[RSCT] LN 1/29/10: Reform caucus jolts Chicago Teachers' Union

[Rick Kisséll]

Reform caucus jolts Chicago Teachers' Union 

 
By Kenzo Shibata 
Labor Notes 
January 29, 
2010 
 
“Teaching is a privilege, learning is a right!” 
announced Karen Lewis, science teacher at King College Prep High School, at a 
January 9 community forum on education in Chicago. 
 
Lewis, recently elected to head a slate running for 
control of the Chicago Teachers Union (AFT Local 1), joined 400 teachers, 
students, and parents organizing with the Caucus of Rank and File Educators to 
map a course for the next year of organizing inside Chicago Public Schools. 

 
CORE is ramping up its bid to jumpstart the 
leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union. The electoral campaign is intertwined 
with CORE’s effort to fight intensified waves of school closures and 
privatization and to reverse the erosion of teacher bargaining power that began 
when Mayor Richard Daley took over the schools in 1995. Since then he’s 
appointed the school board and banned the union from bargaining over class size, 
restructuring schemes, and charter school expansion. 
 
In the intervening years of ballooning class sizes 
and charter school proliferation, union rolls plummeted and teachers feared it 
was only a matter of time before the CTU ceased to exist. 

CORE STEPS UP 

 
The January summit was the latest effort by CORE to 
revive the union. The caucus built on a similar event held a year ago, when 500 
people from 80 schools and dozens of community groups were spurred to action by 
an announcement the day before that 22 schools would be closed or converted. 

 
The caucus has organized feverishly to move the 
union to fight Daley’s bid to close 70 “low-performing” schools and open 100 new 
ones—two-thirds of them charter and contract schools. 
 
This year, the school board postponed its planned 
announcement that 35 schools would be closed or have their entire staff laid off 
(euphemistically known as a “turnaround”). Weeks later, they announced that 14 
schools would be on the block this year. At the forum participants focused on 
mobilizing teachers, students, parents, and elected Local School Councils for 
alternatives to closures, mayoral control, and the incumbent union leadership’s 
handling of the battle for public education. 
 
Union leaders responded to CORE’s organizing 
efforts last year by claiming job actions would only allow the board to open the 
contract. 
 
“Since our union leadership was not fighting 
privatization, CORE did,” says Norine Gutekanst, a steering committee member, 
who emphasized the link between school privatization and gentrification. “We 
worked with community groups to show that students and families were being 
pushed out of neighborhoods by the double whammy of developers and school 
closings.” 
 
The partnership of students, parents, and teachers 
led to formation of the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), which the teachers 
union leadership joined for a time. GEM organized two massive protests early 
last year and brought thousands out in opposition to the school closure plan. 

 
In an unprecedented win, the board allowed six 
schools to stay open. After the photo-ops ended, so did the union’s active 
participation in GEM. 

CLAIMING CREDIT 
 
At the next union House of Delegates meeting, 
members were handed a flyer insisting the incumbents had organized the protests 
single-handedly and that “other groups” were claiming credit. Hundreds had put 
hours of hard work into these actions. 
 
CORE pressed forward with its plan to fix the 
union. Members captured enough seats in the House of Delegates to propose 
actions from the floor and won a new voting procedure that allowed the House to 
physically divide itself on a vote, heading off any counting irregularities. 

 
The current leadership decided to shut down the 
trend toward democracy, however, and has since not allowed new business from 
delegates to make it to the House floor. President Marilyn Stewart filibusters 
new business by giving speeches lasting more than 40 minutes. By the time she 
finishes, not enough remain for a quorum. 
 
Public school teachers nationwide are seeing their 
pensions raided by state governments. In Illinois, Governor Pat Quinn endorses 
two-tiered pensions and Chicago’s schools chief (his formal title is “CEO”) 
takes every opportunity to blame teacher pensions for the budget shortfall. 


SEIZING THE PENSION BOMB 
 
Every teacher seat on the Chicago Teachers' Pension 
Fund Board of Trustees was filled by a member of the incumbent union leadership. 
When an election for two seats was due in October, CORE candidates went school 
to school campaigning and won, the first time challengers have unseated members 
of the ruling caucus on the pension board. The new trustees, Jay Rehak and Lois 
Ashford, promise to keep the board accountable for funding pensions and 
financial managers accountable for sound investments. 
 
The current leadership has sent out literature 
asking members to “Stop Mob Action, Stop Radical CORE!” and flyers attacking 
co-chair Jackson Potter—claiming he’s ineligible to run for election. Potter 
took a board-approved one-year leave of absence after his school was closed. 
Union staff assured him he would remain in good standing by paying inactive 
member dues. 
 
CTU and its lawyers have offered several 
justifications for striking his candidacy. “Our CTU leadership has adopted a 
moving-target strategy to disqualify me, regardless of the evidence,” said 
Potter, who has filed suit. 

CAMPAIGN TRAIL 
 
CORE is on the campaign trail, despite Stewart’s 
warnings that members violate board policy by distributing union literature in 
schools—unless it comes from incumbents. When that threat was unsuccessful, she 
warned principals they should not allow other caucuses to meet in their 
buildings. 
 
Sensing a swelling disenchantment that has 
propelled three opposition caucuses to contest the May election, the incumbents 
are switching up and adding rhetoric defending teachers who face layoffs. 

 
“In the past, they’ve gone to meetings and told the 
teachers to spruce up their resumes and look for other jobs,” says Lewis, CORE’s 
presidential nominee. “Our only question is what took them so long? They had no 
solutions, no ideas, and no clue before.” 
 

Kenzo Shibata is a teacher at John Hancock High School and CORE’s 
communications secretary. 
 
Version updated to reflect Chicago School Board's announcement of school 
closings and conversions this year. 
 

http://www.labornotes.org/2010/ 01/reform-caucus- jolts-chicago- teachers union























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