Jensen Tragedy

Shut it Down! Shut it Down!

By Jim Vail

Jasyma Johnson is organizing a fundraiser to 
pay for funeral costs of her sister and parent 
at Jensen Elementary School who died of Covid.

In a very emotional press conference, the Jensen Elementary School on the West Side said it loud and clear:  Shut it down!

They want the Chicago Public Schools to shut down their school after two parents died of Covid that their children brought home after 11 out of 17 classrooms at the school were in quarantine due to the virus. One was a 47-year-old mother last Thursday, and second 32-year-old mother on Friday. The West Side is one of the lowest vaccinated areas in the city where many African-American people suffer from high blood pressure and diabetes.

"We do not want to lose another member of our community," the Chicago Teachers Union told members of the press and the community at Jensen Elementary School at Sacramento and Harrison Avenues on Tuesday, September 28.

"This is devastating," said Chantella Bland, the president of Jenson's local school council and a parent at the school. "Shut down Jensen!"

Her cry was echoed by many in the crowd who were pumped up and mad that CPS is not providing the necessary safety measures such as contact tracing, weekly testing, temperature checks in the morning, deep cleaning of the school, etc.

"I call on the Mayor to do the right thing," CTU President Jesse Sharkey said. "It shouldn't take deaths to do the right thing. We demand that they shut it down!"

Another member of Jensen's LSC noted that CPS wants the kids back in school because of crime, "but they're killing us." He reiterated like all the others that it is time for CPS to close the school down so no more tragedies happen.

The balloon toss in honor of 2 fallen parents from
Covid at Jensen Elementary School.

Jasyma Johnson, the sister of one of the parents who died of Covid, gave a heart-felt speech in which she deplored CPS and the system for allowing another school district to the west in Naperville to do all the right things during a pandemic to save their children - deep cleaning, small class sizes to follow social distance rules, contact tracing, temperature checks, while the City of Chicago does little to nothing.

"This is an issue of the haves and the have-nots," said the sister of Shenitha Curry who died from Covid. "If the teachers are liable if a kid goes missing, then CPS should be liable for these deaths on their watch!"

State Rep. Lakeesha Collins who represents the district where Jensen is located told the crowd that this is the reason why the Chicago public schools need an elected school board. 

"They put pressure on teachers everyday, it's time to put pressure on the mayor," said Jensen 2nd grade teacher Arielle Chestleigh. "We're sick and tired of being sick and tired!"

The school nurse told everyone that it is not difficult to do the simple steps to be safe. She said after the deaths of the two parents CPS came to only do some contact tracing and social emotional support.

When the families of the deceased parents stepped in front of the corporate media who lined up the street with cameras and microphones, tears and emotions overwhelmed them, and a minister came in to say a prayer. They then had their middle school students release scores of black balloons in memory of a tragedy that many there believe could have been avoided had CPS taken the proper safety measures.

The CTU asked fellow teachers, community members and good souls to donate to GoFundMe for Shenitha Curry's funeral. 

Fix Schools

 Editorial:

Only the Working Class Can Fix the Schools

Sep 27, 2021

Children have returned to school across the U.S., to find themselves in the same old mess—starting with severe overcrowding that plagued most public schools already before the pandemic.

The overcrowding goes hand-in-hand with a severe teacher shortage. Since March 2020, when school systems across the U.S. switched to “remote” or “hybrid” learning, thousands of teachers who qualified for a full pension have retired. Many of these teachers did not want to return to the “circus” of having to teach, in effect, two classes at once—as one 51-year-old Michigan teacher considering an early retirement put it. And many other teachers quit without a full pension, for fear of catching the virus in overcrowded classrooms and bringing it home to elderly and at-risk family members.

These experienced teachers should never have been pushed to such frustration. And not nearly enough new teachers have been hired to replace them either. School districts and county and state officials had a year and a half to do that; but they did nothing—neither to keep the existing teachers, nor to recruit and train new ones.

But it’s not just teachers that are in short supply. Already crowded classes are merged and doubled up because there are not enough substitute teachers to cover for teachers who are out. Long lines form for lunch and snacks because of a dire shortage of cafeteria workers. And the ride to and from school can take hours because bus drivers, also short-handed, have to make multiple rounds to transport students.

For all these workers—the essential workers that make schools run—these jobs simply don’t pay enough for them and their families to live on. But school officials and politicians still parrot that tired lie of “people don’t want to work,” instead of increasing pay.

And then there are the shortcomings of school facilities, starting with the lack of adequate ventilation to prevent the virus put into the air by one person from infecting others.

The only safety measure school officials have offered is masks—which, alone, cannot prevent the spread of the virus. And when Covid cases and even outbreaks inevitably occur, these same officials simply send students home for forced quarantines, or even shut down the whole school—putting all the burden on parents, especially working-class parents who risk losing their jobs to stay at home with their children.

Is this really all this society can do for public school students—that is, the vast majority of the children in this country?

Of course not; so much more could be done, as some schools, especially some private schools—those the very wealthy can afford—have shown.

These schools have hired enough teachers and other school workers to keep class sizes small. They have made full use of existing buildings, and also expanded their facilities, to provide for social distancing during breaks also. They have set up constant monitoring and testing for Covid symptoms, and hired health care professionals to run them.

Yes, to apply these measures at every single school in this country would require a lot of money. But how dare officials claim that this society can’t afford these measures—that is, to keep our children safe from the virus—when, for example, the federal government has already handed over billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies to hoard several times more Covid vaccines than what is needed to get the whole U.S. population fully vaccinated?

But providing every child with a good education is not a goal that this society is organized to achieve. Instead, society is organized today, first and foremost, to allow business owners to make a profit. The biggest among these capitalists, who reap the biggest profits, hold their power over the whole society.

That’s why politicians and officials, who impose big capital’s agenda on us, will never put money into the education of working-class children—and they, Democrat and Republican alike, have proven this for decades.

Only the working class, if organized in our class interests, has the possibility to re-organize society for that purpose. The means for that, the wealth of the entire society, is created by the workers’ labor. The working class has to take it back from that tiny, greedy minority of hoarders, and use it for our needs—starting with the education of our children, who are the very future of our society.

Perfect Scapegoat

THE PERFECT SCAPEGOAT

By Stephen Wilson

  

   During the return of the Academic year in Russia school teachers seem to have been targeted by a vocal moral minority of parents who are venting their negative emotions on teachers for irrelevant forms of conduct which would hardly strike most people as 'immoral'. A climate of fear is being conducted which some say amounts to a witch-hunt.

 

 

All evening a tense school teacher named Aleksei had been preparing for the return to school on the 1st September. After all this preparation he plunged into a deep sleep. Unfortunately he did not hear his alarm clock go off. He slept in. So he missed the first lesson he was due to teach. He was punished by being deprived of his work as a class manager. Another teacher was fired from her job for posting a statement on a social site saying she dreaded the beginning of the New Academic year, a teacher was fired for posting a photo on a social site where she was dressed in a swimming costume, and a headmistress was fired because one of her first year pupils came to school with green hair. A school teacher even lost her job for blowing her nose among her pupils!

 

But perhaps the most prominent case occurred at school number 76 at Khaborouskoi where on the 1st of September, a young school teacher performed an innocuous dance called 'The Dance of Wings' { a kind of belly dance} which was viewed as 'obscene'! The twenty-two-year old teacher, Yulia Marchenko, was forced to apologize after a wave of anger from parents. She stated, "I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings but I had no intention of doing this". She had to apologize before parents and children at school. The result of this scandal was that the headmistress, Tanya Strokova, who had worked as a brilliant math teacher for 28 years, decided to resign from her post. However her resignation has not been accepted until the local management make an inspection! Yet most people saw nothing obscene about the young teacher's dance or the costume she was wearing. 

It seems a school teacher can never be too careful. They have to watch their every word and  be careful what photo or statement they post on a social network. Walls have ears and your never know who could be watching you or overhearing you. Fear has replaced the fun in the classroom! Fewer people can take a simple joke or tell a harmless anecdote.

 

What is odd about this situation is not only why those complaints are taken seriously at all, but why the teacher accused of 'immoral ' activity' is forced or put under duress to make a public confession. The confession itself seems designed to humiliate and deprive the teacher of dignity. It is comparable to putting someone on a cutty stool or pillory  in a public square where the public can walk by and jeer at them. Why is this all being done? Perhaps vested interests seek to contain and control teachers so they don't step out of line. The best way to do this is to foster an atmosphere of fear. But this is going to back fire. A new generation of young people are unlikely to take that much pressure from people. When a teacher was fired for wearing a swimming costume some fellow teachers started to post photos of themselves wearing swimming costumes in solidarity with the dismissed teacher. A flash-mob arose in opposition called 'Teachers are also human'.

 

How does this self righteous moral police distinguish between good and evil? Do they have some x-ray machine which can tell what percentage of a person is good or bad? Is it evil to wear a swimming costume or short skirt? Is it a disgrace to do a belly dance or dye your hair green? As if the morals of a person are mirrored in the color of his or her hair! They evidently express the narrow morals of a reformed alcoholic! 

The chairman of the union Teacher Vsevolod Lukhovitskii made an interesting statement in an interview with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta when he stated:

"Parents tend to be different. The life of parents is hard. When they come across the opportunity to vent their anger they will do this with joy. The more the better on teachers- as she or he represents an ideal target. The question is why don't the school head and management of Education acknowledge this? It is most likely because they are afraid. Now the education system is organized in such away that the main feeling in this is fear. Everyone is afraid of everything. They are afraid they will have to leave because of something. And a school head will do anything in order that people don't blame her or him for anything. It is clear that the teacher did not want to do anything bad. It is clear that there is nothing bad in belly dancing and that there was no real thought connected to this dance. But the school head considers this complaint all the same. She can't justify it because the management of Education always uses it to their advantage to compromise teachers {Kompromat in Russian but really just an abusive form of blackmailing a teacher}. It is pleasant for the parents now to hear independently about what they have been speaking about and the result is the management chooses the most stupid course of action: making an apology for something that never happened. The head also feels alone, unlucky, and understands that at any moment she can be removed. If this teacher had received support from her colleagues then the outcome would have happened differently'. 

In other words, teachers need to strongly support each other as well as draw on the support of sympathetic parts of the public. Without being a member of a trade union which can fight for them, teachers are like sitting ducks. And things can only get worse and escalate into a full scale witch hunt unless teachers resolutely resist.  

 

Acknowledged source - Read the brilliant article by Irina Lukranova  in Novaya Gazeta, number 99, 6.9.21,

Портрет явления  Бдуны

 

Faculty organize

 

LABOR How Contingent Faculty Organizing Can Succeed in Higher Education

To help the contingent faculty movement prepare for its next big battles, the authors have produced a timely history of union activity among “second tier faculty excluded from the tenure system.”

July 21, 2021 Steve Early 

Despite recent organizing gains among some contingent faculty members, the adjunctification of higher education has left hundreds of thousands of college and university teachers with low pay, spotty benefit coverage, and little job security. As former adjuncts Joe Berry and Helena Worthen report in their new book, Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Movement in Higher Education (Pluto Press, 2021), an estimated 70 to 80 percent of all contingent faculty in the U.S. still lack union representation.

The rapid, pandemic related expansion of on-line education threatens to further erode employment conditions for the two-thirds to three-fourths of all faculty members who are contingent. (For an analysis of OLE and its impact, see Robert Ovetz’s “Conscious Linkage: The Proletarianization of Academic Labor in the Algorithmic University,” New Politics, Summer, 2021) In the next few years, Berry and Worthen predict, “the institutions of higher education will be more globalized, more on-line” and “and most will try to eliminate tenure and universalize contingency.”

To help the contingent faculty movement prepare for its next big battles, the authors have produced a timely history of union activity among “second tier faculty excluded from the tenure system.” It updates Berry’s previous survey of the field in Reclaiming the Ivory Tower (Monthly Review Press, 2005) and draws heavily on their own experience in California and other states. Their detailed case study of membership mobilization, contract bargaining, and political action by the California Faculty Association (CFA) illustrates many of the continuing challenges facing  contingent faculty trying to form their own bargaining units or influence the direction of unions that include tenure line teaching staff with sometimes divergent interests.

As described in Power Despite Precarity, four decades of union building, within the CFA, have produced “the best contingent faculty contract in the U.S,” which now covers seventy percent of a faculty of 28,000 on 23 campuses. Adjuncts–or “lecturers” as they’re called in the California State University (CSU) system– “have taken leading roles throughout the union, which has maintained a high level of internal organization and membership despite the loss of agency fee funding,” due to the Supreme Court’s Janus decision. An internal union body known as the Lecturer’s Council of the CFA continues to be an important locus of struggle “both vis-à-vis the employer and within the union.”

In the 1970s, non-tenure track faculty, hired on a per class, per semester basis, had little voice in CSU workplaces. Many felt constrained from speaking their minds in front of tenure-line faculty, particularly if the department heads supervising them were union members themselves. In 1979, the California legislature authorized collective bargaining for CSU faculty, including lecturers. Three years later, two organizations battled each other for bargaining rights—the United Professors of California, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, and the more conservative Congress of Faculty Associations, which “made no secret of looking down on Lecturers and hoping to split them off into a separate bargaining unit.”

In a run-off vote, the more welcoming UPC was narrowly defeated, in part because it failed to prioritize campaigning among lecturers. Ultimately, the CFA was forced to bargain for both tenure-line faculty and lecturers in the same unit. The CFA also avoided any further election competition from the UPC, when it became part of the Service Employees, via the latter’s larger affiliation with the California State Employees Association.

Circle The Wagons?

For adjuncts, the challenge was the same regardless of their union affiliation.  As the authors note, the anti-union climate of the 1980s encouraged many higher ed unions “to assume a defensive circle-the-wagons approach” rather than the “aggressive organizing posture they had taken in the 1960s and 1970s that had led to high-density faculty representation” in states with strong public sector bargaining laws. At the same time, “people working in what felt like the lower depths of college and university systems” were experiencing “bad working conditions, lack of job security, low pay, and lack of opportunities for professional advancement.” In the CFA, this forced them to organize and assert themselves in elections for union office, statewide bargaining committees and contract campaigns, and local contract enforcement.

Berry and Worthen profile Lecturers Council leaders who found creative ways to enforce new contract protections against unfair lay-offs and denial of step increases. In 1994, the CFA helped adjuncts, with sufficient course loads, gain access to employer-paid health care coverage. This new benefit, achieved through legislation rather than bargaining, became a valuable tool for membership recruitment. But members of the CFA “old guard”—the mostly white, older male tenure-line leaders of the union—still downplayed lecturer problems and concerns. In response to an unpopular contract settlement in 1995, that weakened what little job security lecturers had, some started building an opposition caucus within the CFA.

By the union’s next bargaining round, in 1998-99, rank-and-file activists, like Susan Meisenhelder, a former lecturer who had gained tenure, were able to rally members against another bad agreement reached without any workplace agitation or activity. In 1999, Meisenhelder and other reform candidates mounted a re-election challenge to the CFA’s incumbent president, other statewide officials, and members of its board of directors. All the old guard officers were defeated, Meisenhelder became president, and her union vice-president was, for the first time, a lecturer, rather than a tenure track faculty member.

In various ways, the new leadership struggled to replace the “the service-oriented bureaucratic culture of the CFA” with a more activist approach, which included mounting credible strike threats and taking the union’s case to the public. Outside consultants and new staff were hired who could help the union bargain from a position of greater strength, through membership recruitment, education, and collective action. Local rank-and-file leaders were invited to participate in a strategic planning process that included a series of conferences on “The Future of the University.” At these campus gatherings, members critiqued the “corporatization” of higher education and brainstormed about alternatives to the predominant “business model” of CSU administrators. To win a more favorable statewide contract, the new leadership prepared for a system-wide rolling strike, a threat which only became credible after strengthening the role of lecturers in the union and highlighting, rather than ignoring, their bargaining priorities.

A Stronger Union and Better Contract

According to Berry and Worthen, the long-term results of this effort are reflected in both the CFA contract and structural changes within the union. The latter insured that lecturers are now better represented at all levels of the organization and “an important constituency in CFA.”

Contingent faculty members have become particularly active in “an anti-racist and social justice initiative which includes representatives on each campus, a vice-presidential seat on the board, and a robust effort to incorporate these concerns into all aspects of the union’s work.”

The CFA’s current collective bargaining agreement—its tenth since union certification—enables “someone working as a contingent in the CSU system to make enough money to lead a decent life—if they are assigned enough classes and if the live in a part of California where there is affordable housing.” Lecturers who teach 40 percent of a full-time load get job-based benefits identical to the medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance coverage of tenure-line faculty. Other rights and benefits for adjuncts also provide “a level of contractual equality that is extremely rare,” according to the authors, who also praise CFA bargaining demands “that go beyond traditional job issues and address the quality of education, especially access to it by members of traditional minority populations.”

As the authors note, new adjunct organizing has benefited from an influx of veterans from graduate student employee organizations, affiliated either with the AFT or amalgamated unions like the UAW, CWA, and UE.  These grad student unions—representing teaching and research assistants at both public and private universities—have grown steadily over the past thirty years. Some of their activists became so involved in organizing and bargaining that they abandoned academia for trade union careers. As opportunities to obtain tenure track positions continue to shrink for newly minted PhDs, many have joined the ranks of contingent faculty. According to the authors, “new leaders have emerged who are younger, often women or people of color, reflecting the actual workforce more accurately than leaders in the past.”

Faculty Forward

In recent campaigns at private-sector institutions, tens of thousands of adjuncts have become part of SEIU’s “Faculty Forward” campaign, rather than join traditional education unions. One strength of the SEIU approach is what the authors call a “metro strategy,” which means organizing contingent faculty as a regional workforce rather than targeting a single campus.  One downside is SEIU’s long-standing propensity for currying favor with potential industry partners before affected workers have much say in the matter. In California, where the union’s membership includes few adjuncts other than those in its statewide CFA unit, the SEIU State Council backed a bill, signed by Governor Newsom last Fall, that will limit lawsuits, under the state’s wage and hour laws, against wealthy private institutions like Stanford University.  The legislation does set a new minimum hourly rate for classroom hours worked, which may provide a floor for future wage negotiations by adjuncts able to win bargaining rights with help from SEIU or other unions.

But, in California and Washington state, class action litigation has already netted millions of dollars for underpaid and still mostly unorganized contingent faculty. In Washington, a lawsuit against state community colleges resulted in an out of court settlement benefiting thousands of adjuncts and making benefit eligibility easier, which leads one longtime advocate for adjuncts to question the value of SEIU’s lobbying. “Why on earth would a union representing adjuncts side with private colleges being sued for wage theft for not paying adjuncts for all of the hours worked outside of class?” asks Keith Hoeller, a Part-Time Faculty Association organizer in Washington state and editor of Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System. “It’s still not clear to me that AB 736 actually raises pay for current adjuncts at private colleges or will do so in the future. But it does seem like SEIU wanted to get into the good graces of private college administrators and supporting this bill would certainly do that.”

What other lessons can be learned from the experience of adjuncts who have already unionized? The authors argue that contingent faculty–as a majority of the academic workforce and, often, its union ranks as well–should prioritize “democratizing their unions and generating maximum feasible participation in them.” Adjuncts need to develop the “capacity to speak as an independent collective voice within whatever over-arching organization” they choose to affiliate with. They also need to align their own quest for a better deal, within higher education, with the struggles of millions of other precarious workers who lack secure jobs, paid maternity, family or sick leave, adequate unemployment benefits, and affordable healthcare. In that same spirit, Power Despite Precarity is not just a solid guide to best practices in day-to-day trade union work within higher education. It’s also a rousing call for the contingent faculty movement to embrace grassroots, rather than top-down, organizing and break out of the narrow confines of collective bargaining, as traditionally defined.

About Author 
As a national staff member of the Communications Workers of America, Steve Early was involved in union bargaining in both the private and public sector, including in higher education. He is the author of four books about labor and politics and co-author of a forthcoming book on veterans’ affairs. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.

HOD Sept.

Report on the Meeting of the House of Delegates on September 1, 2021

By George Milkowski

I. Officer Reports

A. Recording Secretary Christel Williams-Hayes reported that ongoing bargaining over the summer has resulted in the CPS agreeing to setting up 150 new school assistant positions..

B. Financial Report Kathy Catalano – Our fiscal year is from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021.  Kathy said we received $603,549 more than expected and expenditures were $358,311 more than budgeted.  

Also, member investment in the CTU (usually referred to as “dues”) for the year will be $1,202.80 and for PSRPs it will be $721.68.

C. CTU-CTS Report – Chris Baehrend.  Chris said that seven of the thirteen unionized charter schools have reached safety re-opening agreements. The particulars include mandatory three feet social distancing; more nurses, social workers and paraprofessionals; no simultaneous teaching and paid days if quarantine is required.

D. Recording Secretary Maria Moreno – Maria reported that membership is 28,029 and of that 1,792 are retirees.  Teachers still have the right to opt out of CTU membership.  I asked how many have decided to opt out and Marty Ritter (CTU staffer) said “Few, less than 1%.”

E. Vice President Stacy Davis Gates  - Stacy welcomed everyone back.  She agreed that the COVID Delta variant is a concern and lauded the CTU staff for getting our message about this out to the general public and also our Union podcast, “CTU Speaks” hosted by Andrea Parker a Hyde Park graduate) and Jim Staros.

Thanks to the Union’s advocacy the CPS will have vaccination events in 50 schools this year.  She asked delegates to prioritize vaccination information this year for those who are 12 years old and older.  Note: only one of her kids has been vaccinated, as the other two are too young.  Stacy stressed that delegates must make full use of the agreed to safety committees to protect the students, faculty and staff of every school.

II. President’s Report – Jesse Sharkey

Pres. Sharkey recognized that returning to in-person teaching is stressful and agonizing.  He said Mayor Lori Lighfoot is trying to backtrack on what protocols are needed for a safe return to school.  He said the CPS has agreed to masks, school safety committees and better cleaning, but the safety committees are a tool that will be effective only if used.  He added that if the CPS is not willing to consider the health concerns in classrooms, then more direct action may be needed.

III. Item for Action

A.  A resolution was presented that asks that the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund divest from its portfolio stock in fossil fuel companies.  The CTPF has 1.6% of its holdings in fossil fuel corporations.  Sandra Beck opposed this, arguing that she doesn’t think the CTU should be telling the Pension Fund what to invest in or not.  Nick Limbeck, William Reed, Jackson Potter and myself spoke in favor of it.  With climate change becoming more obvious, the value of fossil fuel companies will decline and they will become “stranded assets”, i.e., stocks of low value that no one would want to buy.  I pointed out that in the last ten years the CTPF divested from companies that produce guns. 

NOTE: because the Board Trustees have a fiduciary obligation; they CANNOT just sell off stocks. By law, they are required to sell them only if they can find some other instrument with and equal or better return.

A motion by Erin Lynch to end debate passed 96%-4%.  The resolution itself, on which I voted “yes”, passed 86%-14%.

B. A second resolution presented by the Retiree Committee passed 98%-2%.  This would require the Union to stop referring to the “pension holidays” that were granted to the CPS as holidays and instead call them “pension defaults”, which is a more accurate description.  I voted “yes” on this too.

IV. Department/Committee Reports

Organizing – Jhoanna Maldanado – With the start of the school year Jhoanna spoke of the necessity of having active safety committees and elections, if required, for school PPCs.  She said if the administration in a school is reluctant to work with a safety committee, then the PPC should contact the LSC and perhaps prepare a letter to go to parents.

Grievance Report – Lois Jones.  Lois said delegates need to welcome new faculty and staff members and try to get them involved with the Union.  Also, there may be a need in some schools to fill vacancies on the PPC.

Lois added that teachers should see a 3% pay increase in their first check, but they should double-check their pay stub to make sure.  Also, for the first time there is a Lane III for PSRPs.

Lastly, delegates need to keep tabs on class sizes.

Legislation/Political Action – Kurt Hilgendirf.  Kurt went over our four major wins in Springfield this year: full restoration of our bargaining rights, an elected representative school board, contract teachers being added to the CTPF, and the teacher evaluation cycle extended from two to three years.

Kurt reminded the body that there are primary and general elections in 2022 and we need to start thinking ahead to 2024 when the first elections for a Chicago school board will be held.

V. New Business/Q and A

Karin Moreno asked what happens if a school is closed due to the pandemic and a CPS teacher is the parent of one of the students in that closed school? Jesse said the CPS will allow that teacher two days to work from home. After that, he/she will have to use sick days.

Dennis Kosuth said that nurse staffing is a HUGE mess.  With the Board receiving almost $2 billion in COVID relief funds they still can’t seem to do very much right.

Karen Trine from Whitney Young asked what is the status of her request a few meetings back of allowing PSRPs to run for the school delegate position? Jesse Sharkey and Christel Williams-Hayes said there are some legal problems with the CTU constitution, but both think it is a good idea.  The Executive Board is still working on it.

James Klock from Juarez commented on the monitoring of air quality in classrooms.  He said that delegates need to insist that reported readings must reflect a classroom while it has students in it; not when it is empty.

Frank MacDonald from Washington High said that much of the work on safety committees has to be done outside of the normal school day and asked if a stipend could be granted for those on the committee.  Jesse agreed but said that Board so far has refused to pay anything, but the CTU will keep pushing it.

At this time there was a motion to extend debate but it failed, 58%-42%. That was followed by a motion to adjourn which passed 955-5%.voted to extend.  With that the meeting ended at 7:062p.m.

Flowers

DON'T BRING FLOWERS 

 

A recent survey finds most Russian school teachers don't welcome their school students showering them with flowers on the 1st of  September and some  have even told them not to bring them but flowers keep on coming. Old customs apparently die hard.

 

By Stephen Wilson

 

September 1 is the traditional first day of school 
in Russia when children bring flowers for the teachers.

"Yes I told parents to stop bringing flowers! I work in Lefortovo, but I live in Balashikhe. Every time {on the 1st of September} I have to order a taxi to take this flower shop home and have no where to put them. Two days later they wilt and even bringing them to the courtyard is a problem for me. By the way, to gather those flowers in a whole sack is heavy. We want to put it bluntly that our pay is not big. It offends me that such money is spent on wasted things. I have already hinted to the parents to give me some make up or something useful," complains the school teacher Tatiana  Aleksandrom. 

Oksana Chebotareva, a Russian English teacher, told me that after the 1st of September she notices that often the school bins are crammed full of dead flowers. She told me, "We get so many flowers we often end up giving them to the school cleaners."

 

The Russian school teachers were referring to the old custom where every 1st of September which marks the beginning of the academic year, practically every school child bring their school teacher a bouquet of flowers. At this time of year an estimated 17.1 million school students converge on Russian schools, and almost 2 million of them are first year school students. On this day all the children seem to surface from nowhere. They are conspicuous by their smart white shirts, and black or gray trousers as well as their lively banter on the streets. The streets of Moscow are seized by a lively and elated festive atmosphere. And even older people can be infected by their buoyant mood as they seem happy to see each other. But other reclusive and isolated students you might see going gloomily to and back to school.

The old custom of school students bringing flowers to their teachers is old. It stretches back 70 years to 1954-1955. But then the custom was different. It was mainly the male pupils who were expected to bring flowers to predominately female teachers. The female pupils were under no obligation and even then, the children usually clubbed together to present a bouquet of flowers. But now every student might bring a bouquet to a single teacher leaving a perplexed school teacher who doesn't know what to do with them or can 't carry them all home!  The custom of presenting flowers not only manifests itself in Education, but on March the 8th International Women's Day, on birthdays and to old veterans of the Great Patriotic War. But not every war veteran welcomes this. When I tried to present a bouquet of flowers to one war veteran a few years ago whom I know, he gallantly told me, "I can't take them. Give them to a woman".

Russians also have a custom where anyone in the audience of the theater can come up on to the stage after a performance and present an actor with a bouquet of flowers. When Yevgeni, a Russian businessman, did this in London after a performance, the cast were shocked. They just don't have this custom in England. Yevgeni told me that when he attempted to present a relative with a bouquet of flowers on her birthday abroad in the Arab Emirates it took him hours to find a florist. They don't have deeply rooted customs of giving flowers there as in Russia.

 

A recent sociological survey carried out in Russia in 2021, whose results were published by the newspaper of the Teacher's Union 'Teacher' found that 82% of teachers surveyed were against flowers being brought to them by school students. They often thought it was enough for the whole class to bring just one bouquet.{29%}More than half {75%} had already made this request via the administration. But requests by teachers to parents to stop bringing flowers proved in vain. They just keep on bringing them. As many as 67% of teachers polled thought that the money spent on flowers could be put to better use in the classroom. As many as 29% think the money would be better spent on school excursions or tickets to go to the theater. However, only 9% polled believed the money would be better spent through a donation to charity suggesting not everyone endorses the idea held by a pressure group to devote all the money to sick children or orphans.

 

How might we explain the results? Perhaps we live in a new era where more attention has been drawn to wasteful consumption, ecological issues and the rising popularity of charity. It might be the case that unlike during previous times, people did not purchase such a mass of flowers and that parents are overdoing the custom.

 

Nevertheless not all school teachers are against receiving flowers on this day. A school Primary teacher called Lena Leonidava stated, "I always react with pleasure to receiving flowers. We even have a custom where my daughter visits me every year to especially help me take them home ... I would 't like it if such a custom died out!" 

Given the insistence on parents continuing to bring flowers to school teachers despite their reluctance to take them, the death of this custom is not imminent.

What's a Name?

'WHAT"S IN A NAME?'

By Stephen Wilson

 

'We are not servants but teachers,' declared a Russian school teacher to President Putin at a recently held video conference of teachers, parents, and school students held on the 25th August to discuss issues of Education on the eve of the new academic year which commences on 1st September. 

However, much more pressing issues such as unfair dismissal, low pay, excessive paperwork and illegal political intervention to force some teachers to vote for the government party were barely addressed never mind acknowledged.

 

'What's in a name?' That which we call a rose by any other name would never smell as sweet,' laments Juliet to her beloved Romeo, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. A name should not really matter, should it? But that is not how some Russian school teachers see things. For them names do matter. How you name the profession of a teacher can exert a profound impact on how the public perceives and actually relates to them. Zhanna Torkhova of School No. 26 in Yaroslavya  told Putin, "Concerning our work as teachers they call us servants. In my opinion and that of my colleagues this is incorrect. I am a winner of an All Russian competition 'Big Change', and don't consider myself a servant. On the contrary, I am proud of the fact that I'm a teacher. I insist that I teach, help, we befriend, and I believe in what is the main thing, to be a friend of children ...  I am certain that there is a necessity to promote a positive image of a teacher through the creation of mass culture, in the cinema, in the theater, in literature! It is funny to observe the image of Snezhania Denisovni, in 'Our Russia' {a popular Russian comedy shown on television showing a foolish and corrupt Russian school teacher}, but this destroys the image of school teachers. We understand what powerful attractive images existed in Soviet Literature and the Cinema in the films 'Until Monday' and 'Big Change'. 

After listening to this sermon, Putin responded by claiming he himself works in the sphere of services and is a servant to his people, but he understood that teachers had their own kind of pride where they can't afford to be seen as 'servants'. But the President did not at first seem to agree with the teacher saying "I'd think you'd agree with me that there is nothing offensive about the word 'Servant'. I often hear the word used to identify others who work in the areas of work such as medics and doctors. Are they also offended when people call them servants? 

But he ended up agreeing that may be it is better not to call teachers servants in order not to offend the sensitivity of the teacher on the eve of elections. The President also thought it would not be a bad idea to introduce into schools the custom in other countries where the national flag of a country is raised every day. He also cited a sociological survey which indicated that 96% of school teachers value and love their profession and that such an attitude ought to be supported and encouraged. Their work should not be seen as a mere service, but a mission.

 

What are we to make of this statement by Zhanna Torkhova? Does changing the name of a profession really make a difference? The government renamed the militia the police, but it's repressive role has hardly changed if you observe how they continue to detain and arrest a person for simply holding up a placard in the streets. Would Torkhova be offended by the spokesman of the Union Teacher who called teachers 'slaves ' without practically any rights? After all, the word slave actually does depict the sad reality of a school teacher who works long hours and can be unfairly fired for petty reasons such as posting a photo of themselves lying on the beach! As if calling a teacher a teacher can conjure away the problems which teachers face like a magic spell. And why should literature and films be under obligation to always promote 'positive images' of school teachers? How would the state go about doing this? Ban certain films that don't do this? Given the history of Russia such future censorship can't be ruled out. Such censorship is already hampering stand up comedians in Russia and the West. You would have to ban the plays and short stories of Chekhov because he often portrays school teachers in an unflattering light.

 

In fact it is even questionable whether the cited films by Torkhova promote a completely positive image of school teachers. They present complex and ambiguous images which can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, take the classic film 'Until Monday' {1968} directed by Stanislaw Rostolsky. It is a wonderful film, but how might we view the role of the history teacher Ilya Melnikov, played by Vyaleslav Tikhonov? Should school teachers attempt to emulate him? Is he a real role model? For example, Melnikov walks into a staff room and scolds a Russian teacher for speaking in a common and vulgar way like a vendor in the market in a humiliating way and at first refuses to help a young novice school teacher having a problem in class because ' my work has finished'. In fact, the film shows a disenchanted and disillusioned teacher who wants to quit his job because he feels he is not up to it. I think any young teacher beginning their career would be put off taking up the profession of teaching rather than embracing it after watching this film. The film's merit is that it more honestly and artistically presents teachers as vulnerable human beings. And the film 'Big Change', {1972} directed by Aleksi Korenev, shows a bitter teacher who hasn't much of a clue on how to communicate with his students never mind teachers, lacks a lot of empathy and is also rude to many people. The latter film should be viewed mainly as a brilliant comedy held together by the cream of a legendary cast of excellent Soviet actors. But as for promoting a completely positive image of teachers we can express reasonable reservations.

 

Where does the President obtain the figure that 96% of school teachers value and love their profession? No reliable source was provided of this sociological study. Indeed such a Russian sociological study exists, but the figure of 96% was not from the Russian survey but an American survey of American teachers the Russian sociologists were citing! {see 2020 survey by R.A. Bilkov and Vlasov, from Tomsk,} Of course, maybe most teachers do like and value their profession, but it does not logically imply that they are content with their work and conditions. Such a finding does not seem convincing to school students who constantly tell me how their school teachers look unhappy, shout loudly and look at the clock to see how long their lesson has to continue for.

 

Zhanna Torkhova is right to assert that a teacher ought at least to be viewed as a teacher with authority. This is because in the West and Russia we have witnessed the rise of popular methodologies where the authority of the teacher is negated on the grounds that students are customers who have paid a fee so we believe they have a right to order a teacher around as if he or she is a servant. Instead of the teacher instructing the pupil, the pupil tells the teacher what to do because he pays the money. So you have an absurd situation where school teachers are ordered to 'entertain ' pupils because that is what the pupils want. So teachers end up attempting to emulate stand up comedians rather than teaching their subject. This might be good news for teachers who want to become stand up comedians, but bad news for teachers who take their profession seriously. The fact is that there will always be a degree of tension between the teacher and student. And a teacher can't exactly be like a friend of a pupil in the same way as the pupil's classmate. They can be friendly, but not too familiar in the way he or she is like a fellow pupil.

 

At this video conference, children were present, but nobody asked their opinions about what they thought. There again, many people don't think children have a right to an opinion. So this video conference was to quote Shakespeare again 'Much a do about Nothing'. All the very important issues which affect school teachers, such as low pay, poor conditions, overwork, unfair dismissal, lack of academic freedom, too much paperwork and teachers being told that unless they vote for United Russia they can lose their jobs were not even touched upon. It was all a carefully scripted and controlled video conference to prevent provocations. You can call a teacher a teacher, but he is still a slave. Nothing can conceal the fact that we are indeed treated like slaves, whatever we are called!

Fossil Fuel divest

Chicago Teachers Union Delegates Vote to Divest from Fossil Fuels

By Jim Vail

Phil Weiss Members First CTPF Trustee &
Investment Chair

The Chicago Teachers Union delegates voted overwhelmingly in support of encouraging the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund to divest from fossil fuels.

The delegates voted 86% in favor and 14% against the resolution that will "implore" the trustees of the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund to ask an independent consultant to review the fund's investments in the fossil fuels industry which includes oil, gas and coal that scientists say are destroying the planet.

The resolution further stated that once the review is complete they would like the Fund to disinvest from fossil fuel funds and support investments that enable governments to convert to renewable energy.

The Teachers Pension Fund invests about $242 million in the fossil fuel industry, or about 1.6 percent of its total portfolio in a $12 billion fund. But union officials said this resolution will send a strong message to the country to act likewise.

A pension researcher told participants at a recent CTU Chicago Teachers Pension Fund forum that public pensions are heavy investors in the fossil fuels industry.

One delegate who spoke against the resolution said this could be a slippery slope if the CTU tells the pension board how to invest its money in a fund that is on shaky ground due to its low funding ratio. "I have a problem telling investors how to invest our money."

Jackson Potter, a CTU delegate, trustee and founder of Core who teaches at Back of the Yards High School, said the union has a vital interest in the environment, citing the environmental problems on the South Side where children have chronic illnesses such as asthma due to fossil fuel industries polluting their environment. "How can we justify investing in an industry that is killing us?"

The resolution was worded in a way that will not force the pension fund to divest from the fossil fuel industry, but rather encourage "possible divestiture from these companies."

The November election for new trustees - two teacher trustees and three retired teacher trustees - is important when it comes to following up on this resolution.

Almost all the trustees on the fund ran on the Core ticket and they have taken an active role in wedding social justice issues to investments. They led the campaign to defund the CTPF from the private prison and gun manufacturer industries. They also became the first pension fund in the country to eliminate investing with hedge funds who are notorious for charging high fees.

However, another teacher caucus may challenge this strategy in the next election. Members First Phil Weiss was elected to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund last fall. Some believe Weiss was elected due to his strong financial background that mirrored Core winner Tina Padilla who holds an MBA in finance.

"I know CORE hates the Private Equity Firm KKR," Weiss wrote on facebook. "FYI-162% gain shared $500 million with their hourly workers! As far as I am concerned we are going to continue to Responsibly Grow our Retirement Wealth!"

Weiss was upset he was not invited to speak to the CTU forum on the CTPF which asked why public pension funds invest in the fossil fuel industry. He then stated that he disagreed with statements at the forum that were critical of KKR, a private equity firm known for buyouts of large companies that result in massive layoffs. 

The speakers at the union pension fund forum included an AFT pension fund researcher, Pension Trustee Jaqueline Price-Ward and former CTPF President Jay Rehak, both with CORE. None of the five Members First candidates who are running in the November election were present. One MF candidate told Second City Teachers they were not invited to the event. 

The CTPF lobbyist told trustees at the last pension board meeting that there has been no discussion about divesting in the fossil fuel industry in the Illinois House of Representatives. She said there are still a number of coal mines open in southern Illinois. However, the coal companies have been replacing their union labor with contractors who are working in more unsafe conditions with less regulatory oversight due to the lack of union protection.

"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as a CTPF trustee and Chair of Investments," Phil Weiss stated on facebook over an article entitled, "Teachers Pension Funds Sees Record Return." The CTPF earned a whopping 28 percent return on investments last year.

While it appeared Weiss was taking credit for the record returns, the fact is the return was generated last year under both Phil Weiss and Tina Padilla, who served as the Investments Chair until they both won in last year's October teacher trustee election. Pension Board President Jeffery Blackwell, who censured Padilla and two other trustees for alleged unprofessional behavior, then removed Padilla as the chair of investments and replaced her with Weiss. Weiss in turn made the motion to censure Padilla and the others.

In another measure at the House of Delegates meeting on Wednesday, the delegates voted almost unanimously to change the wording from pension holiday to pension default. The pension holiday was first proposed by Mayor Richard Daley when he took the teachers pension money that was 100 percent funded to borrow for operating costs including funding charter schools that would replace the public school teachers jobs. He promised to return the money when it would fall to 90 percent, but of course never kept his promise. The CTU lobbied to reenact the pension levy so that property taxes would go directly to the fund and could not be diverted by politicians. 

The wording change was meant so that people would not see this as some kind of a vacation, but a serious assault on public pensions by the business class via politicians that they pay to get elected.

The two resolutions on pensions was after almost a year of no reports on the pension fund at the House of Delegates meetings amidst the scandal President Jeffery Blackwell generated when he attacked and censured three female minority trustees and reprimanded a fourth female trustee and voted himself in as an interim director of the fund before they hired a permanent replacement recently.