PSRP Judy Mahoney is exactly the kind of employee CPS should value. She served as the school clerk at Whittier Elementary in Pilsen for 23 years until a drunk driver changed the course of her life one night. Now, four years later, CPS has slashed Judy’s position at the school and, had our Union not fought back, she would have been out of job at the end of June.
Our members’ willingness and courage to escalate tactics is the only thing that moves CPS to do what’s right for students and educators.
CTU/CPS agreement to reopen schools created safety committees to uphold hard-fought and hard-won mitigations and make building conditions safer for staff and students. At LPHS, staff are united to win change through the committee.
We can help solve homelessness facing our students and families by giving municipalities and villages the right to enact rent control policies. HB 116, sponsored by Rep. Will Guzzardi, would lift the current statewide ban on rent control.
Southeast Side teachers, students join the fight against General Iron
Saying “no” to inappropriate assignments today can help ensure your school has the proper staffing you need tomorrow. CPS will never provide our schools with the staffing and resources they need and that have been promised if PSRPs continue to play the dutiful helper role — always willing to chip in when needed.
Our reopening agreement ,itself, does not make our schools safe. It gives us tools to hold CPS accountable and to ensure our buildings are as safe as they can be. But, like our contract, the reopening will be only as strong as our ability to enforce it, building by building. And that’s where your safety committee comes in.
Chicago’s Grassroots Education Movement alliance and CTU are mounting a campaign to pass HB 2267 — for an elected, representative school board — when lawmakers return to the Capitol after for a “lame duck” session, the closing days of the current general assembly before new legislators are seated. But the success of that campaign will depend on members contacting their state senators and insisting the bill get consideration first thing in the new year.
An independent arbitrator found that school buildings are unsafe and ordered that clerks and other staff should be allowed to work remotely at least four days a week. But the mayor decided she’s above the law and refused to abide by that ruling.
It wasn’t my best moment. I wasn’t especially proud, as the one in my family who has always been the rock in times of crisis, that I was sitting on the edge of my bed crying, and I couldn’t really even articulate why.
