""You missed a wonderful presentation by Mr. Huberman today..." (CTU recording secretary Mary McGuire to management, September 3, 2009)... Court documents now prove... CTU President Marilyn Stewart, other union officers, asked Chicago Board of Education to discipline Stewart's opponents
Top officials of the Chicago Teachers Union, including union President Marilyn Stewart, two other union officers (then-vice president Ted Dallas; recording secretary Mary McGuire), and other top union officials (Chief of Staff John Ostenburg and Fresh Start chief Marc Wigler) repeatedly requested that the Chicago Board of Education discipline dissident union members. The apparent collusion between the union's top officials and management resulted in a pattern that began more than three years ago (during and after the union's May 2007 election) and continues to this day, according to documents filed in federal court in Chicago by the Board of Education in response to dissidents' complaints about the Board's restrictions on teachers' First Amendment rights.
Above, the first page of the 57-page response filed by the Chicago Board of Education to the First Amendment lawsuit filed against the Board by Deborah Lynch and members of the PACT caucus. The union members charged that the March 12, 2010, memo to principals by schools CEO Ron Huberman violated their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by banning union meetings and the distribution of election materials in Chicago's public schools. The entire Board of Education filing is 57 pages long (11 pages in the Memorandum of Law and 46 pages of Appendices, which include e-mail messages from union officials to two Chicago public school administrations (under Arne Duncan and Ron Huberman) asking that the activities of union members opposing Marilyn Stewart be suppressed and those engaging in the activities subjected to discipline by the boss.The dramatic and possibly unprecedented revelations came out in federal court on March 24, 2010 in response to a lawsuit filed by former union president Deborah Lynch. On the afternoon of March 24, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve began hearing evidence on a motion by Deborah Lynch and her PACT caucus (Pro Active Chicago Teachers and school employees) on a First Amendment lawsuit filed on March 24 by Lynch and other union members.
The Lynch lawsuit was filed following a March 12 directive to all school principals by Chicago Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman. In the March 12 directive, Huberman ordered the principals to bar opponents of Marilyn Stewart from holding election campaign meetings in the schools or distributing election materials in the schools' mailboxes. The March 12 order had an immediate negative impact on the five caucuses poised to challenge Stewart in the CTU election scheduled for May 21. Members of CORE, CSDU, PACT, and the SEA caucus all told Substance that following the Huberman directive they were barred from schools during the final days before nominating petitions were due. The nominating petitions had to be turned in at the CTU Merchandise Mart office by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
Deborah Lynch and her group weren't the only opposition leaders adversely affected by the Huberman order. "I was ordered to leave the parking lot at Lance Technical High School or be arrested," said Ted Hajiharis, who is running for CTU president on the School Employee Alliance (SEA) caucus slate. During the days prior to the March 23 deadline, several members of CORE (the Caucus Of Rank and File Educators) also reported that they were hurt in their petition drives. As of March 24, Substance had confirmed that four of the five caucuses opposing Marilyn Stewart (CORE, CSDU, PACT, and SEA) had submitted their nominating petitions to the CTU offices. Substance has not heard from the "Independent Caucus", headed by Marcia Williams, for more than a month and has not confirmed whether Williams got in her petitions.
Marilyn Stewart's United Progressive Caucus (UPC) has refused to provide Substance with a regular contact, but Substance confirmed that Stewart's petitions were also submitted before the deadline. Substance has confirmed that the Huberman administration has continued to allow Stewart to hold meetings in the schools under the claim that as President of the 30,000-member union she is entitled to meet with members in the school on school time on "official union business." According to the Stewart construction of reality, enforced by Huberman, Stewart's election opponents are not conducting "official union business" and are therefore barred from doing the same thing.
In the March 24 Memorandum of Law (and related documents) filed by attorneys for the Chicago Board of Education in Opposition to a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Ron Huberman and the Chicago Public Schools in Federal Court on Monday, March 22nd (case number 10-CV-1783, Lynch vs. Huberman and Chicago Board of Education), CPS officials claimed several defenses, including that they had been asked to do so by Marilyn Stewart and union officials.
The Board's memorandum, which arrived in the court shortly before the 1:00 p.m. hearing on the case, flows from the lawsuit brought by Lynch and others asking the court to stop discriminatory actions against union members. The documents were filed by the Board of Education showing the Union leadership telling the Board to discipline union members who were in opposition the the union leadership. (Defendant's Memorandum of Law in Opposition, Case No. 10-CV-1783, March 24, 2010) TRO Complaint http://207.41.16.133/rfcViewFile/10cv1783.pdf.
The Board of Education's memo has communications from the union to CPS demanding that individual union members be discipline for political activity. All of those cited by union officials for management disciplinary action are and have been in opposition to the current union leadership.
One exhibit, dated November 19, 2007, is an e-mail from Ted Dallas, then vice president of the CTU, to Rachel G. Resnik. "The e-mail reads: "Rachel. I am forwarding the following e-mail as more proof that Debbie Lynch and her PACT caucus still have not been deterred from sending email messages to our members by using CPS email accounts," Dallas wrote. "We were lead [sic] to believe that steps would be taken to block her access to these accounts and that disciplinary action would be taken against her for violating Board rules and policies by continuing to advertise her caucus by use of the CPS accounts. Either there has been no deterrent or Debbie is blatantly ignoring directives to cease and desist. Obviously, she will continue to use the CPS email accounts until forced to stop. We are again calling on the Board to initiate the appropriate discriplinary action, which will deter this type of behavior."
Although there are a larger number of emails from Dallas to CPS officials in the Memorandum of Law, Dallas was not the only union official asking management to discipline Deborah Lynch. Nor was Lynch the only target of the ire of the union's officials. Other opposition groups, including CORE and the CSDU, were also cited by union officials to management for alleged "violations" of CPS policies.
On October 6, 2009, CTU Recording Secretary Mary McGuire sent an e-mail to Joseph Moriarity, a Board attorney, and Rachel Resnick, CPS Chief Labor Relations Officer, which asked CPS officials to prevent Deborah Lynch from advertising her October 23 campaign kick-off dinner at Mayofield Banquest on South Archer Ave. By the time McGuire was writing to CPS officials asking that Lynch be restricted, Marilyn Stewart had purged Dallas from the union. The Vice Presidency has been vacant for more than a year after Stewart successfully got the union's executive board, without consulting the House of Delegates or the membership, to eliminate Dallas.
The October 23, event was reported exclusively in Substance. Readers can find it at http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=952§ion=Article
By late 2009, Marilyn Stewart's staff were complaining not only about Deborah Lynch, but about other teachers who were organizing in opposition to Stewart.
On September 16, 2009, Mary McGuire sent an e-mail to Rachel Resnik and Joseph Moriarity complaining that Jack Moran, who by that time had announced his candidacy on the CSDU slate, was communicating with union members protesting Stewart's refusal to have major decisions (such as the firing of Ted Dallas) go through the union's House of Delegates. On September 16, 2009, McGuire wrote to management about her former colleague at Beaubien Elementary School (where McGuire taught until she was elected CTU Recording Secretary in 2004) as follows:
"This again was sent out lat night at 9:15 p.m. by Jack Moran, delegate from Beaubien," McGuire wrote. "It does look very political and not in keeping with the AUP" [The AUP is the Chicago Board of Education's "Acceptable Use Policy" regarding the Board's computer equipment and communications systems. The Board did not include any responses by Huberman's staff to the requests from Stewart's colleagues.
McGuire and the union officers were apparently tracking the activities of their prospective opponents in the schools as well. On September 11, 2009, McGuire e-mailed the following to Rachel Resnick: "Ted Dallas and Linda Porter were at Simeon today (Friday) between 9 and 10."
Some of the e-mails in the Board's Appendix show the growing closeness between the union's officers and staff, on the one hand, and the Huberman administration, on the other. On September 3, 2009, for example, Mary McGuire send the following e-mail to Rachel Resnick from the CTU offices at 2:17 p.m.
"Hi Rachel," McGuire wrote. "You missed a wonderful presentation by Mr. Huberman today. I do hope everything is A-OK with you. These annual physicals are surely a fact of lie, but so necessary. Glad we have insurance. The message below was sent out on the CPS district-wide e-mail (First Class). This looks like politicking on the part of Jack Moran, teacher from Beaubien. I will talk to you tomorrow. Mary."
Jack Moran's e-mail invited teachers to attend the first meeting of the school year hosted by his caucus, the CSDU.
The "presentation by Mr. Huberman" that was so exciting to Mary McGuire was not identified, but at the time Huberman was going around the city doing a Power Point about his proposal for the "Data Driven Management" system that would later be used (in January and February 2010) to close a number of CPS schools and subject five schools to "turnaround." Huberman refused to provide the Power Point materials to Substance despite repeated requests, and neither McGuire nor any other union official ever reported on the content of the "Data Driven Management" plan to the union's members by discussing in detail that materials and data Huberman was proposing to use against the schools and teachers during the 2009 - 2010 school year.
Mary McGuire wasn't the only top level CTU staff member developing a very cordial relationship to management during the months before the various orders issued by Ron Huberman. On November 23, 2009, at 4:58 p.m., CTU Chief of Staff John Ostenburg wrote the following e-mail to Rachel Resnick, copying it to Marilyn Stewart:
"Rachel. Thank you for following up on this matter. I know it's been a challenge, but we appreciate the work you've done. Please convey thanks to the CEO [Huberman] also, and to anyone else who was involved. We're hopeful that these controls will result in accurate information being circulated among our members." Ostenburg, who became Chief of Staff while Marilyn Stewart was purging her elected vice president, Ted Dallas, has never taught in Chicago's public schools. He was a state legislator hired by the union during the 1990s who spent most of his years in union office as editor of the Chicago Union Teacher, the union's monthly newspaper. Ostenburg was referring to discussion on CPS e-mail about the upcoming referendum(s) that Marilyn Stewart was proposing.
On September 16, 2009, McGuire also wrote about CORE's Jackson Potter. In an e-mail to Moriarity and Resnick, McGuire wrote: "This was sent out this morning at 7:23 a.m. by Jackson Potter on FirstClass [one of the Board's email systems]. It this in keeping with the AUP?"
Potter's FirstClass email announced three meetings CORE was hosting across the city to discuss union issues. "At the meeting we will discuss how to keep our pension intact, ways to stop payroll theft, making the CTU a fighting union, stopping overcrowded classrooms, and protecting job security. Please join us!"
This is an apparent violation of Illinois Education labor Relations Act the at states: Section 14 Unfair labor practices.
(b) Employee organizations, their agents or representatives or educational employees are prohibited from:
(1) Restraining or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed under this Act, provided that a labor organization or its agents shall commit an unfair labor practice under this paragraph in duty of fair representation cases only by intentional misconduct in representing employees under this Act. [115 ILCS 5 § 14(b)(1)]
Today in court the CPS Board of Education used documents sent by union official to CPS administrators and the CPS Law Department in its defense against the Temporary Restraining Order to stop discriminatory actions against union members for participating in the union election process. The documents show collusion of CTU officers with management (CPS) in asking for disciplinary measures against the same union members they were elected to represent and protect.
Defendant's Memorandum of Law in Opposition
(Evidence of Union working against members)
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/31169771/Lynch-vs-Huberman-CPS
Documents showing collusion of CTU officers with management (CPS) in asking for disciplinary measures against the same union members they were elected to represent and protect included the following:
Ted Dallas (Vice-President) seeking discipline against Deborah Lynch (pgs 23, 25)
Marc Wigler (Fresh Start Coordinator) turning people in (p 25, 26)
Mary McGuire (Recording Secretary) turning people in (p 29, 30, 33-40)
John Ostenburg (Chief of Staff) thanks Huberman for sending the memos threatening members for politics(p 41)
Marilyn Stewart (President) asks to shut down FirstClass (the Board of Education's internet e-mail system) due to referendum vote (November 20, 2009) [election tampering] (p 43)
The communications included in the Board of Education's March 24 court filing appear to have originated from the Union headquarters using Union equipment, Some union members are now raising the question as to whether there has there been criminal conduct and conspiracy to use union equipment and resources for personal political gain while using thses same union resources against rank and file union members.
At the writing of this article the affiliate unions IFT, AFT and AFL-CIO have been contacted regarding any criminal investigations without no response.
