As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
Join the conversation
We encourage our readers to leave comments and engage in dialogue about our stories. But before you do, please check out our "rules of the road."
Recent Notebook Entries
Right Now On Notebook
By:
By:
Subscribe to catalyst-chicago.org by e-mail
Other Blogs
catalyst-chicago.org feeds
Current Issue
CPS, union wage legal battle over strike vote
By: Sarah Karp / June 07, 2012
As teachers continued the second day of the strike authorization vote, the district lost its request to a state labor board to have access to strike vote materials.
The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board denied a request for an emergency order that would have forced the Chicago Teachers Union to preserve material from the vote and allow the board and the district access to it.
But the board cannot yet extract itself from the messy battle between the union and CPS. On Thursday, the union announced that it had filed an unfair labor practice charge against the district. The complaint alleges that the Board of Education interfered with the CTU’s right to conduct the strike authorization.
Teachers started voting on Wednesday on whether they will authorize a strike. The vote is expected to last until Friday.
The union says that the district was meddling when it made the request to force the union to keep and provide access to election material. This is not required by law and unduly encumbers the strike authorization process, according to the complaint.
Also at issue is a letter sent by CEO Jean-Claude Brizard to teachers on Monday. In the letter, Brizard writes that he wants to “take this opportunity to share some concerns I have about moving forward with a strike vote.”
CTU lawyer Robin Potter said that the letter included threats and inaccurately portrayed the state of negotiations and what would happen if the strike authorization were approved. For example, in discussing raises, Brizard writes that “the process by which that occurs must be allowed to work itself through.”
“You can’t threaten like that,” Potter says. She says the letter also included statements that were not accurate about the district’s contract proposals. “You cannot mislead members. You cannot coerce them.
Not missing a beat, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll shot back that Brizard was simply responding to misrepresentations by the union.
“We have every right to communicate the truth to our teachers,” she says.
Carroll points out that the denial of the request that CTU preserve records was not a judgment on its validity. She says it was more a timing issue.
“What the IELRB merely did was rule that they do not intend to hold a meeting before their scheduled meeting on July 1 to begin issuing rule-making around SB7 and therefore they can’t require that the CTU preserve all documents related to their strike vote prior to that time,” she says.
John Brosnan, special counsel to the IELRB, explained that CPS’ request was denied because previously the court had set a high bar for what the district asked for: to preserve materials and have emergency rules created to govern the process. (Senate Bill 7, which was passed last year, lays out a procedure for how strikes can occur.)
Brosnan says that the normal process for creating rules around a new law can take several months and includes public hearings. Then, the rules must be approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, which includes senators and representatives.
“Rules can’t really be done quickly,” he said.
In a recent case where the IELRB made emergency rules, the court ruled that the circumstances were not extraordinary enough. Not only did the rules have to be reversed, but the board had to pay attorney’s fees, he said.
Becky Carroll misses mosts beats
I don't know who edited this piece, but a more interesting story about Becky Carroll and the Board's Communications Department at this point in history is one that Catalyst will doubtless continue to avoid. According to the CPS "Position File" (which is the listing of all people working full or part-time for CPS), the Communications Department has doubled (or tripled) in size since Jean-Claude became CEO a year ago. Additionally, the department has added at least three other people working at salaries of $100,000 or more per year without putting any of those appointments (most of which have been made since October 2011) through the Board agendas with a Board Report for each.
Of course, CPS Communications doesn't "miss a beat." They are bloated like most of the nouveau Brizard departments and bureaus that have been set up since Brizard was imported from Rochester a year ago, with a blank check to staff the entire CPS hierarchy with out-of-towners (many of them Broads) who knew even less about Chicago and its public schools than he does.
Given that Becky Carroll's minions harass any reporter who tries to report the facts, while making sure that even the simplest facts are nearly impossible to get, it's not surprising that Catalyst gets the instant replay from Casa Brizard. But given that we now have a year of lies and spin, and a crisis that will be playing out as both tragedy and farce over the next several months, it's time that Chicago reporters stopped playing footsy with the propaganda departments under Rahm Emanuel (the two biggest of which are CPS Communications and the mayor's press office) and try to get some facts, rather than talking heads.
Hope Catalyst Will Not Censor anyone's views that are properly p
As a frequent guest and infrequent visitor to the Catalyst website, my hope is that the editors at Catalyst will allow for a free flow of commentary from the community.
I recently heard that Catalyst was censoring the views of teachers who support the current strike authorization vote being held throughout schools in the City. "Say it ain't so." I hope Catalyst is not censoring anyone who writes appropriately and has the courage of his or her convictions to provide his/her real name.
While in my view, Catalyst is not "pro" teacher enough, (I may be a bit biased, as I am a teacher) Catalyst does provide a valuable service to the community by being a voice and forum for educational issues and reform.
As a reader, I particularly enjoy the spirited discussions provided by your contributors, I'd hate to think we're not getting the full range of discussion due to censorship.
Great coverage
Catalyst Chicago is the only news outlet that has picked up this story. Great job in reporting the news that lesser organizations have missed.
Question about censorship
Jay, I am not sure where the idea that Catalyst is somehow "censoring" the views of teachers got started. But I can assure you, and anyone else who comes to our site, that that is not the case. Anyone is free to post on our site, we do not edit comments in any way, nor have we ever taken down anyone's posting. We want to get as many comments as people are willing to write.
I'd also like to address the comment regarding the CPS communications dept.: Catalyst is not "avoiding" any story, about the press office or any other CPS department, which has been reported on elsewhere.
re: IERLB ruling
The IERLB has had plenty of time to develop administrative rules related to SB7 and it failed to do so. The decision by the IERLB therefore is correct. The level of this body's authority in relation to this vote mandated by SB7 is completely unclear because the IELRB has not put forward any administrative regulations in relation to this aspect of the SB7 legislation. Specifically "PART 1130 COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND IMPASSE RESOLUTION" the section of the relevant administrative rules were not updated.
As I was correctly quoted in the Tribune on June 6: "We have something that involves public education but the rules are so amorphous that it can be interpreted any which way." No matter how one examines this law, it is a mess. The presumption of the existing law is that teachers unions themselves control the strike voting process because they are private membership organizations subject to their own internal rules. CPS appears now to be arguing that because SB7 defined the vote percentage for a strike the entire process is subject to public review or at least to review by the employer. All of this should have been anticipated by the IELRB and appropriate rules should have been developed and subjected to the JCAR rules review process. In stating this I am not suggesting that any developed rule give the employer over sight authority relating to this vote.
The complete incompetence of the IELRB is manifest in relation to this issue, but there is a reason for this. This body is understaffed and if you go to the state audit you can see this for your self [http://auditor.illinois.gov/Audit-Reports/Compliance-Agency-List/ELRB/FY11-ELRB-Comp-Full.pdf].
The Act (115 ILCS 5/5(f)) requires the IELRB to employ a minimum of 8 attorneys and 5 investigators. As of June 30, 2011 the Board employed 6 attorneys and 2 investigators.
Board management stated to auditors that they lacked funding to employ the required number of attorneys and investigators.
The Illinois General Assembly effectively passed a law and that same body refused to appropriately fund the agency required to implement it. From 2009 to 2011 the General Assembly has cut funding to the IELRB by 10.8%.
Rod Estvan
Catalyst deserves Kudos
I would have to say catalyst is the best place for teachers to vent! you don't get the tea bag trough-feeder comments! It's kind of like a sanctuary for the disillusioned teaching world. Maybe they print stories we don't like, but it's their right. I would like to say THANK you Catalyst for your comment section. I think it keeps teachers together and informed!
To Rod Estvan
Thanks for the most informative post, above, Rod!
thanks Rod and lobewiper
I'm really appreciating the dialogue your provide on Catalyst Rod, as well as you, lobewiper, whose dialogue I usually see in the comments section.
Expensive lawyers and legal bullying in CPS demand to IELRB
I just re-read John Kugler's detailed story about the IELRB decision at substancenews.net. Two reasons: I wanted to make sure anyone could get there and read it, and I wanted to re-read those expensive bullet points demanding everything from the CTU about the current voting on the strike authorization.
Anyone who could possibly try and give any credit to CPS on this one needs to read (or re-read) the 20 things the CPS lawyers (expensive, outside lawyers by the way) were demanding. It was clearly the kind of legal harassment that can only be done by deep pockets corporate lawyers who have no respect for anything but how many quarters they will be billing this month.
The real investigation that needs to be made is why the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education have voted, unanimously and without debate, to approve every Board Report since last June to pay the outside law firm of Franczek Radelet huge amounts of money. Remember, these votes take place each month during the same time CPS is trying to claim they are facing some kind of "deficit." Oh, and they are also taking place at the same time CPS is supporting an in-house "Law Department" that still has more than 40 lawyers and dozens of others. In this one, us parents and taxpayers (I'm both, as well as a union person and reporter; you have to be versatile in this age...) ought to have gotten some accountability about the hypocrisy of the CPS legal strategy -- and its huge cost. Maybe Becky Carroll can arrange for a tour of the Seventh Floor at 125 S. Clark St. for all the reporters who think the "facts" consist of quotes from some FNG "communications" specialist who can't find her way from Bogan to Bowen without a GPS...
Anyone who wants to confirm this can just go to the Board's Action Agendas month by month since last June. June 15, 2011, when CPS proclaimed that "fiscal emergency" and voted (unanimously) that it didn't have the $100 million which it would have cost to pay the final fifth year of the five-year union contracts.
Since then, on one law firm, CPS has paid more than one percent of that (in excess of $1 million according to the Board Reports). A bunch of other outside law firms have gotten a total of more than one million bucks on top of that, but the firm that just did the paperwork for the latest Brizard attack on CTU is Franczek Raelet.
Add up all the other pinstripe and other patronage since Brizard came in and it's clear that CPS has that $100 million. Yet the first act of Rahm's Board — behind the first of that raft of mendacious Power Points that now characterize reality in the era of Brizard during the Reign of Rahm —was to poke their thumb in the teachers' eyes. But all that bit of larceny proved to every teacher who was paying attention is prove that there is no way anyone on our side of the aisle can believe that they will ever honor any kind of contract with us that we can't enforce with action. They lied then. They've been lying since. And they'll keep getting away with those lies as long as their word is quoted, and few of us actually check the facts behind the talking points.
Now these are stories, beginning last June, that Catalyst, our brothers and sisters of the fourth estate, could have covered. Instead, easily more than one in the past year I've heard Catalyst people pontificating, usually on radio, about how Poor CPS is facing another "gazillion dollar deficit" and other nonsense.
Why they and their colleagues didn't blow the whistle on these lies prior to now is yet another story of how the fix be in. But as all those red shirts showed, the teachers have figured it out in this second city as we enter into the second year of the Reign of Rahm.
And here's another cool story suggestion for some editor... By May 23, 2012, the majority (not all, just the majority) of those 10,000 teachers who marched (Substance had seven photographers and reporters at various points; our number is 10,000 and nobody else has any credibility on this one) all got those red CTU tee shirts and other red shirts they were all wearing proudly. The level or organizing it's taken for these things to become real was an achievement in itself. And another story ignored by the "reporters" who think that a phone call from Becky Carroll or one of her myrmidons is a way to slug -30- at the end of a story.
How much the the CTU spend in litigation with former CTU members
Since we are so concerned about the lawyers at CPS . Can someone make public how much the CTU spends in litigation with union members, former union members and people like Wigler and others ? The ineffective , once bankrupt law firm, hired by the CTU seems to waste a lot of time filing frivolous litigation against union members and losing. By the way, what happened to the lawsuit filed on behalf of the 2010 tenured teachers that were fired. This union cares nothing about the lives of teachers.. All you care about is preserving the union and gathering up new members to pay your dues.. You would be willing to put every teacher's job on the line and even lose everyone' s job to preserve the union.
As much as you despise
As much as you despise democratic process among teachers and are content to fabricate for the board's agenda, surely you can see the difference between lawyers hired by elected officers of the teachers union to pursue the interests of the members and lawyers hired with TAXPAYER money to litigate against those who work with students every day.
One is private citizens using their money how they see fit and the other is the rich of the city using citizens own tax dollars against them.
Guess Who is a coward
One of the reasons why we demand 'transparency' at www.substancenews.net is trolls like "Guess Who?" here. There is no reason for any legitimate site to allow comments like the libels above from "Guess Who?" and it's not enough to talk about the difference between the Board's taxpayer subsidized lawyers (both from the seventh floor and outside firms) and the CTU lawyers. "Guess Who?" should be outed, fully, and will within the next couple of days. Meanwhile, I suggest that catalyst think again about how far its editors aid and abet libel behind the fig leaf of the conventions of the blogs. Anonymous is cowardice. Anonymous is ...
well, when I see anonymous, we'll have that part of the conversation face-to-face. It's time his fig leaf came off...
What's in a name?
Do you not see how foolish you look always ranting about anonymous on the internet? That and bragging again and again about how you stood up to the Big Bad Board back in the woebegone days really gets tedious. Besides, how do we know who you really are anyway? (I think your mom lied to you.) It might help you sell some "newspapers", just saying. Bullying people like a broken record and now trolling your wannabee rag on other blogs while pretending to take up some flag of bravery because you want everyone to know your blowhard name? Give the drama queen business a rest already. Everything is not about you.
What's in a name?
Do you not see how foolish you look always ranting about anonymous on the internet? That and bragging again and again about how you stood up to the Big Bad Board back in the woebegone days gets tedious. Besides, how do we know who you really are anyway? (I think your mom lied to you.) It might help you sell some newspapers, just saying. Bullying people like a broken record and now trolling your "newspaper" on other blogs while pretending to take up some flag of bravery because you want everyone to know your blowhard name? Give the drama queen business a rest already. Everything is not about you.
Add your comment