Union busting at mendacious Urban Prep now exposed as labor board orders the school to pay back pay to 'fired' teachers...
Urban Prep students, teachers and supporters protested in August 2015 (above). Substance photo by Labor Beat.Urban Prep charter high school in Chicago used to be one of the two favorite locations in town where Mayor Rahm Emanuel would go when he could have a relatively tame group of students smiling or even praising him for whatever the occasion was. After the Laquan McDonald scandal finally broke with the release of the video of Chicago police pumping 16 rounds into the African American young man, even Urban Prep's normally docile young "scholars" began to act up, and Emanuel was challenged with chants during a recent visit.
In addition to the chants, school ties, and other Hollywood stuff, Urban Prep is one of the two Chicago charters that continues the scam, begun nearly 30 years ago by Paul Adams and Marva Collins on Chicago's West Side, claiming that it is a major triumph (at least for urban inner city schools) to proclaim that "all graduates" have been accepted into college. The "everyone goes to college" scam was simple, and relied always on a white blindspot (or racial solidarity from non-white reporters) who came to the school and thought it nothing short of a miracle that inner city kids could (a) finish high school and (b) get into college.
Urban Prep's other scam is that the city's real public schools have to pick up the discarded Urban Prep students that Urba Prep's business model makes sure the school does not want to help. Urban Prep has never revealed its expulsion rate, but the number of students drops significantly from 9th through 12th grade, and Substance will continue trying to learn how many are pushed out of the school and where they wind up after being ejected from Urban Prep.
Labor Beat has a video: "Reinstate Fired Teachers"
http://youtu.be/LODfdffwn34 Urban Prep Settlement of Over $250,000 for Illegal Mass Firing
UPDATE ON URBAN PREP JANUARY 2016
Negotiations for First Contract Continue
While contract negotiations have stalled and a Chicago Teachers Union strike by 25,000 teachers in the city's real public schools is possible, Urban Prep charter school teachers in the charter's three "campuses" are now negotiating their first contract.
While their contract is yet to be settled, they just won a $250,000 back pay and severance agreement with Urban Prep Academies. Urban Prep teachers are represented by (ChiACTS) Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff.
But, organizing and demanding union recognition was not easy. Urban Prep bosses illegally fired 15 teachers after their successful union drive election in June 2015.
On January 12, 2016 Urban Prep officials were forced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to settle an unfair labor practice and pay $261,346. In the agreement Urban Prep Academies was forced to pay severance and back wages to 15 fired teachers. This included the returning of two leading teachers who served on the negotiating committee to be reinstated to their classrooms (with back pay) and thirteen who waived their right to reinstatement and settled for severance and back pay.
The chronology:
In June of 2015 after a year of organizing, a majority 61% of Urban Prep teachers voted to unionize. Abruptly 15 teachers were fired. ChiACTS responded to the illegal firings by submitting two unfair labor practice lawsuits with the NLRB. The new union, ChiACTS (AFT�s Local 4343) submitted that the June 19 mass firing was illegal. Under federal labor law, the vote makes ChiACTS the collective bargaining agent for the employees and they have protection from union busting and workers have the right to an appeal before firing.
But, Urban Prep administrators settled before the January 13 scheduled hearing. Carlos Fernandez, an organizer for ChiACTS, speculated that �these kinds of [labor] charges can take years to settle, so [resolving this] in just a little over six months is pretty good.�
Also, one can speculate that with Mayor Rahm Emanuel�s lack of popularity, the Urban Prep charter school operators have no high level backing. Everywhere Rahm goes is a protest. Also while this was a victory for ChiACTS AFT�s Local 4343, there are over 100 more publicly funded charter schools that are non union. Teachers are afraid to speak up. Parents have no local school council and no appeal. By one estimate student expulsions from charter schools are 12 times higher than in the real public schools.[
Lastly, in a conversation with a ChiACTS teacher/organizer, Chris Baehrend pointed out that charter schools are funded on mostly public money. He stated that he hoped the payment settlement would �come the bloated administrator salaries and not from the classrooms.�
This reporter tried to find out about the progress of negotiations but no official posting was available.
