Cesar Chavez Charter School in D.C. finally has a union

A SmallTalk Salute goes out to the teachers and staff at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School at Chavez Prep Middle School in D.C. who voted 31-2 Thursday to unionize, the first time a charter in the District has taken such a step. The educators organized through the District of Columbia Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.

Staff at the school say they want to unionize to give teachers a voice in decision-making. Jenny Tomlinson, the school librarian, told WAMU in May that staff hoped unionizing would reduce teacher turnover, increase teacher input in the curriculum and attract more experienced teachers.

If you were listening to Hitting Left on Friday, you heard news of this victory from ChiACTS Pres. Chris Baehrend who was our in-studio guest along with CTU's Political and Legislative Dir. Stacy Davis Gates. If you missed it, you can still listen to the podcast where our guests discuss the planned merger of ChiACTS and the CTU Local #1. The Chicago Tribune recently referred to Chicago as the "epicenter" of charter school unionization.

When you think about it, it's kind of amazing that for all these years, there's been schools named after the renowned union leader, Cesar Chavez, that resisted unionization and collective bargaining rights for teachers. Detroit's Cesar Chavez Charter School was unionized back in 2013.

I'm remembering back 10 years ago, debating with anti-union charter school backers and "choice" advocates. I pointed out back then, the hypocrisy of naming a charter school after a great union organizer like Chavez, where teachers were working without a contract, without a real voice in educational decisions, or without union representation.

Stacy Davis Gates (CTU) and Chris Baehrend (ChiACTS).

They called our arguments "preposterous". DFER's snarky response was, "No one's holding a gun to their heads." In other words, if teachers really wanted a union they would have one, or if they didn't like the conditions at school like Chavez, they were free to leave and go elsewhere.

Turns out they really wanted one.

Their arguments ring even more hollow today and discount the years of charter operators' active resistance to teacher unions, including the use of high-paid union-busting consultants and claims that charters were actually "private schools"and that teachers weren't really considered by law to be public employees.

Yes, it's taken a while. But all that's changed now as charter unions are starting to take hold nationally. The American Federation of Teachers says it now represents 234 charter schools in 15 states, including Chavez in D.C.

Lots more are on the way.

Detroit charter teachers live up to Chavez name

Detroit's Cesar Chavez Charter School

Congratulations to the teachers at Detroit's Cesar Chavez Charter School. Chavez teachers, counselors and social workers voted Thursday to unionize the southwest Detroit charter school. The staff voted 88-39 to have the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers & Staff, associated with the American Federation of Teachers' state affiliate, become their official bargaining agent.

Today's Detroit News reports: 

Employees at the four-campus academy had pushed for unionization since last year, said Eva Coleman, an English teacher at its high school. "We noticed that parents didn't have a voice, we didn't have a voice," Coleman said. "Only a select group of people made decisions for everyone."

This should put to rest the ongoing debate that Leo Casey and I had with anti-union charter backers --Eduwonk (Andy Rotherham) and DFER (Joe Williams) going back to 2007. Leo and I pointed out back then, the hypocrisy of naming a charter school after a great union organizer like Cesar Chavez, where teachers were working without a contract, without a real voice in educational decisions, or without union representation.

Rotherham called our arguments "preposterous."  DFER's snarky response was, "No one's holding a gun to their heads." In other words, if teachers really wanted a union they would have one, or if they didn't like the conditions at school like Chavez, they were free to leave and go elsewhere.

Of course these arguments completely discount the years of charter operators' active resistance to teacher unions, including the use of high-paid union-busting consultants and claims that charters were actually private schools and that teachers weren't really considered by law to be public employees.

Detroit AFT organizer Nate Walker says the schools private operators, The for-profit Leona Group,  which operates in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, had refused to recognize the union without a formal election, and has used intimidation tactics to discourage organizing.

According to Eva Coleman,  an 11-year teacher at Cesar Chavez,  teachers want a voice through collective bargaining. She said mistreatment of some employees and a poor working environment had driven good staff members away.

“When I first started working here, we were united,” Coleman said. “It’s not that way anymore.  Certain people are favored over others. “We’re there for the students, and the parents…to make sure everyone succeeds, and make it more of a family environment.”

What makes the Detroit teachers' victory even more impressive is that Michigan is a Right-To-Work state, making unionization twice as difficult.

Helen Gym -- Honored at White House as Champion of Change

Gym is being honored by the White House next week. (ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer)
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/Helen-Gym-to-be-honored-by-White-House.html#gOH8brjFTEKd7MVE.99

CONGRATULATIONS to Philly public school activist and parent leader Helen Gym who will be honored at the White House next week. Gym has been named a Chesar Chavez Champion of Change - one of 10 community leaders nationally who have "committed themselves to improving the lives of others in their communities and across the country," people who "represent the values and steadfast determination of Cesar Chavez to organize ourselves for a more just tomorrow."

Gym and the other Champions will participate in a discussion about how to expand opportunities for all Americans, according to a White House news release. The event, scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, can be streamed live at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

Knowing Helen, I'm sure she will have plenty to say about Philly's mass school closings, privately-run charters and testing madness. In fact, she already has.

We’ve burned through countless dollars chasing after the obsessions and frivolities of this so called “education reform” movement – expensive consultancies, high stakes testing, new standards and curricula, Renaissance schools. We’ve become so obsessed with the structure and management of education that we’ve completely forgotten about the substance and practice of it. -- Washington Post interview

You can follow Helen Gym on Twitter at @ParentsUnitedPA

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"The best way to hold down property taxes is to get school districts and local governments to live within their means." -- Sen. Kirk Dillard

In my post below, I referred to Carol Marin's interview with the man from ALEC, Sen. Kirk Dillard, our so-called "friend of public education," according to IEA leaders. The Chicago Tonight video wasn't up yet when I posted, this morning. It's up now and starting at 2:30, Dillard shows us what a "friend of public education" ISN'T:

CHRISTMAS QUOTABLES

Community activist Martha Sanchez, right, shares an emotional moment with her children, Gonzalo Romero, 17, and Catherine Romero, 12, celebrating victory in an eight-year battle to shut down a metal-finishing plant across the street from 28th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times)

Danny Schechter

I did my Christmas penance back in a very cold and all too empty Zuccotti Park on Christmas day. There had been a 24 hour prayer event and vigil. I had only stopped in for a two hour stint—call it my Holiday witness—in time to hear the writer Jay Janson and others read from the still moving statement by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the need to get out of Vietnam and other countries Washington was then occupying/invading in the false name of freedom. -- The News Dissector

P.L. Thomas

Choruses of “no excuses” and “poverty is not destiny” punctuate almost all of the discourse and even reform plans coming from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee, and the implications of these bromides are where the problems rest.  In short, the real debate is not whether or not one side believes poverty matters and the other does not (this is genuinely a false dichotomy that likely does not exist). The real debate is where the source of what matters lies and how to address the impact of poverty on the lives and learning of children. -- Poverty Matters!: A Christmas Miracle

Ross Caputi

What we did to Fallujah cannot be undone, and I see no point in attacking the people in my former unit. What I want to attack are the lies and false beliefs. I want to destroy the prejudices that prevented us from putting ourselves in the other's shoes and asking ourselves what we would have done if a foreign army invaded our country and laid siege to our city. -- I am sorry for the role I played in Fallujah (Guardian)

Andrew Hartman

TFA is, at best, another chimerical attempt in a long history of chimerical attempts to sell educational reform as a solution to class inequality. At worst, it’s a Trojan horse for all that is unseemly about the contemporary education reform movement. -- Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda (WaPo)  

Katharine Mieszkowski

At Cesar Chavez Elementary School, physical education lessons, taught by classroom teachers, are held on a fenced-in blacktop lot below a huge, colorful mural of the school’s namesake. In the mural, Mr. Chavez, the late civil rights leader, is surrounded by a crowd of children as he carries a banner that reads “Help me take responsibility for my own life so I can be free at last.”--The Haves’ Children Are Healthier Than the Have-Nots’ (NYT)

Weekend Quotables

Fallout from the Ownership Society

In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling among students at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors. (NYT columnist Frank Rich)

Then again...

“Community organizing has become cool,” said Marshall Ganz, who dropped out of Harvard in 1964 to join the civil rights movement in Mississippi and spent 16 years with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Of course, a tough economy helps attract people to professions they might not have otherwise considered, as does a crusading time when Wall Street has become a symbol of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility. (NYT)

Afghanistan--the new quagmire

The danger for Mr. Obama is that a chorus of criticism could stir new public unease with the U.S.-led wars. A public backlash could be particularly problematic for Afghanistan. Mr. Obama's strategy envisions that the U.S. military could be engaged there for years to come... Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said he fears Afghanistan could become a quagmire. "I just have this sinking feeling that we're getting deeper and deeper into a war that has no end," he said.

Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) dismissed Mr. Obama's plans as "embarrassingly naive," and suggested that the president is being led astray by those around him. "He's the smartest man in American politics today," Rep. Conyers said. "But he occasionally gets bad advice and makes mistakes. This is one of those instances." (Wall street Journal)

Klein and the gang use King holiday to attack unions

Klein, Sharpton, Rhee, McCain, and their whole EEP crowd of hedge-fund school reformers were there. Klein called the pre-inauguration meeting supposedly to celebrate King Day, but really to prepare his troops for the coming battle with the Bolder, Broader policy group as they vie for Obama's ear on education.

Can you imagine Dr. King's name being used to attack unions? Reminds me of charter school operators who name schools after Cesar Chavez and then ban teachers from bargaining collectively.

The EEP group targets teacher unions and collective bargaining rights as the number-one problem in public education. Their strategy is built around privatized management of charter schools which are replacing hundreds of closed neighborhood schools. D.C. Supt. Rhee has become their main attack dog. New Ed Sec. Arne Duncan showed up, of course.

Rhee barked. Some in the audience booed, writes Dana Goldstein at TAPPED:

When Rhee said, "There are a lot of people who benefit from our system being dysfunctional," a few voices raised in the crowd, booing. "That's not true!" a woman shouted. But Rhee continued, referring obliquely to her long-running contract dispute with the Washington Teachers' Union over merit pay and tenure. "People who keep their jobs. People who keep their contracts."

Rhee should know. She's the one handing out the jobs and contracts.

Taking the fight right to Urban Prep's board. 'Bring the fired teachers back!'

It's been tough sledding for union organizers trying to help Chicago charter school teachers win collective bargaining rights. Even though charter schools were originally created by union teachers, state laws were soon passed barring charter teachers from joining their public school colleagues in the same union or local bargaining unit. This forced the union to start organizing efforts as the Alliance of Chicago Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS). Over the last five years, ACTS has led several successful organizing drives.

Privately-run, publicly-funded charters and their corporate-dominated boards and lobbyists have spent millions of their education dollars relentlessly fighting unionization. One of their most common legal arguments is that since their teachers are paid by private operating companies, charter teachers are not really public employees and therefore cannot unionize simply by a majority sign-up or card-check. Nationally, there are more than 4,000 charters, each with their own private board or network organization. This creates a daunting task for the unions, having to win agreements with each board school-by-school.

Charter operators have also used tactics of threats, harassment, intimidation and firings of even their best teachers to undermine organizing efforts. I'll go out on a limb here and say that privately-run charters have now become the center of union-busting efforts.

The irony hits you when you see dozens of charters named after people like the great union leaders, Cesar Chavez or Dr. King, who gave his very life while defending the union rights of public employees in Memphis.

Here in Chicago, eyes are on the successful organizing drive at highly-touted Urban Prep Academies where a majority of teachers recently voted to unionize and be represented by ACTS. But so far, Urban Prep's board has refused to recognize the union or negotiate a contract. Worse, they just illegally fired 16 teachers and staff, including several who have be actively supporting the union drive.

Yesterday I joined a rally outside the UP board meeting with more than 100 teachers, parents and students chanting, "Bring them back!" and "Union busting is disgusting!" Then we marched into the meeting where we made our voices heard in support of those who were fired. Board members, including Urban Prep founder Tim King sat stony faced and unresponsive while speaker after speaker came up to the microphone and voiced support for the fired teachers.

I think part of the reason King and the board are so union resistant is that contract negotiations require a higher degree of transparency and the school has been anything but transparent in response to questions about its overblown success claims or finances.

Samuel Adams, an eight-year veteran, one of the fired UP teachers, spoke at the rally as well as inside the meeting directly to the board. Adams said teachers at Urban Prep have an interest in communicating with the board and felt the union would help them get their voice heard. It would promote change, he told the board.

“It seems that when we brought these changes to you, that those teachers who brought those changes were let go,” said Adams.

Brian Harris, president of the charter union, said:

“The campaign is over. The teachers chose a union. You had ample time to make your call,” Harris told the board. “How is firing all these teachers negotiating in good faith? The Urban Prep creed says we choose to live honestly. Live honestly. Reinstate the teachers.”

Shoneice Reynolds, whose son will be a senior, said two of the fired teachers helped her son transition from elementary school to Urban Prep, providing constant emotional and academic support.

Several students also gave testimony about how their now-fired teachers had helped them turn their lives around and get them plugged into school.

Knowing how Tim King has responded in the past, I doubt that he and the board will willingly agree to a contract or bring back the fired teachers. It will most likely take legal action by the union and more protests.

*Be sure a read Jennifer Berkshire's (Edushyster) account of what happened when teachers confronted a union-busting charter CEO at the recent National Charter Schools Conference in New Orleans?

Day 7 Strike suspended. Big victory for teachers

CTU's House of Delegates voted to end the strike and ask teachers to return to class tomorrow.

“Everybody is going back to school,” said Jay Rehak, a delegate from Whitney Young High School. Delegate Mike Bochner said “an overwhelming majority” of delegates voted to suspend the strike. “I’m really excited, I’m really relieved,” said Bochner, a teacher at Cesar Chavez elementary.

Hoots, hollers, applause and what sounded like a cowbell erupted multiple times from inside the closed-door meeting. At the meeting, delegates were given a summary of the contract’s key issues. An introduction to that summary declared victory on several issues. 

“Our brothers and sisters throughout the country have been told that corporate ‘school reform’ was unstoppable, that merit pay had to be accepted and that the public would never support us if we decided to fight. Cities everywhere have been forced to accept performance pay,” the statement said. 

“Not here in Chicago. Months ago, CTU members won a strike authorization, one that our enemies thought would be impossible. Now we have stopped the board are imposing merit pay! We preserved our lanes and steps when the politicians and press predicted they were history. We held the line on healthcare costs. We have tremendous victories in this contract; however, it is by no means perfect. While we did not win on every front and will need to continue our struggle into the future, we soundly defended our profession from an aggressive and dishonest attack. We owe our victories to each and every member of  this rank and rile union. Our power comes from the bottom up.” -- Sun-Times

Reporter asks Rahm: Will your assault on CTU turn Chicago into another Wisconsin?

Rahm Emanuel at Tuesday's news conference at Cesar E. Chavez elementary school. (Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune )

Rahm's anti-union spin machine is spinning in reverse. Even though his pals now own the Sun-Times and even with a big-bucks propaganda campaign bankrolled by corporate "reformers", nothing seems to be spinning the mayor's way.

S-T political reporter Fran Spielman, can't quite hide her disdain for Rahm's assault on the CTU.

Emanuel pushed for a change in state law that raised the strike authorization threshold to 75 percent, a benchmark so high, at least one education advocate [SFC's Jonah Edelman--mk] with ties to the mayor predicted that it could never be met. Instead, the Chicago Teachers Union roared passed that benchmark, fueled by their anger against a mayor who stripped them of a previously-negotiated, four percent pay raise and tried to muscle through a longer school day.

"Stripped" and "muscled" is a long way from the usual Civic Committee-style rhetoric of "union thugs" and "greedy teachers." Spielman then asks the mayor, "whether the showdown with teachers threatens to turn Chicago into 'another Wisconsin?'” It's a question no Democrat dare ask and one that answers itself.

S-T columnist Carol Marin, writing a day earlier couldn't make the case any better or clearer.

If I had been a Chicago public school teacher last week, I would have done as 90 percent of them did — and voted “yes” for a strike authorization...Teachers in this town have been demonized, demoralized, and disrespected. No profession is beyond criticism and no public school system is without significant problems. But taking a sledgehammer approach to CPS teachers and their union has backfired on the Emanuel administration and his schools CEO, Jean-Claude Brizard.

And all the radio ads and robo calls funded by out of town, union-busting billionaires doesn’t alter that fact.