CORE has attended every school closing hearing this year. These hearings have been skillfully chronicled in Substance News.
CORE’s candidate for Financial Secretary, Kristine Mayle, and CORE Pension Trustee Lois Ashford at Guggenheim Elementary Hearing
This CORE clock is one of many items available from the CORE store at Cafe Press
CORE has teamed up with Cafe Press to offer a variety of CORE items suitable for the whole family. Please visit
http://www.cafepress.com/COREChicago and browse the inventory. A portion of the proceeds will go to CORE. T-shirts are also available. E-mail coreteachers@gmail.com for details.
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.
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.
On Wednesday, February 10th, CORE came out to support or brothers and sisters protesting school closings outside of Board of Education headquarters at 125 S. Clark.
Guggenheim Elementary School Community
CORE's Xian Barret at Protest
Students will fight to keep their schools open.
The above link will lead you to a new video on blip.tv showing several CORE members and other community members speaking out against the news wave of school closings. Particularly highlighted is CORE’s Presidential Candidate Karen Lewis, who shows herself to be a powerful and well-informed speaker on several occasions throughout the video.
CORE members in Guggenheim gym after the their closing hearing
After the House of Delegates meeting last night, CORE came out to support the the Guggenheim School community as the Board slates the Englewood School for closing.
CORE Candidate for Financial Secretary, Kristine Mayle describes the evening, filled with pain and joy at Substance News.
After the meeting, the community protested the proposed closing outside of their school. As the members of CORE left the candlelit vigil outside, we left with a tremendous feeling of optimism. Guggenheim’s alumni feel very loyal to their alma mater and the school community feels like a family. There were far more speakers than the Board had time for. One speaker came from Los Angeles where he works as an actor. The Guggenheim community will not let the school close quietly. They will fight this closing.
There will be a strategy meeting to stop school closings at Operation Push this Saturday.
When: Saturday, February 6th, 12 noon
Where: 2nd floor Conference Room, Operation Push 930 East 50th Street
CORE member Katie Hogan is having a birthday and you’re all invited. Katie will be having a birthday fundraiser at Quenchers on Western and Fullerton this Friday. All proceeds go to help CORE win this year’s union election. Please join us to celebrate.
Quenchers
This Friday, February 5th.
2401 North Western Avenue
4:30pm
There is also the Chicago-based Strategic Learning Initiative at Finkl Elementary, where staff and schools are resourced at a much lower cost than turnarounds and have shown some very positive results. The use of the nuclear option on our neighborhood schools can be devastating, such as in the case of Fenger High.
Schools are living entities with an ecology of adults and community ties that are not easily reproduced. When Duncan and Company push to eliminate everyone in the building, it can wreak unforeseeable havoc. As author Malcolm Gladwell describes in the book “Outliers,” people who are considered brilliant at what they do often have spent an inordinate amount of time practicing their craft. Turnarounds are based on the assumption that bringing in primarily inexperienced teachers and replacing the old, forlorn veteran staff will bring positive results. However, the Teach for America approach to staffing urban schools does not provide for a long-term commitment to developing a professional community.
Last, there is the question of discrimination. A disproportionate number of the teachers fired in turnaround schools are veteran black teachers. According to ISBE, Chicago has lost more than 2,000 black teachers since 2002. What is the impact of having fewer black professionals mentoring black youth in low-income communities throughout the city?
CORE Speaks Out
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