Chicago Teachers Union educators at Acero/UNO vote overwhelmingly to strike.

CHICAGO, Oct. 30, 2018—Chicago Teachers Union educators at Acero/UNO charter schools voted overwhelmingly today to strike. 96% of Acero CTU members turned out to vote, and of those voting, 98% voted to strike. Of the CTU’s 536 members at Acero’s 15 schools, 512 voted—and of those, 503 voted YES on the strike ballot.

Educators at four unionized CICS charter schools will also take a strike vote Friday. Roughly a thousand CTU charter educators are currently negotiating contracts with eleven charter operators.

If CTU members in charters hit the picket lines, it will be the first strike of a charter operator in U.S. history.

Watch your email and the CTU website for news about how you can support fellow union members—and how you can get involved in contract fights at both CTU district and charter schools. Check out the livestream of this evening’s press conference at this link.

When the scandal-plagued UNO charter network rebranded as Acero, it promised better management policies. The charter operator has received hundreds of millions of tax dollars from Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education, in addition to millions of dollars more in state funding for school construction. But Acero has dragged its heels for six months in negotiations, and failed to come up with strategies to ensure that a greater percentage of the public dollars it collects ends up in classrooms.

Tonight’s press conference announcing the strike vote was full of fire, commitment and energy.

“We’re fighting for educational justice,” said CTU member Andy Crooks, who is president of Acero’s division of CTU educators. “Our teachers, paraprofessionals, office coordinators and IT staff work longer hours in a longer school day and year for less than public schools. That’s got to change.”

Acero’s CEO earns more to manage a system of 8,000 students than Emanuel’s CPS CEO receives to manage a district of over 350,000 students, and management fees and non-classroom ‘administrative’ salaries eat heavily into Acero’s budget.

“Charter operators are failing charter school students,” said CTU ACTS Division Chair Chris Baehrend. “They’re diverting public funds away from education into private enrichment. We lack transparency, accountability and diversity. We’re putting the entire charter industry on notice—public funds will be used for public services in our schools, and if we have to strike to make that happen, we will.”

Besides better wages and more reasonable working conditions, CTU Acero educators are also fighting to make schools real sanctuary schools for a student population that is overwhelmingly Latinx. Special education needs and poor treatment of paraprofessionals are also critical issues.

“Our bosses call us ‘apprentices’—but there’s no management plan in place that allows us to advance our certification and become full special education teachers” said Acero paraprofessional Deniria Dukes. “We also desperately need staffing for special education that management simply refuses to provide. That is just wrong.”

Management’s refusal to offer ‘apprentices’ a path forward as classroom educators has severely undermined diversity in the classroom. By relegating minority educators into never-ending “apprenticeships”, Acero management is deploying CPS policy from decades ago, when Black and Brown educators were rarely provided full-time positions as general classroom teachers.

“This contract fight is about educational justice—and the educational justice movement rising across this country has come home to Chicago’s charter industry,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “The resources that come into charter operators’ hands are being funneled into the bosses’ boardrooms instead of our students’ educations. Charter operators across Chicago are diverting precious resources away from our classrooms into high management and CEO pay, into PR machines and marketing schemes, into the continued expansion of politically connected charter schools—sometimes even out of the city—in ways that hurt our ability to sustain those schools and support our students. We demand well-resourced schools, and we are prepared to strike to make that happen.”

Poor working conditions, low-ball pay and longer work hours also drive tremendous turnover at Acero schools.

“We have huge turnover rates at because management simply refuses to offer educators equal pay for equal work,” said Caroline Rutherford, vice chair of the CTU charter division and an Acero art teacher, who with nine years in the system is considered a veteran. “Turnover can range from 25-50% at some campuses. At the same time, class sizes are too large—and growing. Charters across the nation have been trying to put as many kids as they can get away with into the classroom with as few adults as possible. Cutting down class size is a key demand.”

Additional CTU demands include curriculum autonomy, adequate maternity/parental leave, a fair system of teacher evaluation and salary tables for paraprofessionals.

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CTU ACTS Division Chair Chris Baehrend will be one of our guests on Friday’s Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. 11am. 105.5fm in Chicago. Streaming globally at lumpenradio.com (download the app). The show is re-broadcast twice on Sundays and on podcast: hittingleft.libsyn.com and iTunes.