“We are facing a crisis that is in some ways unprecedented,” Jackson Potter, vice president of CTU, explained the harm Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill” will do to public services. Chicago Public Schools already faces a $734 million deficit with the “BBB” slashing another $60 million from the district.

Potter reminded the board members of the decades-long fight for school funding in which many board members have participated and urged the board to help apply pressure to Pritzker. For years CTU has called on elected officials to find sources of funding for schools rather than cutting budgets.

“Every dollar cut is a blow to the future of a student who already faces more challenges than most,” Keerti Nandan, a special education teacher, told the press how annual budget cuts affect her students.

“Don't balance the budget on the backs of students with disabilities,” Nandan continued.

One of the consequences of budget cuts is mass layoffs. CPS recently announced the layoffs of over 1400 school staff, mostly paraprofessionals who are majority Black and brown women.

“We know CPS schools are underfunded, and they have $1.2 billion owed to them by the state funding formula,” Pavlyn Jankov, CTU research director, explaining why Governor Pritzker is the target of CTU’s demands.

“Underfunding is a choice,” Jankov described the funding inequality between Chicago and other Illinois districts with fewer Black and brown students. “We have to have a fully funded school system, and that has to happen with state funding and new progressive revenue.”

#ChicagoIL #IL #PeoplesStruggles #Education #CTU #Labor

Tucson, AZ – On March 4, more than 50 K-12 educators and union members rallied outside the federal building to protest the Trump administration’s plans to destroy the federal Department of Education. The National Day of Action – “Protect our Kids” – was supported by the American Federal of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) and targeted March 4 to reject the confirmation of Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon.

 The national unions and their locals vowed to defend immigrant and LGBTQ students from the Trump administration’s reactionary attacks. Destroying the Department of Education would also gut funding to support students with disabilities and limit protections offered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

 Local affiliates of NEA from Tucson, Sunnyside, Flowing Wells, Amphi and Marana school districts united with teachers at BASIS Tucson North, Arizona’s first unionized charter school. A Latino and indigenous-led community organization, LUCHA, joined the rally to make it clear that Arizonan educators are willing to fight back against education cuts, privatization and profiteering so that every student gets the education they deserve.

 Speakers at the rally emphasized the need to fight back at both the state and the federal level.

 Jim Byrne, president of the Tucson Education Association, reminded the crowd that “during Trump’s first term, West Virginia, then Oklahoma, and then Arizona saw historic educator strikes that pushed the needle toward more funding to schools. We did it before and we can do it again!”

 American Federation of Teachers Local 8002 Vice President Duncan Sohn Hasman shared the sentiment, saying, “Charter school teachers at this particular moment have found ourselves a new voice and a new way to fight back. We are ready to fight, we are ready to work with our public co-educators within Arizona to make sure that we are ready to fight back.”

#TucsonAZ #AZ #Labor #Education #Techers #AFT #NEA #McMahon #Trump

On November 19, Donald Trump selected multi-millionaire Linda McMahon as Secretary of the Department of Education. The former CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut and lost twice. She served on Trump’s cabinet once before as the head of the Small Business Administration and then resigned in 2019 to become the director of America First Action, a Trump super-PAC that kept promoting the agenda of “Make America Great Again” after he lost the 2020 election. She has received praise from bigot and Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.

In 2010, McMahon was caught lying to the press about possessing a bachelor’s degree in education, when instead she had one in French. Incapable of being elected to office, McMahon hitched her wagon to Trump’s racist, right-wing political career and became a key part of his campaign. Together, they worked to advance the agenda of billionaires and are poised to resume that mission now that he has returned to the White House.

Her elevation to Secretary of Education is not about strengthening the Department of Education by any means. It is the opposite. Trump and McMahon are hardcore advocates of the abolition of the department. With the erasure of the Department of Education, the following would be gone: standards for education; any enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to investigate racist discrimination and sexual violence; the basis for need-based federal Pell Grants and student loans; funding for all public schools grades K-12; support of English for Speakers of Other Languages programs; special education programs; programs for students with disabilities, and more.

According to the website of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a pro-Trump right-wing Christian think tank chaired by McMahon herself, public funds would be redirected from public schools to vouchers, money that parents would have to use to pay for private schools. These schools are owned in part by the likes of McMahon, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s last Secretary of Education, and their billionaire friends. McMahon’s vision is to ruin the quality of public education, close public schools as enrollment declines, and then direct public funds to private schools, charter schools and religious schools that promote “Make America Great Again” ideals.

McMahan and her billionaire friends advocate the privatization of education because they, along with the billionaires of the U.S., will profit if families suddenly have to pay for basic education. They dream of a world where education from kindergarten through 12th grade is no longer free, and the tuition dollars go straight into their pockets.

Tuition for private schools can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, meaning students from working-class homes, undocumented immigrant students, and Black, Chicano and Latino students may no longer be able to afford an education, and only rich, white students will. The resulting inequality is part of McMahon and Trump’s vision.

McMahon’s racism extends beyond education policy. Her thinktanks demand obedience to and increased funding for law enforcement, despite the fact that racist cops continue killing Black people, including Black kids, without losing their jobs or facing any jail time. The AFPI calls the “defund the police” movement “dangerous.” Moreover, McMahon actively spreads lies about Central American immigrants, Chinese immigrants, and communists in order to justify Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, such as his termination of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals which can leave over 800,000 immigrant youth vulnerable to deportation.

Aside from immediate financial profit, the AFPI and McMahon seek to reshape what is taught. Like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other Trump-endorsed politicians, the AFPI characterizes the teaching of the histories of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, the women’s rights movement, gender and sexuality struggles and any social movements in the U.S. as “identity politics” and calls for them to be eradicated from the education system.

The MAGA movement doesn’t limit their hatred of social justice movements to just words. McMahon has come out in the press calling Palestinians who resist illegal settlements terrorists and stands firmly in the camp of criminalizing free speech on campus if it is used to speak out against genocide.

In the state of Florida, DeSantis banned funding for campus cultural organizations, activist groups, any LGBTQ groups, and pro-Palestine student organizations, also calling them terrorists and effectively banning groups like Students for a Democratic Society and Students for Justice in Palestine. This semester, students have faced criminal charges just for promoting events that say no to the genocide in Gaza, and experienced expulsion and even deportation.

McMahon, MAGA, and Moms for Liberty have worked hard to paint a target on the backs of LGBTQ people, particularly trans youth, and parents who love and support their queer kids. America First Action and the AFPI, her two think tanks, use the slogan “Give parents more control over the education of their children” in reaction to the growing support for open expression of gender and sexuality among students and youth. To the sound of this drumbeat, Moms for Liberty has campaigned to ban books that depict LGBTQ people or women’s rights positively in any way, and they have advocated for bills that ban trans people from using the right bathroom, ban teachers from using the right pronouns for trans students, and green-light legal action against parents who support their children’s gender expression.

Ironically, despite America First’s hardline campaigning around LGBTQ people as predators, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, face multiple ongoing lawsuits for sexual abuse and trafficking of World Wrestling Entertainment employees and the sexual abuse of children. This October, a lawsuit was filed against the McMahons for covering up the sexual abuse of young boys committed by WWE announcer, Melvin Phillips, with allegations going back to the mid-1980s. Last summer, Vince McMahon was subpoenaed by federal law enforcement for million-dollar payoffs to silence five women, including former WWE employee Janel Grant, who he is said to have not only sexually assaulted, but also trafficked to business partners. The McMahons and their lawyers have denied all allegations, but these cases are not yet closed.

It is into these dirty hands that the care of students and youth in the U.S. would be going. Public schools that need to be strengthened and expanded will be ransacked. An office that should come to the defense of women, LGBTQ youth, and Black, Chicano and Latino students will be put in the hands of a former CEO who has built a career on defending rapists and racists. Instead of becoming sites for learning and political engagement, college campuses will be reduced to nothing more than storefronts for stakeholders and a recruitment ground for war criminals.

Despite their high offices, Trump and McMahon’s positions are unpopular. In April 2019, unionized public school teachers, workers, students, parents and community members in East Los Angeles, most of whom are Chicano, successfully defeated a major privatization initiative. After months of protests, including a week-long strike of over 30,000 teachers, they ended the construction of a corporate mega-charter school called KIPP Promesa Charter in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles. KIPP is the largest charter school corporation in the United States and builds in working-class neighborhoods, often Black, Chicano or Latino-majority ones. Not only do public schools close in their wake, but other impoverishing policies often follow, such as rent hikes, evictions and displacements. The people of East Los Angeles went up against an effort led by billionaires Eli Broad, the Waltons of Wal-Mart, and the Gates Foundation, and they won.

Trump has installed incompetent, failed politicians like McMahon to carry out his racist, reactionary agenda without question. Together, they will dance to the tune of greedy billionaires who are waiting to put education up completely for sale. At the same time, their views represent the few. Millions of students, teachers, workers, parents and community members will not sit idly by as this valuable institution is destroyed.

Anyone who wants to see public education expanded, and not condemned, needs to make their demands heard, using protests and every tool at their disposal. Just like the Chicano teachers’ unions, families, and activists of Boyle Heights, if we fight, we can win.

#Feature #PeoplesStruggles #Trump #LindaMcMahon #SecretaryofEducation #EducationDepartment #Education #WWE #MAGA

Los Angeles, CA – On October 29, East Los Angeles (ELA) residents, led by the community group Centro CSO, scored a major win against a proposed charter school in their neighborhood. Centro CSO members and residents spoke at a meeting of the LA County Board of Supervisors to oppose Extera Charter School’s plan to build a new facility on Gage and Eastman Avenues.

Angelina Chavez, a community member voiced her concerns, stating, “This project will bring constant traffic, noise, and pollution to our quiet street.”

At the meeting, Extera representatives brought over 60 parents, mostly mothers in Extera T-shirts, to voice support. However, opponents highlighted that charter schools often pressure parents to advocate on behalf of projects. Ruben Rodriguez, a resident living adjacent to the site, expressed his frustration: “I live right next to this project, and I am against it because it will cause pollution and more traffic to our community.”

Extera’s plan involved purchasing an old church to build a school for 528 students in the residential neighborhood. The charter organization is already co-located in several local Los Aneles Unified School District (LAUSD) campuses, drawing criticism for taking resources and space from public schools. Both Centro CSO and the United Teachers of Los Angeles have previously protested Extera’s intrusion.

Centro CSO had previously raised concerns about the saturation of charter schools in ELA to LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who responded by challenging the project. Solis noted that the school’s location, near Interstate 5, would worsen traffic, endanger pedestrians, and block driveways. Her objections swayed the board, resulting in a unanimous 5-0 vote against the project – marking a clear win for ELA residents.

Centro CSO Education Committee Co-chair Antonieta Garcia emphasized the health risks posed by the construction site, stating, “The Extera construction site is not safe for the community. If they break ground, it will spread lead contamination.” Garcia celebrated the victory, remarking, “We worked hard for this, canvassing the community and convincing neighbors to stand up and fight. When we fight, we win!”

Key support also came from Los Ruco, a group of retired Chicanos who canvassed door-to-door, attended meetings, and spoke out against the project. Together with Centro CSO, they engaged with residents on their needs and living conditions, rallying neighbors and empowering them to join the fight.

The victory is the latest in Centro CSO’s long-standing fight against privatization in public education, which they see as part of a broader struggle for Chicano power. Centro CSO sees their work as a continuation of the historic ELA high school walkouts of March 1968, when thousands of Chicano students took to the streets to demand educational justice. These walkouts launched the Chicano Power movement of the late 1960s, leading to gains in bilingual education, affirmative action and ethnic studies – victories that Centro CSO fights to protect today.

Centro CSO’s past wins include blocking the construction of a KIPP charter in Boyle Heights and stopping Green Dot from taking over Garfield High School. Their advocacy recently contributed to the election of Dr. Rocio Rivas to the LAUSD board. Centro CSO calls on community members to join them in defending public education.

If you would like to join Centro CSO be sure to contact them @CentroCSO on social media or attend their monthly meeting which takes place every third Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., in Boyle Heights.

Carlos Montes is the Centro CSO Education Committee co-chair.

#LosAngelesCA #CA #PeoplesStruggles #Education #Public Education #CentroCSO #CharterSchools #Feature

Tampa, FL – February 19 is the 55th anniversary of 35,000 Florida teachers submitting their resignations in the United States’ first statewide teachers strike. Teachers and administrators took a stand against the Florida legislature worsening schools. This historic action is relevant today with renewed attacks on teachers unions by the DeSantis administration.

The strike

By 1968, Florida had experienced a large population rise with little to no increases in state-level funding. Schools were in poor condition, textbooks were out of date, there were staffing shortages, class sizes were too large, and teachers had to buy their own supplies. Florida teacher pay did not increase to match rising inflation and cost of living. The state’s refusal to increase taxes led to worsening education. The Federal Education Association (FEA) wanted to fix this.

The former Governor Claude Kirk threatened to veto any spending package that increased taxes. In response, tens of thousands of teachers rallied in Orlando on August 14, 1967 to listen to the FEA president speak.

When a special session over the spending package lasted for months, teachers took a stand in February. Public sector strikes are illegal in Florida, so teachers instead submitted resignations. For weeks, half of all teachers in the state were for all intents and purposes on strike.

The statewide strike ended three weeks later in March with some demands met and some losses. The funding package passed without Governor Kirk’s signature. Schools received an estimated $175 million, or about $2000 per classroom. Florida teacher pay went from 22nd in the nation to 13th, a ranking it has never achieved since.

Weeks after the FEA declared the strike over, some counties remained on strike. The strikers demanded the reinstatement of all striking teachers. Hundreds of teachers were not rehired, and dozens had their teaching licenses revoked. The retaliation haunted many teachers.

On September 18, 1968, the Florida supreme court confirmed the right of public sector unions to collective bargaining. The strike also paved the way for teacher retirement and pensions. To quote Don Cameron from his book Educational Conflict in the Sunshine State, giving credit to legislators for these gains “allows Florida’s power structure to obviate FEA’s success, and lets itself off the hook for abandoning education and forcing teachers out of their classrooms.”

Teachers today

Florida teachers today face many of the same issues as 55 years ago. Teacher pay is low and class sizes are high. The Florida legislature’s refusal to raise taxes is a major reason for the state’s low rankings in reading and math comprehension in the nation.

DeSantis’ attacks on teachers are different from Kirk's because of the increased unionization. This year, there is legislation that would decertify a union with less than 60% membership at a workplace. This would end collective bargaining rights for many union workers in Florida. DeSantis admits this is an attempt to break teacher unions.

The wins of the 1968 teacher strike have eroded in the five and a half decades since. Yet teachers have not lost their right to unionize and to bargain collectively. To stop attacks from the Florida legislature and get funding for schools, educators took statewide action. Learning of the 1968 teachers strike serves as inspiration for how to defend worker’s rights and fight for a public sector that serves everyone.

#TampaFL #education #Strikes #TeachersUnions #teacherStrike

Chicago, IL – Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy (IJLA) is a small two-floor building that rests on the corner of Western and Blue Island Avenues in Pilsen, Chicago. At first glance you would notice the mural that decorates the wall – women of color with fists in the air, “La Lucha Sigue.” You might ask yourself, “Is this a school?” and the first answer is: yes. Though, the more accurate answer is: “It’s a home, a safe haven.”

First, some vital context. IJLA (more commonly referred to by its original name, Rudy, after the socialist Rudy Lozano) is an options school. This means that our students are 16 to 21 years old and typically are pushed out of the traditional school system, whether that be because of home responsibilities, mental health that impacts attendance, pregnancy, gang affiliation, or ‘behavior.’ We are a small school – our enrollment is currently at about 108 students though that is ever growing as we have accumulated a waitlist and have several students who refer their friends to enroll. However, what’s arguably most notable about IJLA is that we are a Restorative Justice school.

Restorative Justice is the philosophy that believes that in order to repair and heal, all parties affected need to come together to discuss the harm that was caused and a way to resolve it. In other words, believing in Restorative Justice means genuinely believing that people are capable of changing, but at the same time understanding that change takes time, patience, love and accountability – the difference is that under restorative justice, accountability is never, ever punitive.

At IJLA this Restorative Justice looks like a united staff that prioritizes the health and safety of students. This means building relationships with students to the point that we consider each other family (yes, they call us all by our first names). It means student circles, community circles, and staff circles (what we ask our students to do, we need to do ourselves). It means understanding and accepting that there are times when a student, community or staff will need multiple circles for the same behavior. It’s going back to the drawing board to see what happened and what we can do moving forward.

This emphasizes the fact that we are equals. There is no “because I’m the teacher” at IJLA. That phrase will not survive here and that’s good. Everything we do at IJLA needs to have a purpose, and that purpose should focus on dismantling the systems of oppression that are embedded in our country. If we feel challenged as teachers, we need to ask ourselves why and admit that students are right to question us, and at IJLA, we try our best to provide the tools for students to question effectively beyond our walls.

Even during a global pandemic that has pushed us to remote learning, we are embodying these beliefs. Remote learning is inherently inequitable, but if we are left with no other choice, the only thing we could do was try to find the least inequitable solutions. So, we got to working. And we found a way to communicate with each and every one of our students. We distributed laptops and hotspots to each student who needed one along with any other supplies students might need (masks, hygiene products, food, baby products, gift cards, nearly anything that could be necessary) almost immediately.

Academically, we’ve established cross-curriculum classes that are relevant (especially during COVID-19) that make it significantly less stressful for students and staff to function during this time. That means collaboration between the subjects of history and science, and the subjects of English and math to create a total of two classes that include each subject’s core competencies. This not only reduces the amount of time students are expected to log in, but it creates a unique opportunity to conduct a truly interdisciplinary project that asks students to research a different aspect of COVID-19 and create or re-write a current policy that exists. The topics can vary, from researching the lack of testing sites in communities of color to researching the stimulus check and who it really benefits – it’s all up to the students and their interests.

Nonetheless, at IJLA, we understand that because of our size, we have the opportunity to establish these practices without the barriers of a traditional school. But the traditional school system is failing our youth, especially our youth of color. This pandemic and remote learning are bringing these injustices out of the woodwork and making themselves obvious to those who have had the privilege of being blind to them. Students at IJLA have not had the privilege of ignoring these inequities; in fact, they are the exact people the school system has failed.

It is because of this that the staff of IJLA has worked passionately to create a space where our students are allowed to feel safe, to feel loved, to feel respected. It is a space that prioritizes their voices and their needs, whether that be through practicing restorative justice or reworking curriculum in the face of a global pandemic; students will always be put first – a foundational and essential right that should be given to all students at all schools.

#ChicagoIL #ImmigrantRights #StudentMovement #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #Opinion #Healthcare #AfricanAmerican #ChicanoLatino #PuertoRico #education #COVID19 #InstitutoJusticeAndLeadershipAcademyIJLA

Madison, WI – On May 9, dozens of students, faculty, campus workers and supporters gathered on the steps of the capitol building just off of State Street in Madison, to protest the continued attacks against public education. These attacks predate Governor Scott Walker's administration but have intensified significantly since he took office in 2011. People came from Steven's Point, Eau Claire, Kenosha, Oshkosh (represented by UW-Oshkosh Students for a Democratic Society), Madison and elsewhere.

This event, titled “Reclaim the UW,” is the third is a series of actions organized by a dedicated group of student activists and supporters from Steven's Point. UW-Steven's Point (UWSP) was the latest victim of the war against education when, on March 5, it was announced that the institution planned on cutting 13 programs, mostly from the traditional humanities and social sciences. Like many schools in the University of Wisconsin system, UWSP faces a budget deficit ($4.5 million) that is the result of massive cuts to state funding of education in 2013 and again in 2015, followed by a tuition freeze that has only exacerbated the issue. The university intends on introducing new programs which markets indicate draw students in. However, many of the programs that are in line to be cut are the fastest growing at UWSP. The proposal is one that further aims to undermine the notion of education as a human right.

Sara Trongone, a graduate student at UW-Madison, stated, “Since 2011, Governor Walker has bullied and devalued teachers, denied educational opportunity to some residents based on their ability to pay, and is now promoting policies that dictate what students may study based on their zip code. This is the most dangerous form of elitism and disinvestment in our teachers and young people, plain and simple.”

Trongone continued, “We remain committed to the values of transparency and shared governance and will continue to fight for students', families', teachers' and workers' right to govern the UW system so that it truly serves our Wisconsin community.”

UWSP, and UW-Superior before it, serve as a warning for things to come for other UW system schools that have fallen on hard times in the last decade. UW-Oshkosh (UWO), the third largest institution in the state and one of the cheapest to attend, has a running deficit of $9 to 12 million – the highest debt of them all. This semester, the UWO administration, led by Chancellor Andrew Leavitt, initially proposed a 43% cut to the faculty and staff in the College of Letters and Science, the biggest department on the Oshkosh campus. These cuts would primarily affect non-tenured faculty in departments such as history, English, and political science. It is easy to see how such a proposal is an attack on students.

“Chancellor Leavitt is a puppet to the board of regents,” says Zach Herriges, a student at UWO, said. “He is a money man who wants to cut everything, hurting students and faculty who are weakest. It's just a few steps away from total privatization of the entire UW system.”

SDS sent a small contingent of students to the event, and member Ryan Hamann was added to the line-up of speakers. Hamann painted a picture of just how out of touch Chancellor Leavitt is from working people and students, stating, “We strongly encouraged that Chancellor Leavitt incur a bit of personal sacrifice in these trying times to demonstrate solidarity with his students by taking a pay cut to his fluffy $240,000 salary.”

Hamann continued, “Perhaps predictably, he declined, and was very adamant that he in fact earns every single one of those 240,000 dollars.”

Organizers from Oshkosh, Madison, Steven's Point and Kenosha made connections that should lay the groundwork for a statewide coalition to build a movement to combat the reactionary agenda of Governor Walker and his hand-selected board of regents, with the ultimate aim of reclaiming the UW system for those who it should serve – the students.

#MadisonWI #Labor #SDS #PeoplesStruggles #Wisconsin #education

(Fight Back! News / Staff)”)

Los Angeles, CA — A packed house is unusual for the Boyle Heights Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUC), but on Dec. 14, over 50 people filled the room. The PLUC meeting was asked by KIPP Promesa Charter School architects and developers for a statement of support from the PLUC as well as a preview of a new Community Plan with a rezoning proposal. Boyle Heights is already occupied by two charter schools which co-locate at 2nd Street Elementary and Breed Elementary.

What charter school proponents didn’t plan on was a powerful show of people ready to fight back. Present in the room were public school teachers who are members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), parents and students of Marianna Avenue Elementary, and at-risk for displacement Boyle Heights residents.

“Shiny and new charter schools are not always the best choice,” said Lupe Torres a public school teacher who graduated from Roosevelt High School. “Today the Boyle Heights PLUC turned them down and this is great news for public education. KIPP should not be given the chance to expand and poach students from local public schools. Charters are gaining support from public officials and billionaires looking to profit off families and their students. Which leaves us public teachers fending for ourselves and fighting back like we did today.”

Eloisa Galindo, whose children attend Marianna Avenue Elementary public school, stated, “We know it has everything to do with business and profit when billionaires are supporting charter schools. We raised our voices today and fought to protect public education. We fought against a co-location effort by KIPP Promesa at my children’s school, and we won! No KIPP Promesa Charter at Mariana nor in Boyle Heights!”

Those fighting against KIPP Promesa Charter are ready to continue the struggle, as the LA city council may consider the Kipp Charter school rezoning request in 2018.

Sol Márquez is a Chicana member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization and a resident of Boyle Heights.

#LosAngelesCA #teachers #BoyleHeights #education #California

Passages was one of the first charter schools created in Chicago, and today serves just under 500 students, including a large population of immigrant and refugee students of Asian and African heritage. Passages’ 47 union educators – teachers, teachers assistants and paraprofessionals – were certified last April as members of ChiACTS Local 4343, which represents 32 charter schools in Chicago. The school’s educators have been negotiating for a new contract since May of 2016.

The Passages strike would be the first of a charter school network in the nation.

“We really believe in the mission of this school and the students we serve, and it’s time for management to provide the resources we need to carry out that mission,” said third grade teacher Gina Mengarelli, a member of Passages’ ChiACTS bargaining team. “None of us wants to strike; we want to be in our classrooms with our students. And our bargaining team is committed to continuing to negotiate in good faith with AHS in hopes of reaching a fair contract. But if it takes a strike to force AHS [Asian Human Services] to make changes that improve the education of Passages’ students, then we will be on the picket line until we achieve those improvements.”

Passages’ refugee and immigrant students look to the school as an environment to support the hopes and dreams they bring to their new country. But management is failing those aspirations, say educators, by spending too much money on top brass and overhead compared to other single-site charters, and too little on staff and students. Many teachers with BAs and even master’s degrees earn salaries in the $30,000 – $40,000 range for work weeks that can top 60 hours. Spending on students’ education at Passages is also at rock bottom among comparable publicly-funded charter schools in Chicago.

“One of the core reasons educators formed a union at Passages was to have more voice in decisions that affect their students,” said ChiACTS president Chris Baehrend. “We’ve been bargaining for a year for a contract that gives us that voice, and guarantees fair working conditions for teachers and staff and fair learning conditions for our students. Yet AHS to date has refused to make us an offer that provides for these most basic of demands. If it takes a strike to convince management that it’s time to put students and the teachers who are the backbone of their education first, then we have no choice but to strike.”

Management has not skimped on salaries for itself. For the most recent year for which figures are available, AHS, the agency that runs Passages, paid $540,000 in total to two people, their current and former CEOs – that’s over $1000 per student in compensation for those two positions alone, compared to Chicago Public School’s CEO Forrest Claypool’s compensation of less than $2 per student. The current and former CEOs of AHS together earned more than double that of Claypool, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who earns $250,000 per year to run a system of just under 400,000 students. By way of comparison, the combined current salaries for Passages’ 47 bargaining unit members is $1.7 million, with teachers’ compensation averaging over 20% lower than that at comparable Chicago charter schools.

Despite repeated requests and FOIA filings, management has refused to make detailed financial information available to the bargaining team. That lack of financial transparency is now the subject of a pending claim with the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Bureau. Teachers are calling for greater fiscal oversight at the school, including improvements in the percentage of dollars that management spends on students instead of on its own compensation.

AHS spends a greater percentage of the Passages school budget on management costs and a lower percentage on direct student and personnel costs than every other single-site charter in the city except one. The average single-site charter spends a quarter on management and overhead for every dollar they spend on school staff and students, whereas Passages spends fifty cents for every dollar. Passages is also an outlier when it comes to teacher salaries, with teachers earning 20% less than teachers at other Chicago charters. That low spending level for the school’s dedicated teachers and staff lands Passages far below the average in budget comparisons across charters.

Union members charge that the disparity in salaries for Passages educators and those at other charters is driven by AHS mismanagement of funds and the fact that AHS simply does not contribute enough to the school’s budget from its own funds. Chicago’s other single-site charters typically provide 5 to 10% of their financial resources from private fundraising revenue – a practice touted in the early days of the CPS push for charters as a way to harness private dollars to support publicly-funded education. Passages raises zero dollars from private fundraising revenue.

Passages’ union educators returned to the bargaining table on May 19, just after announcing their strike date.

#ChicagoIL #PeoplesStruggles #education #Strikes #TeachersUnions

Richmond, VA – On the morning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 18, around 100 students with the Virginia Student Power Network rallied outside the Virginia state capitol, demanding the right to a free education. Students chanted, “Education is a right, that is why we, fight, fight, fight!” and “No cuts, no fees, no corporate universities.”

“The fact is that the Virginia government as been balancing their budget on the backs of poor people and people of color and it’s not okay that people have to choose between paying bills and paying tuition,” said Ayanna Ogaldez, an activist with the Virginia Student Power Network. “That needs to change.”

#RichmondVA #PeoplesStruggles #education #Antiracism #MartinLutherKingJrMLKDay #Virginia

Minneapolis, MN – Chanting, “What do we want? Raises and respect. When do we want it? Now!” about 20 university workers held signs and protested inside the Board of Regents meeting, Oct. 9.

Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME 3800, the University of Minnesota clerical workers, said, “It’s appalling that the Board of Regents is voting to spend $166 million on a new sports complex when many members of the university workforce are forced to live in poverty. Between the sports village, settling sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits, and huge raises for coaches, it’s clear that the university has money to spend. They need to prioritize dignified salary increases and equitable leave benefits for unionized staff, who make up the most diverse segment of the university workforce.”

Horazuk continued, “$100,000 could provide $15-an-hour salaries for the 82 clerical workers who make less than that. $175,000 could provide the six-week paid parental leave that is equivalent to what faculty and professional employees are given.”

Members of U of MN AFSCME and Teamsters Local 320, which collectively represent over 4000 university workers, are currently in contract negotiations with the university. The university’s wage proposals stand at 0.25% and 0.75%.

Missy Bernard, a clerical worker in the College of Education and Human Development, said, “The university’s offer of 0.375% equates to $0.54 per day for me. An increase of less than 1% does not even cover the cost of the gas it takes me to get to work, much less the cost of school lunches to feed my two children.”

Mick Kelly, member of Teamsters 320 negotiating committee noted, “Right now there are 400 Teamsters at the U making less than $15 an hour. We insist on our right to a decent standard of living. We are tired of making due with less; we want and expect raises and respect.”

Horazuk concluded, “As the sixth largest employer in the state of Minnesota, and as the state's land grant university, it's time for the U of M to close the gap between haves and have-nots within its own workforce. This is a public university, not a private business where a few people on the top get CEO salaries while those on the bottom struggle to survive.”

#MinneapolisMN #StudentMovement #PeoplesStruggles #AFSCME #education

Minneapolis, MN – On the night of Sept. 29, dozens of educators, students, parents and community members disrupted the Minneapolis Board of Education. Tensions between the community and the board have been rising over the recent adoption of a new $1.2 million district-wide racist reading curriculum for elementary age students, sold by the Utah-based company Reading Horizons.

Anticipating protest, the board opened the meeting with an attempt to prevent public comment during the special “business only” meeting and limiting brief public comments only to an upcoming tax levy. Protesters entered shortly after the meeting opened, chanting “Whose tax dollars? Our tax dollars!” The protesters’ arrival was met by the moans and obvious discomfort of the small audience and board members, some of whom tried to shout down protesters and demand they leave. Within minutes the frustrated members of the Board of Education postponed the meeting.

Upon the departure of the Board of Education members, protesters seized the abandoned board room. Group members began airing their concerns and comments to several board members who remained listening in silence. One concerned parent from North Minneapolis, a historically Black community in the city, explained that she hoped to “see our children represented in what happens in their schools.” A retired teacher offered encouragement when he reminded protesters, “If we stand up, things can change.” Another employee and parent added that this is only “the most recent racist curriculum” to enter schools. A community member and parent questioned the values of the religious based, for profit Reading Horizons, calling on the board to “divest from corporate curriculum.” A student from Southwest High School added that he believed the curriculum was a “form of abuse.”

The Board of Education made two attempts to re-enter and reconvene their meeting from behind their ornamental podiums. Both of these efforts resulted in a shouting match. Each time the standoff resulted with protesters claiming success as the Board of Education was denied its efforts to carry on with business as usual and forced to withdraw. In the midst of each the demands of the protesters were read loudly for all to hear: “End all relationship with Reading Horizons; no racist curriculum!” followed by a demand for a public apology from interim Superintendent Michael Goar and that he, or those responsible, lose their jobs.

More demands were circulated that called upon the district to circumvent future curriculum through community review prior to purchase or implementation; to have a moratorium on using scripted curriculum and test-based initiatives; and to review and replace marginalizing curriculum and tests with richly diverse and culturally relevant curriculum and literature on the Northside this year, in partnership with protesters.

After the Board of Education vacated its chambers for the final time, in the wake of an attempt to turn the microphone volume so high that their voices became distorted and muddled feedback from the speakers, only protesters were left. A second-grade student from a nearby elementary school boasted that her teacher was amongst those standing up and fighting back against the “bad books.”

As the school year began in August with trainings for the new curriculum at least one concerned teacher was alarmed by the racist and sexist content of the books and began raising concerns to all those who would listen. They discovered that the curriculum, came at a $1.2 million cost and was produced by a company whose only research supporting its success came from its own self-promotion and advertisement. While other states and cities had already implemented the curriculum, organizers in Minneapolis stood up and said no to Reading Horizons in Minneapolis public schools. Soon after local and eventually national media began debating the content. Since then many more across Minneapolis have joined in the growing effort to demand the district rescind the curriculum. While the Board of Education has said parents cannot opt out, more parents are sending in paperwork to attempt to do so daily.

The Reading Horizons reading curriculum was designed for students between kindergarten and third grade and is intended to help Minneapolis align with the national Common Core State Standards that are intended to prepare every student to read by third grade. More specifically, such efforts are explicitly aimed at narrowing the ‘achievement gap’ between white students and/or middle class students and their peers of color and/or those peers in poverty. Minnesota has, for over a decade, consistently had among the worst achievement gaps in the U.S. This achievement gap in education reflects a far greater gap in American society than one just seen in schools though. The gaps prevailing in education actually reflect the much greater inequalities plaguing the U.S. at large.

In the year since the national uprisings around the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson that prompted the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Minnesota has been exposed as having the greatest racial inequalities in the U.S. It has seen deteriorating education as well as employment, wage, housing and health care inequalities that are the worst in the U.S. and have only been getting worse.

In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul Black residents live below the poverty line at a level three times greater than their white counterparts. The median income for black Minnesotans in fact decreased $4000 in the past year to a median household income of $21,026. Home ownership is only at 41% while white residents see a rate of home ownership exceeding 75%. Twin Cities banks are four times more likely to give Black residents toxic and dangerous sub-prime loans than their white counterparts. African American and American Indian infants are twice as likely to die as white infants, despite the fact that the state as a whole has amongst the lowest infant mortality rates. This trend is troubling and is even more troubling in light of the fact that infant mortality for non-white residents has been getting worse in Minnesota over the past five years. Finally while students across the Twin Cities and Minnesota score collectively amongst the best in the U.S. by most academic measures, the scores of students of color have remained stagnant for years amongst the lowest in the U.S. Last year, while 68% of white students were ‘proficient’ in reading and math, Black students showed proficiency in reading at a rate of 34% and math at a rate of 32%. Thus while Minnesota and Twin Cities project an image of a progressive, tolerant land of equality and harmony, it is little more than a rhetorical veil for some of the worst inequalities in the U.S. today.

The adoption of the Reading Horizons curriculum was brought in as a band-aid to ‘fix’ the inequalities in education without acknowledging the source of the inequalities. Much worse though, the curriculum has only agitated the existing tensions. The fabric of inequality exists not only in schools and the response has come not just from within the schools but from all around them.

Saturated with racist and sexist content, the curriculum of Reading Horizons was adopted by the state of Minnesota’s largest and most diverse school district. There is no wonder why the content has been so troubling to the community though. Reading Horizons is comprised of an all-white male board of directors who lead a company that professes to be a “faith based” organization. Amongst the troubling texts it produced and distributed is Lazy Lucy, about a young Black girl who refuses to clean her “hut” in an unspecified part of Africa, and Nieko, the Hunting Girl, about a young Native American girl who hunts wooly mammoths. Another book, allegedly about the importance of the printing press, uses the example of the benefit of printed press for the “discovery of America” by Christopher Columbus. The book goes on to asks, “What do you think would have happened if Christopher Columbus had not read?” This question arrived in curriculum purchased for a city that in 2014 became amongst the nation first to reject ‘Columbus Day’ in favor of Indigenous People’s Day.

In conjunction with the dismantling of other important public resources such as housing, health care or job-training programs, schools and the teachers in them have been under attack from multiple fronts for years, blamed for the ills of society, ills that have been exploited by and created by the routine exploitation and oppression of d communities of color and the working class. Education as a whole has been the target in recent years of for-profit industries manifested in the forms of testing and publicly funded but privately operated charter schools. Both charter schools and testing companies have routinely exploited the growing ‘achievement gap’ to achieve a destabilization of public schools and teachers unions, while deflecting attention away from the fact that the gap has largely been the result of the re-segregation of schools and of the larger social fabric of communities across the U.S. Schools today are more segregated than they were at the time of Brown v. Board of Education and are only part of much greater crises rising in communities across the country.

A major thrust of the attack has been on teachers, specifically their unions, which, much like other public sector unions, have been seen as a target of big business for years. As a result of the strain placed on them by politicians and private profiteers trying to turn schools into factories and offer children into the school-to-prison pipeline that has decimated oppressed nationality (African American, Chicanos, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans) communities, many people are leaving the teaching field. Teacher shortages nationwide are further leaving communities of the greatest need, particularly those located in high concentrations poverty and in communities of color, short on quality resources. This crisis has only continued to undermine public education, teachers unions and, most importantly, the children and communities they serve – especially communities of color.

In the midst of a nationwide education crisis, many educators are creating strong alliance with the community to reclaim schools. From Chicago to Seattle, Portland to Saint Paul, educators, parents, students and communities are fighting austerity. The struggle against racist curriculum in Minneapolis is part of a larger movement demanding corporate profiteers keep their hands off public education.

The next Board of Education meeting is Oct. 13 at 1250 W Broadway Avenue in Minneapolis. Public comments will be heard and further action is being planned. Supporters are encouraged to come and demand and end to this reading curriculum and for community control over curriculum and content in our schools.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #AntiRacism #education #Minnesota

Milwaukee, WI – Eight students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee staged a sit-in at Chancellor Mark Mone's office in Chapman Hall, May 7. After several failed attempts to meet with the chancellor, the students occupied his office and demanded that the chancellor meet with them, presenting a list of demands including that the chancellor both oppose the proposed $300 million budget cut to the UW system as unnecessary and political in nature, as well as pledge to cut administration salaries before cutting student services, academics or laying off faculty and staff.

Over 20 students and faculty members picketed and rallied outside of Chapman Hall in solidarity with the students sitting in. The students inside occupied the office for over two hours, until Chancellor Mone agreed to meet with the students at a Faculty Senate meeting which was being held at the same time. The students sent Andrew Urban of Progressive Students of Milwaukee (PSM) to represent them and present their demands as they continued to occupy the office.

At the Faculty Senate meeting, Chancellor Mone publicly refused to concede to either of the students demands. “With his statements today, Mone has demonstrated the disconnect between the student body and the administration,” said Tyler Evans, one of the participants of the sit-in and a member of Youth Empowered in the Struggle.

Upon hearing the news of Chancellor Mone's refusal to defend students and faculty from the cuts, the students left Chapman Hall where they then united with the rally outside. “We forced the chancellor into taking a public stance, a stance that places the interests of the administration above the interests of students and workers alike,” declared Will Guenthner, another participant of the sit-in and a member of PSM.

UWM's Budget Planning Task Force has recommended cutting $4.7 million to university administration while cutting a total of $18 million from academic and student affairs. Chancellor Mone's current salary is $340,000 a year.

The sit-in and rally was organized by members of Progressive Students of Milwaukee, Youth Empowered in the Struggle and the UW Coalition of Progressive Organizations.

#MilwaukeeWI #PeoplesStruggles #education

Milwaukee, WI – On May 5, a flash protest of about 50 students occurred at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee campus to call on students to take action to resist the cuts that form part of the 2015-17 Wisconsin budget proposal, in which Governor Scott Walker insists on a $300 million cut to the UW system.

For UWM, it means about $40 million in cuts from overall state funding. Such a big loss would most likely translate in the shrinking on liberal arts departments, cultural resource centers, fewer staff, fewer faculty and larger class sizes, according to the Coalition to Save UW, made up of UW faculty, staff and students across the state.

The demonstration was organized by Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES) at UWM, in collaboration with the Save Our UWM Coalition. The student protesters passed out leaflets, chanted and performed mic-checks, in which they engaged the audience in their call to action. The mic-check ended with, “We can rise together, or we will all fall together.”

Chris Antimo, who led the march, said, “It takes a little reminder sometimes, by a group of individuals like the ones today to let students know that their efforts aren’t in vain.”

Amaerani Torres, also with YES, stated her concerns regarding the cuts, “Resources and programs will be cut, especially those offered to minority students and those in the art school. I believe this is all of our fight if we want to progress in further education, and one that we cannot stand to lose.”

The demonstration ended with a call to students to get involved in the organizing efforts by YES, Progressive Students of Milwaukee and the Save Our UWM Coalition.

#MilwaukeeWI #PeoplesStruggles #GovernorScottWalker #education

Tampa, FL – Students at the University of South Florida (USF) won a campaign to keep their library open 24 hours per day. Returning USF students were surprised in August to find the library would be closed at midnight and re-opening at 7:00 a.m. everyday. This comes after years of open hours on the campus. The students defeated the cutbacks imposed by the University administration by organizing and taking action. The victory was announced Sept. 5.

At midnight on Friday, Aug. 30, as the library began to close for the night, about 90 USF students, including Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), began setting up camp for a sit-out protest. Some students studied for their classes, while others struck up conversations about how the students could take further actions to make positive changes on campus and in society. Melissa Garzon, a lead organizer of the sit-out, said, “I did not expect the large turnout. The restoration of library hours is a testament to the power that students can have.”

Jared Hoey of Tampa Bay SDS said, “The administration's attempt at shortening the library's hours is an attack on students and learning. Many students have to work at jobs, in addition to taking classes, due to surging tuition costs. Late nights and early mornings are the only time some students are free to go to the library, and this attempt at shortening hours is a direct affront. It shows the administration’s lack of concern for students. The administration claims budget shortfalls.”

On Sept. 5, William Warmke, student government president, announced the administration’s reversal of the cutbacks. Students won a solid victory with the library once again open 24 hours a day during the week.

#TampaFL #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #BudgetCuts #education #UniversityOfSouthFlorida