An eclectic coalition of UC Berkeley students, lecturers, employees and local education activists held a rally on Sproul Plaza on Tuesday in solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union strike.
Asking for better pay, more comprehensive benefits and a moratorium on school closures, the Chicago Teachers Union began their strike on Sept. 10. The strike received national attention, as it had been 25 years since the nation’s third largest city had its last.
The Chicago Teachers Union suspended its walkout on Tuesday and promised to return to classrooms Wednesday, national news outlets report.
The campus rally began at noon and lasted for about an hour, with participants dressed in matching red shirts holding up a sign reading “Berkeley Stands with Chicago Teachers.”
“Their fight is our fight,” said Bill Balderston, a rally organizer and spokesperson for Oakland Education Association, a teachers’ union for Oakland Unified School District. “Chicago Teachers Union is fighting against school closures and drastic austerity measures, the same problems that East Bay teachers face today.”
According to Balderston, five Oakland schools have shut down in the past year, and there have been major cuts in school arts, special education and physical education programs.
“Some say teachers are being selfish. That is not true. Teachers know that students are the real victims, and that is why they are fighting to save the schools,” Balderston said.
The rally’s message extended beyond support for the strike into a general concern regarding the direction of public education.
“This rally is not simply about our support for CTU,” said Barbara Barnes, a lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. “It also serves to raise awareness about our society’s shift away from public education to privatization of education.”
Contact Dan Kwak at [email protected].
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Clueless Cal kiddies:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the school board waved the white flag of surrender and sold out the children of Chicago.
The teachers did not get the ridiculous 30 percent raise they originally sought, but came away with a seven percent increase over three years, according to the LA Times. That’s absurd in a school district with a budget deficit approaching the frightening $1 billion mark.
The teachers also maintained raises based on nothing but seniority and earned college credits. Merit pay, which would have rewarded the best teachers and put pressure on the underperformers, did not make the final cut.
The teachers reportedly also pushed through a policy forcing the district to call back laid off teachers for open staff positions, instead of allowing principals to fill the jobs with the best available teachers.
And worst of all, Emanuel backed off on his plan to make student test scores worth 50 percent of teacher evaluations. Instead they will only comprise 30 percent, which means, as ABC News put it, the system “will be more forgiving for teachers.”
As a result, thousands of mediocre or miserable teachers who could have been weeded out by a tougher evaluation system will remain employed. That probably means that students will continue to struggle academically, because the district did not insist on replacing bad teachers with good ones.
The only silver lining would be a change in Illinois state law that bans teacher strikes once and for all. A total of 37 states have banned teacher walkouts, and even Pennsylvania, the teacher strike capitol of the nation, is considering legislation that would do so.
The simple solution is to adjust the budgets for teacher’s compensation. Stop basing so much of teachers’ pay on borrowing and investment predictions. Eliminate the pensions and instead give teachers a higher take home pay. Then teachers receive pay that they can use now, and future taxpayers don’t face a situation like we face now with crushing pension payments. And maybe eliminate all the money the teachers have to give to their union.
“said Barbara Barnes, a lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Gender and Women Studies”
All the race/ethnic/gender/PACs studies should be combined into a single department, “Grievance Studies”, to save money. Better yet, eliminate all of them.
Eliminate and reallocate those resources to programs that create value for society.