However, CTU also says that the agreement puts them in a vastly better position than they were in November, when even after months of struggle, the planning and preparation by CPS would have been laughable were it not also so dangerous. They say that school clerks and technology coordinators who had reported safety concerns for months will now have access to vaccines and enforceable safety measures that should have been in place before they had ever been asked to step foot back into the buildings.

A new safety committee will be created which the teachers say they will use to enforce the agreement and organize to ensure that CPS meets safety standards and mitigation protocols. The agreement also lays out gains on accommodations, vaccinations, delayed re-opening, school closing metrics, and more. CTU says that while they did not get what anyone deserves, they instead got what they were able to take through collective action and fighting hard, and that accepting this deal is a way to protect the progress they have made.

This agreement comes after many rank-and-file CTU members were locked out, docked pay or faced discipline as a result of the actions they took to keep people safe. CTU believes that those sacrifices made were a major factor in what made CPS finally negotiate and arrive at the agreement that is now ratified.

As CTU members were voting on the agreement on Tuesday, February 9, CPS began at last to reinstate the workers who they had locked out in retaliation for their collective action.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #ChicagoTeachersUnion #ChicagoPublicSchools #TeachersUnions #COVID19

Many classrooms appeared as if they had not been cleaned since the district’s initial shutdown last March, while in others, window treatments remained covered in dust or with windows that would not stay open at all, despite CPS’ claim that “we worked to ensure every classroom has a working window or a mechanical ventilation system to dilute air particles that may have viruses or bacteria and allow old air to move out of the classroom.”

One school was asking workers whose rooms had no portable HEPA filters to sign a release saying they would not hold the school “liable for any health consequence of been [sic] in the building.”

A common concern was the Intellipure Compact air purifiers provided by the district, which work “best if used in spaces below 500 sq. feet,” according to the company website, but are being deployed by CPS to ‘protect’ much larger classrooms.

“CPS and the mayor are saying that they desperately want to open schools, but in many buildings, they’ve done nothing to make conditions any safer – and that’s without the threat of a pandemic,” Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Jesse Sharkey said. “Parents, students, teachers, community groups and elected officials aren’t demanding that CPS and the mayor keep buildings closed; they’re demanding that they exhaust all resources in making schools as safe as possible before reopening.”

More than half of the teachers scheduled to start teaching directly from unsafe school buildings on Monday chose to work remotely.

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Chicago, IL – More than 100 teachers, parents and community members participated in a car caravan, December 12 for safety, equality and trust. Chicago Public Schools has rejected the union’s safety concerns at every turn, refused to bargain to consensus on safety needs, rejected improving its inhumane remote learning program despite months of pleas from parents, students and educators, and fallen woefully short on safety promises they’ve made.

The caravan traveled to city hall, where caravan members delivered pointed criticisms of CPS’ dangerous plan to accommodate the mayor’s insistence on reopening unsafe buildings to students and school staff starting in early January – even as the pandemic is surging.

The union has been seeking to bargain demands for safety, equity and trust with CPS for months.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #ChicagoTeachersUnion #ChicagoPublicSchools #TeachersUnions

Chicago, IL – Close to 400,000 students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are in their seventh week of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this haze of attempting to teach the children of Chicago one thing is becoming crystal clear: disparity. According to NBC Chicago 52% of coronavirus deaths are of African American people and 25% are Latinos. Working-class African American and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West Sides are being hit much harder than predominantly white neighborhoods downtown and on the North Side.

This disparity is being felt in ‘schools.’ Remote learning is impossible without access to technology and the internet, something lacking for all too many working-class families. Students in residential facilities are expected to complete work without sufficient access to a computer. Before the pandemic it was estimated that CPS served 17,000 homeless students. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is not addressing the needs of working-class families effectively or efficiently. Students are not being educated.

Chicago Teachers Union Area Vice President Sarah Chambers said, “The Chicago Public Schools should not use a ‘one size fits all approach’ to the pandemic. The allocation of resources should prioritize students with the greatest need, including Black and brown students as well as those with disabilities.”

Teachers and staff need training on how best to help undocumented families. Many of these families are facing a deep economic crisis on top of the health crisis facing our communities. Undocumented immigrant workers are ineligible for the stimulus check. Some are hiding from ICE raids that continue in Chicago during the pandemic. Students and families are traumatized by their conditions.

In addition, teachers and staff need training to provide emotional support for students who have lost family members due to COVID-19. Also, despite massive layoffs working-class people are still required to pay rent. “We need a rent, mortgage and eviction freeze,” Chambers demanded. “How can students who are possibly facing homelessness learn in the face of the emotional distress that arises from this health and economic crisis?”

Mayor Lightfoot, Chicago Public Schools, and the city of Chicago need to address these issues for our students, their families and the entire working class if people are going to survive this crisis. The Chicago Teachers Union has joined the Right to Recovery coalition. This is a massive grassroots organizing effort to win the recovery that working people need.

The boss will give us nothing, if we do not demand it. Join the working class and people of conscience making these demands, we need you.

Thomas Leng is a special education teacher at World Languages Academy and a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.

#ChicagoIL #PoorPeoplesMovements #StudentMovement #OppressedNationalities #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #ChicanoLatino #ChicagoPublicSchools #PublicSectorUnions #TeachersUnions #COVID19 #MayorLoriLightfoot

With 80% of schools reporting, members have voted 81% yes to ratify the new contract with Chicago Public Schools.

The union won powerful gains for students and their school communities.

Those gains include mandatory class size caps and enforcement, language forcing CPS to comply with special education laws and regulations, sanctuary school protections for immigrant and refugee students, and supports for thousands of homeless students. While today most schools have a nurse barely one day a week, the contract will provide schools with a nurse and a social worker in every school every day. The union also won another freeze on charter expansion, and additional funding for staff that includes librarians and counselors, who now must be allowed to serve only as counselors, not recess supervisors, test proctors or substitute teachers.

The contract will also, at last, lift up teaching assistants, school clerks and other paraprofessionals out of poverty.

“This contract is a powerful advance for our city and our movement for real equity and educational justice for our school communities and the children we serve,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. We live in one of the richest cities in the wealthiest nation in the world, and finally Chicago must start investing in the future of our city – our children.”

Moving forward, the union has put some of CPS' most harmful and inequitable education policies squarely in its sights, including ending CPS’ discriminatory ‘student-based budgeting’ formula and the district's racist school ranking system called SQRP. That includes the union's effort to win passage in Springfield for an elected, representative school board, a bill that the House and Senate leadership have vowed to move this spring and the governor has promised to sign, restoring to Chicagoans the same democratic rights that voters in every other school district in the state possess. The union is also pushing legislation to restore CTU members' bargaining rights, which were stripped away in 1995 with the imposition of mayoral control over CPS.

“Our contract fight was about the larger movement to shift values and priorities in Chicago,” said CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates. “Working-class taxpayers in Chicago have paid for skyscrapers that most will never visit – but a school nurse is someone their child in need can see on any day. In a city with immense wealth, corporations have the ability to pay to support the common good.”

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Chicago, IL – The energy was high at Whittier Elementary’s la casita, as the parents and their children prepared for another vigilant night to protect their field house from demolition, Sept. 20. Sign-in sheets covered the front tables with ‘on-guard’ schedules and long lists of names and contact information from educators, community members, members of the Chicago Teachers’ Union and other supporters. Sept. 20, began the seventh day of the occupation of the field house at this school in Pilsen, a Chicano/Mexicano neighborhood on Chicago’s west side.

The parents’ demands are straightforward: They want a library for their school and they do not want their field house torn down to become a soccer field for a neighboring private school. Currently, Whittier Elementary School has no library for the students nor is there a nearby community library. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has deemed this field house “not structurally sound.” Araceli Gonzalez, one of the parents leading the protest, claims that CPS’s statements are inaccurate. “We showed CPS a letter from a structural engineer saying that we only need a new roof, which would cost less to fix than to demolish the whole field house.” CPS has made no comment on this letter.

Even though at least two people are always on guard in front of la casita, the parents and their children sleep with one eye open after being encircled and barricaded by the CPS security on Sept. 16. CPS security surrounded the Whittier playground and field house that day. They would not let anyone enter or leave, even though some of the parents’ children were on the outside of the fence. Araceli describes this horrific incident, “I don’t even think criminals get treated like we were treated. They tried to cut the electricity. They pushed girls, kids, including my daughter. They yelled that they would call immigration and get us arrested.” After approximately one hour, shouts of “Si, se puede!” surged through the air as the CPS security removed the barricades.

On Sept. 20, ward Alderman Danny Solis finally showed up to hear the angry parents of his district. While Solis promised to give Whittier more by using tax increment funds, only 5% of those TIF funds have been made available to Whittier so far. [TIF – Tax Increment Financing – is a trick played by politicians to take tax money from the community and give it to developers.]

Mothers and community members demanded that Alderman Solis pledge his support that the money for the demolition of the field house go towards rebuilding it into a library. When Solis pled that he could do nothing, protesters chanted and made him announce on television that he would show up the following morning to deliver a signed note saying the house wouldn’t be demolished and that he would support “negotiations” for a library.

“We are excited about the way things went today, but we’re not going to back down,” said Carolina, one of the mothers occupying Whittier. “I’ve planted myself here – I’m not leaving – my roots are here.”

The people of Pilsen have fought tirelessly for the right for a say in their community. This is the latest in a series of fights against privatization of the school system, gentrification of their neighborhood and for community autonomy.

Community members and others have supported the occupation, bringing in food, water and supplies to rebuild la casita. The brave parents say they will not end the occupation of the field house until they get a written statement from Chicago Public Schools promising they will not demolish it.

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