Why is the CTU Defending Urban Prep West Charter School Against Closure?
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) issued a press release stating its opposition to closing Urban Prep West Charter School.
The union said it is wrong to close a school and thus interrupt the children's education and for the teachers to lose their jobs. The CTU now represents the unionized charter school teachers at Urban Prep West in Lawndale.
Charter Schools were created to destroy the union, privatize public education and force the neoliberal agenda tied to standardized testing, strict discipline and smiling faces.
The former CTU ruling caucus United Progressive Caucus (UPC) joined with American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten to promote charter schools by saying we only need to unionize them.
The current CTU leadership CORE fought strongly against charter schools, stating they are only created to destroy and close the public schools. Many times public schools were closed and a charter school opened.
CORE even mandated in the last teacher contract to ban new charter schools, and a recent endorsement of Toni Preckwinkle included the president of the Cook County Board to state she is against any new charter schools.
So the tightrope walk the union is engaged in now between defending charter schools (with CTU members) and fighting against charter schools is getting a little confusing.
Urban Prep was opened and the surrounding public high schools were closed. Now the public schools on the South Side are under-enrolled because of all these charter schools. Shouldn't the union defend the public schools and not the charter?
Certainly we need to support all teachers. And we need to support our public schools. Charter schools are designed to destroy the public schools and the union. Unionizing the charter teachers is important, but more importantly, stopping the growth of charter schools and not fighting against their closures is also important.
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) issued a press release stating its opposition to closing Urban Prep West Charter School.
The union said it is wrong to close a school and thus interrupt the children's education and for the teachers to lose their jobs. The CTU now represents the unionized charter school teachers at Urban Prep West in Lawndale.
Charter Schools were created to destroy the union, privatize public education and force the neoliberal agenda tied to standardized testing, strict discipline and smiling faces.
The former CTU ruling caucus United Progressive Caucus (UPC) joined with American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten to promote charter schools by saying we only need to unionize them.
The current CTU leadership CORE fought strongly against charter schools, stating they are only created to destroy and close the public schools. Many times public schools were closed and a charter school opened.
CORE even mandated in the last teacher contract to ban new charter schools, and a recent endorsement of Toni Preckwinkle included the president of the Cook County Board to state she is against any new charter schools.
So the tightrope walk the union is engaged in now between defending charter schools (with CTU members) and fighting against charter schools is getting a little confusing.
Urban Prep was opened and the surrounding public high schools were closed. Now the public schools on the South Side are under-enrolled because of all these charter schools. Shouldn't the union defend the public schools and not the charter?
Certainly we need to support all teachers. And we need to support our public schools. Charter schools are designed to destroy the public schools and the union. Unionizing the charter teachers is important, but more importantly, stopping the growth of charter schools and not fighting against their closures is also important.
If Urban Prep West can close, no school is safe
Closure of campus serving African-American young men is the latest transgression in the wholesale removal of Blacks from the city of Chicago
CHICAGO, Dec. 11, 2018—The Chicago Teachers Union was disappointed to learn of Chicago Public Schools’ plans to close Urban Prep Academy’s West Campus. The Union’s position on school closings has long been clear: We oppose the closure of any school for the same reasons we oppose charter expansion. Both have destabilizing effects on communities and lead to privatization of public education at the expense of those our schools should serve.
But the closure of Urban Prep West, a school serving a student population made up entirely of African-American males, goes one step further in its negative impact as it represents another chapter in the wholesale removal of Black and Brown people from our city. Urban Prep’s stated mission to remedy the myriad ways that Chicago Public Schools—and the city itself—has historically failed young Black men is admirable, however, it is past time that people stop believing that a striped tie and black blazer can mask the scars these children have suffered from the years of mistreatment of their communities. We are steadfastly opposed to the school’s closure, which would only exacerbate the Negro Removal Act that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has put in place since taking office in 2010.
Classrooms at Urban Prep have not been immune from the trauma, enrollment loss and test-based “accountability” that have decimated district schools serving Black communities on the South and West sides. But in the face of these mounting struggles, Urban Prep last year chose to expand its organization rather than invest in the classrooms, staff and students they currently serve. Urban Prep applied for, and was granted, a contract to run a charter school in Las Vegas under Nevada’s Achievement School District. The Achievement School District operates much like other state takeovers of urban school districts, where privatized charter operators are hired to take over struggling, under-resourced public schools.
According to documents submitted to the Nevada Department of Education, Urban Prep management created a full-time, six-figure position specifically for its expansion effort, and top officials took numerous trips to Las Vegas over the past year to secure its expansion. Meanwhile, Urban Prep has one of the most bloated central office operations of any charter school in CPS, serving fewer than 800, yet spending $1.3 million on executive and central office administration (or $1,700 per student).
Our members at Urban Prep West are in the midst of negotiating a new contract, and under their collective bargaining agreement, teachers who are laid off if the school closes will have the right to be placed into vacancies for which they are qualified at the school’s remaining two campuses.
We hope that last week’s news will serve as a wake-up call to Urban Prep leaders to keep their focus local and provide for students here in Chicago, because let’s be clear—if the mayor’s handpicked Board of Education can close a school made up entirely of young Black men that touts a 100 percent college acceptance rate year after year, what does that say for the academically struggling school with infrastructure issues that serves a low-income community without support from the city’s Black power elite?
The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information please visit the CTU website at www.ctunet.com.
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