The Dedham, Massachusetts, teachers strike ended after three days.
Classes resume Monday.
Archives for category: Teachers
Steven Singer was excited to read Elizabeth Warren’s plan for K-12 education.
There was just one thing he was troubled by.
He begins:
My daughter had bad news for me yesterday at dinner.
She turned to me with all the seriousness her 10-year-old self could muster and said, “Daddy, I know you love Bernie but I’m voting for Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth Warren?” I said choking back a laugh.
Her pronouncement had come out of nowhere. We had just been discussing how disgusting the pierogies were in the cafeteria for lunch.
And she nodded with the kind of earnestness you can only have in middle school.
So I tried to match the sobriety on her face and remarked, “That’s okay, Honey. You support whomever you want. You could certainly do worse than Elizabeth Warren.”
And you know what? She’s right.
Warren has a lot of things to offer – especially now that her education plan has dropped.
In the 15 years or so that I’ve been a public school teacher, there have been few candidates who even understand the issues we are facing less than any who actually promote positive education policy.
But then Bernie Sanders came out with his amazing Thurgood Marshall planand I thought, “This is it! The policy platform I’ve been waiting for!”
I knew Warren was progressive on certain issues but I never expected her to in some ways match and even surpass Bernie on education.
What times we live in! There are two major political candidates for the Democratic nomination for President who don’t want to privatize every public school in sight! There are two candidates who are against standardized testing!
It’s beyond amazing!
Before we gripe and pick at loose ends in both platforms, we should pause and acknowledge this.
Woo-hoo!
From the Chicago Teachers Union:
For ten months we had absolutely no progress on key proposals. After only two strike days, we have seen considerable movement and crucial openings on issues such as homeless students, class sizes, staffing and other key issues that the mayor told us would not be open for bargaining. Today, we got a tentative agreement for specific staff positions to support Students in Temporary Living Situations (students who qualify as homeless). For Pre-Kindergarten classes, we won contractual guarantees that CPS will follow Illinois law in maintaining a ratio of 1 adult for every 10 students in a Pre-K classroom. We also won guaranteed naps for preschoolers in all-day pre-K programs. We won language that counselors will not be pulled from counseling to do other duties such as substitute teaching in a classroom. This will lead to greater counselor access for our students.
We also brought CPS a new counter-offer on class size, today. We need guaranteed caps on class sizes and we continue to fight for them. There are still many open issues, including prep time and steps for veteran teachers, as well as a raise capable of moving our lowest-paid paraprofessionals above poverty wages.
Our gains have only been possible thanks to the strength of our picket lines, the turnout at our afternoon protests and the support we’ve gotten from students, parents and community members. Keep it up!
Pickets Monday at 6:30am
Although we made progress over the weekend on important issues, this strike will need to continue Monday. Like Thursday and Friday, all CTU members are directed to picket at their schools, starting at 6:30 a.m. Although different schools have different start times, it’s important that our union operate as one. Keep talking to parents, students and community members about what we’re fighting for. Despite the expected rain, we need to keep up our strength to win what’s best for our schools and our students. Dress for rain, bring umbrellas and boots. Take turns coming inside. But keep those picket lines strong from 6:30 to 10:30!
Regional unity marches
In a number of neighborhoods, educators at schools near one another are coming together for particular actions tomorrow.
Southwest Side
CTU strikers will line Pulaski from Archer to 111th from 8:00am to 9:00am. Contact Organizing@ctulocal1.org for more information.
Hyde Park
Hyde Park “Nurse in Every School” Solidarity March for Justice
CTU, SEIU, National Nurses United and Graduate Students United at University of Chicago are combining forces to put muscle behind our call for adequate and equitable nurse staffing. Marches will start at area schools between 8:45 and 9:00 am and converge on Kenwood Academy at 9:45am.
You can email Michael Shea of Kenwood Academy for more information and coordination.
North Side
Striking CTU and SEIU members on the north side will be enacting a solidarity action down Addison Street from Broadway to the expressway Monday at 8:00 am. Participating schools currently include Disney 1, Greeley, InterAmerican, Nettlehorst, Hawthorne, Blaine, Lakeview, Hamilton, Jahn, Burley, Audubon, Coonley, Bell, Lane Tech, Linne, Cleveland, Henry, Disney II, Murphy, and Belden.
March at 2:00pm at Union Park
Our afternoon rallies have been incredibly effective in demonstrating our unity and the sheer scale of what we are fighting for. Keep coming!
Monday, we will march from Union Park, at the corner of Washington and Ogden. The location is accessible from the Green Line Ashland stop and by bus (Ashland, Ogden, etc.).
Afternoon Allied Actions
Raise Chicago Coalition
Youth will hold an action at City Hall at 1:00 p.m. to highlight the need for $15 per hour minimum wage AND the need for a fair contract that enshrines the resources schools need to combat things like overcrowded classrooms and housing issues.
Resist, Reimagine, Rebuild Coalition
The R3 coalition will host a Teach-In for Strikers so that they may learn about community based struggles that support and intersect with teachers demands for education justice. It will be held at Experimental Station (6100 S Blackstone) from 12:00 to 3:00 pm.
Art Build
The Grassroots Collaborative will be setting up an art build at the CTU Center Monday night from 5:00 to 8:00 pm to create signs and props for colorful and impactful actions later this week.
Image adapted by Jesus Sanchez of Social Justice HS from Are You Ready to Play Outside? by Mo Willems.
Karen Lewis is the inspiration for today’s teacher’s strikes.
She is one of a kind.
She is a hero, a woman of courage, character, integrity, intellect, and steel.
The Chicago Teachers Union just released this video tribute to Karen.
Karen is a product of the Chicago Public Schools. She went to elite Ivy League colleges, first to Mount Holyoke, then transferred to Dartmouth College, where she was the only African American female in the class of 1974.
Karen returned to Chicago and became a chemistry teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, where she taught for 22 years.
In 2010, an upstart group of unionists called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) ousted the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union and elected Karen Lewis as its president. The new leadership cut its own salaries and began building relationships with community organizations and parents.
The city’s political and financial elite rewrote state law in hopes of preventing the union from striking. Assisted by Jonah Edelman of the turncoat “Stand for Children,” the city’s financial elite hired the state’s top lobbyists (so that none would be available to help the union), raised millions of dollars (outspending the unions), and passed a state law saying that teachers could not strike unless they had the approval of 75% of their members. They thought this was an impossible threshold. Jonah Edelman, seated alongside James Schine Crown, one of Chicago’s wealthiest financiers, boasted of their feat at the Aspen Institute in 2011. Surrounded by their union-hating peers from other cities at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Edelman said “If It Could Happen Here, It Could Happen Anywhere,” meaning that with enough financial and political clout, unions could be crushed. (The event was transcribed by Parents Across America and blogger Fred Klonsky copied the video before the Aspen Institute took it down). Edelman subsequently apologized for his candid remarks, but Stand for Children has continued to act as a proxy for philanthrocapitalists. (The Aspen video and Edelman’s apology is here on Fred Klonsky’s blog).
Needless to say, the elites were shocked when Karen Lewis and her team called for authorization to strike and won the support of more than 90% of the union’s membership.
In 2012, the union struck for 10 days and won important concessions, including protections for teachers laid off when Rahm Emanuel closed schools, prevention of merit pay (which she knew has failed everywhere), and changes in the teacher evaluation system. The union had carefully built relationships with parents and communities, and the strike received broad public support.
In 2014, Karen Lewis was urged to challenge Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 mayoral election. She set up an exploratory committee, and early polls showed she was likely to win. But in the fall of 2014, Karen was afflicted with a cancerous brain tumor. She was 61 years old. She stepped down as president of the CTU. She is cared for by her devoted husband, John Lewis, who was a physical education teacher in the Chicago Public Schools.
Karen Lewis exemplified courage, fearlessness, Resistance, leadership, and concern for teachers and children.
Every teacher who took the bold step of striking to improve the conditions of teaching and learning in their school stands on the shoulders of Karen Lewis. Every teacher and parent who wears Red for Ed is in the debt of this great woman.
She is our hero. She should be the hero of everyone who cares about the rights of children and the eventual triumph of the common good.
Watch here to see Karen Lewis before her illness, speaking at the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Austin Texas on March 1, 2024. Her speech was preceded by that of John Kuhn, superintendent of a school district in Texas. Karen starts speaking about the 14-minute mark. Both are worth watching.
I interviewed Karen Lewis at the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Chicago in 2015. You can see it here.
And this is my account of how I met Karen for the first time and why I love her.
She inspires me every day. I miss her very much.
Day 2 of CTU strike will bring educators, allies to City Hall at 1:30 pm
Some movement at bargaining table Thursday, but no agreement on special ed needs, classroom overcrowding, salary floor for low-wage teaching assistants, staffing shortages.
CHICAGO—Educators and frontline staff will hit the picket lines for a second day today, as rank and file union members attempt to bargain a fair contract for 25,000 CTU teachers, clinicians, teaching assistants and support staff. While some progress was made at the bargaining table Thursday, the union and CPS ramain far apart on efforts to reign in exploding class sizes and find a path to remedying dire shortages of school nurses, social workers, special education teachers and other critical staff.
Late this afternoon, CPS refused to discuss a proposal on special education needs with the expert special education teachers and clinicians at the table who had crafted the proposal, because not every CTU officer was present. The CTU’s 40+ member rank and file bargaining team must sign off on any tentative agreement to be sent to members for approval.
Today’s schedule: Thursday, Oct. 17
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- 6:30 a.m.: picket lines go up at all CPS schools
- SPANISH language: CTU officer Maria Moreno, Little Village Lawndale High School, 3120 S. Kostner Ave.
- Lindbloom High School: CTU officer Christel Williams Hayes, 6130 S. Wolcott Ave.
- Citywide social workers, school nurses, clinicians: CPS HQ, 42 W. Madison, Chicago
- 7:00 a.m.:
- Juarez High School: CTU President Jesse Sharkey, 2150 S. Lafflin
- Juarez High School: CTU President Jesse Sharkey, 2150 S. Lafflin
- 6:30 a.m.: picket lines go up at all CPS schools
- 1:30 p.m.: Mass rally and march, City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. with CTU rank and file, grassroots community groups, CTU officers, elected officials, allies.
Fast facts:
- The State’s new equity-based school funding formula is sending a billion-plus additional dollars each year to CPS to reduce sizes of chronically overcrowded classes, support students in poverty and increase services to special education students and English language learners.
- CPS passed the largest budget in its history this year: $7.7 billion. Yet CPS cut the amount of dollars it is spending in school communities this year.
- Juarez High School in Pilsen, which enrolls over 1,300 overwhelmingly low-income Latinx students, saw its school budget cut this year by $840,000, costing the school nine teaching and staff positions.
- CPS cut the budgets of more than 200 CPS schools by at least $100,000, and cut the budgets of more than 40 schools by more than half a million dollars for this school year.
- CTU educators are fighting for better wages, smaller class sizes, adequate staffing, and educational justice for students and their families. They want the additional state revenue CPS receives to increase equity to go to school communities and student needs.
- Almost half of CPS’ students are Latinx. Yet the district has acute shortages of ELL teachers—teachers for English language learners—and is severely short of bilingual social workers. Bilingual education services are chronically short of both educators and resources—a key issue at the bargaining table.
- CPS is desperately short of school nurses, social workers, librarians, special education teachers, ELL teachers and more. CPS has staffing ratios three to five times higher than those recommended by national professional organizations and best practices. Fewer than 115 school nurses serve over 500 schools. Most schools have a nurse only one day a week.
- One out of four schools has a librarian—and that number falls to barely one in ten for Black-majority schools. A decade ago, most schools had a librarian.
- CPS is desperately short of social workers and special education teachers, even as CPS is under the oversight of a state monitor for shortchanging its diverse learners.
- This year, more than 1,300 CPS classes are overcrowded under CPS’ own high class caps, up from more than a thousand overcrowded classrooms last year.
- Almost 25% of elementary students attend overcrowded classes, with some kindergarten classes topping 40 students. Roughly 35% of high school students are enrolled in overcrowded classes; at schools like Simeon, virtually every core class is overcrowded, with math, social studies and world language classes topping 39 students.
- The CTU’s school clerks and teaching assistants earn wages as low as $28,000/year—so low the children of two-thirds qualify for free and reduced lunch under federal poverty guidelines. Over 1,100 cannot afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment at prevailing rent rates in ANY zip code in the city. In year 5 of the mayor’s proposed contract, most of those workers would still be earning poverty wages. And in the last ten years, NO CTU member’s wages have kept pace with the inflation rate.
- Candidate Lightfoot ran on a platform calling for equity and educational justice—including a nurse, a social worker and a librarian in every school—all proposals her negotiating team has rejected at the table. She also ran in support of an elected, representative school board—but moved to stall that legislation in the Illinois Senate after she was elected.
- CPS has said it has budgeted to improve staffing shortages, but refuses to put those commitments in writing in an enforceable contract. The union wants those promises in writing, in an enforceable contract—the only way we have to hold CPS and the 5th floor to their promises.
Mike Klonsky just posted this as he was leaving to bring coffee and donuts to striking teachers, including his daughter.
I hope this strike has a good outcome for both the teachers and the new mayor. She is not Rahm Emanuel. She inherited the debt for Rahm’s two terms of hostility to the city’s public schools and their teachers.
Mike included this quote:
Yesterday, the parent group, Raise Your Hand, issued a statement on the strike which made a lot of sense.
Please remember to be good to each other out there. At the end of this contract negotiation, we are all parts of school communities that are part of a larger community, the Chicago Public Schools. Our children need all of us working together.
The Chicago Teachers Union announced that it would begin a strike on Thursday.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is paying the price for years of neglect under Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Mayor Richard Daley.
Teachers in Chicago announced Wednesday evening that they would go on strike, forcing the cancellation of classes for more than 300,000 public school students in the nation’s third-largest district starting Thursday.
The strike threatened to upend life in the city, as parents raced to make arrangements for child care and as city officials began to activate a contingency plan for supervising and feeding students in school buildings.
The strike in Chicago is the latest in a string of more than a dozen major walkouts by teachers across the country since early last year. It is an important early test for Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was elected this year after a campaign in which she called for more nurses and social workers in the city’s schools — some of the very changes Chicago’s teachers are seeking now.
The city and the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents more than 20,000 educators, had been in tense contract negotiations for months, and there had been signs of progress in recent days. But as a midnight deadline approached on Wednesday with no deal, Ms. Lightfoot canceled Thursday classes and both sides signaled that a walkout was inevitable.
The split between the city and the union stretches beyond traditional debates over pay and benefits, though representatives for each side disputed details of what had been offered during negotiations and what the exact points of contention were now.
The city said that it has offered teachers pay raises totaling 16 percent over a five-year contract, while union leaders have called for increases of 15 percent over a shorter three-year term. More pressing, union leaders say, are their calls for a promise — in writing — of smaller class sizes, more paid time to prepare lessons and the hiring of more school nurses, social workers, librarians and counselors. Other issues, including affordable housing provisions and protections for immigrant students, have also been raised.
The strike is the first for Chicago’s school system since 2012, when teachers walked out for seven days as part of a defining battle with the city’s previous administration.
About 7,500 school support employees represented by a different union also rejected a contract offer and planned to go on strike Thursday. Those workers include security officers, bus aides, custodians and special education classroom assistants.
Yesterday the Arkansas State Board of Education voted to return control of the Little Rock School District to the people of Little Rock. This followed massive demonstrations and demands by the citizenry. At the same meeting, the board voted unanimously to deny recognition to the Little Rock Educators Association, which represents 60% of the teachers in the district.
Rev/Dr. Anika Whitfield, an activist in Grassroots Arkansas, was outraged by the latter decision. She is a podiatrist and an ordained minister. For her volunteer fight for public schools and democracy, she is one of the heroes in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH.
She wrote the following response to the board’s stripping of the teachers’ right to join as a union.
October 10, 2019 will be a day marked in Arkansas history as the enslavement of LRSD teachers and educators, a day when democracy and liberation was denied to them.
The Auditorium in the Arkansas Department of Education was overflowing with concerned community members from the LRSD. People who took leave from work to lend their voices for a people’s democracy to a nine member board appointed by a republic/empire run by billionaires and millionaires who maintain their wealth primarily from the economy of persons who earn the lowest compensation. With the help of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and Walter Hussman have been siphoning money from the people in our state who are the most vulnerable, our children. And, to add insult to injury, they are targeting our children who primarily come from homes were their families are the lowest income earners in our state. The wealthy are maintaining their riches by stealing from the poor. This a model of capitalism that traces back to the origins of this nation that we call the United States of America.
Yesterday, we witnessed the nine appointed members of the state board of education unanimously remove the collective bargaining power of teachers and educators. Their coup of sorts was made deliverable through a myriad of chaotic twists and turns of the worst type of confusion and violations of Robert’s Rules of Order. And, after reflecting on the manner in which the state board of education directors conducted themselves on yesterday, it has become more evident that their goal was to be deceitful and underhanded, to ward off any opportunities for the public to call their hand and stop their votes.
Dr. Sarah Moore, one of the nine appointed directors of the Arkansas State Board of Education, who worked as a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the Office of Education Policy (funded by the Walton Family Foundation) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, made the initial motion to no longer recognize the Little Rock Educators Association (LREA) at the end of their call meeting on September 27, 2019. Yesterday, Atty Chad Pekron, who was appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to the state board of education in July 2019, made and rescinded two or three motions to overturn, table, and then to vote on Dr. Moore’s tabled motion from the September 27th meeting.
After all of the smoke was clear, and the confusion was never resolved, the public realized that the state board of education voted to unanimously deny the Little Rock school teachers and educators the recognition of their union. What a sad day in Little Rock and in Arkansas history. Justice, Liberation, Equity and Democracy continue to be lawfully denied by the Empire of the Republic of wealth, greed, and fear that is being unjustifiably marketed as a great America.
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Why do teachers’ pension funds invest in stocks of corporations that are actively undermining public schools and their teachers?
K12 Inc. manages a chain of online charter schools that are noted for low performance, high attrition rates, and low graduation rates. Their teachers never meet students. They have large classes, no union.
