suddenly, Etoy Ridgnal (who was the public face of Stand for Children during the SB7 stuff and who vowed to stay in Chicago, live on the West Side, and send her own kids to CPS schools in the 'hood) disappeared without a trace, and the Stand for Children Chicago office was reorganized with almost all new faced at the top.
It just shows what you can do when Penny Pritzker and James Crown speed dial some friends to fund you. In December 2010, Stand for Children raised a million dollars (on top of the millions they already had) when the Crowns and Ptizkers made a few phone calls and their buddies each chipped in with a check for $50,000 to grease the Stand for Children wheels (and who knows what or who else)...
This stuff would make Tony Razko blush, but when you own a large part of the world, you actually think you can buy the rest. And with the unemployment rate among college grads to high (and most of the privileged not wanting to get near real children in a real classroom — even a charter school one) the people who are doing the Stand for Children dance are truly, as Karen Lewis has said, making the rest of us realize that they should be named "Stand on Children."
Sign Stand on Children's Petition
I just signed their petition. Let's bust the unions like in 1933!
Adolph Hitler
Strike
I also will vote yes for a strike. I come from a school that voted over % 95 to strike. Boards come and go. They leave with their perks and compensation packages. We are left to deal with the mess they leave behind. Chicago children deserve the best. I am also a parent with a child in CPS. Enough is enough!
Good point about all those
Good point about all those who come and go while teachers are left dealing with the fallout.
In 8 years I have seen 5 CEOs, 7 Area Officers / Network Chiefs, 6 principals, more Assistant Principals than I can remember -- each with his or her own pet project, scripted curricula, reading initiative, math protocol, curriculum mapping, or other education "reform" salvation of the day. I can't even begin to contemplate how many work hours have been wasted on all their mandates over the years.
At the end of the day I still teach my class the way I have always taught my class:
I do what has proven to work for me and my students. I learn who my students are, what they need, and how they can best succeed. I work collaboratively with my colleagues to help every student. I change and adjust and tweak my practice constantly through assessment, reflection, and student input.
And most importantly of all, I ignore to the absolute largest extent possible all the bloated, misguided, unproven junk that trickles down from CPS policy and admin.
Stand for Corporate Profits !
Stand for Corporate Profits has been outed as a Corporate Tool to privatize public education. I should not be doing the reporters job at Catalyst to out Stand for Children. Stand for Children with SB7 tried to keep under wraps the present situation faced by teachers in the classroom , from over testing to overcrowding. Stand for Children is a pox! You can't defend them since their arguments lack any standing in the research community!
Seems Stand for Children went to Stand for Corporate Profits when they got the "big checks".
Stand or Children in Mass. kicked their real grassroots members to the side when they got the big corporate checks! Their grassroots member did not want charter schools nor more testing.
http://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/editions-of-the-backpack/spring-...
Thanks Reverend Jackson, You are a God Send!
When Karen Lewis and Jesse Jackson use the word "apartheid" to describe the current situation in Illinois, the word doesn't just apply to the fact that Chicago has more than 250 all-black public schools
I would like to say thank you to Reverend Jackson for all the help and support he has given CAUSE and the Displaced Teachers over the last 4 years. We have continued our meetings at PUSH every Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. He has shared his facilities with us since 2009 when Terri Wilford, CTU Delegate and Elementary Functional Vice President and I met with him and informed him about the purge of teachers from CPS. We have been working with Reverend Jackson since Marilyn Stewart was president. She often visited PUSH when we held meetings there. Our education fight is a civil rights fight. We thank Reverend Jackson for his continued support over the years.
Apartheid is now common practice to bring on privatization!!!
New York City also does this! After reading, we can make the connections as to what happens under mayoral control of CPS!!!
http://schottfoundation.org/publications-reports/education-redlining
BATELLE FOR KIDS, $590,953
Batalle for kids--horrible! Garbage in-garbage out. This is what CPS teachers will be judged on! Where is the media on cost of this program and the inaccuracy? Waste fraud and mismanagment? Look into this please!As of now, cost for roster verification reported at $590,953
From Department of Procurement & Contracts – Contract Award Report
APPROVE ENTERING INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH BATTELLE FOR KIDS FOR ROSTER VERIFICATION SOFWARE LICENSING AND SUPPORT SERVICES CONTRACT SIGN DATE 03/29/2012 http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_Education/Documents/BoardActio...
As this is another ‘not for profit’ minorities need not apply
Why call the vote now and vote yes?-because CPS is playing dirty
This Batalle on kids is forced on teachers to do on their own time-taking hours, with having to input their student rosters in over and over again. Why? To JUDGE every teacher with value added--which has not been 'negotiated'. (Teachers are effectively digging their own graves in the Battalle Cemetery.) CPS and SB7 approached this as CPS wins, CTU loses. One cannot call this process negotiations and CTU is correct in not being forced to 'wait' for facts from a fact-finder.
Reading is Rocket Science
Yes! Yes ! Yes! This is spot on ! I have been ignoring "program of the year" since the mid-seventies when we had Mastery Learning and the skewers for the punch cards. My children always showed overall growth on standardized tests. Teachers used to come to my room in September and ask,"how did you teach your children to read..... very few of the other second graders can read" .....the aide and I would look at each other and say, "well we worked hard" What we did was teach reading behind the closed door ( OMG we had three reading groups with a basal) and use the Program of the Year in a secondary manner. Our children learned and this was in a primary program on the west side-yes poor children can learn!
I remember a visit from a central office dignitary in her fur coat who swooped into my room demanding to know why my children were in a basal group. She had no clue about the teaching of reading...just get out the skewers and run it through the punch cards....ludicrous to think that children learn to read through osmosis....38 years later and we still have the Reading Kool-aid being pushed down our throats.
This Vote means nothing
Silly union. Cards are being played way too soon. If you lose the vote, what do you have left.
Silly Observer
We are not going to lose the vote. We will do way better than 75% in fact.
To Observer
The CTU is desperate after giving away teachers rights in Springfield. Asking teachers to jeopardize their jobs to save the union is ridiculous. What will they left? Absolutely nothing! Everyone know what's happening except the teachers who are following this irresponsible union leadership to their own destruction.
You will not get 75%. I am
You will not get 75%. I am sure of it. My friends/colleagues indicate they will not vote for a strike until CPS has put all the cards on the table. We could wait on the fact finding and then consider whats next. We are moving much too fast to have any leverage. Is Karen going to take no pay while we strike. Put it n writing and I could feel better about a strike vote.
Trolls and anonymous cowards posting everywhere ... ???
On another website that deals primarily with questions about public schools with a focus on Chicago, we have a requirement that everyone who wishes to post a comment give their first name and last name. Reading some other places (including here), I'm touched by what a good rule that is. Any CPS or ruling class troll can post a dozen or more comments in five minutes, and this site just lets them do it.
ALEC was passing around legislations for the conservatives to pour into state law long before they were outed following Madison and the work of the odious Scott Walker. The conservatives that made those laws included not only Republicans, but Democrats — and with the support of many so-called "Progressives."
Sadly, the trolls are still operating, and now in Chicago they are going to be unleashed after being fed that latest talking points because so many blogs and services still allow them to pour out their nonsense behind the fig leaf of "Anonymous..." "Observer..." or a hundreds other troll spots.
CTU will get the 75 percent vote this week...
Despite the years' work of the apartheid pushers in Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union will get well above the 75 percent vote necessary to authorize the strike. The majority of teachers and other union members are no longer listening to the talking points and attacks from the avatars of CPS and their agents. One of the most amazing things to me the past couple of weeks has been how much my fellow reporters are avoiding real public schools and real public school teachers. Every time I'm reminded of that supposedly hard core tradition of Chicago reporting (Mike Royko, Kurt Vonnegut, City News and all that stuff) I've got to laugh.
The remaining reporters writing about Chicago's schools are so deep in the tank with the ruling class they'd get the bends if they tried to surface. Now this isn't unique or unusual as some people would try to claim. For every reporter (Lu Palmer comes to mind) back in the 1960s who actually walked the streets and talked to the people, there were a dozen guys like Ron Koziol of the Tribune.
For those who don't fully appreciate the dubious traditions of Chicago reporting, Koziol was the guy who got his "news" straight from J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. The Tribune then turned those "exclusives" into infamous front page stories, ranging from those racist exposes against Dr. King to the nonsense during the 1968 convention about the "Yippies" spiking the city's drinking water with LSD.
At this point in history, any Chicago reporter who quotes Robin Steans as a "teacher" or expert on CPS should go on a list of Infamy as clear as the one that includes Koziol. And any outlet that asks for our money after giving another silly segment to Steans, the latest generation of Stand on Children talking heads, or whatever else the Astroturfers come up with should get giggled next time they try to report seriously.
Trolls
Observer and Guess Who: Are you ready to eat those words when the CTU gets 75%? For all the defeatists, whiners and apologists for the CPS, get ready for a big fat helping of crow!
Teachers need to wake up!
What this blog should stop is George Schmidt from name calling and bullying everyone on all the Chicago Blogs. Isn't he a union employee?
The CTU is a busted union begging teachers to give up their jobs because THEIR union president has made everyone an "at will" employee.
She also went to Springfield singed up for the longer school day, got a 75% strike deal , what happened to getting 51%? What about the longer school day? The union is just trying to save itself from it's foolish mistakes and using naive teachers to fight this useless battle. The question is, what will or what can they gain by going out on strike and risking their livelihood?
A four per-cent raise is not enough to put your career in harms way . No small money offer can take the place of your jobs. Teachers wake up ! Remember now that you are "at will" employees the principal can and will fire you as soon as you come back to work, that is if you get back after the strike. Teachers need to take care of themselves and their families. The union doesn't care anything about you. They just don't want to be embarrassed by their foolish mistakes.
Thanks for the pep talk
Is "Guess Who" Brizard, or some other scumbag from the Board trying to dishearten the Union?
Sorry, it is not going to work. Take your panic peddling elsewhere.
The 2% proposed raise is an 18% wage cut.
Let's remember that this 2% so called raise is actually a cut in pay since the board has unilaterally increased our official workday by 20% or so. This cuts our hourly wage significantly. After next year, it's on to a flawed "merit" pay system that will further damage our schools. None of what the board is doing is about education, it's all about busing the union, privatizing schools and cutting costs.
To Just a Teacher
Then why did your union president agree to the longer school day. Why didn't the CTU go on strike before they gave up your seniority? Now that you will be at will employees, and now that they have lost your seniority, given you a longer school day without a fight and made sure you can;t bargain for anything other than wages, now they want to strike. Teachers, you've been had by your own union.
Stand Together
We will stand strong. We will stand together. We will stand in solidarity. We are not afraid.
Trolls rising and foaming at mouths...
One of the reasons I remain patient and have fund here is that the trolls are revving up their slanders against the union leadership as we speak. One of the best ways to sample the internal divide-and-conquer work of the boss is to read the anonymous trolling that goes on here, and the lies. My favorite the last four hours has been "Guess Who?" hiding behind what tree and trying to piss on others while remaining troll-like in anonymous land. I never answer coward's challenges, let along questions from trolls. Come out in your own name, "Guess...", and let the world know who is it trying to break the Chicago Teachers Union.
What has the union done for fired teachers? - Absolutely Nothing
Teachers stand with the people who put food on your table and those not who have sold you out. The union has used you , all the fired teachers will tell you how the union sold them out. You'll be next . Why don't you ask them what they think?
CTU opponents are desperate!!
It's so funny to see CTU opponents shaking in their boots with jargon and propaganda of fear. Everybody knows we will get the 75% vote, heck we had way more than that when we did the mock vote a few weeks back. That's why the mayor and his croonies are up in arms, they know the margin of error weighs heavily in our favor. I'm a clinican at three buildings each with 100% support in favor of the strike vote. Educators are not fooled by the CPS crocodile tears. And are not afraid to strike. CPS can shove that proposed 2% raise right up their a$$. VOTE TO AUTHORIZE A STRIKE!!!!!
Common Sense
Does anyone out there have any real evidence that this organization will play fair? That without opposition and a fight the proverbial "they" are about making the best choices for schools, students and teachers across this city? Is this the track record? What an insult to common sense. Does any parent you know want a classroom environment where their child is seen only as a possibility to "value add" to their results (resulting in increase in pay)? Have we lost our way to this degree as persons who committed themselves to this profession? We should be outraged. Vote Yes!
Please simmer down "Guess Who"
The reason we didn't go on strike when the longer school day was first announced is because it takes a long time to get a strike together correctly, for one thing, and our contract is not up until June 30th for another. You are advocating an illegal strike. You are a panicked fear monger who, incidentally, is talking out of your butt.
Vote yes! Stand strong, together!
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