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CPS taking position on contract negotiations to public
By: Rebecca Harris and Sarah Karp / June 16, 2012
This story has been updated to clarify that the parent meeting at Gage Park High is on Monday, June 25.
The phone rings. It is CPS CEO Jean Claude Brizard’s voice, a voice that is no stranger to Chicago parents. This time, however, Brizard is not reminding parents about an upcoming vacation day or the release of test scores.
Instead he is asking parents if they would care to attend a meeting about collective bargaining over the teacher’s contract—something that is usually considered internal school board business.
Unlike years past and unlike most other teacher contract negotiation processes across the nation, both parties are taking pains to present their positions to the public. Under new leadership, contract negotiations have now become almost a spectator sport, with positions traded in public and both sides trying to rally parents and the public to their side.
The leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union took the first steps by aggressively organizing community groups. From the outset, Karen Lewis made clear that the CTU would be getting into the community organizing business.
For the last few months, outside groups did the district’s bidding. Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform, national groups with local chapters, held town hall meetings, circulated online petitions and did robo calls, providing the public their take on why teachers should not vote to authorize a strike.
But now that teachers overwhelmingly approved the strike authorization, district leadership decided to reach out to the public. Parents received robo calls on Thursday night from Brizard and the district has already scheduled the first informational meeting. It will take place on Monday, June 25 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Gage Park High School on the southwest side.
(The event is being co-sponsored by the Employment Resources and Childcare Network. It is unclear what this organization’s purpose is or what its role is in partnering. It has received $800 from CPS for each of the past two years, according to the CPS procurement website. It is registered with the secretary of state as a not-for-profit, but is not registered in the Illinois Attorney General’s charity trust database.)
Michael Bakalis, president and CEO of the charter-operator American Quality Schools, has been involved in Chicago’s education scene for decades and says that never before has the union or the school board taken such pains to organize and go directly to the people.
Bakalis says that this year’s contract negotiations are a stark contrast from those in the 1980s—a decade that saw five strikes.
Bakalis says the union has always presented its case to the public via the news media, but didn’t spend as much time outside to influence opinion.
As for the board, he says he doesn’t recall it ever “taking a counter offensive.”
Yet Bakalis says the school board is not as well equipped to rally the public. The teachers have thousands of members--22,000 of them voted to authorize the strike—who can get out and sell their position to people.
“The school board does not have the ground forces,” he says. “I hang up on robo calls so I don’t think it will help.”
Bakalis says the mayor could perhaps get some “feet on the ground,” if that is what he chose to do.
Bakalis says the situation is aggravated by the state’s desperate financial condition.
Teachers may have a legitimate gripe about not being offered a substantial salary increase while being asked to work longer, he says. However, he doesn’t see how the district can come up with much more money. “It is a tough situation,” he says.
Wendy Katten, of the parent group Raise Your Hand, says that parents are confused, and many are skeptical of information that is coming from the district.
“It’s become so politicized,” Katten says. “I don’t feel like it’s going to be a true discussion. … What we have is so toxic, and I think some of the messaging has made it worse.”
She adds: “If I was a consultant, I would tell the city to take a few days and think about what happened instead of spinning things.”
Some parent groups say that it is inappropriate, while others say that it is a savvy move.
Stand for Children Chicago Director Juan José González praised the move as a departure from the district’s usual mode of communication – flyers in children’s backpacks.
“That’s a great idea – instead of having an event and who knows who’s going to show up, having something that’s more targeted and efficient, [aimed toward] those parents that are seeking information,” he said.
González says he thinks CPS should be informing parents about the status of the negotiations as well as what alternatives – like the Park District or opening school buildings to children with other adults present – might be offered in the event of a strike.
“Ultimately, no one wants a strike, and everyone is going to work hard to not achieve a strike, parents want to know, what can I do?” he says. His organization is having its own town halls for parents on Thursday June 21 and Monday June 25 (separate from the CPS event the same night.)
Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education and a stalwart critic of the district, says she feels it is wrong for officials to try to force their position on parents.
“They should be doing their business of negotiating with the teachers, and let the parents decide for themselves what to think about it,” she says.
Chicago Public School officials did not respond to questions about the robo calls or informational meetings.
Please use equity in reporting
If you are going to frame Julie's comment by calling her "a stalwart critic", could you explain Stand for Children's background as well?
Is this a good use of CPS dollars?
Should CPS be funding a PR campaign with dollars that ought to go to the classroom? What about all the anti-union radio ads I've been hearing? Who is funding those?
Re: Is this a good use of CPS dollars?
Those radio ads are being funded by Democrats for Education Reform. It's a not-for-profit funded mainly from people in the financial industry that advocates on behalf of charter schools. In this case, they seem to be pressing the Board of Education's case because the CTU wants to make it harder for CPS to close neighborhood schools in the next contract. Charter school advocates don't want CPS to continue to close schools so that they can open up their own. Charter networks are also very much wrapped up in the political leadership in Chicago.
Very interesting the me
That back in Feb. the parents made speech after speech afte speech at the Board meeting and did the Board listen? Weren't they talking about the longer school day, funding for it and keeping neighborhood schools open? Did the parents have a voice then?
Now the Board wants to plead it's case with the parents. Why should the parents listen to them. I say go to the meeting in Gage Park and do another MIKE CHECK.maybe JC will listen this time. I doubt it.
Parents 4 Teachers, Raise Your Hands, et. al go there, let your voices be heard, you know the truth from the lies. CPS is running scared.
cps community meeting
If I were union leadership, I would have union representatives stand outside of Gage Park hs and hand out their booklet " THE EDUCATION CHICAGO STUDENTS DESERVE." I am not sure if that is the exact title. Then parents can see first hand what CTU is fighting for. Parents could then compare and and ask JCB legitimate questions about what both sides want and make an educated decision. I hope you are reading union leaders because this would be a great way to counter their plans!
Stand 4 Children
Like Xian wrote, the info on S4C should be expanded on. It's just like the other groups that pledge "reform" but are tightly weaving into Chicago politics, all in an effort to shut down teacher unions and open charter schools (notice that I didn't say anything about "doing what's best for all children" - That's not in their list of priorities).
Right or Wrong
Yes, the parents pleaded, the Board members listened. They weren't ignored, schools received more discretionary funds. Schools were closed because that was the right thing to do. Just because parents speak at meetings they aren't always right.
Parents Voice
@AnotherParent - In my opinion, a parent's voice is far better than a Hedge Fund Manager who is the "CEO" of a Charter School program. Schools are closed because they weren't funded properly or had the needed resources. English classrooms that are learning "literature" out of classroom-set textbooks that arguably don't have decent writing in them at all. Schools that lack extracurriculars, or comprehensive curriculum. Just because some high-flying business exec starts spouting phrases like "education reform" and "put children first", it doesn't mean they're right. Take a deeper look at Stand 4 Children, and you'll see what their real motives are.
Turnaround
Board reps are going around now saying that transformation schools outperformed turnarounds in the last cycle.
Unfortunately, thousands of kids have already been damaged by that experiment. That's the difference--the board is happy to experiment Tuskegee style on "other people's children".
Where was the "evidence-based" decision making on destroying the positive supports in those schools? Where was the data on why it's important to fire the food service staff? All I ever heard was some idiotic supposing from the CEO(s) and the sound of clout landing in someone's clout piggy bank.
CTU--principals are on your side. We want smaller class sizes,
support for students with special needs and a quality school day, not a quantity day, and the halt to the chaos of turnarounds. The REACH system is horrible. What schools are forced to spend next year for 20 minute recess is fraudulent. At each CPS 'informational session,' CTU members and parents should be there with signs that list each of the charter school facts that appear on page 7 of the June Union Teacher. More power to you at every one of these phony meetings.
Look who's calling
the kettle black.
The black kettle
That was for hybridactor
As parents, we send our
As parents, we send our children to CPS everyday so we know what's going on as do CPS teachers. We all know our children's classrooms are overcrowded, they spend way too much time on standardized testing (I wonder what % of the budget is spent on purchasing & administering these tests), there is a lack of resources, etc. We don't need to attend a CPS forum and hear all of the "soundbites" (I think I have memorized all of JC Brizard's answers by now and could do some interviews for him). We all know there is a lack of funding for education in Illinois, but when the Board pays severence to employees who work one year and quit, when we read articles about consultants receiving $20K monthly salaries, when charter schools of connected "friends" receive an increase in funding, etc. the Board's "lack of finances" argument loses credibility. It seems more of a question of financial priorities.
History Repeating?
Brizard will fight like hell to hold onto his job here and not fail. After being run out of Rochester, another identical failure after much less time will have him either flipping burgers or being "promoted" to a "leadership" position where he makes no direct decisions for schools but merely inflicts them on a state or the nation. Broad Toadies are the ones with life time employment guarantees, not the teachers. Doesn't matter how bad they fail, how much money they waste or how much harm and damage they cause, folks like Rahm keep hiring them.
Big Snow Storm - Bilandic
Bogus School Reform - Rahm
Standing for public education
Don't let Stand for Children pull the wool over your eyes.
Does anything really think that teachers who are uncerttified, underpaid, overworked teachers charter school teachers with no real teaching experience will do a better job?
Luckily, I am am entirely a product of CPS and I know better. As a volunteer coach, CPS parent, and CPS teacher I am proud to send my son to a public unionized school where teachers can afford to buy a house in Chicago and raise a family. If the CTU falls, we WILL get what we pay for.
CPS Parent You are FUNNY!
CPS PARENT You made me laugh!! It is so true Brizzard has his prepackaged just add water answers. If I could make a Brizard Robot these would be my responses...
Start off with....
I just want to thank you for having me on today.....I am so excited to let you know what we are doing for our kids.....
so (he always starts with so) we are really working on this problem, i have seen such great dedication from teachers and principals around the city.
or
the teachers are showing great passion, but I am afraid that they have listened to the UNION too much and not listening to the people who truly care about the students, the parents!!
or
I come from a family of teachers, I know what it means to be a teacher. look i think the teachers deserve a raise..a big but......
or
we are here for the children, but we are here for a happy teaching workforce...BUT we can't stop the momentum now.
or
I sat down and listened to thousands of teacher all across the city and everyone of them told me their first interest is to give the kids the education they deserve!
The NWEA test is much more rigerous so you might not see the gains that your child saw on the ISAT
or
Let it be known that I , as a parent, want what's best for our Children
RAHMS ANSWER IS ALWAYS
I know what the union got, I get it, I know what the city got, i get that too...but I dont get what our children got and that concerns me the most.
or sometimes he just says something like
We have our constituants to take care of when we did the Meter deal, but now we have to deal with the most important consituant of all..the students.
we worked hard to give our students a world class education and a world class day, i am not going alow anything that will stop our students from getting the education they deserve. we need to sit down and come to a compromise...i have been saying it from day one......blah blah
when i came to this office i made a pledge to the children of this city...i am not going to back down nor listen to the teachers and parents because of little setback like a 90% no confidence vote from 25k teachers who resperent doctors of physics, NBCT, published authors, MBA's (i made that one completely up)
blah blah blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I'm confused. I thought CPS
I'm confused. I thought CPS shut down the high school transformation initiative a few years ago because the results were disastrous. No? Or did they just stop expanding it?
Fortunately, my school was able to fight it off. Scripted curricula and a price tag over $1 million for our school? No thanks!
An elected, representative school board.
Some parent groups like Raise Your Hand http://ilraiseyourhand.org/ the 19th Ward Parents http://nolongerday.com/ , and the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization http://www.kocoonline.org/ are teaming up to fight for an elected, representative school board. It's one thing for the mayor to be out of touch, but his hand-picked group of investment bankers and business executives just rubber stamps his every whim. We need to change this. What if the school board was made up of 15 elected representatives from different regions of the city along with one rep selected by the mayor and one rep selected by the union? A little democracy might go a long way.
Of course, we'd need public financing of school board elections and a strict prohibition of money coming from any organizations like Stand For Children or even coming from the CTU for that matter. Let's actually make this a model for what representative democracy could be.
Transformation is not the same of High School Transformation
Sorry, they make up new dadaist names every year. Yeah, HST threw several hundred million a year down a corporate patronage well and is as big a reason for the current deficit as any pension or compensation issues, AND it actually hurt student achievement.
Transformation is the fourth of four (now five potentially) models for school improvement under Race to the Top. It is the only one of the four that I would can "non-nuclear" as it is the only one that doesn't destroy all existing supports that high-need students rely on.
That being said, in many CPS schools implementing the plan, it is still being used as an excuse to E-3 and push out high performing, veteran teachers (usually of color).
Elected school board
I agree, but CPS should also get to put a member on the board, or at the very least have a liaison there since they are in fact responsible for running things. The point about excluding the influence of money cannot be made too strongly. I would go much further and model the election on LSC elections. I'd ban all endorsements and have a strict, limited format for the candidates to submit policy positions upon which they would be evaluated by the voters. No attack ads, possibly no debates (though having them might increase interest), individual interviews with the media would be OK and all candidates who made the final cut (however determined if we do it that way) would be given equal opportunity. The over arching idea is to obtain the best signal to noise ratio possible, giving the voters the clearest picture and lowest amount of garbage to wade though in making their decision. The First Amendment should not be seen as a limiting factor in all this but as a base line starting point.
CPS Meetings Postponed
CPS is contacting parents with the following message:
"“After thoughtful consideration, Chicago Public Schools has decided to postpone the collective bargaining meetings until after the fact finding report is released on July 16th. In order to respect the bargaining process and the high sensitivity of this issue, CPS will wait until after the findings are released to host these meetings. We apologize for any inconvenience and will contact you in the next coming weeks about information on rescheduling the meetings.”
Rahm is really pushing the republican agenda-break the middle cl
Rahm emmanuel is a disrespectful "Napolean Complexed" man! Michelle Obama ran him out of the White House, now it's time to run him out of the city of Chicago. I will definitely vote for Obama, however he is culpable for assisting this little disrespectful pompous dictator to win the mayoral election. Rahm Emmanuel is nothing more than a Scott Walker or any other Republican. With alleged Democrats like Rahmbo, who needs a Cantor, Romney or Palin. Rahm is also pushing the agenda of breaking the middle class. He attacks teachers, policemen and firemen. We can't afford to send our Children to the "Lab School." Simply Rahm and the Pritzker types he's fighting for doesn't want the middle to be able to afford groceries let alone college for our children. However he will offer you a deplorable Charter School for your children to attend!
Hedge Fund
Hybridactor -- please name ONE Chicago charter CEO who is or was a hedge fund manager. Just one. Bet you can't.
Financial Bigwigs as "Education Reformers"
http://www.newschoolsnow.org/about-us/board-members/
Most of the names on that board come from financial groups and likely have very little actually experience in the classroom.
http://stand.org/illinois/staff/mary-anderson
Although the Executive Director of S4C Illinois has a lot of "social justice" on her resume, there's nothing about her experience that exemplifies knowledge about what goes on in a classroom.
Charter schools are a great option, but not the only answer. If you want charter schools to be the true option, then the public schools that are in the same neighborhoods need to be given a fighting chance. These organizations want to remove that chance from them.
What was your point?
Hybridactor -- This is what you said: In my opinion, a parent's voice is far better than a Hedge Fund Manager who is the 'CEO' of a Charter School program. I asked you to name just one Chicago charter CEO who is or was a hedge fund manager. You posted links to two organizations that are NOT charter school organizations. New Schools for Chicago gives start-up funding to already-approved charter schools. They do not develop, propose, start up or run charter schools. You sent me to the list of its directors, not its CEO. So you did not name a hedge fund manager who is the CEO of a Chicago charter school program. Then I clicked on the link to the bio of the Illinois CEO of Stand for Children. This is not a charter school operator. It's a lobbying organization that backs a broad array of school reform measures, including, as has been mentioned again and again, SB7, which said not a single word about charter schools. Moreover, its Illinois CEO is not and never has been a hedge fund manager. She was an advisor to the Attorney General, a litigator in private practice, and very, very active in a broad array of charities. So again, you did not name a hedge fund manager who is the CEO of a Chicago charter school program. My challenge still stands. One, just one.
Generalities
While I appreciate your attention to detail, the analogy that you are so lovingly clinging to was merely a generality. You're welcome to continue debating minutiae about whatever you'd like. However, the overarching point still remains: the vast amount of Board Members, Leaders of (CEOs or what-have-you), lobbyists, etc of groups that are aligned with charter schools (like those I listed above) seem to only argue against teachers.
They tout high achievement numbers (although roughly 1/3 have the lowest achievement scores of all Chicago schools), "waiting lines", and claim to be "the fix" for education, when such a claim is never an absolution. Charter schools are welcome to be a good option. However, it's only a true "option" if the neighborhood school nearby is funded and managed properly.
The National head of S4C came out (publicly) that he and his organization had maneuvered themselves into a political position to shut down teacher unions, specifically CTU. His comments didn't have to do with increasing student learning, managing class sizes, increasing resources, etc. He talked for thirteen minutes about how he was going to cripple the unions. The closings that Another Parent were highly protested by several other parent groups in the city. The biggest proponents of those closures and turnarounds are groups that normally come from outside of the city and state, whose controlling members have most-likely never set foot in a classroom. Independent studies have shown that more students are expelled from, and transfer out of, charter schools than public schools. Again, a great option, for those that want it, but not the enlightened answer that everyone says it is.
Your minutiae: No, there is not a Hedge Fund Manager that is the CEO of a Charter School. However, my point still stands that the majority of those that make decisions about those schools have very little experience with actual public school classrooms. I will trust a parent whose child is in those schools more than I will some lawyer or financial advisor who sits on a board of a charter schools or any other "education reform group".
Re: Hybridactor
So, your original point was based on a lie?
Re: Sean
No, the original point was not based on a lie. It was based on the general dialogue that seems to remove parents and the front-line conversation, replacing them with corporate financiers, legislators, and those with agendas other than education. The point still remains: I'll take the voice of a CPS parent over any of the "big-wigs" that I just mentioned any day. It doesn't matter if it's a member of a corporate board of directors, a trial lawyer, a life-long litigator, someone from the CME Group, etc. After all, this is supposed to be about the children, correct?
Nitpicking about a generalized reference does little to move this conversation forward. As a country, we look to the Pentagon and the military boots on the ground for advice about our armed forces, we ask our medical professionals about doctor care and medicine--why does it seem so toxic to really listen to the voices those closest to the children?: the parents and the teachers. Regardless of my career, I would never tell a law firm how to best run their practice. Teachers just ask for that same respect in return.
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