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The Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates is set to vote on calling off the strike on Tuesday. On Sunday the delegates voted down a proposed contract offer, saying they needed more time to consider it. The surprise rejection revealed divisions within the union that may make it hard to agree on a contract.
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The teachers Union in Chicago votes later today for the second time on whether to and a strike that has kept 350,000 students and their parents in limbo. On Sunday, the union’s House of Delegates voted to continue the weeklong strike until they have more time to read the outline on of a tentative agreement. That vote was a setback for union President Karen Lewis and her bargaining team.
NPR’s Claudio Sanchez reports that with the vote pending, some teachers still don’t know what’s in that agreement.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Robert Resner, an elementary school teacher at Orozco Academy showed up at Strike Headquarters at 6 A.M. this morning to pick up some pamphlets and the latest four-page summary of the tentative contract the Chicago teachers union is reviewing. But he still wasn’t sure what he’s supposed to reject or endorse.
ROBERT RESNER: We got our information late Monday night on what was in the contract and it was only a small part, ’cause the contract is still not being written.
SANCHEZ: How can you sign something if you haven’t seen it, says Resner? His colleague, Melissa Sears, says she just wants to get back to work.
MELISSA SEARS: What I’ve seen in the contract is good enough for me. Is it perfect? No is it ever going to be? No, but I feel like we have to, at this point, sort of appreciate what we’ve gotten and hope for the best.
SANCHEZ: Sears says her confidence in union President Karen Lewis though is not as strong as it once was. And Sears wonders was Lewis tough enough in negotiating a fair contract. And what will she do if the union’s 800 voting delegates turn down the latest proposal and remain on strike?
SEARS: All I can do is just trust that she’s looking out for our best interests.
SANCHEZ: Until now, few teachers have suggested that Lewis has not done enough. But as public support for the strike slowly fades, some teachers wonder whether she’s the best person to take on a much tougher task once the strike is settled; turning, what they call, a politically polarized school system, dominated by politicians and corporate interests into a system that respects teachers.
Brooke Pippet Thompson, a music teacher at Helen C. Pierce Elementary, says Lewis is absolutely the right person to do that.
BROOKE PIPPET THOMPSON: Can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, Well, she’s not the best spokesman for you. I disagree. She is a teacher. She knows what she’s talking about. Until we start listening to those who know what they’re talking about in the classroom; people who’ve been in the classroom who know children, who understand cognitive development, and also the pressures that poverty plays in that. I trust her and I believe what she says when she says something.
SANCHEZ: Lewis, after all, has secured a 17 percent pay raise for teachers over four years. School officials have also agreed not to fire teachers after one year under a new, tougher evaluation policy that would be phased in over time. Merit pay was taken off the table. And more teachers would be hired under a plan to extend the school day – all important victories for the union.
But with Chicago’s schools under mayoral control, teachers just don’t trust Mayor Rahm Emanuel to keep his word. As soon as the ink dries, teachers say he’ll lay off thousands of teachers, close a hundred schools, and turn many of them into privately-run, publically-funded charter schools.
What will Lewis and the union do then?
KAREN LEWIS: Ultimately the decision whether to suspend the strike will be taken..
SANCHEZ: When Lewis came on WBEZ Public Radio this morning to talk about the strike, teachers at Pierce Elementary hovered around an iPhone listening to the broadcast and Lewis’ words carefully.
LEWIS: I think that people that really want to go back to work will be able to make the argument..
SANCHEZ: Bridget Fabianski says no matter how the union delegates vote this afternoon, its time for someone other than Lewis to speak for teachers.
BRIDGET FABIANSKI: She seems confrontational. Any parent that I’ve talked to says she’s confrontational. But..
SANCHEZ: That’s her nature.
FABIANSKI: Maybe that’s her nature and she’s the one who’s going to get it done. Maybe it’s a confrontational…
SANCHEZ: So this next phase might call for (unintelligible).
FABIANSKI: For a different spokesperson, for a different person to stand up and to represent us.
SANCHEZ: As union delegates gather to vote, Karen Lewis will once again be in the hot seat and have a chance to show whether she’s the right leader at the right time.
Claudio Sanchez, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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Florida A&M University held a meeting on Thursday for students to talk about hazing. Last November drum major Robert Champion died in a hazing incident, and more than a dozen students face criminal charges. The event thrust the university and the issue of hazing into the national spotlight.
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Florida A&M University held a town hall meeting yesterday. Students and faculty talked about hazing. Drum major Robert Champion died in a hazing incident last November, and more than a dozen students face criminal charges. Now, people at FAMU, known as FAMU, know the country is watching. NPR’s Kathy Lohr has the story.
KATHY LOHR, BYLINE: At the campus meeting, hazing experts said they realize it’s been difficult at FAMU since the death of Robert Champion.
HANK NUWER: Florida A&M has an target on its back, yes, but it also has a chance to change the culture of society in general.
LOHR: Hank Nuwer has written four books on hazing. He told students many schools are facing the same challenge.
NUWER: Fresno State, Cornell, Radford, Vincents, Northern Colorado, have all had recent hazing deaths. The last time I heard from a mother who suspected anything was an email at eleven o’clock last night after the drowning of a pledge at the University of Idaho. So you’re not alone.
Drum major Robert Champion died last fall after being beaten on a bus after a football game. It was part of a hazing ritual. The brutality of the beating and Champion’s death shocked this campus and the country. Throughout yesterday’s meeting, students were asked questions about the definition of hazing, many didn’t have a clear answer. Professor at the University of Maine and national hazing expert Elizabeth Allan says that’s part of the problem.
ELIZABETH ALLAN: They don’t see many things that meet the definition of hazing as hazing, because the image in their head is a physical force, and they often fail to account for the power of coercion, the group peer pressure, the emotional kinds of power dynamics that play out in a group situation.
LOHR: In a 2008 study, Allan says more than half of students who belong to clubs, teams, or other collegiate organizations said they had experienced hazing, and 47 percent said they also went through it in high school. It’s not clear how many of the FAMU students attended this town hall meeting. Many wandered in and out during the forum. President of the Marching 100, Brandon Cunningham, told the group that the band committed to ending hazing, and he had this advice for those who may not take the issue seriously.
BRANDON CUNNINGHAM: Remember one thing, the Marching 100 has done a lot of great things for the university, and if they can suspend us for a year, what makes you think that they can’t do that to your organization, all right? So just be very careful about your decisions and ask yourself if it’s going to be worth it.
LOHR: Outside students had mixed opinions about how much the meeting will change student behavior. Chandeidra Williams is a junior at FAMU.
CHANDEIDRA WILLIAMS: I’m not sure if it will stop hazing, just to be honest, but, I mean, (unintelligible) have information out there on the consequences of hazing, I think it’s good to have it out there, but I don’t know if it will stop because some people are still stuck in their mindset that they’re going to do it anyway.
LOHR: Femi Komolafe who’s a junior, brought along Christina Hibbert who attends Florida State University. After hearing the discussion, they say it’s up to students in groups that have traditionally committed the hazing to stop it.
FEMI KOMOLAFE: If they’re actually willing to let go of things they had to do to get into the organization and allow new members to come in without having to go through what they went through, then that’s when change will happen.
CHRISTINA HIBBERT: We have to be the ones to step up and say that we’re not going to allow people to do that to us. We have to be the ones to step up to say that we’re not going to continue in a tradition that’s so – so primitive, to me, at least.
LOHR: Several members of the Marching 100, including Timothius Harper and Kenneth Johnson were here. They miss the band, but they say they understand why the university suspended the group this year.
TIMOTHIUS HARPER: For every action there’s a consequence.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Right.
HARPER: And even though it was a few, you know, everybody in the Marching 100 understands that we’re now a catalyst for this anti-hazing movement. And so we’re just taking this time off to regroup and to reevaluate some things. And we’re going to come back and we’re going to be better than we ever were.
LOHR: University officials hope students learn through forums like this one, but it’s not clear how well that worked. At the end of the town hall, just 68 percent of those polled said they would report hazing if they saw it or participated in it. Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Tallahassee.
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The union rank and file still must vote on whether to accept the contract hammered out between union leaders and city officials. And both sides will have some hard work ahead to repair the bad blood that erupted during the walkout.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Robert Siegel.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I’m Audie Cornish. Kids in Chicago are back in school. While teachers and school officials still need to iron out wrinkles in their new contract, both are satisfied they can do that with school in session. Chicago students lost seven days as a result of the strike.
Though parents are relieved schools are open again, NPR’s Claudio Sanchez reports that some are worried about what they call the toxic climate that led to the strike and that lingers still.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Fair contracts.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Now.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Angry teachers’ demonstrations in Chicago have given way to recess and children playing in the cool September air.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Unintelligible)
SANCHEZ: But there was something else in the air this morning, a deep, lingering concern among parents. Cara Rudolph has two children at Helen C. Peirce Elementary. She says she’s not sure if kids won anything as a result of the strike.
CARA RUDOLPH: It’s like too soon to know what the good is that came out of it. A lot of questions come up, like, how are we going to make up the days that we lost? Will we make up the days that we lost? Will our school year stay longer or shorter if we’ve gained days or lost days with this new contract?
SANCHEZ: Parents have lots of questions: Will new teacher evaluations really help weed out bad teachers? Where will the money to pay teachers more come from if the school budget is almost a billion dollars in the red? And perhaps the biggest question of all, will the union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel be able to work together after all the vitriol? Kate Flynn has first grader at Peirce Elementary.
KATE FLYNN: I’m concerned about the level of toxicity that we all got to see between the Board of Education and the teachers’ union. I don’t know how that gets fixed. And part of my pipe dream would be that parents would rise up into that vacuum. But I don’t – I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen.
SANCHEZ: Not if you consider that the deep, deep problems that have plagued public education in Chicago persist: child poverty, insufficient investment in kids. Then there’s the issue of transparency, like on the huge issue of school closings that everybody knows are inevitable. Parents are totally in the dark about that, says Flynn.
FLYNN: Parents in Chicago don’t really have a voice. And I don’t really know why that is.
SANCHEZ: For Cara Rudolph, the lack of parental involvement simply boils down to fatigue. She says people in Chicago are tired of the conflict, of the finger-pointing and a history of unfulfilled promises that the quality of public education in Chicago will improve.
RUDOLPH: I feel like its been talked about for so long. It just was sad. It was so sad to see that we had to have this strike when we’ve had so much time. We’ve had a lot of time.
SANCHEZ: Teachers at Pierce Elementary say these are all legitimate concerns. Some say they, too, feel somewhat in the dark because so much of the contract that they’ll be able to vote on in the next two weeks is still being written. No one knows, for example, if the issue of class size is even on the table anymore. And that’s a key issue for kindergarten teacher Ted Wanberg, a 20-year veteran who was chosen as strike captain at Peirce Elementary.
On the bright side, says Wanberg, is that teachers in Chicago have never felt more unified, thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
TED WANBERG: Because I don’t think there’s any way that teachers could have been galvanized the way that it has been done through shared adversity.
SANCHEZ: Mayor Emanuel, for his part, in an emotional address Tuesday night, struck a note of reconciliation.
MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL: I want to thank parents and taxpayers for their patience. We showed that we are not just a city of big shoulders. We are a city of big hearts.
SANCHEZ: So now, with the strike out of the way, there is a small window, an opportunity for the mayor and the teachers’ union to come together, to tackle the tough decisions about the big problems ahead, like the city’s 40 percent dropout rate and growing number of kids who can barely read. What neither side is saying, though, is just how much they’ll be willing to concede to make sure that these problems get solved. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News, Chicago.
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