catalyst-chicago.org

By the time this issue of Catalyst In Depth reaches our readers, the dust will have settled on the city’s first teachers strike in 25 years. Daily picketing will be over, children will be back in school, misleading radio and TV ads will be off the airwaves and the overheated bluster and rhetoric about lazy teachers and greedy unions will, with any luck, be replaced by more rational discourse from cooler heads.

On the first day of school at Clemente High, about 120 more students show up than expected. It’s an early victory and a good start to the year for second-year principal Marcey Sorensen.

“We hope word is getting out that it’s a good place to be,” she says. More students have returned from last year, as well.