Chicago teachers, students head back to school as strike ends

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Teachers have fought for better supplies in the classroom. “The resources they’ve given us are really, really old resources,” said Anise Marshall, 25, a computer teacher at Mount Vernon Elementary School on the South Side of Chicago. “So these kids aren’t even learning the newest technology.” The new plan allots for more than double the annual supply money to $250. Textbooks will be available for distribution on the first day of school.

Recalling teachers and clinicians who have been displaced by school closings, consolidations and turn-arounds have also been up for debate. Once rights claimed by the board of education, the CTU’s new contract states that 50 percent of all new hires must be from the displaced pool. The board will suffer an economic penalty if the displaced quota is not met, and it must provide specified benefits to displaced members by seniority.

Clinicians —nurses, psychologists, counselors, etc. providing “wraparound services” — who traditionally didn’t have a place in the contract, under the tentative agreement, will have a meeting space, one hour of daily prep, a locked cabinet, protection from a heavy workload and access to printers and other office supplies that they used to have to buy themselves.

Linda Stewart, 52, is a nurse at five schools in the CPS system said last week that “I had to buy my own band aids before,” and “I’ve bought other supplies as needed.”

CTU officials and members continue to be concerned with the closing of several “under-performing” schools. “The big elephant in the room is the closing of 200 schools. They are concerned with this city’s decision on some level to close schools. They are extraordinarily concerned about it,” Lewis said Sunday.

Emanuel announced earlier last week plans to close at least 120 under-performing schools, many of which are in impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago, where predominantly African-Americans live and teach. Lewis argued that those experienced and dedicated teachers, many of them African-American, could see their careers destroyed by the district’s plans to close these schools, since they work in many of the schools that would be closed or consolidated.

In addition to closing schools that are performing poorly, Emanuel has come under fire for being a proponent of reopening under-performing schools with new staff or converting them into charter schools, which are typically non-unionized and privately-run. “That’s something that we have to continue to fight with,” said Schoenbeck.

Heavy compromise was made among both sides Tuesday. “You never get what you want in negotiations, but we felt like it was a win, for not only us, but nationwide,” said Porter.

Jennifer Schultz, a librarian at Julian High School on Chicago’s South Side said she’s excited to go back to school, but with a purpose. “We needed to make sure that [the board of education members] understand that the reform movement for public education has to be positive for the kids and not for the businesspeople.”

Schultz continued, saying, “I personally think that everyone on the board should have to serve in a classroom, two weeks every year as a teacher, so they’ll know what we’re dealing with, so when they try to make these pronouncements, they will have something on which to base it.”

Although the strike has ended, CTU delegates contend that the fight for education reform is not over yet. Contract negotiations continue and according to Lewis, the entire 26,000 CTU membership will cast a formal vote in the next two weeks to approve a new contract agreement.

Renita D. Young is a multimedia journalist based in Chicago. Follow her on Twitter @RenitaDYoung