Our contract demands for the schools Chicago’s students deserve resonate with parents and communities across the city. But Chicago Public Schools continues to stall and deny students what we need.
HB2275 is the Chicago Teachers Union’s bill to restore Union bargaining rights and bring Chicago in line with every other school district in Illinois. HB2275 would repeal Section 4.5 of the IELRA (the labor law that covers CPS educators), which limits our rights. It would also require CPS to bargain over class size, clinician staffing, special education teachers, paraprofessional staffing and other working conditions over which every other district is required to negotiate.
HB2267 creates an elected school board for Chicago. City residents want one. Newly elected Chicago City Council members want one. And Chicago’s new mayor claims to want one. Senate President John Cullerton, however, has long held the bill up at his friend, Rahm Emanuel’s, behest.
But Rahm is gone, and there are no more excuses. The only way to ensure that community members and parents have a real voice in school governance is to have an elected school board.
The current session in Springfield ends May 31 at 11:59 p.m. Let’s pass the elected school board bill and the repeal of Section 4.5 to ensure bargaining rights, smaller class sizes and more for Chicago’s public schools!
Use the form below to contact your state senator and do two things:
- State your support for HB2275 or HB2267.
- Ask them to ask Senate President John Cullerton to release the bill for a vote.
The time is now for the restoration of our bargaining rights and bringing democracy back to the decision-making process for Chicago’s public schools. Chicago’s educators, parents, students and school communities have had enough of mayoral control of CPS, and our union deserves the right to bargain for the resources to make equity in education a reality.
