Mods, please note, this is Karen Lewis (head of the reform slate) victory speech, not copyrighted material:
"Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators for the social ills that all of our children, families and schools struggle against every day... Corporate America sees K-12 public education as a $380 billion trust that--up until the last 15 years--they haven't had a sizeable piece of. So this so-called school reform is not an education plan. It's a business plan, and mayoral control of our schools and our Board Of Education is the linchpin of their operation.
Fifteen years ago, this city purposely began starving our lowest-income neighborhood schools of greatly needed resources and personnel. Class sizes rose, schools were closed. Then standardized tests, which in this town alone is a $60 million business, measured that slow death by starvation. These tests labeled our students, families and educators failures, because standardized tests reveal more about a student's zip code than it does about academic growth.
And that, in turn--that perceived school failure--fed parent demand for charters, turnarounds and contract schools. People thought, "it must be true, I read it in the papers. It must be the teachers' fault." Because they read about it, every single week. And our union, which has been controlled by the same faction for the last 40 years--37 out of 40--didn't point out this simple reality.
What drives school reform is a single focus on profit. Profit. Not teaching, not learning, profit."
Article:
Lewis' statement left the Chicago press corps literally speechless. Only one reporter managed a couple of questions. The local media simply isn't used to an assertive teachers' union leader--certainly not one who declares that she's standing up to the politicians and business interests that have made Chicago a laboratory for "school reform" for the last 15 years...
The UPC was ousted after it failed to resist attacks that have included 70 school closings and the loss of 6,000 CTU members over the last decade. African American women have lost their jobs in disproportionate numbers, Lewis noted on election night.
CORE won by bringing attention to such problems. "We've broken apart this mantra of reform that charter schools and firing so-called bad teachers is the solution to our education woes," said Jackson Potter, who co-chairs CORE with Lewis, and who was elected to the union's executive board as trustee. "I think this whole thing is coming off the rails, and this
is a sign of that."
The CORE victory will also turn heads in the Washington headquarters of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the CTU's parent union. AFT President Randi Weingarten has collaborated with Race to the Top and other White House education initiatives, even at the cost of retreating from the union's opposition to merit pay and defense of tenure as the basis for teacher job security. But the election in the CTU--the third largest teachers' union local in the U.S.--is a clear signal that rank-and-file teachers have different priorities.
http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/14/new-day-for-chicago-teachers
The CORE slate took all central & regional union positions but one. It was an overwhelming defeat for business as usual.
CORE's platform is fairly radical (for a teachers' union):
* Capping CTU officer and staff salaries to the average teacher salary prorated over 12 months.
* Limit standardized tests. Ban using test results to punish, label or denigrate schools, students or teachers.
* Repeal mayoral control of schools and restore our right to collectively bargain class sizes, counselor loads and stop school closings and reconstitutions.
* Lead legislation to fund all schools equitably and return all TIF (Tax Increment Financing) funds to each school taxing district. (The TIF is a Chicago issue, & a volatile one: Daley's been robbing the schools to fund other things.)
CORE's already on the job:
Monday, June 14, 2010
CEO Ron Huberman called an emergency board meeting this Tuesday. He is still claiming a $600 million deficit, but won’t show the numbers. Now he wants to borrow $800 million and be granted the authority to fire tenured and probationary teachers, increasing class sizes to 35 per class.
Let’s tell Huberman that this is unacceptable.
Emergency Picket
Tuesday, June 15th
6:00-7:00 AM
Chicago Board of Education
125 S. Clark
http://coreteachers.com/
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