1/ Today, the Board of Education and the mayor announced a transition in which the current Board will step down. We thank this Board for centering equity, initiating the Black Student Success plan, and moving away from a punitive school rating system. 2/ Unfortunately, this news reflects the ongoing instability created by the district's CEO. While we finally have a mayor working to transform our schools, this CEO continues to say ‘no’ to progress.

Today, CTU presented a proposal to CPS to standardize termination terms across the district—giving all employees the same protections the CEO currently enjoys. Here’s what you need to know. ⬇️ 1/ In recent months, the CPS CEO has faced criticism for incomplete budgeting, school closure plans, and over 1,200 educator vacancies—leading to overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms. Now, we’re seeing plans for mid-year layoffs and furloughs.  1/7

The path to CPS elementary gifted programs is broken and does not work for the majority of Black and Brown parents in Chicago.

These 7 pieces of data and evidence make it clear that the gifted admissions process needs to be repaired.

A thread 🧵
wbez.org/education/2024… 1. "Students admitted to a CPS elementary school with a gifted program are three times more likely to get into one of the 11 test-in high schools than students who go to neighborhood schools."

The late great Karen Lewis was a former science teacher, who often talked about the importance of letting data & evidence guide our decision-making.

If she were alive today, she would say that these 7 pieces of data & evidence demonstrate the deeper story of selective-enrollment schools in Chicago.

A thread 🧵
wbez.org/education/2024… 1. "Only 1% of 8th graders from mostly low-income and Black elementary schools were offered a seat at one of Chicago’s top five selective enrollment schools over the last three years."

Of course.

The right-wing Bruce Rauner-funded think tank attacks student civic engagement. 🧵

https://twitter.com/paschutz/status/1767302114303160386

The Student Power Forum is a nonpartisan voter education forum.

It will be hosted at the CTU Center with several non-partisan community organizations, including #ChicagoVotes, @LaCasaNorte, @GKMC18.

As a union, we know our contract is critical to protecting members’ rights in their day to day work lives, particularly from principals who bully, harass, or target our members. 🧵 Today we received a call from a reporter letting us know that a principal at a CPS elementary school filed a police report against CTU President Stacy Davis Gates for allegedly telling members to “punch him in the face.”

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Chicago Teachers Union honors Albert Raby. 🧵 As a teacher in an all Black school, Albert Raby served as delegate then became the head of the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO). There, he organized 300,000 students to stay home from school to demand integrated public education.

We are nearly 30,000 rank-and-file teachers, clinicians, counselors, nurses, PSRPs, librarians and others. Not sure how complaints based on inaccurate info from three people on the losing end of internal elections and a fired ex-staffer constitute a "revolt," but here we are. 🙃

https://twitter.com/paschutz/status/1628570802680483840

The overwhelming majority of our membership is excited about Brandon, because Brandon IS better for Chicago. He is a fresh, new voice of leadership, and the only candidate in the race for mayor of Chicago who will deliver what students, families and all Chicagoans deserve.

The Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago City Council both meet later today. Both will discuss finances. Mayor Lightfoot desperately hopes no one looks at the real issue -- the harms of the mayor's inequitable financial policies. Her election year city budget takes resources from kindergartners, denies health services to special ed students during a global pandemic and withholds sanctuary/language services from English learners and their families by shifting hundreds of millions of $ in City costs to CPS.

CTU NEWS: Recently, the Union has learned that Chicago Public Schools charter operators are bankrolling right-wing politicians and supporting a racist legislative position through funding and formal affiliation with the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS). INCS is funding campaign literature and identifying itself as supporting Republican Illinois State Rep. Chris Bos’ distorted and dishonest attacks against the SAFE-T Act, legislation scheduled to be implemented this January and strongly backed by the IL Legislative Black Caucus.

The results of tonight's citywide electronic ballot are in. Starting tomorrow, all CTU members at CPS schools should be working remotely. The result of tonight's vote was 73 percent in favor of the remote-work-only job action. The action will end when one of the following conditions is met: The current surge in cases substantially subsides, or the mayor's team at CPS signs an agreement establishing conditions for return that are voted on and approved by the the CTU House of Delegates.

The school where Mayor Lightfoot is a parent is remote today.

As are eight unionized charter schools in Chicago, and schools in West Chicago, East St. Louis, Niles, Skokie, Morton Grove, Peoria, Gary, Evanston, parts of Algonquin, Barrington Hills and Hoffman Estates...

https://twitter.com/royalpratt/status/1478039249765253120

Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Ann Arbor, District of Columbia, Madison, Milwaukee, Newark, Camden (and a number of other New Jersey districts), Seattle and Prince Georges County, Maryland.

CPS plans to close all schools on Nov. 12, giving parents and guardians an opportunity to get their children vaccinated.

We welcome the district acknowledging the urgent need for parents and families to vaccinate their children, and providing time and opportunity to do so. We're all exhausted by daily challenges to safety and security confronted in this pandemic. CPS’ decision to close schools and give all school staff paid time off is welcome relief from the stress of trying to protect and educate students without resources to address their needs.

Children ages 5-11 are eligible for the COVID vaccine. A relief for thousands of families.

But our union and our district must work in partnership to get our students vaccinated. We absolutely cannot have a repeat of COVID testing failures.

Let's unpack what this all means... Parents and school staff continue to have significant concerns about the City and CPS’ plan for increasing vaccinations for students, after the district revealed this week that just 47 percent of eligible students have been vaccinated.

Children at Nixon and in the community no longer have a playground. This is truly awful. The playground was just rebuilt in 2018.

https://twitter.com/CTULocal1/status/1455754067062542338

The school community is devastated. Teachers, staff, students and families worked so hard to get this playground without any help from CPS, "who continually denied us funding to build a new one when the old one was crumbling," says an educator at the school.

In an example of how it goes from bad to worse for many CPS parents, this mother and teacher, reported to DCFS in March because her son was picked up 7 minutes late on the 2nd day of in-school learning, is now among victims of CPS' transportation crisis. atlantablackstar.com/2021/04/30/chi… Her son, Braylin, is among thousands of students who are still without bus service as his route was among those affected by cancellations. CPS promised to reimburse parents for transposition, but like many, his mother hasn't received anything. wbez.org/stories/with-w…

🏵 Farragut High School...amor eterno 🏵

With his signature of HB2275 into law today, Governor J.B. Pritzker has now restored Chicago public school educators’ right to bargain freely for real equity in our public schools, and advance organizing for the common good. The restoration of our fundamental labor rights lies at the heart of Karen Lewis’ legacy as a fighter for racial and economic justice, and as a fearless advocate for those disenfranchised by systemic racism and multi-generational neglect.

The issue of Black families' trust is not only missing from school reopening plans, but also from many school reopening arguments.

But Black families make up more than 1/3 of our school district and many others, so it matters.

It absolutely matters. nytimes.com/2021/02/01/us/… Chicago Public Schools is the third-largest school district in the U.S. In the past 20 years, our classrooms have lost more than 5,000 Black educators, which has had a negative impact on many school communities.

On the first day of Black History Month, Mayor Lightfoot and CPS leadership will lock out 80% of predominantly Black and Brown students and families who chose remote learning because it's safe.

Yet they refuse to make any improvements to remote learning. Remember, this is the same school district that systematically reduced special education services and lied about it. And are now under state supervision.

President Sharkey and CTU counsel spoke to Mayor Lightfoot today. The conversation was cordial. The mayor did reiterate the disappointment she expressed Friday, referring to the "hyper-democratic" nature of the CTU. But as we all know, that is what unions should be: democratic. The mayor and the CPS CEO refer to "CTU leadership" often, but CTU leadership is the 28,000 rank-and-file teachers, PSRPs, clinicians, librarians, nurses, counselors and other educators. These are the people who run our union. We look to them for direction. That won't change.