CTU Hosts First HOD Meeting of New Year
By Jim Vail


The first Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates meeting of the new 2013-2014 school year sailed smoothly by, at a time when the assault on the teaching profession and public education is unprecedented.

Absent was the bickering between different caucuses fighting over motions, and points of order or information.

It remains to be seen whether or not weak to non-existent opposition is a good thing.

Whereas the United Progressive Caucus or UPC once ruled the roost, it is now the CORE group that is running the show, quite smoothly.

President Karen Lewis began her speech by focusing on the pension fight.  For now, she told the delegates last Wednesday, September 3, there is no "ugly" pension legislation in Springfield, because the Chicago Public Schools refuses to work on a plan with the CTU.

"I called (Speaker of the House Michael) Madigan and told him CPS is not meeting with us, that CPS was forced to come up with a plan and they never did."

Lewis will refer to her private calls to Madigan, after taking some heat for endorsing the powerful speaker who is a pro-education reform politician, with close ties to UNO charter schools and other privatization forces.

In this case, Lewis is working with Madigan to come up with a compromise pension bill.  However, CPS is refusing to play ball, although they admit that the CTU plan to reform the pension system looks good, Lewis said.

"CPS said we have a 'political problem,'" Lewis told the delegates. 
"They said the CTU needs to give up something...If we give up $100 million, they will give it to charter schools."

Charter schools and politics were big on the agenda at the HOD meeting.  Sharkey said charter schools are an "existential threat" against the public schools.  He and Lewis noted that while there were huge cuts to the public school budgets, the charter schools actually got increased funding (that money may have come from the Gates Foundation).

So the CTU is looking to increase its muscle in the political arena.  

A resolution passed to increase CTU political action committee dues from $2 to $5, and encourage members to contribute to the 2015 campaign fund, as well as provide a voluntary tiering mechanism so that members can give at the $5, $10 or $20 level.

The resolution read:

"This increase will give the Chicago Teachers Union PAC sufficient resources to intensify political and legislative activities, including but not limited to: hosting political education forums, expanding research, canvassing, phone banking, voter registration drives, issue campaigns, grassroots organizing, and financial support to potential candidates in an effort to mount an effective and vigorous campaign in support of those candidates who share our vision or quality public education and strong communities."

It should be noted that the CTU has had a history of financially supporting the mayor.  Even when reform minded PACT took over the union 10 years ago, they still wrote out hefty checks to the pro-education reform mayor.

It was mentioned during the brief debate for the motion that the CTU should be transparent and provide a list of how much money has been contributed from CTU dues monies to support which candidate.  This was provided at one point to members when the UPC was running the show.

Another resolution passed at the HOD meeting was to support Honduras, where more than 25 teachers have been murdered for their political activism by the military, police and government sponsored forces since the US-backed military coup took power in 2009.