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Contract Update #16: No More Shortchanging Our Students [1]
['H Kapp-Klote']
Date: 2024-08-12 03:00:10+00:00
Contract Update #16: No More Shortchanging Our Students
CTU leadership and bargaining team at our last public bargaining session. CTU leadership and bargaining team at our last public bargaining session.
Since the spring, CTU officers, members, and staff have spent hundreds of hours bargaining – at the main bargaining table, with the 60-member CTU Big Bargaining Team, at 12 issue-specific bargaining subcommittees, and our unprecedented public bargaining sessions. As we prepare for the first day of school, it’s clear who’s genuinely working to transform our schools for the future of Chicago’s students—and who’s stuck in a broken status quo.
We have consistently brought solutions that would lead to transformative changes for educators, students, and their families. Time and again, CPS has shown up to bargaining with incomplete or nonresponses. The few counterproposals they’ve offered even contain efforts to roll back hard-won advancements from our last strike.
The leadership at CPS needs a vision for finding the resources our students urgently need. They are out of touch with the daily realities in our school communities, and it’s easy for them to delay negotiations, reject substantial proposals, and use the claim that they don’t have the money to respond to our proposals—even the non-economic ones.
We won’t let CPS stand in the way of this historic opportunity. We must ramp up the pressure to secure the transformative change our schools need. We organized and won the reinstatement of our full bargaining rights and are not backing down. Parents, families, and students want what we want: fully-resourced neighborhood schools, a baseline of a joyful, robust education for every student, and a district administration that shows real vision and leadership in winning the full funding of Chicago public schools.
We must join with community partners and CPS families to show our unity as we return to school. We must demand that CPS and our elected officials collaborate to secure the funding our schools deserve—from banks that profited off our schools, the federal government, and the state of Illinois fully funding the equity-based funding formula for all Illinois schools.
As the new school year approaches, we’ll keep bargaining for our students and the schools they deserve. And as CPS continues to sell our students short, we’ll keep the pressure on.
Public Bargaining Tuesday, August 13
For years, banks scammed CPS with predatory financial deals, taking money out of our classrooms and shortchanging our students. For years, CPS and many other Illinois school districts have been systematically underfunded, burdened by bad bank deals, and forced to do more with less. We will need leadership from every level of government to transform our schools with the resources they deserve. The state of Illinois and Governor Pritzker, the Chicago Board of Education, and City Hall officials like the City Treasurer and our Mayor must all play a role in helping fund our schools and undoing the damage from the Rahm and Rauner years of predatory bank deals, and the decades of inadequate state funding.
RSVP now for a front-row seat at Tuesday’s public bargaining.
We will demonstrate how resources—resources CPS can find if it has the vision and political will— can transform the CPS student experience, from expanded mental health support to enriched academic programming. At public bargaining, we’ll hear powerful testimony from our members about what losing vital federal COVID relief funding will mean for their schools, from fiscal experts on opportunities for greater funding, and from our union siblings in Minnesota, where public schools are well-supported by the state and Governor. This public bargaining session will put CPS on notice – we will only back down when our schools get the resources they need. Together, we can recover the funds stolen from Chicago students by predatory financial institutions, generate new revenue from the state of Illinois, and fully invest in public schools so all of our students have the resources they need.
Sign up today to be part of negotiating the schools our students deserve.
Our Proposals to CPS at Bargaining This Week
Presenting members of our team at our last public bargaining session.
Here are the proposals we presented to CPS this week:
Bilingual Education
For so long, bilingual programs have been treated as a remedial service or offered only as the bare minimum to English learners. This systemic injustice has deprived our children of the cognitive, cultural, and career advantages that come with true bilingualism and biliteracy. Our proposals to CPS on this topic are about equity for every student.
Our Bilingual Education proposals include:
Centrally funded ESL/BIL/DUAL positions,
Greater access to high-quality bilingual and ESL curricula,
100% tuition reimbursement for coursework toward ESL and bilingual endorsements,
Expansion of dual language schools across the city.
See the slides from our presentation here.
Career and Technical Education
We want to enshrine Career and Technical Education (CTE) as a priority in our contract. CTE equips students with the skills they need for the emerging green economy and various other meaningful and rewarding careers. A well-resourced and equitable district-wide CTE program can provide students with the support they need to pursue those careers during their time in CPS.
Our CTE proposals include:
Support and resources for necessary equipment for CTE programs,
Methods of addressing CTE teacher shortages, including ensuring recruitment and professional development,
New professional opportunities, including nursing, education, and green economy careers.
See the slides from our presentation here.
Guest Teachers
Investing in our guest teachers and treating them as the professionals they are is crucial for providing quality instruction when regular teachers are absent. Our guest teacher proposals aim to address the district’s over-reliance on substitutes by improving their working conditions.
Our Guest Teacher proposals include:
Better prep, support, and scheduled assignments,
Health insurance, bereavement leave, and up to 10 paid sick days.
See the slides from our presentation here.
Bargaining Together With Our Community
Community members at our coalition table with the Grassroots Collaborative.
Bargaining for the common good means building a powerful labor and community movement to win transformative change for students, families, and educators. On August 8th, with our partner, the Grassroots Collaborative, 70 people from over 20 community organizations came together. Participants connected community goals around housing, healthcare, and racial justice to our fight for better staffing and resources in schools. Our contract demands reflect the demands of our school communities. Creating a collaborative approach with our allies across the city will only strengthen our power as we negotiate with CPS.
Underfunded and Understaffed Tracker
CEO Pedro Martinez’s temporary budget shamefully fails to guarantee fully staffed schools on Day 1 of the school year. To expose this unacceptable reality, our union is launching an “Underfunded and Understaffed Tracker”, documenting the staffing shortages that will deprive our students of what they deserve when we return.
Bargaining Team Profiles
More than 60 rank-and-file CTU members have joined together to forge our union’s biggest bargaining team ever. Thanks to everyone for the experience, knowledge, and dedication they’re bringing to this struggle. Our contract is in good hands!
Jeannine Woods, Haines Elementary School
Jeannine Woods has been a CPS teacher for 15 years and has taught at Haines for three years. She’s a member of our union’s executive board and the big bargaining team. She has been disappointed by CPS’ response at every bargaining session. “It’s not just the proposals that are about transforming our schools. Some of the things we’re asking for are so basic,” she says. “Things that should be in every school, that every student should have. They make our schools better. But across the table, CPS isn’t listening, even regarding our free proposals.”
To her, the most fundamental part of our transformative proposals is related to a better student experience. “When you have 22 preschool students in a classroom, you have to break up the school day in a way that gives them the enriching experiences that every student should have,” she says. “There are fundamental skills you learn from going to school to get arts and music and spend time with a librarian. These are skills our students take with them through their entire lives.”
Josh Lerner, Peirce Elementary
Josh Lerner is a National Board Certified Teacher, a member of our Executive Board and bilingual education contract subcommittee, a CPS teacher for 15 years, and the chair of our city-wide PPC committee. We profiled Josh back in February when he was putting together our transformative contract proposals. Since then, he has worked hard on our big bargaining team, most recently on our bilingual education proposals.
“A trend across my teaching experiences has been working in bilingual education with newly arrived students,” he said. Josh worked at Chavez School for seven years before moving to Peirce Elementary, where he provides bilingual and ESL education as the English Language Program Teacher and helps coordinate the school’s EL program.
While the district fails to adequately fund our schools, our union provides essential resources, support, and advocacy to ensure that our students and educators get the tools and opportunities they deserve. “Over the past year, our district has received so many asylum-seeking students and families,” Josh said. “Our union has done inspiring work to support them. I am thankful to be a part of it.”
In solidarity,
Chicago Teachers Union Leadership Team
Stacy Davis Gates, President
Jackson Potter, Vice-President
Christel Williams, Recording Secretary
Maria T. Moreno, Financial Secretary
PS — Happy Bud Billiken from your union!
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