Chicago Teachers Union leaders preoccupied with deviant 'social justice' agendas while Chicago's general high schools and neighborhood elementary schools are screwed -- again -- during the opening weeks of school...
While thousands of Chicago children await their real teachers in the city's general high schools and neighborhood elementary schools, the officers of the Chicago Teachers Union have diverted the union into ignoring the real problems of the city's schools and the teachers who pay more than $1,100 per year in union dues while promoting a so-called "social justice" agenda that substitutes abstractions for the reality of strong union contracts and the strong enforcement of the rights of the union's members.Once again, Chicago's general high schools have been forced to open for the 2017 - 2018 school year without enough teachers to staff the classrooms of all the students who have been arriving. Once again, the so-called "20th day rule" is being utilized by the administration of Chicago's public schools to deprive thousands of students in the general high schools of their full school year by shuffling students and teachers through massive amounts of "program changes" that continued from late September into October.
The program changes are almost exclusively taking place at the city's general high schools, while the city's selective enrollment high schools have been operating fully since opening day. How is this done?
Comments:
By: Paul DiGiulio
Contract Sellout
Why should teachers read the contract now?! They clearly didn't read it before they voted to ratify it!
Red flags warning of a bad contract were everywhere!
The weakness of the previous contract was the first red flag.
The last minute 'midnight deal' was the second red flag.
When CTU leadership failed to provide teachers with hard copies of the agreement was the third red flag!
The ironic fact that the ratification vote was actually held on October 28, 2016, the Friday before Halloween 'trick or treat' weekend should have been the fourth red flag!
Never mind the filthy schools, swelling class sizes and an unprecedented number of midyear position cuts!
Please!
The simple fact that Chicago educators, responsible for teaching the skills of drawing conclusions, making inferences and predictions, reading comprehension and critical thinking, failed to demand the details of the contract; failed to even see the 'writing on the wall' leads one to conclude that they sealed their own fates.
By: George N. Schmidt
Strong union contract sold out to 'social justice'
Anyone who can get a copy of the '2015 - 2019' Chicago Teachers Union contract will note the problems facing teachers who had hoped the contract would be a "win" for us. In fact, the new blue contract is a huge loss-- most of it based on selling out to the BOSS in the name of so-called "social justice." The "new" contract is a dense read, in a major way because it is more than 120 pages longer -- yes, LONGER -- than its predecessor. At every point where the power of teachers (and other dues paying union members) used to be strong, it's been weakened deliberately by the union leadership that brought in this contract a month before the November 2016 election (maybe to avoid a strike that would have "hurt" Hillary?). There are dozens of examples of the sellout, not the least of which is the creation of a new two-tiered pay system for teachers hired after January 1, 2017. Substance will begin analyzing both the sellout contract and the hypocrisy of the attempt to consolidate the power of the current leadership in the next several weeks -- perhaps as a Christmas gift to our readers. But the most important things is for everyone to read it and compare it with the two predecessors: the final contract brought in by Marilyn Stewart's "New UPC" and the first (strike) contract brought in by the current (since July 2010) CORE group now in power.