$60 million in high-stakes tests; $250 million in TIFs; $315 million in charters, turnarounds, and contract schools; $400 million in CPS cash reserve. What about money for students?

CPS called  an emergency Board meeting on Tuesday, June 15 to pass a resolution that will drastically change our working conditions and the learning opportunities for our students.  The resolution was passed unanimously at the meeting, in spite of every single speaker during the “public participation” portion urging the board members to vote “no.” This resolution gives CEO Huberman permission to fire teachers and therefore raise class size up to 35 if he deems it “necessary” for budgetary reasons. It also gives him the permission to take out an $800 million loan, which he claims cannot be used to stave off the firings and ballooning class sizes.

This budget has still not been made public, in spite of Freedom of Information Act requests from CORE and various Chicago journalists. These firings will be based on Huberman’s secret projections and without real budget numbers.

No announcement was made about how many teachers they will fire, if any. They claimed this was “just in case” they felt the need to fire teachers later.

Appendix H of our contract states:

Section I – Scope of Policy
Whenever an attendance center or a program is closed, there is a drop in enrollment,
the educational focus of the attendance center is changed such that available teaching
positions cannot accommodate some or all current regularly certified and appointed
teaching staff, or when an attendance center is subject to actions taken pursuant to
sections 34-8.3 or 34-8.4 of the Illinois School Code, tenured teachers will be
reassigned or laid off in accordance with this policy.

The contract states teachers have to be laid off according to seniority and tenured teachers get ten paid months to find a job. In those ten months, teachers are retained in the “reassignment pool” where they work as substitutes four days a week with full pay and benefits without a break in service.

Because the specific phrase “budgetary reasons” is not included in the “scope of policy”, Huberman claims he can fire tenured teachers without giving them the 10 month bridge to continue employment in CPS.

CORE contends  that none of this is necessary. Although there is no line-item budget available for the 2010-2011 school year, CORE’s budget committee studied the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and found millions of dollars in wasteful non-classroom spending.

The city’s TIF (tax increment financing program) costs the schools $250 million in revenue, according to TIF expert Ben Joravsky, and verified by Cook County Clerk David Orr . This is money that normally would go directly to schools, but goes into the mayor’s slush fund instead.

Many  speakers at Tuesday’s meeting spoke in favor of returning TIF dollars to the schools, but Huberman refused to speak to the issue.

It will save the CPS approximately $150 million a year if they raise class sizes to 35. Instead of lobbying the city to return TIF dollars, Huberman and the Daley-appointed Board passed policy to take out an $800 million dollar loan, raise class sizes, and possibly end the teacher reassignment pool. If it’s a question of priorities, we question the board’s.

Lois Jones, CTU High School Functional Vice-President-Elect, pointed out that 25 or fewer students in a classroom should be the first priority, before the board funds area offices, scripted curricula that don’t work, and other costs we don’t know about because we haven’t seen the budget. Putting more students in a class is the LAST thing you should do if you have budget problems, not the first.

Teachers and students are the only ones asked to make sacrifices. This summer, it’s crucial that we keep on top of the Board and continue organizing around budget transparency and quality education. With 30,000 united,  the Board will have to change they way it does business.

An historic moment at Connie's Pizza. CORE's Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis met with caucus leaders Deborah Lynch (PACT), Linda Porter (CSDU), and Ted Hajiharis (SEA) about going forward with bringing UNITY back to the Chicago Teachers Union. All three of those caucuses endorsed CORE in the June 11th Run-Off Election.

Karen Lewis’ speech to the House of Delegates (6/2/2010):

Good afternoon.  I would like to thank PACT, CSDU and SEA for running honest campaigns, based on the issues; and for their support.

I am honored … and exhilarated.  Those of you who are unaligned and voted for CORE, thank you.

Last week’s rally was incredible.  All of us in this room turned out thousands of people to tell Huberman and Daley “No” — stop destroying our neighborhood schools and trying to bust our union.

We should have done this every year for the past six years.

Because for years there has been a well-funded national smear campaign against public school teachers. Gains we won over 70 years of struggle are being stripped away. I have taught in this system for over 20 years and I have never seen this level of attack – scapegoating educators for all that ails urban schools.

But on June 11th we have a  chance to end this business as usual, top-down unionism.

The most important thing Union leaders do is build consensus and organize members to speak and act as ONE.  But who has heard our voice in the past 6 years?  Who has seen a real fight against privatizing Chicago’s schools?  Big business sees K-12 public education as 350 billion dollars they weren’t getting a piece of.  Why haven’t we heard our leadership attack that profit motive – and PROVE IT?  Why has our Union seemed complicit in its silence?

My opponent charges that we aren’t experienced despite the fact that we worked to stop 12 school closing and saved a thousand jobs. We had to sue the Board for budget and TIF details so we DON’T have to reopen the contract. You can’t talk numbers if you don’t have real information.  We have the former vice-president of CTU, Howard Heath, who has not only negotiated a contract, he’s a mathematician who can crunch the numbers with the best of them.  We’ve got lawyers and old contracts so we’re ready!

Let me share something with you.  You already know that I’m the wife and daughter of CTU members and I went to Chicago Public Schools. But I am the only Black woman in the class of 1974 at Dartmouth College and  I got that degree when I was 20 years old.  I know how to stand strong in the face of adversity and win.  I am not afraid.   Never have been.

The current leadership claims that the safe bet now is to stay the course.

Clearly members didn’t buy that.

Two-thirds voted against the very candidate Huberman has backed in secret meetings over the last couple months.

On May 25 we said NO to repeating “the Marilyn experience” that cost 6,000 members their jobs.  We said NO to pension raids.  We said NO to the unchecked powers of abusive principals. We said No to rising class sizes.

We’re going to bring real technology to this union so our members have access to relevant information.  We’re going to have real delegate training so everyone knows how to run an election smoothly, help the members in our schools and provide professional development that makes us more effective educators and unionists.

We will have a political strategy that is based on our ability to initiate and take the lead on legislation, not wait until the hammer drops – especially after the beating we just took in Springfield with the pension raid, the diabetes fiasco and a voucher bill that just won’t die.  We’re ready.

So, I ask you today, will we stand united?  Will we stop the attacks on our members? An injury to one is an injury to all.  CORE represents what called us to the teaching profession in the first place.  That commitment must be fused in out Union’s work every day.  Let’s rebuild our spirit, our public image and harness the power of 30,000 members.  Reclaim the joy of teaching and learning.

CORE FOR CTU Ad on Vimeo.

Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis at the Curie HS Town Hall Meeting

Press from the 2009 School Closings Protest

Recording Secretary Candidate Michael Brunson at the Board of Education

Financial Secretary Candidate Kristine Mayle at the Guggenheim School Closing Hearing

Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis

CORE Co-Chair Jackson Potter at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally

CORE Budget Committee Chair Kurt Hilgendorf at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally

The Struggle Against Renaissance

Arne Duncan/Advance Illinois Protest

Public Dollars, Public Schools

Opening Commentary by Vice Presidential Candidate Jesse Sharkey

Stop School Closings!

CORE attended another monthly Chicago Board of Education meeting  to support the school communities devastated by the announcement of their schools being closed, phased-out, consolidated, or turned-around.

CORE Candidate for Financial Secretary, Kristine Mayle, spoke out against the 15 years of educational experiments made possible by mayoral control of Chicago’s schools.

From Chicago Breaking News:

Teachers worry that [school]closings disrupt the learning environment and the connections students have with teachers, harming their education.

Kristine Mayle, a former teacher at De La Cruz Academy Middle School, which closed last year, said the board should look at the research and realize that their leadership needs to change.

“Our current reforms are not working,” said Mayle, who now teaches at Eberhart Elementary School.

CORE members Norine Gutekanst (Whittier Elementary), Jesse Sharkey (Senn High School), Earl Silbar, and Xian Barret also spoke out against the failures of Renaissance 2010 and mayoral control. Barret, a teacher at Julian High School, asked Huberman why he isn’t sticking to promises he’s personally made to him.

CTU President Marilyn Stewart brought up the fact that a number of schools that will be closed were a part of the TAP program, and was disappointed that this did not stave off their closing. The TAP program is a merit-pay system that the Board and the Union had agreed could be used in “failing” schools to keep them open. The program was ushered in as a backdoor deal without a vote by Union membership or by the House of Delegates.

Click “read more” to read Mayle’s testimony.

My name is Kristine Mayle and I’m proud to be a CPS teacher and a member of CORE.

As you know, the Consortium on Chicago School Research released a study late last year that showed that there was no evidence to prove that Renaissance 2010 and all of its experiments made possible by mayoral control-reconstitutions, re-engineerings, closures, and charters have done anything to help the students of Chicago.  The Consortium’s most recent work[1] highlights what they call Five Fundamentals that do spur success in Chicago schools, and they have 15 years of data to back it up.

These five things run counter to parts of the Education Department’s school improvement agenda, the things we’ve seen in CPS: charter schools, “innovation,” replacing principals with “New Leaders,” etc. The study shows that if the five factors are all in place, schools do improve.

These factors are:

1) Strong principal leadership that focuses on instruction and is inclusive of others in the work, as opposed to our current, top down leadership that dictates to principals instead of trusting them to lead.

2) A welcoming attitude toward parents and a formation of connections to communities.

3) Development of professional capacity—treating teachers like professionals and giving them good professional development and collaboration time.

4) A safe, welcoming, stimulating, and nurturing environment for all students.

5) Strong instructional guidance and materials, not forced curricula

When all five of these supports were working in tandem, the Consortium found that schools improved.  In an article from “Ed Week,”[2] Dr. Eason-Watkins was quoted as saying, “schools that adopted the model and the five fundamentals have improved.”

Dr. Watkins, as an educator, I implore you to stand up for our students and tell the members of the Board what we know is true: the current reforms aren’t working.  Let’s adopt this Five Fundamentals model, which has been proven to help our students.

[2] “Scholars Identify 5 Keys to Urban School Success” by By Debra Viadero http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/27/19ccsr.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/27/19ccsr.h29.html&levelId=2100

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 22, 2009  9 p.m.

Contract-to-Charter Conversion Reveals

CPS Circumvention of State Law

Number of Charter Seats Requested on 11/23/09 Almost Doubles Last Year’s Total

CHICAGO – On November 23, 2009, CPS is asking the Chicago Board of Education to nearly double the number of charter seats over last year’s total, 8,130 seats up from 4,200, according to data compiled by CORE researchers from CPS public documents (see below).  Over half of those “new charter seats” come from CPS’s proposal to convert eight contract schools to charter school status.

Jackson Potter, CORE’s Co-chair, noted that CPS appears to disregard the letter and intent of state law when privatizing schools.  Potter explained that over the past few years, when CPS had maxed out on the number of allowed charter schools, it began opening “contract” schools.  “CPS appears to be admitting that it did sidestep the charter cap law for years by asking the Board to convert eight contract schools to charter school status today.”

CORE member and CPS special education teacher Kristine Mayle explained that unlike contract schools, only 50% of the teachers need to be certified at these “new” charters for the next few years (see 105 ILCS 5 Art. 27A 10(c)). Moreover, charter schools are barred from joining the Chicago Teachers Union.  “Through shady moves like this, CPS is creating a rash of `new’ charter schools overnight.  Why?  Only half of new charter staffs need to be certified to teach.  CPS appears to be purposely creating a non-certified, low-wage, inexperienced, high-turnover workforce without workplace protections,” said Mayle.

Potter explained that when educators do not have contractual rights, “management can run wild.  My union contract backs me up so I can demand that my students receive an adequate education and proper services if they are English language learners, special education students, or are in need of counseling or medical support.  Without union protections, students are increasingly at risk.”  Potter challenged the media to interview charter teachers off the record on this issue.

“Once again, CPS makes proposals without public debate, meaningful accountability or publicly-available financial audits of these quasi-private charter school operators,” said Karen Lewis, co-chair of CORE, who renewed a call for independent financial and operational audits of all Chicago charter schools.

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CORE, the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators, is a caucus of the Chicago Teachers. The group is comprised of teachers, retired teachers, educational staff and other champions of public education.