Chicago gears up for legal battle over what can be taught in public schools

Besides that, he truly cares

New Chicago School Board president apologizes for social media posts criticized as antisemitic
The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson says he won’t resign, despite calls from 26 City Council members and other leaders. The board leader says he’ll work to protect all students.
By Nader Issa and Sarah Karp | WBEZ
Oct 30, 2024, 8:01pm CDT




Chicago Board of Education President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson during his first board meeting on Oct. 24.

The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, Chicago’s new Board of Education president, apologized to the Jewish community Wednesday and said he would protect all students after he faced criticism and calls for his resignation — from City Council members, school board candidates and pro-Israel politicians and organizations — for his social media posts about the war in Gaza.

Johnson said he would not resign, as 26 alderpersons have called on him to do, but said he was “deeply sorry for not being more precise and deliberate in my comments.” He acknowledged that some of the posts he shared “could be construed as antisemitic.”

“Let me start by apologizing to the Jewish community for the remarks I posted, which were clearly reactive and insensitive,” Johnson told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ in an interview. “Since that time, I have asked for and received feedback from my Jewish friends and colleagues who helped me be more thoughtful as I addressed these sensitive matters.”

A review of Johnson’s Facebook account showed from October 2023 to a few months ago, he often wrote pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel posts on social media, many of which referenced Jewish people in hostile and inflammatory ways.

The media outlet Jewish Insider first reported about Johnson’s posts on Tuesday, calling them “antisemitic” and “pro-Hamas.”

The Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 killed 1,200 people, Israeli authorities have said.

Israel has subsequently killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in 13 months of attacks, according to Gaza health authorities. Tens of thousands more have remained trapped under rubble and are missing. Parts of the besieged enclave are enduring famine as a result of the Israeli blockade, according to the United Nations.

Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th), the City Council’s only Jewish member and a vocal supporter of Israel, said the school board president’s posts called “into question his ability to fairly represent Jewish students and families in Chicago Public Schools.”

“We are deeply troubled by antisemitic and pro-Hamas comments made by Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson,” read a letter signed by 26 alderpersons who called on him to apologize and resign. “This situation is a failure of leadership and judgment on the part of Mayor [Brandon] Johnson and his executive team.

“[Rev. Johnson’s] comments have crossed major red lines into overt antisemitism, both in his explicit support for Hamas and his insistence on collectively blaming all Jews for Israel’s military actions,” they said. “His continued role on the school board is non-negotiable.”

American Jewish Committee Chicago, a pro-Israel organization, said it welcomed the letter.

The mayor’s appointment of Johnson, no relation, was already under scrutiny — including by some of the same alderpersons — after the previous Board of Education resigned en masse this month, an embarrassment for the mayor amid a battle with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez over the school system’s budget woes.

The new board president has faced questions about his delinquent child support payments and his legal disbarment nearly 30 years ago.

Asked about the situation at an unrelated news conference, the mayor said he would “continue to fight back and beat back” antisemitism. He said he appreciated that Rev. Johnson had apologized and would “work toward restoration and healing.”

Johnson, the board president, said he has worked for years with Jewish communities to fight antisemitism. Johnson said, “As board president, [I] am committed to making sure that hate of any kind has no place in Chicago Public Schools.


“I don’t disagree that at a time like this, we can have conversations on difficult topics without being insensitive,” he said.

Johnson also stood by his support of Palestinians, saying “the manner in which the Palestinian community has been treated is abysmal.

“I would agree on two different things. One, the actions of Hamas were unforgivable on Oct. 7. I would also agree that the actions of any army unjustifiably killing civilians is inconsistent with those of us who have, objectively, records of fighting for justice.”

Rev. Johnson had previously supported Israel on social media and said he still supports its right to exist. After the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, he linked the “struggle and the crimes against humanity perpetrated against people of African descent” with the massacres against Jews in the Holocaust.

“And if we are silent … crimes against humanity seem to be the loudest voices we hear,” he wrote then. “So let us who are combatants against hate stand and be accounted.”

Johnson on Wednesday also referred to the killings of three Jewish students who were fighting for Civil Rights in Mississippi in 1964. “I believe that the history of the Jewish community and solidarity with the African American community is a relationship that should always be nourished,” he said.

But from October 2023, Johnson turned his attention to the war in Gaza. There is also a long history of Black-Palestinian solidarity.

“How can a group of people who have suffered from the Holocaust; today join with the Alt Right Community?” Johnson wrote last December.

“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” he wrote in February. “The Israeli government offers a renewal of Nazi language once directed toward European Jews, ‘savages, dogs, vermin,’” he added in March. Most of these posts now appear to be deleted.

Top Israeli government officials have routinely used inflammatory language to describe Palestinians as “human animals,” “savage” and “children of the darkness” in the past year.

In a December 2023 post, Johnson shared a video of author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates sharing his experience visiting the occupied Palestinian territories and what he described as an apartheid Israeli government. Johnson commented: “I suspect my Jewish friends, or perhaps ‘former’ friends will post a rebuttal to this post. I cannot support Israel until it relents and discontinues [its] apartheid regime.”

Rev. Johnson wrote on New Year’s Eve: “Let us go into 2024 with a commitment to change the narrative and force, yes force Israel to [atone] for its shameful attempt at genocide against the [Palestinian] people.”

In March, he posted that his “heart is broken in additional pieces when I consider people who I work with and considered my friends in the fight against antisemitism who today, not only defend Israeli ongoing acts of genocide but have told me to my face that I was ridiculous.”

Many countries are accusing Israel of committing genocide and have taken the case to the International Court of Justice, which has found plausible evidence for their case.

The United States and Israel have denied the war in Gaza is a genocide. In addition, some of the world’s leading human rights organizations have found Israel to be operating a supremacist apartheid regime in the Palestinian territories, but Israel and its allies reject that characterization.

Rev. Johnson at times also painted Jews with a broad brush, asking, “How long will the Jewish people in America stand for these crimes?”

That month he also wrote: “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!”

He acknowledged last year that his comments might face criticism. But he wrote in one post, “I am not Anti-Semitic. I am anti in-justice.”

Power Grab by the CTU via their stooge Brandon Johnson

Entire CPS Board to resign, adding to school district chaos, all so they can get a loan!

 

has no idea what he is doing, neither does he care

All seven board members are expected to step down, paving the way for Mayor Brandon Johnson to appoint members who will do as he wants: fire the CEO and take a loan to that will used to give the teachers pay raises and a bonus.

By Sarah Karp and Nader Issa
Updated Oct 4, 2024, 5:42pm CDT




The Chicago Board of Education members on Sept. 26 with a video of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez behind them.

The entire Chicago Board of Education is resigning, a stunning development after months of acrimony that clears the way for Mayor Brandon Johnson to appoint a new board that will likely follow his orders — fire schools CEO Pedro Martinez, make a contract deal with the Chicago Teachers Union and take a loan to cover a city pension payment and the teachers’ contract this year.

The timing of the refunds suggest that somebody knew the to whom and when the contracts were going to be awarded.........Where are the Feds?

Brandon Johnson takes, gives back campaign cash from janitorial businesses that share in fat CPS contracts
While the mayor’s campaign refunded several contributions from custodial companies and industry executives, it defended keeping $1,000 from a businessman who was part of Aramark’s losing bid to continue as CPS’ janitorial contractor.
By Robert Herguth
Sept 27, 2024, 5:30am CDT




Mayor Brandon Johnson greets students on this year’s first day of school outside Thomas Chalmers Specialty Elementary School in North Lawndale.

Four janitorial companies and executives sharing in $330 million in new contracts with the Chicago Public Schools to clean hundreds of buildings had contributed to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign fund several months before the bidding got underway last year, records show.

Martinez needs to stand up to the incompetent bully

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez says he won't resign and cause 'leadership vacuum and instability'
Martinez’s opinion piece published Tuesday in the Chicago Tribune comes as the school district is expected to adopt a resolution at its monthly board meeting Thursday that prevents any district-run schools from closing through the 2026-27 school year.
By Nader Issa
Updated Sept 24, 2024, 5:56pm CDT




Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez


Sun-Times Media file photo

In an extraordinary set of comments Tuesday that brought the leadership tussle at the top of the school system further into public view, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said he would not resign at Mayor Brandon Johnson’s direction.

He argued his departure would leave a “leadership vacuum and instability” in his wake and decried “outright lies” about his administration.

Former Kindergarten Teacher Tells the School Superintendent To Resign!

Mayor Brandon Johnson tells CPS CEO Pedro Martinez he wants him out, sources say
Martinez did not immediately resign and seemed to be digging in his heels. Friday evening CPS issued a statement that said Martinez was focused on “building on the positive of the momentum of the new school year and implementing the district’s five-year strategic plan.”
By Nader Issa, Fran Spielman and Sarah Karp
Updated Sept 20, 2024, 1:32pm CDT




Mayor Brandon Johnson listens to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez speak during a news conference at Orr Academy High School on the West Side in June 2023.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file

After months of tension, Mayor Brandon Johnson told Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez this week that he wants the embattled schools chief to leave his position, four sources told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ.

It's only money

 

Chicago Mayor Wants $1 Billion More For Schools Even Though 43% Of Teachers Are Chronically Absent 

BY TYLER DURDEN

SATURDAY, MAY 11, 2024 - 09:30 PM

By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently traveled to Springfield with a big wish list of stuff he wants from state lawmakers. Among them, $1 billion in extra funding for Chicago Public Schools.

We have a host of reasons why his demand should be categorically rejected. Among them, CPS already spends $29,000 per student, Chicago teachers are already among the nation’s highest paid in big cities and the Chicago Teachers Union refuses to close the many empty, failing schools across the district. Not to mention that both CPS and CTU refuse to hold themselves accountable to students. Just 20% of minority CPS children can read at grade level and in math it’s even worse.

Now add to that the growing rate of teachers simply not showing up to school. The U.S. Department of Education’s definition of chronic teacher absenteeism is 10 or more absences in a school year.

In CPS, the share of teachers who are chronically absent has jumped to 43% from 28% just seven years ago. The jump can’t be blamed on the pandemic, as the rate of absenteeism was rising (from 28% to 36%) even before covid hit.

Teacher attendance has a heavy impact on student outcomes. From the Illinois State Board of Education’s Report Card:

“Teacher attendance is a “leading indicator” of student achievement, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Teachers with regular attendance provide continuity of instruction and attention to individual students. The National Bureau of Economic Research has shown that when teachers are absent for 10 days or more, student outcomes decrease significantly.”

Instead of asking for more money, Mayor Johnson should make sure his CTU brethren are actually in the classroom. He should then set dramatically higher reading and math proficiency targets that both he and teachers are held accountable for. 

And then the mayor should make those targets public.

Teachers should not be unionized

Chicago teachers' $50B demands include pay hikes, abortions, migrant accommodation

The demands include members getting 9% annual wage increases through fiscal year 2028
By Michael Dorgan Fox News
Published May 5, 2024 8:09am EDT Updated May 5, 2024 8:11am EDT




The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the public schools system and is understood to be calling for an extra $50 billion to pay for wage hikes as well as other demands such as fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBT-related requirements and training in schools.

To put the figure into context, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7

CTU...Hard Workers...................Not

Chicago Teachers Union’s Radical, Ludicrous Contract Demands for Lots of Cash and Even More Wokeness

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is currently negotiating a new contract with the public school system, with audacious demands that have been leaked to the public. Among these demands are substantial wage increases for its members, with a proposed 9% increase each year through fiscal year 2028. This would result in an average salary of $144,620 for teachers by the 2027-2028 school year, which is more than double the median household income in Chicago.

The union is also seeking additional benefits such as a $1,000 per student per semester stipend for teachers and counselors when they are assigned a number of students above contractual limits, as well as a retirement bonus of $2,500 for employees with more than 30 years of service.

In addition to these financial demands, the CTU is also calling for a range of social justice provisions. These include 100% coverage benefits for abortion care and fertility treatments, $2,000 to be given to each migrant to help with academics, transportation, and mental health counseling, and the conversion of unused school facilities into housing accommodation for migrants.

The union also wants workers and educators to be trained annually on LGBTQ+ issues and mandates that every school in the district has at least one gender-neutral bathroom. It also wants to prohibit any member from being compelled to tell parents when a student rejects his or her sex.

These demands come at a time when only 21 percent of the city’s eighth graders are proficient readers, according to the last Nation’s Report Card. The CTU’s demands have been criticized for being far outside the scope of traditional bargaining, with concerns that funding them will require a significant overhaul of finances and new revenues, meaning more and higher taxes for residents.

The negotiations are taking place under the influence of Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has deep ties to the CTU and received significant funding from teachers’ unions during his campaign. The outcome of these negotiations will have significant implications for the city’s finances and the education of its students.

Socialism on Steroids!

‘$50 Billion’ Chicago Teachers Union Contract Demands Higher Pay And Lower Expectations

BY: ANGELA MORABITO

MAY 03, 2024

IMAGE CREDITCITY CLUB OF CHICAGO/YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT

The contract veers into many social issues and away from academics: LGBT issue training, sex-neutral bathrooms, immigrant housing, police-free schools, restorative justice, and more

---

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has kicked off a season of contract negotiations by issuing a $50 billion list of demands that will enrich the union at taxpayers’ expense and provide little, if any, benefit to the city’s students.

Right now, Chicago Public Schools delivers terrible results at a very high cost. Last school year, the district spent more than $21,000 per student, well above the national average of $14,347. And on the last Nation’s Report Card, only 21 percent of the city’s eighth graders were proficient readers.

But that is of no concern to the CTU, based on its list of demands. The union intends to require every school to have at least one sex-neutral restroom and for every counselor and social worker to undergo training on “LGBTQ+ issues” each year. It also specifies that no union member may be compelled to tell a student’s parents when the student rejects his or her sex. Since when does a labor union get to decide what parents are allowed to know about their own children?

This isn’t the only way the contract veers into social issues and away from academics. CTU wants taxpayers to pay for unused school facilities to be turned into migrant housing and to pay $2,000 in “support” to each unaccompanied minor. Ever-hungry for more members, the union also insists each school must have a “newcomer liaison.”

The union is also pushing for policies that will make its youth violence problem worse. The contract put forward by CTU calls for “police-free schools,” security guards (presumably members of the union), and the creation of school safety committees at each school chaired by — who else? — the union delegate or the delegate’s appointee.

The contract also calls for mandatory annual restorative practices training for all school-based employees. There’s one glaring problem: Restorative practices don’t work. A randomized controlled study conducted by Rand in Pittsburgh found that schools that used restorative practices saw no benefit to either arrest rates or academic achievement (in fact, academic performance decreased in grades six through eight). Restorative practices do, however, give the union pretext for forcing the district to hire “restorative justice coordinators.” The union wants one in every school and another 50 hired each year through 2028.

Another Excuse Not to Work

The union’s policies will not prevent school violence, but they will leverage unsafe schools as a reason to close schools and lower teacher performance standards. After any “traumatic event” at a school, the superintendent will be required to meet with the head of the CTU to discuss closing the school for some time. The union learned from its success in keeping schools closed during Covid, and it is baking into the contract a new excuse to pay teachers for not working while students suffer. “No school will reopen until all necessary supports, both physical and emotional, are in place,” the contract says, yet it does not define a “traumatic event” or “necessary supports.”

In the eyes of the union bosses, “trauma” is also a reason to stop evaluating teachers. “In the case of a traumatic event at a particular school or subset of schools, the evaluation process shall be suspended for an entire year (365 days) for all staff,” according to the contract. But the union isn’t going to wait around for a reason to lower teachers’ job performance standards. It is pushing to decrease the score a teacher needs to be rated “proficient” and to reduce the frequency of evaluations for some tenured teachers from annually to once every three years. Plus, it is expanding opportunities for teachers to have poor performance ratings overturned.
More Pay, More Teacher Aides

Bad teachers will get to stick around, and when they do, they’ll be compensated handsomely. The union wants 9 percent annual cost-of-living raises that would bring the average teacher’s salary to nearly $145,000 over the next four years, per the Illinois Policy Institute, which published the contract online. That’s a tough pill to swallow in Chicago, where the Census Bureau reports a median household income of less than half that sum. The union also wants to force the district to hire 2,500 new teacher aides, despite stagnant district enrollment.

The union wants a policy that prioritizes saving the jobs of minority teachers in the event of layoffs. Its proposal includes nothing about teacher performance.

Mayor’s Support

Those unfamiliar with Chicago politics could be forgiven for thinking city officials are likely to laugh the union bosses out of the room. Instead, the union has an ally in the mayor’s office because the union decided who would hold the mayor’s office. Mayor Brandon Johnson is a former paid CTU organizer, and the union spent millions to get him elected. And if Johnson balks at any of the 700 demands? Well, the CTU is prepared to strike.

Union boss Stacy Davis Gates, who sends her own son to a private Catholic school, told the Chicago Sun-Times, “We’re a labor union that understands the power of solidarity and the power of work stoppage.” This leaves Chicago Public Schools families in a bind. Their options are to let the public schools do an even worse job for students or resign to the public schools not doing their job at all. This is what teacher union power does to schools and the families they’re supposed to serve. Every city in America would be wise to learn this painful lesson before it happens to them.

These teachers already do a bad job with the kids and now they want a license to do an even worse job. The true victims here are the children of color and the parents should he outraged. That stated, the bankruptcy of the Board of Education and the undoing of this union is going to be compelling.

She's a good mom

CTU president defends sending her son to private school, calling it a result of ‘unfair choices’ for South Side families
The Chicago Teachers Union leader is facing backlash for the move. She says it represents a stark statement about disinvestment in public schools.
By Sarah Karp | WBEZ




“There is not a lot to offer Black youth who are entering high school” in Chicago public schools, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates says.


The head of the Chicago Teachers Union is facing backlash for sending her eldest child to a private high school, a decision she says represents a stark statement about disinvestment in public schools and drives home why the fight to fully fund neighborhood schools is so important.

Everyone gets an A and Everyone will be an honor student

Chicago drops public school ratings in favor of a less punitive system for assessing schools
Chicago Public Schools board members say the new policy focuses on improving teaching and learning and creating an optimal educational experience.
By Sarah Karp | WBEZ
Apr 26, 2023, 7:39pm CDT




Chicago Public Schools on Wednesday did away with its policy of rating schools from a high of 1-plus to a low of 3.

The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday voted to replace its school rating policy with one that’s intended to provide information about a range of school characteristics, from how students perform on state tests, to whether instruction is rigorous and student centered, to whether a school environment is healing.

Local 1: The Rise of America's Most Powerful Teachers Union

Watch Teacher's Union Head Fume as She Realizes That DeSantis Is Winning...

WTF

According to Beetljuice, 8,400 teachers or 37 % of the teachers who work for Chicago Public Schools make over $100,000 a year, for 6 hours a day, for 9 months out of the year. And they do a bad job too. That's too much.

Need longer class days - year round and match pay to student academic performance.

So true

 

Paul Vallas: Institutional Racism in America–The Teachers Union-Dominated Public Education System 

By Paul Vallas

Yes, there is institutional racism in this country. It’s in our antiquated public school system. I’m not suggesting that is necessarily by intent, but it’s an undeniable outcome of the status quo.

Institutional racism both festers and flourishes in the absence of school choice.

It festers when communities, particularly, poor urban school districts, are denied quality educational options and are unable to force fundamental changes in their often-failing neighborhood schools.

Now I'm disillusioned

CPS has lost 8% of schools’ ‘tech assets’ during COVID, tens of thousands of computers, even air purifiers, defibrillators
The police suspect that much of the property that CPS has listed as missing actually was stolen by people with access to school buildings during the pandemic.
By Frank Main
March 25, 2022 05:30 AM







Air purifiers such as this one (right), seen at a South Side school, have been among the most-stolen items from the Chicago Public Schools during the coronavirus pandemic.


Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times



Computers and other devices that amount to at least 8% of the Chicago Public Schools’ “technology assets” have been listed as “lost” during the coronavirus pandemic.

More Chaos

 

Chicago Teachers Union takes credit for spreading the “new gospel” of union strike power across the nation. If the CTU-backed Amendment 1 passes in November, it will lock the union’s militant tactics into the state constitution, to the detriment of children and parents statewide.

The Chicago Teachers Union provides a case study in how government unions will use their power in school districts across Illinois if voters pass Amendment 1 in November.

Now you know

 

Jesse Sharkey won’t seek reelection as head of 25,000-member Chicago Teachers Union

The former social studies teacher will step away from CTU leadership when his fourth term ends June 30 and plans to return to the classroom.

By Nader Issa and Fran Spielman  Updated Feb 2, 2022, 6:32pm CST

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Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates (center, left) and CTU President Jesse Sharkey (center, right) lead thousands of striking union members on a march through the Loop.

 Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Jesse Sharkey, the wonky president of the

All Bad and Incompetent

What’s next for CPS-CTU?

After three battles in three years, the relationship between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union is beyond repair. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
By Nader Issa@NaderDIssa Jan 23, 2022, 1:31pm CST

Because of labor strife CPS families have endured multiple interruptions to their children’s education throughout Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s time in office. Getty


Anyone who has followed Chicago Public Schools in recent years knows Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union is beyond repair.

When the mayor accuses teachers of holding their students “hostage” by demanding safer working conditions, and the union president calls the mayor “relentlessly stupid” — two moments that made you cringe during their latest standoff this month — it’s clear there’s little chance of reconciliation.

But with bitter disputes having interrupted all three school years the mayor has been in office — leading to 16 missed school days, countless postponed