Teachers to Picket School Board Vote (IL)
June 15, 2010
The president-elect of the Chicago Teachers Union planned an "emergency picket” today protesting a special Chicago School Board vote to raise class sizes and lay off up to 2,700 teachers.
"It’s an emergency board meeting, so we’re having an emergency picket,” explained King College Prep teacher Karen Lewis, who takes over as head of the nation’s third-largest teachers union on July 1.
Meanwhile, attorneys hired by current CTU President Marilyn Stewart said the board’s layoff plans seem unusually onerous, as Board officials are contending that tenured teachers who lose their jobs due to rising class sizes will not be entitled to the 10-month pay cushion their displaced colleagues have received in the past.
"The board is putting them [tenured teachers] out on the street,” said CTU attorney Jennifer Poltrock. "The only thing we can do about it is file a grievance … which is the slow-boat-to-China route.”
Under the current contract, teachers displaced due to school closures are sent into a "reassigned teacher pool” from which they can substitute-teach for four days a week, look for a job the fifth day of the week and continue to earn the ir usual pay for 10 months.
That benefit also was extended last year to teacher reading coaches who lost their jobs due to budget cuts, Poltrock said. But Board officials insist the contract does not specifically extend the benefit to tenured teachers laid off due to class size increases, Poltrock said.
Plus, Board officials contend more than 700 teachers now in the "reassigned pool" will no longer get a fifth day a week off to look for a job. Instead, they would have to substitute teach five days a week, Poltrock said.
Veteran teachers are up in arms about the prospect of losing their 10-month pay cushion, said one tenured teacher who asked to remain anonymous.
In the past, "Even if we didn’t land a great job at first, at least we would be working at our current salary level,” the teacher said. "We are hysterical.”
Late Friday, after the polls closed on the runoff election for the CTU presidency, Board officials revealed they were scheduling a special meeting today to vote on giving Huberman the greenlight to raise class size from an average of 30 to "up to 35” and to take out a line of credit of up to $800 million to cover $420 million in late state aid payments this school year as well as the uncertainty of state funding next school year.
At the same time, Huberman will be asking Board members to vote on a resolution stating that the district has the money to cover four percent raises for the CTU and seven other unions. The move blocks teachers from striking over pay, while still allowing teachers to offer to give up pay hikes for reduced class size.
The resolutions, "feel like a ploy to get parents [who dislike larg e class sizes] angry at teachers,” said Lewis, who has organized protests with parents in the past. "They are trying to destroy the relationship we are building with our natural allies. There are other places they can go to get this money.”
The board’s decision to fund raises to remove any possible chance of a strike and to instead raise class size "raises questions about the financial reasonableness of the Chicago Public Schools,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation.
"There’s no way they can afford those raises at a time when there’s such instability in Springfield and they face enormous financial challenges,” Msall said. "The pay raises have to be on the table. To treat those as sacrosanct over class size is not financially reasonable and is financially risky.”
Msall said higher class sizes could cause an exodus from CPS, further reducing its per-pupil funding.
"It’s going tobe a huge turnoff to parents,” Msall said.