How hard did CTU lobby for the moratorium? The Chicago Teachers Union's imaginary lobbying for the 'Soto Bill'
During the last six months, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) and our coalition partners in the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) have been working tirelessly to stop the closure, consolidation, phase-out and turn-around of 22 Chicago schools. While we were able to get the Board of Education to back off of six schools, the Board voted at its February 25, 2009 meeting to guillotine the other 16.
One of the tools that we thought was in our arsenal to combat these attacks was a piece of legislation known as the 'Soto Bill.' The Soto Bill was a bill that, once passed, promised to retroactively overturn the destruction of the16 schools by placing a moratorium on such actions against Chicago schools until certain conditions were met. However, we were all caught by surprise when the bill had the retroactive moratorium language stripped from it in Springfield. By the time the Soto Bill was passed unanimously out of the House of Representatives a month ago, it had been stripped of the moratorium provision.
After that, a version of HB 363 continued through the legislature, but when most of us learned about the original bill's demise, we felt betrayed and upset. We had been telling parents and teachers that HB363 might be able to save the remaining schools from their almost certain fate. Although most of us are still not entirely convinced that the remaining bill is helpful, it does have language that could be of value. The current version of HB363 would create a special joint "Chicago Education Facilities Committee" with four representatives of school community organizations who have past involvement in school facilities issues and give the Chicago Teachers Union one representative on the committee. If empowered, such a committee could reverse decisions that hurt our brothers and sisters suffering from charter school invasions.
The 16 schools that were targeted on February 25 were one group. A month later, the Board of Education added a second group, schools that are now supposed to house, under one roof, two or more schools. One example would be Penn elementary school on the West Side. Penn is scheduled to share their building with the 'KIPP Ascend' charter school beginning in September 2009. In the past, these sharings have been a tell-tale sign that a school was going to be forced out of its own building (as the example of Carpenter Elementary School sharing the past three years with "Ogden Middle School" shows). Many suspect that soon Penn will be inched out while KIPP takes over their building.
Some personal lobbying
On Tuesday, April 28, 2009, I decided to go to Springfield to lobby on behalf of the pared down version of HB 363, which was before the Senate.
I also wanted to see what the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was doing — or not doing — to keep the moratorium alive. Although the moratorium provision had been taken out of the bill before the final House vote, there was no reason it could not be put back into the bill before the Senate voted. On April 28, I spoke extensively with Representative Cynthia Soto, and she explained that the CTU had been limited in its support for her bill. She also said that lobbyists for the Chicago Public Schools had undermined the original piece of legislation.
We walked over to the Senate Education Committee meeting, where HB363 was supposed to get voted out of committee. During my whole day of lobbying all of the important voters on the committee, I never saw any lobbyists on behalf of the CTU.
I never bumped into Tracy Cobb Evans, the CTU's full-time paid lobbyist. Also, at the committee hearing there was no CTU representation whatsoever.
Although CTU President Marilyn Stewart claimed at the May 6 House of Delegates meeting that Ms. Cobb Evans had been on sick leave, this did not explain Stewart’s absence from this important meeting. At the HOD meeting, President Stewart lauded her own attendance at the Senate Education Committee's vote, which was the following week. What has been left unexplained is how CTU tried to get the moratorium restores, after the Chicago Board of Education successfully got it taken out. Did CTU try? If so, who did what with the help of which senators?
The CTU leadership claims (in Marilyn Stewart's report on May 6) that it hired other lobbyists in Springfield to represent our interests. Where were they on HB 363, and what were they doing? My experience in Springfield suggests that full-time paid lobbyists, who have no loyalty to our members, do a poor job of conveying our interests. We need our own people doing this work. Sixteen schools are still facing their demise in one month, from the five schools facing "turnaround" to those being "phased out", "consolidated," or otherwise radically changed. What happens in Springfield could change the fate of those schools (all of which were voted on at the February 25 Board of Education meeting) and the fate of the additional schools (like Penn) that faced radical changes as a result of the March 25 school board votes. Although the CTU constantly claims that they have been a major force behind the passage of the Soto Bill, it appears that they have largely sat on the sidelines and taken credit for the minimal progress of HB363.
It is not acceptable that the largest union local in Chicago does not do more to fight for things like a retroactive moratorium on school sabotage. Why was our membership not informed that the bill, which our leadership adamantly supported, had been substantially weakened? Why didn’t our leadership work night and day to mobilize the rank and file, and use our own paid lobbyists to preserve the original document?
While CORE could provide a legislative strategy to the CTU, why should we have to? As teachers and PSRPs who work hard all week long, we depend on our full paid staff to defend our interests each and every day. Let’s hope that these words of encouragement don’t fall on deaf ears. It may also be time to follow the lead of the Republic Window and Doors workers. When Republic worker, Melvin Maclin, was asked how their takeover of their factory received so much support from politicians he replied, “we led and the politicians followed us.”
Jackson Potter, Little Village Lawndale High School, School of Social Justice (SOJO), 3120 S. Kostner. 312.731.2743, jpottery2002@yahoo.com.
This article was originally published in the print edition of Substance, May 2009. Copyright 2009 Substance, Inc. Reprint permissions are hereby granted to not-for-profit and pro public education groups and for teaching purposes. Please give full credit to Substance, www.substancenews.net. Your subscription to Substance helps provide timely and accurate news about the fight to save public education in the face of corporate media lies.
By: Kugler
Lobbyist is a SCAB
Ms. Cobb-Evans is a strikebreaker who crossed a picket line. She did not care about her brothers and sisters back then and neither does she now. Stewart is also a traitor for taking ms. Evans with her to the CTU and paying her 100k to screw our members over.
here is the article which documents her treason to the membership and as witnessed by the soto bill continues today.
CTU President hired scab for $100,000 per year legislative lobbying job\rhttp://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=135§ion=Article