Media

What the Media Wants You to Believe

By George Schmidt

George Schmidt's words of wisdom live on.

Substance is reprinting my short book “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” in its original form (save for an increase in page size and an increase in price) after several years of renewed interest in it.

I was at first pleased—but surprised—to find that intelligent and committed people were still interested in this brief study nearly a quarter century after it was researched and written. Looking back on the 26 years we have been publishing the teachers’ newspaper Substance in Chicago, however, it should not have been as surprising as it first seemed to me. There is the same connection across generations now as there was when my generation struggled to locate and learn the history of American radicalism during the Orwellian brainwash of the early 1960s.

Those who grew up, as I did, in the working class towns of industrial America during the 1950s were cut off from our past, often by our own parents. We were denied access to the legacies of protest and militancy that had a long and honorable tradition in the United States of America. The unions had been built by others. Civil rights was for rich college kids and black preachers. Feminism was not for our mothers or sisters. And woe betide our brothers (or sisters) if their sexual preferences deviated from the “Leave it to Beaver” orthodoxies of the mass media—or the even more viciously policed barriers to love erected by the Archbishop of Newark.

Our histories were not our own. Born in places like Elizabeth, New Jersey, and raised in Linden, New Jersey, we were supposed to view militant labor radicalism, the anti-war movement, civil rights activism, feminism and the vast poetries and potentials of human affection as something alien and subversive. The outsiders who practiced such things were not welcome on our block, or on Broad Street in Elizabeth, or on Wood Avenue in Linden. The people who wrote books about us were not our neighbors.

The children of American workers were not supposed to think subversively about the reign of American capital, either at home or abroad. The propagandists who brought that world view to the minds of children like myself 50 years ago are still working today. This little book is about some of them, and how they do their work among teachers. The people who tell America how to think about itself today are telling us that those industrial places where most of us live are rendered realistically in the media. They tell us that “The Sopranos” is a better way to understand white working class people from Elizabeth, New Jersey, than other methods. Certainly no one is to go to the area and walk through downtown Linden, Rahway, Elizabeth, or Freehold and visit our high school classrooms, gyms and sports fields. Brainwashing is a long discussion for a different time, but it is quite relevant to why we are reprinting this little book about one union at one moment in history.

In order to make people do what they want, any ruling class first has to make people think that a certain way of viewing the world is the only way. Conversely, in order to act more clearly and liberate ourselves, we have to develop critical thinking skills quite different from the ones presently sanctioned in our schools. We have to counter many of the official lies. As one character says in the movie Platoon—“Free your mind and your ass will follow.”

Maintaining the slavery of people’s minds is one of the main jobs of every ruling class. This involves a twofold dialectical process of suppressing (or distorting) the truth and of elevating banal fictions about persistent facts. Together today, these activities are called “Public Relations,” in politics, “Spin.” They are always lies in the service of power. There have been some changes in the tactics used to suppress the truth since this little book was first published, but not in fundamentals.

Propaganda still parades everywhere as “news.” The law is still invoked to suppress dissent. It’s still expensive (albeit perhaps not as physically dangerous) to publish and speak the truth about those who run the world. One of the things accomplished by the end of the Cold War was the unleashing of thousands of trained propagandists on the rest of the world. No longer in the employ of the governments that fought the Cold War, these men and women offered themselves for employment to the highest bidder.

Truth, again, was to be the first casualty. A dozen examples could be offered on any single day. In July 2001, anyone who paid careful attention to the media could read that the deceased owner of Newsweek was a heroine of free speech and a free press. We could then turn to the pages of Newsweek and read that protesters who threw things at police should be shot dead with a bullet in the head. This “They are only getting what they deserve” version of reality has its roots as old as history itself. Less than a week after dozens of peaceful activists from around the world were hospitalized by the brutality of Italian security forces (now led by fans of Benito Mussolini), most of us were supposed to believe that the dissidents got what they deserved.

Those who confronted official lies have long known that the liars usually are better funded and more polished than those who try to bring out unpleasant truths. Gone with the Wind is still more widely read and profitable today than The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. How does all this relate to the republication of a little book written a few years after the last American C.I.A. operative was pulled out of Vietnam (or disgracefully left behind to the not-so-tender mercies of the victors in that terrible conflict)? Our monthly teachers’ newspaper Substance bridges a few generations in the annals of critical reporting. Founded the year Saigon was liberated and Vietnam reunited, Substance has continued publishing continuously since. We have been around from the days of the Killing Fields to the years of the Battle of Seattle, the insanity of the “anti-drug” war on the poor in Colombia, the vicious official brutality of Genoa, and the daily attacks on the poor in all of the largest cities in the United States of America. And we came under attack, too, from the same people.

As readers of Substance know, in January 1999 the “Testocracy” sued me for $1 million and suspended me from my 30-year teaching job in Chicago’s inner city. Officially, the “Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees” sued us for a million dollars for “copyright infringement.” In January 1999, Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas (praised nationally for his fictitious “miracle” in the city’s public school system), with the full support of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (the man whose brother ran Al Gore’s election campaign) began the process of legal maneuvering against us. That maneuvering led to my termination as a public school teacher at the August 2000 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Still pending is the claim that our act of publishing facts entitles the Chicago Board of Education to get $1 million from us.

What was our crime? Publishing a handful of dumb tests that Chicago had just forced its high school students to take. Our crime was publishing facts that didn’t jive with the official version of The Truth. It’s been difficult to face off once again against the thugs who rule Chicago today. The assault on my career and the newspaper I edit has also provided me with an opportunity. It has given me the chance to meet a new generation of activists and to have some time away from the daily demands of classroom teaching to study and understand the movements that are growing today.

One of the strange highlights of the past three years was arriving in June 1999 at a conference of the Rouge Forum and Whole Schooling Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit. We had been invited there by people in Detroit who had heard about our struggle in Chicago over the Internet. My wife Sharon and I had driven from Chicago to Detroit and were late. As we walked up to the sign-in table, I was asked, “Who are you?” “I’m the guy who wrote that little book,” I said. Displayed among the literature near the registration table were a number of photocopies of “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” I was told that people in Detroit had been reading the book as part of their study of the forces once again arrayed against the rights of the majority of people. Many, I was told, had thought the person who wrote the book was dead or out of political life. In fact, we had remained in the politics of Chicago and its schools, while others had gone elsewhere. We had stayed at the grass roots while others found that their “movement” pasts could be brokered into quite comfortable presents and futures.

Rereading “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” 23 years after we first sold it at the 1978 convention of the American Federation of Teachers, I am glad for several things. Reading the accounts of the C.I.A. speaker Irving Brown at the 1977 AFT convention still gives me chills. I am glad that the facts we reported then still stand up now. I am glad to have worked with thousands of men and women who had the courage to oppose U.S. imperialism—both abroad and in our own cities—during those decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and beyond. I am proud that I can tell my sons what I did to halt the terrors of white supremacy during the century when it was at its most vicious.

It has been an honor to work with those who continued to oppose the atrocities of the “system”—even in the sugarcoated forms that were being prepared then (and which would be unleashed after the Reagan presidency began in 1981) and the cloying, trendy seductiveness of the “New Democrats” who ascended to power under Bill Clinton.

A great deal has happened since 1977 and 1978, when this book was researched and written. Most notably, for those interested in the topic covered in this book, was the collapse of Soviet-style Communism and its replacement by a brand of rapacious capitalism, often led by criminals and former intelligence operatives, throughout the former Soviet Union and across what was once called the “Eastern Bloc.” There have been attempts by the U.S. business press to present the nastiness of privatization and the “free market” in Russia as something unique, as if it stems from a Slavic gene.

Even a brief but honest history of capitalism in its various national inceptions shows that the abstract “market” preached by professors is really closer to the drive-by version practiced in places as diverse as Moscow, Manila, Los Angeles, Chicago, Santiago or Mexico City. 

Who are they kidding?

Capital bares its fangs behind the apologetics of those who abstractly preach about “free markets” and a “free world.”

This little book is about what one American trade union did during one period in its history. Why is it relevant today? I would argue that the international corporate capitalism practiced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during its Cold War heyday is the predecessor to the “globalism” that is generating a new generation of protest today.

Similarly, the class collaborationism of many trade union leaders is part of that process of subordinating people across the planet to the global reign of unbridled capital.

The saga of the American Federation of Teachers and its subordination to the agendas of America’s corporate leaders continues today in the union’s reluctance to support militant trade union organizing throughout the United States and, especially, in those nations were working people are most clearly the victims of globalization.

The American Federation of Teachers today is also the main union supporting the corporate drive—led by those we call the “Testocracy”—to subordinate the desires of the majority of people for democratic public schools to the agenda of the ruling class.

Just as during the Cold War, we are presented with “accountability” for the majority of people while those who run things are only accountable to themselves.

The growing international protest movements against “globalization” and the vicious attacks on these movements—and especially on their leaders—are nothing new in the ongoing struggle between capital and the majority of humanity. Hopefully, the republication of this small book will help to put some of the less visible portions of the history of our struggles into perspective. During the coming years, much more will need to be published about these issues. The republication of “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” is meant to provide people with one additional tool for understanding the facts of history, rather than the glib generalizations which serve only those who wish to abuse humanity and the history we are all creating.

Pension Committees

Despite Harsh Rhetoric MF & CORE Join Forces on Pension Board

By Jim Vail

MF Pension Trustee Victor Ochoa

There is rhetoric, and then there is reality.

The war of words between Members First and CORE have heated up lately after Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates accused MF of being a part of the Illinois Policy Institute. The IPI helped lead an attack on the CTU by trying to get members to opt out of the union.

Gates even called MF Teachers Pension Trustee Phil Weiss the campaign manager for failed Republican Governor candidate Darren Bailey.

But despite these incendiary words - CORE, who controls the number of seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Board, voted in favor of Phil Weiss to continue as Chairman of the Fund's Investment Committee and voted for MF Pension Trustee Victor Ochoa to chair the Technology Committee.

In fact, Trustee Weiss endorsed CORE Trustee Jeffery Blackwell during the campaign before his re-election.

The public fight between the two union caucuses apparently turned into a love fest.

And independents be damned! Retired Teacher Pension Trustee Maria J. Rodriguez and Teacher Pension Trustee Tina Padilla who is not affiliated with either CORE or MF will not chair any committees. 

Recently elected Teacher Pension Trustees Jeffery Blackwell will continue to be the President of the Pension Board, and Jaqueline Price Ward will be the new Vice President.

The new Committee heads were named at the Chicago Teachers Pension Board meeting on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022.  

The Financial Secretary will be Retired Teacher Trustee Mary Sharon Reilly and Recording Secretary will be Retired Teacher Trustee Lois Nelson.

The Finance and Audit Committee chair will be (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly. This Committee is powerful because it provides oversight of management's administration of the Fund's annual budget and financial operations.

The Pension Laws and Administrative Rules Committee will be chaired by (CORE) Jacqueline Price Ward. It establishes CTPF's legislative agenda.

It recommends or proposes pension legislation.

Claims and Service Credits Committee will be headed by (CORE) Quentin Washington. This committee recommends action by the Board on applications for pensions, including disability and refunds.

The Personnel Committee will be headed by (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly who will review, evaluate and make recommendations regarding staff compensations, and hiring and firing. 

MF Teacher Trustee Victor Ochoa will be the chair of the Technology Committee.

The Elections Committee Chair will be (CORE) Quentin Washington and the other members will be (MF) Victor Ochoa and (CORE) Jaqueline Price Ward.

The Policy Committee chair will be (CORE) Jeffery Blackwell, and include (CORE) Jaqueline Price Ward and (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly. This Committee makes recommendations to write new policies and amend them.

The Executive Committee consists of (CORE) Jeffery Blackwell President, Financial Secretary (CORE) Mary Sharon Reilly, Price-Ward (CORE) Vice President and one elected trustee (CORE) Lois Nelson.

CORE controls the Chicago Teachers Pension Board, and they are playing ball with the caucus they claim to disparage.

Book Review

A Fight for the Soul of Public Education:  The Story of the Chicago Teachers Strike

Book Review

by Jim Vail

You know you're good when you have a book written about you.

Celebrities, famous leaders, world events, etc. have plenty of books written about them. So it should be no surprise that the powerful Chicago Teachers Union and its CORE leadership have a book written about their exploits in leading the first teachers strike in 25 years.

A Fight for the Soul of Public Education: The Story of the Chicago Teachers Strike was written by labor professors Steven Ashby and Robert Bruno who followed the strike closely and had access to union communications.

That means first and foremost that the book published in 2016 is a glowing report about the strike and how CORE organized an amazing fight back against the corporate forces hell bent on privatizing public education, closing schools and destroying the teachers union.

I joined CORE when it first formed around 2006 because our Chicago Teachers Union was a total and pathetic sell out. It was no coincident that Mayor Richard Daley announced the Renaissance 2010 plan to close 100 public schools and open mostly privately managed charter and contract schools with no unionized teachers the day after PACT President Debbie Lynch lost her re-election to the UPC Marilyn Stewart. 

CTU President Stewart stayed silent after Daley announced this massive attack on the union. The UPC in fact worked with the Mayor to help destroy our public schools. They organized no resistance to the massive school closings, and said nothing about the new sweatshop labor of charter schools (Marilyn kept saying charter schools are our friends!).

That was why CORE formed and captured the imagination of not only the city, but the nation.

CORE's 2012 strike was very symbolic. It was the first fightback against the powers that wanted to destroy public education - from Republican President George Bush's No Child Left Behind (that union darling Diane Ravitch first supported when she worked in his education dept.) to Democrat President Barack Obama's Race to the Top. 

CORE and the teachers and public school parents, students and communities fought back! We said no to charter schools, no to attacking public schools and no to mind-numbing standardized tests.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Mr. 1%, was the epitome of corporate greed and the billionaire attack on the people. He was an agent of capital and wealth and greed that forced working people out of their jobs, homes and health care in order to preserve the billionaire portfolios.

The book focuses a lot on the organizing tool that CORE brought in order to lead this successful strike in 2012. A lot of nuts and bolts and teacher and union staff comments about how it went down. That is not terribly interesting to me, but nonetheless good stuff for especially our new teachers and staff and others who may not know what the 2012 Teachers Strike was all about. 

I voted against ending the strike. The reason was teacher evaluations. We could not end the destructive attack on our teaching forces when the Chicago Board of Education implemented the ugly Reach Evaluation that stated 2 developing or fair ratings turned into an unsatisfactory rating and the end of many teachers' careers.

I can speak personally how this attack went down on our teachers. Our physical education teacher did everything for our school - he coached many after school sports, the kids loved him, he fund raised and sponsored many events, he organized teacher outings and he even got a sponsor to pay for the insignia painted on the middle of our gymnasium floor. But because he was a veteran of many years, he was attacked for any little weakness and got the 2 developing ratings that turned into an unsatisfactory rating and now he is gone. We have not been able to secure a regular PE teacher ever since.

That was a big part of the corporate attack on the public schools. Destroy the family, destroy the beloved teachers who gave everything for the kids and put in a cold, hard, corporate culture that focused on fear and firing teachers. 

Mayor Emanuel got his revenge after the strike by closing 50 schools in the city, the most in history. The rich loved that he destroyed so many city public schools that served as anchors for low-income children. He was rewarded for his anti-people work with an ambassador post for President Biden (who I remember emphatically defending the rich on stage at the American Federation of Teachers Convention in Detroit after CORE was elected).

What was an eye-opener to me was how the ruling class worked with our union to set up this horror show. The CTU used to be one of the most fearsome unions when it went on many strikes throughout the 1970s and 1980s under the fearsome leadership of Jackie Vaughn. She rightfully has a public school named after her and the hall in CTU headquarters is named after her.

Mayor Harold Washington and public school reformers had passed the Local School Council law that gave the communities control over their schools while Vaughn headed the CTU.

But then all that was erased with the election of Tom Reece in 1994 who sold us down the river. He partnered with CPS CEO Paul Vallas to keep the union silent. He infamously said the only strike he wanted to see was in a bowling alley.

The corporate attack on us first began in 1991 when Vaughn was still the CTU President (she died of cancer in 1994). Mayor Richard Daley decided to take a big interest in the public schools and offered the union a 21 percent raise over 3 years to not only avoid a strike, but set up his diabolical plan with union support. In 1995 Daley again gave the teachers a nice raise in exchange for more control over the school operations after the Republicans took control of the state legislature the year before and wanted to ban Chicago teachers from going on strike. 

(I actually was hired at this time in Russia to work on behalf of President Clinton and his Russian aid program that similarly wanted to privatize the Russian economy on behalf of wealthy American investors at the expense of the people because the Republicans took control of the Congress and wanted to cut aid to Russia. I guess I was as stupid as Reece to work for the enemy!) 

In Illinois the Republicans wanted school reform and Daley wanted to take control of the public schools!

The Amendatory Act of 1995 was passed that destroyed the union's collective bargaining rights. Now Daley on behalf of big money interests had a free ride to privatize the public schools, destroy the union by naming his own board trustees and school's chief and no longer pay into the teachers pension fund (Daley receives today a fat quarter million city pension while he made his name destroying city workers pensions. That's what you call a big City Politician!)

"Inexplicably, the CTU leadership was not only quiescent about its own hobbling, but never mobilized against the law's passing and actually applauded parts of the legislation. CTU President Thomas Reece, who had assumed office in 1994 when incumbent president Jacqueline Vaughn died of breast cancer, pledged that the union would eventually repeal the law. He failed, however, even to criticize the Chicago-area Democrats, including Mayor Daley, who lobbied for the bill."

This new law took all power from the union and gave it to the bosses. now the CTU could no longer negotiate over class size, layoff procedures and school closures. Daley did this by buying union peace (bribing). 

"We paid to control the schools," CPS lawyer and union bargaining chief Jim Franzek said. 

Throughout the 1990s, union leadership preferred higher pay in exchange for ignoring the effects of school reforms dictated by the business class and their puppet mayor. Strikes had ended and peace brought us total corporate misery. People no longer wanted to be teachers!

Who needs enemies when your own union sells you out. 

The book's authors wrote that only State Rep Monique Davis spoke out against this attack on the teachers union, equating the new law to treating the teachers like a slave! When I first started helping CORE do political outreach, Rep. Davis told me that the UPC union in 2007 told her charters were their friends. When I said no, we are the real union, and charters are not our friends, they merely destroy our jobs by outsourcing them for cheaper wages, she agreed and added she didn't like that charters did not do any finger printing for criminal background checks. 

Rep. Miguel Santiago said, "You are putting the school system into the hands of individuals that are going to be corporate executives that do not have any idea of the educational system ... There is nothing in here that improves the educational system."

Today we see the effect of all these corporate decisions to fire teachers resulting in massive turnover in schools that further hurts children and their communities. 

Finally the CTU fought back 17 years later with the strike. 

The Amendatory Act has been repealed to restore our collective bargaining rights. The CTU restored the pension levy so that the city makes its required $500 million payment each year rather than using the money to destroy teacher union jobs. The AUSL private management group that Pres. Obama and his education sidekick Arne Duncan touted to turnaround public schools everywhere and fire everyone in the school is gone! The union put in school closings charter bans. That's called Fighting Back!

The book, however, fails to mention the biggest fight the CTU is engaged in. That is in political arena. They pour a lot of money into political races. It's an ugly game. But why must only the very rich play the political game to keep their taxes low and impose austerity on the rest of us? The CTU plows a lot of money into democrats to protect our pensions, stop privatization of the schools and have an elected school board.

The one glaring omission in this book is not talking to George Schmidt, the fearless teacher union fighter who edited Substance News for 40 years. That is like writing a book about organized crime in Chicago in the Twenties and failing to write about Al Capone. Schmidt was the expert on teacher contracts and the official historian of Chicago Teachers Union history. No one knew school union politics more than George Schmidt. However, I could see that CORE leaders most likely forbade the authors from interviewing a critical voice to rain on their book parade. The book certainly has the feel that CORE thoroughly edited it.

It was a kind of amusing to see the authors first refer to Substance as the pro-PACT newspaper, then later the pro-teacher newspaper. A quick look at their many, many references to Substance in their bibliography must have made the profs feel a little guilty not interviewing George.

The CORE fight is impressive and a great story. But CORE won in 2010 not just because they were organized, but even more so because the CTU President Marilyn Stewart decided to not take a No vote on the 2007 contract that further eroded union rights resulted in the UPC Party split. VP Ted Dallas allegedly called her a "f$% b*tch" right after we delegates chanted "NO, NO Vote" and the media picked up on this. She then fired Dallas. The splintered groups then backed CORE in the runoff.

Also, passing a teachers contract is very political. Mayor Daley fired Paul Vallas because UPC President Tom Reece lost in 2001 to Debbie Lynch. No more push over union to give the rulers everything they wanted without a wimper. But the UPC was still organized and continued to fight Debbie in the House of Delegates and were able to organize against passing her first contract. When a union has no opposition, they then need only to sell their contract to their members who vote on it. CORE had no opposition, and even though the members initially wanted to continue to strike, the last day that the delegates voted to end the strike reminded me of something out of spectacular tent revival event. Even the news media that started to bash the CTU strike in the second week were already set up in the parking lot interviewing delegates and congratulating them on the end of the strike. Who could say no? 

This is not to take away the amazing work CORE did. The contract did not stop the rulers from implementing harmful reforms and closing more schools, but it certainly turned the tide. Now people finally had a reason to be proud of their union! 

But the fight never ends. This book is a reminder of what we face and what a union must do for the working people - Fight Back!

HOD Nov.

Report on the meeting of the House of Delegates held on November 2, 2022

By George Milkowski

CTPF Jeffrey Blackwell and Jackie Price Ward were re-elected to Pension Board.

NOTE: The CTU did not make its traditional delegates’ packet available in print for retiree delegates..  The Union put it on line, which I think is foolish as I did not have time to print up copies before I had to leave for the meeting.  The only recourse was to look at the material on our phones, which is difficult as there was so much material.

The meeting began at 4:50 p.m.. 

The meeting opened with four candidates for the Pension Fund given two minutes to explain why they are running.  This election is for active teachers only this time.  Pres Davis Gates preceded their remarks by saying that CTU Executive Board has voted to ask the House to endorse two of the candidates; Jeff Blackwell and Jacqueline Price Ward.  The vote on this will come later in the meeting.

Jeffery Blackwell has been on the Pension Board and has been able to serve as its president.  He said he worked successfully to get the State legislature to re-enact a dedicated tax levy for the Fund and also has been active in going after charter schools that have not made their required payments to the fund.

Catherine Cunnigham-Yee is running as an independent.  She is a high school Special Ed teacher and wants the CTPF to be more aggressive in divesting from fossil fuels.  She maintains the 2027 self imposed deadline to do so is too late.  She also said that if elected she would put out a monthly video report to the Pension Fund members.

Marcy Esposito-Usterbrowski wants to abolish the Tier 2 category for teachers and she strongly criticized the leadership of the Union for not being transparent.

Lastly, Jacqueline Price-Ward said she has been on the CTPF Board for 4 years and for two years chaired the Pension Fund’s Communication Committee.  She said that some of her opponents are in the Members First Caucus and are tied in with the right wing leaning Illinois Policy Institute.

I. Officers’/Committee Reports

A.   Christel Williams- Hayes – Recording Secretary.  Christel is ill so Pres. Stacy Davis Gates filled in for her.  While using Zoom during the pandemic, delegates were able to send in questions during House meetings using the “chat” function.  That seemed successful and the Union will continue to take questions during the meeting using delegates’ phones.

It was announced that a “Delegates & School Leaders Training” session will be conducted on Saturday, November 12 from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.  Breakfast and check-in will start at 8:00 a.m. and there will be a break for lunch. 

November 29 is “Giving Tuesday” and the Union is asking for donations to the CTU Foundation.  They would like donations to the Student Special assistance Fund for eyeglasses, hearing aids and clothing.  Also there will be a holiday coat and toy drive.

B. Kurt Hilgendorf gave a brief financial report with some pages posted on a screen but it was difficult to read so I have nothing to report on this.

C. Maria Moreno – Financial Secretary – Our membership is 27,569 of which 1,683 are retirees.

Retirees will have a chance to elect someone to represent them on the Pension Board.  Nominations will be taken at the scheduled December 8 luncheon.  If you would like to run for the Board you do not have to pay for the luncheon.  You can just show up for the nominating process.  Ballots will be mailed out January 17, 2023 and will need to be returned by February 14.  If needed, there will be a run-off March 9.

D.  Jennifer Conant – Charter Division – Jennifer reported that 35 charter schools in 13 different charter networks have their contracts expire this summer.  The CTU Charter Division is working to have a common baseline contract for all the schools.  She stressed that whatever the charters contracts can get will help set precedents for our own contract when negotiations begin the following year.

Jen also said the CPS has revoked the charter of Urban Prep due to financial mismanagement, substantiated cases of sexual misconduct, and the lack of the minimum required number of certified teachers.  She said they are working with the CPS to insure that the future of these schools will have union representation and involvement.

F.  Jackson Potter - Vice President –Jackson referenced the Union’s “We Care Coaching and Mentoring” program.  Too many newer teachers feel isolated and lost in their first two years and end up quitting in frustration.  This has made the growing teacher shortage worse.  He said the CTU’s program has a success retention rate of 93% for those in years 1-3 of teaching.

Jackson said he has been out canvassing for Lori Torres (36th Ward), Muise Bawamy (50th Ward), and Brandon Johnson (running for Mayor).  He said Johnson is insisting that public safety is directly tied in with public investment in communities.  

The CPS has agreed to recognize five new job categories and is negotiating with the CTU over 25 more job titles.  Once this is finalized, these workers will be eligible to be CTU members.

Jackson concluded by saying that the immigrants being shipped north from Texas and Florida are increasing the number of homeless students the CPS has to deal with.

G.  Jed Schenkier – Grievance Department.  An arbitrator has ruled in favor of a CTU member, Melissa Poeta.  She was laid off illegally and told she had to get a Special Ed endorsement if she wanted her job back.  She did at her own expense.  The arbitrator ordered the CPS to pay Melissa for the expenses she had incurred to get that endorsement..

In other grievances we won, 4,234 coaches, athletic directors and sports liaisons will receive between $1,200 and $8,500 for unpaid work they did during Fiscal year 2020-2021.  Also, over 5,000 coaches will get $20,000 for their schools for uniforms, equipment and bus transportation for 82 high schools.  261 elementary schools will be getting $13,000 for the same reason.

Lastly, Jed said the deadline to appeal one’s REACH (teacher evaluation) score for the 2021-2022 school year is November 22.

II. President’s Report

Pres. Stacy Davis-Gates opened her remarks commenting that the CTU and CPS has put a number of lingering grievances on a “fast track” and it seems to be working.

Stacy also said the CTU is opening its on-line store on November 4 to give members a chance to buy CTU “swag”.  Members can get a 10% discount if they sign up for the Union’s “Memberlink”.

Stacy also said we need to celebrate the work that our members are doing, so she specifically devoted some time highlighting the work done by Delegate Jedda Biddle-White (Fiske School) and CTU organizer LaShawn Wallace.

Pres. Davis Gates became emotional when she related how she and her family were recently outdoors and there were gunshots.  Her kid, playing soccer, and everyone else, had to hit the deck for their own safety.  She said that CTU endorsed mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson feels more investment in neighborhoods will help reduce crime.  She said this won’t solve all of our social problems but this is better than proposals put out by other candidates.

III.  More Reports

A. Organizing – Jhoanna Maldanado.  Jhoanna urged delegates to notify the CTU if there is an influx of immigrant students.  We are working with CPS to try to have more bilingual interpreters, especially for developing IEPs for students.  Also, they are trying to deal with the problem that the high school entrance exams are only in English.

B. Political/Legislative – Kurt Hilgendorf.  Kurt’s report was short.  He is asking for volunteers to work to get passage of the Workers’ Rights Amendment.

IV. Items for Action

A.  The House voted, without dissent, to endorse Daniel La Spata (1st Ward), Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward), Rosanna Rodrigues Sanchez (333h Ward), and Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35th Ward).  They are up for election in February 2023.  I voted “yes” for these individuals.

A motion was made to have the House of Delegates formally endorse Jeffery Blackwell and Jacqueline Price-Ward for the CTPF.  After some debate it passed.  There were a handful of “nays”.  I voted “yes” on this.

IV. New Business/Question and Answers

Retiree Delegate Lou Pyster asked about the status of renaming some Chicago schools.  He suggested a few names, including Jacob Lawrence.

The delegate from Bright School again asked that the Union take a position supporting reparations for foundational African Americans.

At that point a motion to adjourn passed.   It was 7:05 p.m..