Once Scott Walker was done destroying the teachers union, he passed his bi-partisan teacher bashing torch to Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago. The Chicago Teacher's Union learned from the devastating losses in Wisconsin. The saddest lesson was to believe the worst, and prepare. Rahm followed the same path as Walker. Step 1, neuter the union. Step 2, with no one to speak for individual teachers, treat them like second class pawns in their education privatization scheme.
The first step in Illinois was to make it impossible to strike. They increased the threshold for a strike from a majority of members, to a 75% super majority among all members, not just those voting. Any member not voting would count as a No vote. With the union out of the way, Rahm was free to impose his school privatization will. They followed through with their plan. When it came time to vote on a strike, they must have been sitting back and laughing. They were not laughing when the result came back over 90% of all members in favor of striking. Over 20,000 teachers are set to go on strike on September 10th.
From that day forward, teachers were the enemy. Rahm would boldly declare that class sizes did not matter, while he sent his kids to schools with ten kids in a class. The entire district is being transformed into a quasi-private charter/traditional cyborg. Schools that are closing disproportionately affect the minority teachers that we are trying so desperately to add. The district is trying to add 20% to the teachers work day, without any reasonable increase in pay. An independent arbitrator sided with the teachers, but that was ignored.
Now, because of the dedicated movement to privatize education, 400000 students will be without classes. Chicago Public schools is planning on spending $25 million dollars to keep the strike going as long as possible. Students won't be learning, but they will have schools to go sit in from 8:30 to 12:30. The union has a comprehensive plan to improve Chicago Schools, but their ideas are not valued or even listened to. They are fighting for their students and their schools. You can read their one page summary HERE All of their proposals are research based on student outcomes.
CrossPosted at MN Progressive Project