Dave Woo, a teacher at Urban Prep Charter Academy for six years, explains that his school needs a union to hold it accountable for its free-wheeling use of taxpayer dollars.
“When a majority of teachers and staff at Urban Prep decided to organize a union represented by the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, one of the first actions we took was to file a FOIA request in order to get a better sense of how the Urban Prep network uses the tax dollars and private donations it receives. Here are some of the things we found:
“Urban Prep spends over a quarter of a million dollars a year renting out downtown office space across the street from the Trump International Hotel and Tower for the network administrative staff.”
But that wasn’t all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Welcome, David Woo to a public school near you when you are fired.
An accountable elected school board is what is needed not a union. Unions have been part of the problem for years.
But some unions – the Chicago Teacher’s Union and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, for example – are becoming part of the solution. A powerful union, if it can serve it’s members, can do a lot to hold the school board accountable.
Quite correct with those IFS being 200 pt font for the two major teacher organizations/unions.
How so?
Ohio charters pay teachers 40% less than public schools do. Just as a citizen I would love to know where that money is going instead of to teachers.
Every time Duncan or other “movement” members deliver a stern lecture on how we all must learn from their preferred charter sector I think :”thanks but no thanks- it doesn’t benefit me at all to drive down wages where I live and work”.
I don’t have any beef with individual charter schools teachers any more than I have a beef with individual charter school parents, but I do think charter teachers should admit that although they don’t belong to unions or pay dues, wages and benefits negotiated by teachers unions benefit them because charters have to compete for teachers.
It’s true in manufacturing where I live, and everyone knows it- union and non-union. The non-union facilities aren’t offering employees comparable wages out of the goodness of their hearts- they’re doing it because they have to compete for the best employees with union shops.
Chiara;
Yeah, there’s real heavy competition in the manufacturing sector for workers now, isn’t there? [smile] And no doubt employers are having a hard time finding any without paying wages comparable to what the unions are demanding.
Still, it’s rather mysterious, what with all this “competition” thing going on and what-not, that over the past few decades, the primary characteristic of union membership has been the likelihood of a worker losing one’s job.
But if what you say is true – and “everyone know it” [smile] – then manufacturing workers are NOT having a hard time finding employment, and unions are NOT losing there members jobs. That the way things are in YOUR neck of the wooks, ‘eh Chiara? [grin!]
Huh? This down below was for your post. Sorry Krazy TA; I must have moved the screen before posting.
Also, in a move that should surprise absolutely no one, President Obama now throws private sector unions under the bus:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/11/obama-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-push-critics-senate-vote
Remember when the anti-labor folks said they just objected to PUBLIC sector unions? Raise your hand if you were dumb enough to believe that.
In the article, Woo notes the Urban Prep CEO’s salary. It is most certainly exorbitant. The Detroit Free Press series from last year also depicted that the percentage of funding for administration in charters was significantly higher than public schools. The charter school administrative “costs” were 80% higher.
A neighbor complained that my school district superintendent made $215,000. Our district has nearly 12,000 students. While we were in the same conversation, I found the pay that Clark Durant received as CEO of Cornerstone Schools in Detroit six years ago. Cornerstone was then only K-5 schools and served fewer than 4,000 students. His compensation: $650,000.
Good for Dave Woo.
It’s kind of inexplicable to me why charters pay 40% less than publics in Ohio because charters don’t pay transportation costs. That’s a huge savings.
It all must be going to administrative and advertising.
Thank you both for your comments.
Let’s add to the context. NYC. Last year. Eva Moskowitz, rounding upward, 10,000 students, made $57.50@student. Carmen Fariña, rounding downwards, 1,000,000 students, made less than 25¢@student.
Adults first? Students first? And the hard data points say…
😎
Huh?
For my money charters need more than a union.
They need to go back to what they were originally said to be about, as Dr. Ravitch has repeatedly pointed out.
As long as big money supports them, money will be the bottom line and politicians listen to what really talks: money.
When money supersedes the needs of children and society we have lost our way. Teachers were once considered to be the intellectual leaders of society. We were respected.
Since a “Nation at Risk” came out teachers and public schools have been demeaned, even castigated and the situation keeps getting worse. In my view we must write letters, all of us not only individually but our organizations, to our newspapers and politicians, make our voices heard as a group.
As of now the public has been fed so much propaganda, as we all know, that our voices have been lost. It is imperative that we organize and fight back – in places where it counts, wherever we can.