Video of of the 5/25/2010 Save Our Schools rally and march featuring CORE Candidates Karen Lewis (President) and Jesse Sharkey (Vice President)

Huberman, Daley, and the CPS are in for a fight when 30,000 members are united.

In a display of unity that is uncommon in an election season, all five caucuses of the CTU came together to march against Huberman’s threats of ballooning class sizes to 35 and major cuts to educational programs. Koco, Teachers for Social Justice, Pilsen Alliance, Blocks Together, and other GEM partners  organized students, parents, and community members to march in unity with the Union teachers who are integral members of their communities.

CORE Presidential candidate Karen Lewis talking to young people at rally.

One police officer on duty estimated 5,000 protesters, making this one of the largest educational protests in decades.

Initially, CORE planned to organize the rally with their GEM partners, but realized that this was an event that would be bigger than a caucus, and made a resolution at the May House of Delegates meeting for the event to be a Union event; a show of unity against Huberman and Daley. Although it was a political risk to organize members to an all-caucus event while on the campaign trail, CORE made it a priority to build this event, and it paid off.

This is exactly the kind of Unionism that CORE wants and the membership deserves.

On May 21, 2010, 65% of all Chicago Teachers Union members voted against their incumbent President, Marilyn Stewart.  In the election booth and in the streets, our members declared that our Union can no longer be complicit in the destruction of public schools.  This protest on May 25^th was initiated by rank-and-file teachers and Union delegates to break the current Union leadership’s silence.

Letter from CORE Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis:

Dear Teachers, PSRPs, clinicians, and supporters,

Tuesday May 25, 2010 will go down in history as the beginning of a new way.

We had thousands of people in the streets telling Huberman “No” to 35 in a class, “NO” to cuts in programs and “NO” to balancing their budgets on the backs of educators and students. What made this possible was that members of all five caucuses came together to show unity.  I would like to thank all the members of PACT, CSDU and SEA for running campaigns that focused on the pressing issues we all face.  We appreciate the expressions of support we have received from the leadership and membership of those caucuses.  It is an honor to be among people who care passionately about the direction this Union must take.

As I rode back on the bus a parent said to me, “…And this is just the beginning.”

She was absolutely right.

In solidarity,

Karen Lewis

CORE Candidate for CTU President

National Board Certified Teacher

Thousands of Teachers, PSRPs, and Clinicians are a force to be reckoned with!

Click here to read the press statement on the rally.

Download this flyer and distribute to teachers, parents, and other community members.

CORE Candidate for Area Vice President Norine Gutekanst delivers FOIA request to the Attorney General's office, surrounded by members of CORE and the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM)

On April 28th, the Grassroots Education Movement, CORE and more than 50 teachers from 10 different schools throughout the city held a press conference in front of the State of Illinois building to force the Chicago Public Schools to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act. The gathering spoke first about the need for transparency before any budget cuts are in place after which everyone proceed to move inside of the building and request a meeting with Attorney General, Lisa Madigan.

The letter was received by the Assistant Public Access Counselor who quickly notified CPS that they were in non-compliance of the FOIA law and must provide the documents that I, on behalf of CORE and GEM, requested on March 27th. Thanks to the efforts of this gathering, there may finally be a way to determine whether or not Huberman and his financial appointees are telling the public the truth or hiding a surplus to justify draconian teacher cuts in the fall.

Representative from Attorney General's Office receives letter.

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!

NO CUTS! OPEN THE BOOKS!

ALL BUDGET DATA ON THE TABLE NOW!

Rally 4 p.m. / Press Conference 10 a.m.

Wednesday April 28th, 2010

We’ve seen the raises for Huberman and his friends …

we’re supposed to just trust him on the rest?

4 p.m. RALLY! Ask IL Attorney General Lisa Madigan to fast-track data release!

Thompson Center (State of Illinois Building) Plaza
100 West Randolph Street (Corner of Randolph and Clark)

Bring signs and a fighting spirit!

The Attorney General office’s motto is “ensuring open and honest government.” Will she fast-track our Freedom of Information Act requests to CPS?

10 a.m. GEM/CORE Press Conference/Hearing Testimony

125 S. Clark.  To speak at hearing, show up at 6 a.m. to sign in!

* * * * *

Public educators are winning battles across the U.S. In Chicago, we saved 12 schools from closing and CORE’s EEOC discrimination case against turnarounds is moving forward. In Florida, teachers won the Governor’s veto on a bill that would have tied teachers’ salaries to test scores and eliminate tenure. In LA, union teachers won 29 of 30 new school contracts, cutting non-union charters off at the knees. In DC, the union is back in the courts fighting teacher cuts made on budget deficit lies. Could we have the same situation here, now?

In a $5.5 billion CPS budget, the money’s there.  It’s about priorities.

Today’s Education Committee hearing ended up being quite a show! Several aldermen gave scathing accounts of their view of R2010, and Alderman Munoz forced the committee chair to change her mind and hear public testimony from a small representation of the many folks who came out to support the R2010 school closing moratorium. It was a powerful day.

When the public was allowed to speak, representatives from CORE and our GEM partners spoke in favor of the Moratorium Resolution, co-sponsored by Aldermen Lyle and Dowell. This resolution would,

…requite that a moratorium of at least one year be place on current and future school closings, consolidations, turnaround, and phase outs until a comprehensive strategy of transparency, community involvement, and public accountability can be developed, which will include the recommendations from the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force.

From Catalyst:

…members of the audience said they wanted the education committee and the City Council at large, to vote on the resolution. Jesse Sharkey, a member of the Caucus Of Rank and File Educators, a group of progressive teachers, said at least then people would know where their alderman stood on the issue.

CORE Vice Presidential Candidate Jesse Sharkey speaking to the City Council Education Committee

Jesse was recently elected as CORE’s Vice Presidential candidate. Jesse’s testimony available at the “read more” link.

During public participation, hundreds of students, parents, and teachers from schools slated for closure arrived and filled the board chambers.

School communities entering city hall

Jonathon Jackson of Operation Push and protestors outside City Hall.

School communities file into City Council chambers to hold their representatives accountable as CORE Co-Chair Jackson Potter looks on

School communities storm the fifth floor to hold the "Education Mayor" accountable

Since the "Education Mayor" refused to speak to students, teachers, and parents, the group decided to sing songs against school closings.

Afterword, they filed up to the fifth floor, demanding to speak to the Mayor. Daley refused to leave his office and sent out a representative who insisted that Daley “has been the ‘education mayor’ for the last 21 years.”

What that means is anyone’s guess.

Mr. Mayor, please don't close our school.

There’s a lot of fads in school reform, just like there’s a lot of fads in weight-loss—and the belief that turnarounds—that is firing the whole staff of a school and bringing in a fresh but inexperienced team is every bit as discredited as crash dieting. In Chicago we saw substantially the same policy, which was called ‘reconstitution’ fail in 1997, re-engineering fail in 2000, we undertook turnarounds in 2006—and there’s a lot of evidence that this latest face on an old fad is doing us more harm than good.

We have now seen enough of this experiment on our schools; we have evidence that is too persuasive to ignore: (1) turnarounds have been associated with increased violence, as we saw at Fenger H.S., (2) the turnaround process has pushed veteran black educators out of the teaching force as they are fired and replaced with predominantly white novices, and (3) the turnaround process has actually destabilized the teaching force and displaced a significant number of students in many of the schools where it is tried—and therefore even the legitimate test score gains that CPS claims—and not all of them are legitimate—are based on a quick fix, that actually reduces the health of our schools overall, and will lead to a sad, but predictable reversal.

Without going on for too long, I want to go through each of these three claims in a little more depth.

1. Violence. No one is blaming school violence on turnarounds—that’s a social epidemic that does not begin and will not end in the schools. But there’s good reason, and plenty on anecdotal evidence to show that destabilizing a school by firing its veteran staff is a bad idea. In early September, Derrion Albert, who attended the Fenger turnaround was killed outside of school after weeks of gang violence dominated the beginning of the school year. No one knows if the tragedy at Fenger High School could have been averted if a veteran staff, who knew the neighborhood, and had a history with those kids, had still worked in the building.

2. The turnaround process has pushed veteran black educators out of the teaching force as they are fired and replaced with predominantly white novices. It is moreover the case that this is taking place in schools that serve the African American community—so not only do turnarounds have a negative impact on the diversity of the Chicago teaching force in general, the policy has the effect of depriving students of role models who look like them, and share their background. Chicago has 2,000 fewer African American teachers than we did in 2002. Turnarounds are a big part of this. In fact, the EEOC has upheld a complaint, filed by CORE on behalf of black teachers whose schools had been turned around. This is a disparate impact case—meaning that driving veteran black educators out of Chicago’s classrooms may not be the intent, but it is certainly the effect, expect the Department of Justice to take up the investigation soon.

3. Finally, turnarounds do not achieve the goal of creating a stable, skilled teaching force at the schools in question. Take for example, AUSL, which is Chicago’s most important turnaround operator. According to data compiled by Catalyst, the large majority of AUSL graduates are not still at the turnaround school three or four years later. This is not too surprising; nearly fifty percent of new teachers don’t make it—but it does not serve these schools well.

Finally, I want to say something more about the historical parallel between turnarounds and reconstitution, which was tried and then abandoned in the late 1990’s. In both Chicago and San Francisco, where reconstitution was first used in 1984, there was an emphasis on recruiting the best teachers for the targeted schools—as well as curricular and other supports which went into place after the school was reconstituted. And in both these cases the program was abandoned because those schools wound up with most of the same difficulties which they faced before the reconstitution—in fact, one of this year’s turnaround targets, Marshall, was reconstituted in 1997! But this leads to the question—if a school system is going to make an effort to hire skilled teachers, as well as provide training and curricular supports for a school—why do you have to fire the entire staff in order to do that?

The turnaround process is like a fad diet—we’re trying it because we’re desperate for results. But like any diet that hurts our health, we’d be better off asking our doctor and using a little common sense. In this case take the advice of educators, not venture capitalists with a product to sell. Do not fire your most dedicated, veteran teachers who work at your toughest schools. Stop Turnarounds.

GEM mobilized this massive protest against the Chicago Board of Education to end Renaissance 2010. For the first time, 6 schools were saved from phase-out, consolidation, turnaround, and closing.

The struggle is not over. The Board has just voted to push out Pulaski Fine Arts Academy from its own building, despite overwhelming community support for the school. The award-winning De La Cruz was closed down because according to the Board, “the neighborhood doesnt need a school” and then the Board leased the building to Juan Rangel’s UNO for $1.

CORE, along with our community partners at GEM, will continue to fight as long as there is injustice in the Chicago Public Schools. We will make as much video available as possible at COREtube.