Current Issue

School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

Chicago Teachers Union

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.

June 07, 2012

Chicago's beleaguered tax-increment financing program is taking another big hit, this time over where and how it's spent more than $800 million building and repairing public schools.

June 06, 2012

As Wednesday’s strike authorization vote began, a battle began brewing between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union over the voting process itself.

June 06, 2012

Parent groups and city officials are coalescing on different sides of the strike issue as the Chicago Teachers Union prepared to take a strike authorization today.

June 05, 2012

As the Chicago Teachers Union prepares to poll teachers on whether to authorize a potential strike, parent groups and officials around the city are coalescing on different sides of the issue.

June 05, 2012

A major advertising campaign hit Chicago rush-hour radio Monday, urging parents to “text’’ in their opposition to the timing of a Chicago Teachers Union strike authorization vote that begins Wednesday. The ads are being placed by an affiliate of Democrats for Education Reform, which is packed with private equity and investment firm managers, according to CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey.

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.

June 01, 2012

While the Tribune was reporting that a $35 million federal grant to implement a pilot program for a form of merit pay in Chicago Public Schools is in jeopardy because the teachers union has refused to buy in, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis on Thursday asked CPS' inspector general to investigate why district officials accepted the grant two years ago requiring union collaboration that it did not receive.

May 25, 2012

In a letter to the editor, a Chicago teacher explains why he participated in the big CTU rally on Wednesday: "…the privatized educational system that is being proposed by the current administration will cause irreparable harm to our students, schools, communities and our careers."

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