CORE is currently touring schools to talk about the issues that effect the teachers and PSRPs in Chicago. One of the most prominent complaints it the lack of transparency in Union matters under the current leadership. CORE is working tirelessly to bring information to membership, in spite of resistance by the current administration. One option is to follow CORE on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coreteachers. CORE sends tweets from the monthly House of Delegates meetings, allowing followers to see what happens behind closed doors. This resource was chronicled here.
We are also proud to announce that our own candidate for president, Karen Lewis, will post her monthly report on the CTU House of Delegates Meetings.
Karen Lewis
BROTHERS & SISTERS IN THE STRUGGLE – A monthly recap of the House of Delegates Meeting. Submitted by Karen Lewis – February, 2010
I was unable to make the question and answer session that begins the meetings because I attended a school closing hearing, but by the time I got to the meeting, I needed to speak with two different field representatives about union issues. One, I’d like to bring to your attention. A teacher at Lane worked in CPS for 25 years. She worked part-time for the last five years. CPS calculated the payout of her sick days based on a part time pay scale. She grieved, CPS found against her, but the process has been on-going and ridiculous. She agrees that the sick days she earned in the last five years should be prorated, but the ones she earned while teaching full-time should be paid out as such. This amounts to a $20,000 difference.
The only item for action from the Executive Board was that there will be an “Informational Picket” at the Board on Wednesday, February 10th at 4:00pm. The union leadership has finally decided to take the advice of CORE and protest against the privatization schemes. Amazing what happens in an election year! I even saw Marilyn at the Prescott community hearing Saturday morning. The leadership promised to be at every school closing hearing this year, after six years of being AWOL.
Ed Geppert, President of the IFT spoke about Randi Weingarten’s recent speech about Race to the Top. If you haven’t heard it, here it is. What is very interesting is that Weingarten calls for collaboration with the school boards on tying student outcomes to teacher evaluation. She hedges her bets by saying that the evaluations have to be based on more than the “drive-by” observations once a year and that the tests used have to be fair, but that’s tantamount to reworking the whole testing agenda. Geppert’s remarks met with tepid applause, but I actually heard some boos from the audience when the notion of tying test results to evaluations was mentioned. He also said he would be in a meeting on the 10th and would come and march with us.
Special note: For the first time in the history of the Chicago Teachers Union, our membership fell below 30,000 members. This is due in part to the fact there are approximately 2500 teachers and paraprofessionals who are not members and that thousands of members have lost their jobs to closures and turnarounds. We are still the largest local in the state, but we are hemorrhaging members annually. The meeting adjourned early and those of us in CORE went to the community hearing at Guggenheim. It is heartbreaking to hear children begging for their schools while the heartless “hearing officer” admonishes people in the audience. I ask that each of you attend a school closing hearing so you can see how devastating this policy is. There is something wrong when a “top down” decision, based on dubious data can turn the lives of an entire neighborhood into a never-ending nightmare! This year, with the help of CORE, there is a loud and furious fight.
