As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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Strike Day 3: Negotiators report movement, CPS makes new offer
By: Sarah Karp and Rebecca Harris / September 13, 2012
In the new contract proposal released late Wednesday night, CPS seems to have sweetened the deal for good displaced teachers.
It is unclear if the CTU is happy with this new proposal, but leaving negotiations, CTU President Karen Lewis indicated she is hopeful that on Friday students could be back at school.
In addition to teacher evaluation, a sticking point in this contract is the fate of teachers laid off because their school or position was closed.
In this contract, it is a major issue because CPS has over 300 schools that are under-enrolled. On Thursday, Board President David Vitale acknowledged that the district must take action to address its supply issue.
The district could move to close as many as 100 schools over the next few years, leaving thousands of teachers without jobs.
Initially, CPS wanted to reduce the protections for displaced teachers. While promising teachers could follow their children to receiving schools, CPS wanted to reduce the amount of time teachers would spend in the displaced teacher pool to five months from 10 months. They also were offering three months' severance pay.
CPS has fought hard against giving displaced teachers preference for future jobs—something the union is demanding. On Wednesday, Jean-Claude Brizard held a round-table with principals in which he again framed the issue as one of principal autonomy.
"As a principal, I lived and died by the folks in my school, my teachers," Brizard said. He said he has not been to negotiations, but instead keeping abreast of happenings and making sure the contingency sites were running smoothly.
Clemente Principal Marcey Sorensen said it is important to her to find the "best quality" teachers, not just to keep her job, but to make students college and career ready. "And I want you to send students to me who are high-school ready," Sorensen said to the elementary school principals at the roundable.
CPS did not change its offer for teachers laid off because their school is being turned around or phased out, or whose position is closed out due to low enrollment.
In the offer for teachers whose schools have closed, CPS would create something called a "quality teacher" pool only for teachers of closed schools. Teachers with good ratings would be allowed to stay in this pool for one year.
It is unclear how much this changed from Sunday night, but one thing that appears new is that principals would have to interview at least three displaced teachers to fill vacancies. If they rejected all of them, they would have to explain the move to the Talent Development Office and would have to prove that their reasons for rejecting them were not arbitrary.
The CTU wanted the principals to be forced to hire a displaced teacher should three apply for one position. It remains to be seen if the union will agree to this compromise.
Here is the district's latest offer.
This NY Times piece is a must
This NY Times piece is a must read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-over-unions.h...
Winning the hearts and minds polls show this........
According to Capitol Fax.........
STRONG STRIKE SUPPORT After three days on the picket lines, striking Chicago teachers have a strong majority of Chicagoans behind them, according to a new poll. Also, an overwhelming majority of Chicago parents with public school students support the strike, the poll found. And strong pluralities blame Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The poll of 1,344 voting Chicago households was taken yesterday by We Ask America at my request. When asked, "In general, do you approve or disapprove of the Chicago Teachers Union's decision to go on strike?" 55.5 percent said they approved and 40 percent disapproved. Another 4 percent had no opinion. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percent.
But that support jumped to 66 percent among parents of public school children. Less than a third of those parents, 31 percent, disapproved of the strike, according to the poll. Among people with no school-age children, 51 percent approved of the job action, while 44 percent disapproved.
A very strong 63 percent of African-Americans polled approved of the strike, while 65 percent of Latinos expressed approval. Women and men almost equally approved of the strike - 55 percent of women and 56 percent of men
re: issues relating to CPS proposal
I am reading through this document and I suspect from what I am reading that there will be significant areas where the parties will still be at impasse. But there are significant concessions made by CPS too.
For example given the language of SB7 for the CPS to actually agree to the class size provisions, defining the length of the day, and defining the length of the school year is a major concession from several months ago. But there are big problems too and I am sure teachers who are very knowledgeable about the provisions of prior contracts will see a lot more than what jumped out at me that I discuss below. I am not trying to be cute in saying this, but CPS actually has done a great service to the public in releasing this document and should be commended for doing so.
Issue 1 that the current lane system will end as of June 30, 2013 and then forcing a negotiated full differentiated compensation system after that could be a big problem. This impasse could be avoided by CPS if they extend out the current lane system to 2014. Then frame any discussion of differentiated compensation within a framework that includes educational attainment. The proposed contract wants to use the Chicago City Colleges agreement with Cook County Teachers Union Local 1600 as the basis for a differentiated compensation system. Up to 1 percent of salary per year for CCC faculty will be awarded as student success pay, for increases in student outcomes using metrics developed by the state such as student outcomes, transfer rates, completion rates and students’ rate of employment in their field of study. Under the City College agreement, metrics such as grades are not be used to determine faculty performance.
The current contract's lane system is totally based on educational attainment and it may be possible to have a hybrid between what CPS wants and what exists. Clearly the critical factor would be the metrics used in any differentiated payments and how much of the existing lane payments based on educational attainment could be maintained. This issue is solvable, but it will not be solved if CPS' proposed metric is driven totally by test scores.
Issue 2: I personally do not like the concept of "teacher leader" that appears in the "Teacher Career Paths" section. A teacher leader sound a lot like an assistant - assistant principal or a training program for educational management. I have no idea what the union thinks about it.
Issue 3: Eliminate Wage Reopener and Provision on Wage Increases Upon Additional Funding. Delete Sections 47-2.1 and 47-2.2. The CTU should have no illusion that this eliminates CPS' ability to negate pay raises in the future. That power exists under a court ruling in the State of Illinois, Department of Central Management Services v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, 2011-CH- 25352. So the CTU needs to retain a provision allowing it to immediately strike if CPS again negates a scheduled wage increase.
Issue 4: Teacher Evaluation (including Appendix B) having now read the formal CPS proposal I can understand why the CTU is not going along with this. Regardless of the split between the student testing data component and observational component. Using only one year's test data as part of the evaluation process is simply wrong. To get a reasonable picture of the growth component three years of data should be used to create a multi-year perspective of the effectiveness of any one teacher. I know CTU is focusing on the cut scores, but there are other issues here too.
Issue 5: Tenured Teacher Layoff and Recall the language here is very complex because the union will have zero control over the choices CPS makes after a school is closed. Consolidations are maybe more straight forward. Possibly one path to solving this issue might be requiring that full grade level classrooms be moved to new schools and that the transferring teacher from the closed school be guaranteed a teaching position at the new school, and be exempted from 20th day closings for at least one full year. After that period whatever order of layoff procedure that is agreed to be implemented.
I have to assume the CTU is opposed to CPS' proposal for a Reassigned Teacher Pool/Alternative Severance Package. I assume CTU wants to keep the provisions of the last contract in this area. Clearly some type of compromise here seems possible.
Quality Teacher Pool issues are significant the CPS proposal clearly does not define what an "arbitrary" rejection of a candidate for a vacant position is. There is also no forced filling provision for positions that remain vacant for an extended period of time. There needs to be a provision on age and salary discrimination in this section too. The section titled drop in enrollment, financial, programmatic etc. will be I think unacceptable to CTU members as it exists.
Issue 5 Pending Litigation and Grievances it is not in the best interest of teacher who lost the 4% increase for the CTU to accept this provision which requires that the union give up its case against CPS, a case which at least one bond rating agency believes CPS could lose. This issue should be settled between the lawyers for CPS and CTU it should not be an issue in this contract.
Rod Estvan
How would you evaluate the Mayor's performance leading up to and
in this strike? Let's look at a list of extremely serious mistakes that have been costly to tax-payers, damaging to the city, and don't bode well for future city-union confrontations:
1. SB7: Rahm relied on bad advice and undermined his credibility by relying on ostensibly clever deception and incorrectly calculated power grabs. Are the state politicians who got sucked into this mess by Rahm going to be forgiving? SB7, as Rod Estvan has amply pointed out, made it impossible for meaningful negotiations to take place. It restricted teachers to striking over wages, forcing negotations to become bizarre and suggestive rather than direct. SB7's 75% strike vote requirement encouraged the mayor to take an overly aggressive and arrogant stance that laid a solid foundation for mistrust and dared teachers to strike.
2. Brizard. Perhaps filled with SB7 hubris, Emmanuel appointed a CPS CEO with a proven record of inspiring mistrust in teachers. Brizard's 99% no-confidence vote among Rochester teachers presaged the sky-high teacher vote for a strike authorization.
3. Rescinding the 4% raise for the last year of the previous contract. Again, probably due to false confidence that SB7 made him strike-proof. Rahm did not involve the union in discussions about this, but simply had his board do the dirty deed in the dark. This gave the union greater credibility and missed an opportunity to share some blame for this predictably alienating maneuver.
4. Evaluation/Merit Pay. Like all of the above, Rahm relied on trickery to make it look like the union had participated willingly in the design of the evaluation system, and then made what I think was maybe his most crucial mistake--his people clearly articulated to teachers how a controversial evaluation system could get you fired, but totally failed to articulate how it could us merit pay. So the many confident and highly-skilled teachers I know who were at least curious about merit pay came to believe that firing teachers was the point of the thing and threw their/our lots in with the union. Had merit pay been articulated before the "50 ways to lose your job" program was rolled out in such splendid and gorey detail, the union might have been split.
5. Giving away the store. Again, building on the lousy foundation of SB7, Rahm insisted on only negotiating the raise until, like, today. An intelligent child would have seen that the union was not going to agree to any wage increase, not matter how high, because wages were not the issue of greatest importance to teachers. As a result, CPS bid up the wage increase in an effort to preserve the things that SB7 was supposed to make non-negotiable. Had Rahm seen that SB7 was a bad egg earlier, he might have held off on offering wages, which the city might not be able to afford, and instead offered serious negotiation earlier on the issues that really mattered to teachers.
6. The other unions. It seems likely that that if this strike is settled at a higher price than Rahm seemed to promise early on, he will not be able to negotiate forecefully with other unions. While there is a safety valve for this contract, because CPS can shut down 100 schools, cut the 3000 teachers that are involved, and save a chunk of the extra raises it promised to teachers, the same safety valve does not exist for the other city services.
7. Good will. I am not sure anyone would want to govern Chicago as a Republican, but that is what has happened. The astro-blogger and the editorial sides of the two big papers have the support numbers wrong, I believe. Support for teachers is on a par with disapproval for Rahm. The 47% percent of respondents who support teachers is likely to increase, not decrease, with time, because this is an expression of sympathy with the perceived anti-Rahm nature of the strike. As long as the public perceives this to be a referendum on Rahm, his personal popularity (or lack thereof) is going to drive polls about support for teachers.
Why Chiefs and networks do not know what they are doing--
Has anybody been puzzled by the "common core" books the Westside Network sent out to its schools. We received enough copies of "Black Robe" for every sophomore. We were told to teach this book. Did anybody read this and think it's a good idea for high school sophomores? It's an interesting read, but it is filled with graphic depictions of pedophilia and sodomy involving Jesuit priests. Is a sophomore really going to get past that to see the greater issues? How many tens of thousands did the network give to well paid vendor Pearson for this?
http://rebeldiaz.bandcamp.com/track/chicago-teacher
Theyd rather put the kids in jail, shackle em wit chains,
then provide an education that challenges the brain.
Top down education..Chicago- the birthplace
And now its spreading nationwide all over the place
They don’t teach us how to think they teach us how to test!
They just teachin to the test
Forced by the feds Or they losin that check
Too many children left behind by this corporate assembly line
how they privatize? education is a humam right!
and they kids gon be fine, they send em to private schools
while ours get sent to prison or given a job servin fast food
Black robe??
Are you kidding? I saw the movie...not one for a sophmore! If the book is anything like that? How is that any more common core than any other book? i thought common core was more of a learn from your mistakes mentalilty? that's what we were told by the man who wrote the math standards...in fact....how do you assign any book at any level...when common core is about reading at your level? His other books are about a 1600, which put them in the college level??? is this for ap?
Here is an example of how CPS lies: At children first schools,
staff reporting to schools were told that they could be dismissed from work at 12:30; right after students leave. This was a reward for them coming to work during the strike. Now as of today and from now on, ALL staff (except for 4 hour employees) have to work until 2:30 each day every day. And one wonders why CTU does NOT trust CPS. This is even more proof.
Chicago Public School's Ball of Confusion
Arms are being twisted to tear CPS down and turn them into Charter Schools. The Union is to be broken. But Chicago needs a new mayor. This is not working. The city has been placed in a mess by a mayor that will not compromise. These will be the same thing happening with all of these new hired Principals. Poor Principals. They do not realize that they are being used to fire some teachers; then CPS is going to close those school doors and hire NEW teachers and NEW Principals. After all; Brizard know a lot of schools are low performing; and very under utilized. So the CPS is in the hole for the coming years. This is why he thew it out there to Principals so that HE does not have to be accounted for in Springfield. After all; Springfield wants to know how CPS is spending their money. So now its off their backs onto the Principals backs. Poor Principals; you are not going to know what hit you either. Those schools are going to be closed. There is a list of over 100. Some of them do not have enough students. Some of them have poor leadership. Some of them have been on probation for 3 years and more; under the same leadership. Maybe the leadership should change? But I suppose no; because the poor performance is stemming from the poor leadership. A lot of these schools do need new Principals. Some Local School Councils are just letting some Principals do whatever they want (which is nothing), and not rating THEM to replace with a helpful Principal to bring the school up and pull enrollment in. A lot of teachers can expect to be unemployed. A lot of Principals and Assistant Principals can too. They are going to turn those schools around. Doesn't matter what the Union is fighting for. They are going to over rule it. But now Chicago Public Schools is a place where teachers are ashamed and afraid to teach. There is no future or guarantee that you would have a job there the next year. If your scores go down; you are fired. Correction. You are framed; then fired. If you look at life; Principals and leaders. Chicago Public Schools does not belong to you. All of this is earthly stuff. When you leave this world you WILL NOT be taking CPS with you. And someone else will be here running it. Like; in a few years. So why be selfish. You don't run anything. Principals don't run anything. That's the difference in young Principals and old Principals. The old ones had wisdom enough to know this. The young ones don't have that wisdom. With job losses out there; and the economy bad. People should be helpful to one another. You will never make it to Heaven messing up peoples lives. People won't be able to pay their bills. Fuel their cars. Have health insurance and dental. Pay their children's tuition; Pay their rent or mortgages. Take vacations. Buy their medicine. Live at ease. These are the the things people who are out of their jobs are facing. Now Chicago Public Schools is adding a lot to the people to unemployed. It is a shame. Mayor Daley would have never done it this way. They would have never been a strike. But now we have amateurs running it; and look at this selfish mess. Hit your knees everybody; because this is going to be a mess that a lot of people are going to have to do a lot of praying to make it through. This is SAD!!!!!!!!!
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