Showing posts with label TIF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TIF. Show all posts
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Stand With CTU

October 3, 2016 0 comments

TSJ Strike Support Bulletin #1

As you probably know CTU voted 95% to authorize a strike, and the House of Delegates (union delegates from each school) voted to strike Oct. 11 if CPS does not meet their contract demands.

Key issues CTU is fighting for are:

  • RESTORE cuts to art, music, librarians, and staff-classrooms are overcrowded and understaffed!
  • RESTORE cuts to special education, which is in a desperate situation as CPS is balancing the budget on backs of the most vulnerable students
  • NO teacher pay cuts
  • YES job security

The challenges in the schools require money to fix so the Board of Education and the city will have to come up with it. CTU and GEM (the Grassroots Education Movement), along with other community groups, have proposed solutions that include tapping into TIF funds, taxing corporations, imposing a financial transaction tax, and more. The city council can pass the TIF ordinance sponsored by Garza/Cárdenas to restore TIF funds to CPS. Contact your alderperson if you live in Chicago and demand that they support the ordinance!

Actions-We urge everyone to participate!
Oct. 4: GEM and the Chicago Teacher Solidarity Committee joint press conference. 10:00 AM, at City Hall. We need to dispel the narrative that "greedy teachers" are holding parents and students hostage.

Oct. 6: School walk-ins. 8 am. This is in conjunction with a national day of walk-ins sponsored by AROS (Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools). See list of schools here. Students, parents, teachers, and residents will be walking into schools, rallying for the schools they deserve, before the school day begins. Please go to your neighborhood school or a school you have a relationship with to support them and tell them you read this here.

Oct. 10: GEM student/youth forum. Time and location TBA (tentative).

Oct. 11: Potential start of strike,. Again, please go to your neighborhood school/school you know to support them, walk the picket line, help out any way you can, and again, tell them you read this here! Picket lines start before and at the beginning of the school day (FYI, in 2012, they stayed up for 2-3 hours)

Stay Tuned! Please communicate with us by emailing here and letting us know what you are involved in and what is happening in your school community.

See CTU Contract FAQ, their proposal for A Just Chicago, and their info on the contract campaign.

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Help restore the CPS budget cuts. Two things you can do this week to get Mayor Emanuel to return money to CPS Schools.

August 13, 2013 0 comments

Call the Mayor and Demand TIF Restoration-Rally Sunday, Logan Square


  • Call Mayor Emanuel's office to demand restoration of our tax dollars taken from public schools!

  • Rally to Support Public Schools, this Sunday, August 18th in Logan Square-Centennial Monument, Kedzie & Logan. 4:00 PM!!!


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Please call the Mayor's Office--
312-744-3300--and tell him to put our kids first by declaring a TIF surplus and moving at least 100 million dollars back to CPS classrooms to restore the cuts!

Don't know about TIFs?
They're tax dollars taken from CPS for private development.

Want to know more?
Check out Ben Joravsky' Chicago Reader stories on the TIFs
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CPS budget cuts are another attack on schools, but communities are fighting back.

August 4, 2013 0 comments

Chicago Public School leaders got an earful Thursday night at a public hearing about next years budget.

Chicago Public School leaders got an earful Thursday night at a public hearing about next year's budget. - Photo via ABC Chicago 

 The Chicago Sun Times covered the budget hearing in Englewood where TSJ member Byron Sigcho called out CPS for de-humanizing students and doing absurd things such as shifting art and physical education to online classes: 

“When you yourself refer to our children as seats, it’s hard to believe that you think of our children more than seats and of our communities more than spreadsheets,” he said. Sigcho, a grad student at University of Illinois at Chicago, continued to vent. "You’re really proposing that our children take P.E. and art classes online? To me that’s a joke. That’s not investing in our youth. . . . Why does CPS keep funding corrupt charter networks?” he said, referring to the UNO Charter Schools." 

 WBEZ reports that "A top school official at the North Side hearing said at the start of the meeting he didn’t just want to hear complaints about cuts. He wanted solutions for closing the district’s $643 million gap between revenue and expenses."
“Tell us the things you think we’re spending money on, that you think we ought to cut,” said Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley. “You can’t just say, ‘Give us more.’  Tell us what you think we should cut.”Speakers were happy to comply.“Ask the 20 charter schools that are opening after 50 public schools have closed—ask them to do more with less,” said Dan Phelan, who worked as a teacher in the writing center at Schurz High School until he was laid off last month."
According to this Chicago Tribune Article, CPS claims that they are "only" cutting $68 million from classrooms, but other estimates are much higher - closer to $162 million causing massive cuts to art, music, physical education, libraries and core teaching positions. 

 Parents at the budget hearing at Truman College on the city's north side "railed at CPS": "I'm angry that the mayor sold the idea of a longer school day and only funded it for a year," said Janet Meegan, a parent at Mitchell Elementary in the West Town neighborhood...Meegan said her school has lost a specialized reading teacher [one of the 500 positions Rahm promised as part of the longer day] and a librarian. Parents, she said, will be pitching in with increased student fees to help pay for art and music programs. This was not what we were promised," Meegan said at a hearing at Truman College in Uptown attended by about 200 people.

 Progress Illinois reports that at the north side hearing CPS Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley (who lives in a north-shore suburb on a waiver of CPS's residency policy) "...really struck a nerve while discussing various investments the district is making for next year, including a $7.7 million expansion of its Safe Passage program. The program is being ramped up with 600 additional Safe Passage workers to cover routes for the 51 welcoming schools.
“You probably don’t have to worry about Safe Passage up in these neighborhoods,” Cawley said, which caused an uproar.
“How would you know,” one person at the meeting asked Cawley. Others said: “How insulting!” “How dare you?” “Oh my God!” and “Where are you from?”
“My son was shot and murdered near here. Don’t even go there,” said local resident Carol Keating-Johnson. “You don’t know what’s going on in these communities.” 
Via Bob Simpson "Action Now led a walkout of the Chicago Public Schools budget hearings at Malcolm X College tonight (Friday Aug. 2). Decrying the undemocratic CPS public hearings that have so far not been attended by Barbara Byrd Bennett or Mayor Emanuel, they led about 2/3 of the audience out of the auditorium." - This walkout was not covered by any media outlets. 

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