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Teachers don't like bullies

Matt Farmer - May 11, 2012

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post and is reprinted here with the permission of Matt Farmer. Other articles by Matt Farmer are also available in back issues of Substance and by Googling through the Huffington Post. The original of this article was Posted: 05/10/2012 4:24 pm to Huffington Post].

Teachers Don't Like Bullies

Notices for the May 10, 2012 contract poll went up at more than 600 real Chicago public schools as union teachers and other union members took part in the Contract Poll. Most of Chicago's charter schools are viciously anti-union, and at least one has been sued because of its violations of labor laws. A couple of voices from Mayor Emanuel's "education reform" choir are up in arms because some public school teachers are now talking seriously about the possibility of a teachers' strike in Chicago later this summer.

The mayor's folks are outraged by such talk -- and by recent reports of mock strike votes in schools across the city -- because they believe it distracts teachers from their primary mission, which is educating kids.

Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll called news of recent mock strike votes "a disservice to our children." Charter school advocate Rebeca Nieves Huffman upped the ante, saying the Chicago Teachers Union was recklessly "playing the strike card" and would likely rely on "thuggery and intimidation" to get its way.

Give me a break.

Among those helping tally the massive Contract poll conducted by the Chicago Teachers Union on May 10, 2012, were organizer Matt Luskin, teacher Jim Cavallero, and school clerk Jay Jimenez. In the background are the wall charts listing all of the schools in the CPS "Networks". The "Networks" are the latest novelty reorganization brought to the nation's third largest school system by the latest iteration of corporate reformers hired from outside Chicago to revolutionize — i.e. privatize and piratize — public education in the nation's third largest city. By midnight on May 10, 2012, the union had compiled results of the poll from the majority of the schools. A summary of the results was anticipated on the morning of May 11, 2012, but none had been available at Substance press time. Indications from those familiar with the poll were that teachers are, as the accompanying article indicates, angry at the year of teacher bashing unleashed by Rahm Emanuel's administration, with dozens of schools indicating 100 percent for a strike authorization. It's not as if the city's teachers are suddenly asking their bright-eyed students to paint color-by-number portraits of Eugene Debs and Albert Shanker during their (likely non-existent) art classes. And no one, to date, has accused any CPS teachers of shaking down kids in the cafeteria for contributions to a CTU strike fund.

Teachers and their union representatives are simply gearing up — outside of the classroom, mind you — to fight for their professional lives this summer, and I'm glad they're finally getting engaged.

I say that both as a longtime CPS parent and as a local school council member. I talk to a lot of teachers around the city, and from Rogers Park to Gage Park they're angry.

They're tired of being made scapegoats for the devastating effects of the generational urban poverty that Emanuel and his aides would rather not talk about. They're tired of having their students used as over-tested lab rats by an ever-changing cast of out-of-touch, out-of-town "reformers" who specialize in "public education by press release." But what really angers the teachers I've talked to is the absolute lack of respect that this mayor and his hand-picked team have shown them during the last year.

Dozens of volunteers worked through the afternoon, evening, and into the night compiling the results of the May 10, 2012 CTU poll. Each of the schools was double-checked so that the union had interim accuracy of the sentiment of the union's 26,000 active duty members (the CTU also has more than 3,500 retiree members). Only active duty members vote on CTU strikes and contracts.In fact, I'd fear for my fourth-grade daughter's next eight years in the CPS system if her teachers were not mentally and emotionally invested in the ongoing contract negotiation process.

Make no mistake — I want my kid in class next September. But if her teachers ultimately vote to go on strike, my daughter will know why.

She may not have a deep understanding of tenure issues, pension contributions, or "step and lane" increases, but (like most kids I know) she has a solid grasp on the basic concept of "fairness."

Even a 10-year-old can understand that if 75 percent of the CTU's membership ultimately concludes that our charter-school-loving mayor is trying to give them (as Emanuel might say) "the shaft," then those teachers need to stand up and fight, not only for their individual jobs and their profession, but also for the well-being of the kids in the classrooms in which they now teach.

The deck is undeniably stacked against the teachers in their current negotiations with the Board of Education, and a strike vote is the only leverage teachers have to secure a fair contract.

You want to call mock strike votes a scare tactic, be my guest. But don't forget to call out Emanuel and his high-priced media machine the next time the mayor starts talking about putting 55 kids in a classroom, or complaining that CPS teachers enriched themselves for years while "cheating our children," whom, he claims, teachers effectively "left on the side of the road."

It's easy, I suppose, to make a habit of dumping on CPS teachers if the only parent-teacher conferences you ever have to attend take place at a private school. 

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