A Blueprint for Resisting Trump Education Cuts? Chicago Teachers Reach "...

Bretón Vrs. the Sacramento Teachers

 Sacramento Bee opinionnaire  Marcos Bretón offers up one of his frequent attacks on the Sacramento teachers’ union in today’s Bee https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article249152435.html.

It is the usual anti union diatribe filled with paragraphs cut and pasted from prior columns.  He purposes to deal with the issue of opening schools in Sacramento.  If you ignore all the hyperbole, you get down to the dividing issue – when should Sacramento City Unified re open schools.

There is substantive agreement between the district administration and the union except for one issue. 

Should teachers be given vaccines prior to returning to work.  That is the issue.

Bretón has one side; the union argues teachers should have vaccines first.  That's all.  The remainder in innuendo and name calling. 

Below  is an alternate view- with data citations. 

Re: Opening schools

David Dayen, The American Prospect  Feb.15, 2021

Last Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally released a long-awaited set of guidelines for how to safely reopen schools. It really says what the data has said for a while: schools are generally safe when community transmission is low, less safe when transmission is high, and only really safe when following mitigation guidelines, which include masking, social distancing, frequent hand washing and things like not coughing out loud without covering your mouth, sanitation, ventilation, quarantine and isolation for the sick, and contact tracing. Many observers have put the lack of school reopening on teachers and particularly teachers unions, but the polling shows a different story, which plays directly into the above paragraph. If you ask parents whether they want to return their kids to in-person instruction, you see a significant disparity cut by race and class. In general terms, whiter, richer parents are more likely to want to return their kids to school; poorer parents and parents of color do not. And the difference is that, for the whiter and richer parents, their communities have not been as ravaged by COVID, and their schools can actually undertake the mitigation measures.

Black and Latino communities have seen a disproportionate level of death and suffering during the pandemic. Whether community transmission is high right now or not in their area, the accumulated impact makes it feel high. (In truth, community transmission has been high pretty much everywhere in the country since late fall, and only now is coming down to a manageable level.) But just as important, these parents have been battling their school districts for a basic level of quality in the places they send their kids for many years. These schools are simply not equipped for the kinds of adaptations necessary to minimize risk from COVID. That’s where the Biden relief package comes in. It should be considered, especially by those concerned about the size or unnecessary nature of the plan, as a make-good for decades of disinvestment. It’s as much an infrastructure package as anything. There are public schools in America without soap in the bathrooms. There are public schools in America, a shocking number of them, with no working air conditioning system. Lots of schools have no on-site nurses, and janitorial staffs are often inadequate. Countless students are jammed into too-small rooms with bursting class sizes. The Philadelphia Public Schools came up with the idea to put window fans on boards and have that serve as ventilation for one of the largest and poorest school districts in the country. Students and staff are headed back in the Philly schools next week.

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By contrast, this white person’s school district in Brookline, Massachusetts, where the median household income in 2019 was $121,949, is presumably not indicative of these realities. Some of the CDC guidelines will be difficult no matter what school people find themselves in. It’s hard to get kids to physically distance or keep masks on or cough into their elbow. And the latest anger from the open-the-schools set, that six feet of distance is "impossible" in schools, is mostly a cri de coeur against regulation itself, as usual for the libertarians leading the charge. (See this dystopic potential solution to the distancing problem, rather than, you know, distancing.)  But it’s clear that some schools cannot come close to providing a safe environment, really even under normal conditions let along during COVID. They don’t have the possibility for distancing, the ventilation, the medical personnel, or the sanitation measures needed. That’s why there’s $130 billion in the American Rescue Plan, which can be put toward making these necessary adjustments. It includes an "Equity Challenge Grant" intended to reverse historical inequities in schools and the impacts on students of color.

That could easily be put toward investment. How about getting an air filtration system with the highest-quality filters (a pretty low-cost option!) in every school in America? How about money for staffing nurses at every school, and ensuring a clean environment in every school? This could be an opportunity, not just to reopen, but to level the playing field in the built environment of our public school system. There’s a concern that states and cities will take the new money and drop out their share of funding for these schools, leaving them in worse position once the one-time funds are exhausted. Congress could work to try to prevent that, and should. Jared Bernstein, now on Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, championed an infrastructure program during the last recession called FAST, or Fix America’s Schools Today. He reasoned that upgrading the nation’s schools would create lots of construction jobs while improving learning long-term. A $50 billion program would produce about half a million dollars per school building in the U.S., with a focus on weatherization, better air quality, mold and asbestos abatement, plumbing updates, boiler and window replacement, and outdoor learning improvements. The American Rescue Plan can be a version of FAST, with effects not only for the pandemic but the future. And this is an area where we ought to be investing anyway. The concerns from the Larry Summerses of the world that we’re just "throwing away" temporary emergency spending (we’re not) are unfounded, because school upgrades are among the most necessary infrastructure spending options we can take. It’s long overdue.

 

 

Texas Teachers Union May Strike Over Covid-19

Texas Teachers Union May Strike Over COVID-19 Precautions

https://portside.org/2020-07-12/texas-teachers-union-may-strike-over-covid-19-precautions

Ed Note. While it is illegal for Texas teachers to strike, it was also illegal for California, New York and other teachers to strike at one time. What changed that?  Strikes.

Wear Red for Chicago teachers on Thursday.
Yesterday I was on the picket lines in Chicago with Elizabeth Warren. She took time from the campaign trail to come to Chicago to support the members of the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU Local 73, who are entering the seventh day of their strike. 

And she’s not the only one standing with them. Bernie Sanders has been at CTU rallies. Cory Booker met with Chicago teachers earlier this week. Joe Biden had a phone call with striking teachers and school staff. And multiple other candidates have tweeted their support. 

In a video, CTU President Jesse Sharkey asks all of us to show our solidarity with our colleagues, as they start their second week of the strike, by wearing red tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 24, and by sharing a photo on social media of yourself (and your colleagues, if possible) wearing red. Click here to watch and share the video about how we can all show our solidarity.

and read the post about the Sacramento USD budget below. 

Progressives take control of UTLA Teachers Union

For seven years, the 31,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the largest local on the West Coast, have gone without a salary increase. Their contract has been expired for nearly three of those. And the teachers, counselors and school nurses that make up the UTLA can still be sent to so-called “teacher jail”—housed in district offices until they’re either fired or restored to their position, a process that can take months—when they’re accused of misconduct .

All of this, activists say, has left United Teachers Los Angeles disengaged and disillusioned. This was evidenced by the low turnout for the union election in late April, in which only 7,235 members—fewer than 25 percent of the UTLA—participated.

The results of that election, however, are perhaps an even greater indication that the UTLA is ready for a change. On April 29, social studies teacher and longtime union activist Alex Caputo-Pearl was elected as president of UTLA following a run-off with incumbent Warren Fletcher.

Chicago Teachers Union joins opposition to Common Core Standards

by ctu communications  |  05/07/2014

CHICAGO – Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passed the following resolution that enjoins the city’s educators to growing national opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration.

Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.

Common Core’s origins can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus Bill which gave $4.35 billion to the federal Department of Education which created the “Race to the Top” competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to adopt Common Core  with the added incentive that participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.

Chicago Teachers Union oppose school closings

This is what austerity looks like.

Chicago Teachers Speak Out Against School Closings - CTU President Karen Lewis Statement on CPS School Closings CTU Communications March 21, 2013 Chicago Teachers Union   Closing 50 of our neighborhood schools is outrageous and no society that claims to care anything about its children can sit back and allow this to happen to them. There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down nearly a third of our school district without putting up a fight. Most of these campuses are in the Black community. Since 2001 88% of students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American. And this is by design.     Mahalia Jackson Elementary second- grade teacher Tamara Faggins passionately condemns the CEO's recommended school closings., Photo by Nathan Goldbaum, CTU Communications.,     Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said the following at a news conference regarding proposed school closings:   "We are standing here today in the beautiful Mahaila Jackson elementary school in our city's Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. This school was named for one of the greatest gospel singers in our nation's history, a woman who sang at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral, a woman who was instrumental in our Civil Rights struggle. Unfortunately, we are gathered here today not to talk about this pioneer or even about how this school does an outstanding job of providing a great learning community for some of our special needs students. We are standing here because this school, along with scores of others, has been targeted for closure by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Chicago Public Schools district.   "Closing 50 of our neighborhood schools is outrageous and no society that claims to care anything about its children can sit back and allow this to happen to them. There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down nearly a third of our school district without putting up a fight. Most of these campuses are in the Black community. Since 2001 88% of students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American. And this is by design.     "Closing 50 schools is not grand or glorious. This is nothing to celebrate or marvel.   "These actions unnecessarily expose our students to gang violence, turf wars and peer-to-peer conflict. Some of our students have been seriously injured as a result of school closings. One died. Putting thousands of small children in harm's way is not laudatory.

Chicago Teacher Strike _ update

Where we are in Chicago today: 

This morning (Monday, September 10, 2012) the Chicago teachers went on strike – for the first time since 1987.  The road to the strike has been a long one that includes (i) efforts by the hedge fund elite behind Stand for (on) Children (SFC) to make such an occurrence impossible; (ii) the desire of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to impose on Chicago public schools a model of corporate privatization; and (iii) important changes in the functioning of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). 

Stand on Children

The efforts of SFC are by now well known.  A brief review: after spending almost $4 million on Illinois legislative races, SFC got as payoff SB7.  The bill made it impossible for the CTU to pass a strike vote – or so SFC CEO Jonah Edelman bragged in June 2011to the Aspen Ideas Festival that “The unions cannot strike in Chicago.”  Edelman and his allies figured that the requirement for 75% approval for a strike with the further provision that abstentions counted as no votes could not be met. 

Turns out they were wrong.

In early July, CTU membership voted by over 90% (and excluding abstentions, by 98%) to authorize their house of delegates to call a strike if contract negotiations fail.

“Reforming” Chicago Public Schools

When Emanuel ran for mayor of Chicago, one of his announced political goals was to “reform” Chicago public schools.  The system is the third largest in the country and has a high percentage of children from low income families (80% of Chicago’s public school attendees qualify for free lunches).  To understand what “reform” means to Emanuel, we should take the advice of Deep Throat regarding Nixon’s Watergate, “Follow the money.”  It is a good guide to what Chicago is and is not doing for its school children.

TIF monies nicely illuminate the real priorities of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education.  Earlier this year, Roosevelt University Professor Stephanie Farmer’s analysis demonstrated that TIF spending for education over the past two decades has been biased against open enrollment schools (what we use to call “public schools”).  These schools constitute 69% of total Chicago schools, but they have received less than 48% of TIF money for building maintenance, repair, and upgrading.  In revealing contrast, nine selective-enrollment high schools (charter and magnet) that make up 1 percent of the total number of schools got 24 percent of the money spent on school construction projects.  Overall, CTU estimates that TIFs remove $250 million/year from the CPS.  This is almost half of the budget shortfall forecast by the Board.  (See:  http://createchicago.blogspot.com/2012/06/research-brief-3-tax-increment.html)

The charter school mantra reigns supreme in the thinking of both Emanuel and his appointed Board of Education.  In analyzing the Board’s proposed budget, the CTU pointed out that it:

increases charter school spending by 17 percent, but does not address the rampant inequality in education programs across the district. In 2002, charter school spending was about $30 million; now, CPS proposes a whopping half-a-billion dollars to a failed reform program that has been shown to provide its students with no better education outcomes.

The last decade has seen a huge growth in (nonunionized) charter schools despite lack of any evidence of their alleged effectiveness.  Chicago’s 600 plus schools include 110 charters and another 27 schools run by private firms.  Meanwhile what is the situation for the bulk of Chicago school children?  A quarter of the open enrollment elementary schools have no libraries, 40% have neither either art nor music instruction while many others must choose one or the other but can’t get both.   

Mayor Emanuel sends his children to the private Chicago Lab School – where all of these “extras” are available.