CTU statement on today’s shooting near Kenwood Academy High School
Mothers don’t send our children to school to be murdered. Mayor Lightfoot and every single decision maker in this city owe us more. We demand more.
Mothers don’t send our children to school to be murdered. Mayor Lightfoot and every single decision maker in this city owe us more. We demand more.
Thanks to the new rules members have won in their long struggle for safety, some 315 schools now have at least one person assigned to their contact tracing team and, of those, more than 230 have more than one contact tracer. This work is sorely needed because more than two-thirds of those schools have vaccinations rates under 50 percent.
Our January 2022 safety agreement with the district is legally binding and unaffected by the court’s decision.
One consequence of Mayor Lightfoot’s four-day lockout is that today’s paycheck is not a full one, due to the fight for safety in our schools during a lethal surge in the COVID-19 pandemic. But we continue to push Chicago Public Schools to reinstate those four days of work and wages, just as we continue to meet with CPS daily and hammer out enforcement issues in the new district Safety Agreement.
While it’s unsurprising that CPS has yet to get its safety act together, take heart from the knowledge that parents support our efforts to push for safety and transparency.
CTU officers and staff are prepared to support members as we all work together to continue to build safety through solidarity for our rank-and-file members and the students and families we support.
The decision was made to bring the proposed agreement to the entire active membership for their final say. If the agreement is voted up, we do everything in our power to enforce what is there. If the agreement is voted down, we will have to hold another House meeting and decide when we are resuming the action.
The courage and unity of our rank-and-file members secured a landmark agreement, and one of the best safety pacts in the U.S. for district educators and their students.
Join us today at 5 p.m. for our citywide Speakout for Safety, and learn from educators, families and students what’s really taking place in our schools and in negotiations with the district. These voices deserve to be heard right now.
On Friday, CPS finally sent the discipline rescission notices to 55 members targeted this past winter for communicating with parents about how unsafe CPS’ reopening plan was. But it took until this past Friday for CPS to finally issue the formal notification, and it’s been great to receive happy messages from some of the impacted members!