Thread by @xianb8

Thanks for your perspective.

We worked on this since the last contract in 2016. We surveyed members and asked what we should fight for in the next cycle, we reached out to students, parent and community organizations too. We developed a list of more than 200 demands.

https://twitter.com/JennBinis/status/1186038713492606976

The vast majority of the issues on the list are directly benefiting students. Of that nearly all of them are "equity" issues. As in the white dudes sniping at us' kids got these basic human rights our children and students are denied.

We brought these issue to the table about 10 months ago. We advocated for them w/our unelected board, & community actions and supporting our students in their actions.

The board refused to discuss them because "Rahm is leaving". (cause Chicagoans kept protesting on his lawn)

Mayor Lightfoot was elected as one of several candidates who essentially copy-pasted our equity agenda.

We brought those to the table again. The board lawyers (literally the same ones) refused to discuss them because "Lori is new".

Time continued to pass. A couple weeks of sessions were cancelled because the board's lawyer had some important vacation or something. (We don't understand why the board can't represent themselves at the table).

With the time to set a strike date looming, we made the preparations to poll our membership. We needed 75%+ of TOTAL membership to vote yes in order to authorize. (For perspective, Mayor Lightfoot got just under 25% of TOTAL registered voters in her runoff election)

We got 90%+

We continued to bring our student-centric issues to the table. We were told in no uncertain terms that "We will not negotiate on student issues because we don't have to". (Again, IL law says ONLY Chicago students suffer from a management option to not discuss these issues)

We set a date. We continued to negotiate. We also asked for "Open Bargaining" (the membership passed a resolution supporting it) which would allow all CTU members to attend bargaining sessions. We offered to plan one session or more for community members to attend.
CPS refused.

Finally, with the strike looming, CPS came to the table with some responses to a tiny subset of our issues.

We asked about the student centered issues. They again said "We don't have to talk about them, so we won't"

With each offer, we reviewed it, weighting the members of the bargaining team directly affected by the provision. We reached out to members, parents, students in the review. We came back with language or emphasized the original offer. CPS was very frustrated.

They said that they weren't taking so long, so why were we? We pointed out that they had no constituency to consult and didn't seem to be consulting anyone whose job or education would be affected. They bristled and said that wasn't fair. It was both fair and true.

To illustrate, they brought in principals to argue to remove our preparation time and give it to principals. The principals spoke on talking points the board communicators gave them "principal protected time" (it's so ignorant) and talked about their own buildings. We listened.

We noticed that the principals were highlighted good principal supported Professional Development but were not asking to take away our preparation time. Our brilliant VP addressed this to them directly at the table. The last principal essentially spoke on our behalf.

CPS said they were just advisory & refused to budge. Soon after, the largest CPS principals association came out with a presser revealing the vast majority of their members opposed the very policies that CPS was fighting on behalf of the principals for.
chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/26/2088…

We were bewildered. Again, it seemed like the folks opposing STUDENT CENTERED demands at the table, seemed to have no constituency at all. And were still deeply critical that we were taking time to consult ours.

The strike was looming.

We continued to meet and finally received the first realistic counteroffer (i.e. not just a wish list of complete dismantling of basic rights outlined in the current contract) a few days before the strike. The board lawyer called it their, "Last best and final offer".

We were like, "Ok, thanks for the massive middle finger bro, I guess we'll go call our strike captains."

The next day, the board said they never called it a "last, best and final offer", but words mean what they mean.

Oh and throughout all of this they kept saying it was "inappropriate and highly irregular to have this many demands".

Our attitude was that there's no limit to what our students deserve.

So we struck. And boy, members were ready. Our 2012 strike made international history and this felt like greater enthusiasm on the line than 2012. Why is that? We struck for the first time in decades in 2012, and people wanted it, but were not as in tune with the negotiations.

We were making student centered demands in 2012, but this year is a more comprehensive bundle of demands with more community consultation.

Also, our members were sooo ready to strike in 2016, and that didn't happened and there is the sentiment that things have gotten worse.

The first two days of the strike and the proceeding weekend were bustling at the bargaining table. The board would move on several of our demands each day and we would present movement acceptable to our members as well. (Emphatically avoiding giving in on student issues.)

But in the evening, the Mayor would hold pressers blasting us; often for the same issues that we were getting movement at the table!

In one particularly nasty exchange, we were mocked by the Mayor and the Trib Editorial Board (yes, the newspaper that printed a editorial linking dead black people to progress) about housing issues.

At the table, they had said, "We won't move on housing" but after a devastating presentation by CTU on the scope of students in temporary living situations/homeless and the impact of lack of services for those students, they came back, "We'd like to work out a deal on this".

This dynamic continued through the weekend (we bargaining for long periods both days) and we continued to give more and more detailed proposals with concrete implementation recommendations. On Monday, members returned to picket lines and we shared our optimism with them.

Part way through the day, CPS released Mayor Lightfoot's letter to Jesse asking us to return to work with no contract "for the benefit of children". The mood in the room as we read the leaked letter moved from optimism to rage to conviction.

As parents and educators fighting for equitable futures for our children and our students, we found it completely disgusting for the Mayor to "concern troll" us over missed school while still holding a line against equity for our kids.

For her to bring up missed sports games while still offering literally nothing on our sports equity demands and basic Special Education demands felt disingenuous and hate filled.

But we stayed in the bargaining room. And waited for concrete offers.

And waited...and waited....and waited. Finally the board summoned our leadership (refusing to talk to our member bargaining team) and gave us the same "There's not one penny more" ultimatum that the mayor shared in the media.

They still hadn't responded to our comprehensive class size plan, our demands for them to just literally follow federal and state law in supporting Special Education students and English Language Learners in Bilingual and Dual Language programs.

All through this process, they refused to put these protections in to the contract. Often complaining that they would be subject to greater enforcement. It was dumbfounding. It felt like they were asking us to collaborate with them to break the law and deny students services

So we took their message and went home. This morning our leadership went to bargaining while we went to our own schools and communities. A group of our member sports coaches went to negotiate and pushed the board to make some verbal agreements around sports equity.

That was brilliant, but also begged the question, "How many times are you going to tell us the well is dry and then when pushed in public, come back with another bucket?"

So the board HAS moved since the strike started. They went from saying, "We won't talk about students' rights our equity because we don't have to" to "We will toss some crumbs of equity toward the students, but can't possibly fund equity".

Both are lies.

Anyone at all involved with education has an obligation to prioritize student needs. We do that when we move money from our own tables with our own children to buy required supplies and supports for our students in the classroom.

It doesn't matter what the law says. This is a moral imperative.

And second, to say, "There is not enough money" is to say, "The things we are prioritizing are more important than equity for students."

Their priorities are police in schools, connected developer slush funds, crony contracts and $120 million in new curriculum literally no one asked for (and which won't be competently differentiated for SpEd and ELL students).

It's sweetheart deals previous boards made with banks and their friends' companies. It's high salaries for clouted folks with no connection to education w/o the decency to live in the city (in Tim Cawley's case he stayed out so his own child wouldn't suffer CPS' SpEd violations).

So we are here. We are ready to bargain. We are also striking, and we will expect substantial movement on student issues. We don't want excuses that the law says they can mistreat our kids or that equity is expensive.

We expect that the mayor and her team will drop their pet projects and crony contracts and how about the millions going to the legal team they are paying to fight at the table. We expect that that money will be devoted to students.

We expect to walk into our classrooms after a victorious strike and see all of the equitable supports the children of the city of Chicago deserve or a few cases have an expedient, detailed accounting of how, when and where that's happening in the short future.

On that day, we will not forget, but we can move past the expensive, hateful propaganda the board has used students dollars to spew in order to divide us from our communities. We'll move past these awful press conferences and her alliances with far right, racist groups to slur us

And Mayor Lightfoot will have a lot of very angry, very rich men yelling at her. But she will also have the opportunity to be considered the greatest mayor in the history of Chicago (or at least second to Washington).

We finally will be able to retire our daily mantra, "I love my city but hate the people in charge."

Your move, Mayor. May our children's faces haunt your dreams until you deliver your promises.