Public Servitude

Before the September Board meeting, I ran into our school's contact in the Office of LSC Relations in the lobby of the Marquette Building. 

We spoke briefly about my ongoing request that the BoE include a teacher preference percentage into its admissions policies. Although he is a 20+-year veteran of CPS and his children went through the system under the previous policies, our contact told me that he doesn't support my request for several reasons, but chiefly because it is a requirement of public service that you don't give yourself perks. My changes, as proposed, would be "too much of keeping the best for ourselves."

We challenged each others' thinking for bit, exchanging ideas and beliefs about the issue, and then he went for coffee and I went up to attend the September BoE meeting. 

But the more I think about it, the more this particular stance ticks me off. As I said to our contact. if it were true that public servants should consider personal sacrifice as part of their job description, why is it only the rank and file teachers who must adhere to this mindset? 

Why does Tim Cawley get a residency pass to live in Winnetka? Why is there no outcry that the mayor sends his kids to Lab? On the current Board of Education, appointed by mayor Rahm Emmanuel in 2012 and 2013, there are are only a handful of members (Andrea Zopp, David Vitale, Mahalia Hines) who sent their children to CPS--and even then, only Hines's son attended a non-selective school (Luther High School South). 

On CPSObsessed this week, there is raging debate about how much access individual schools should give to individual parents. Inevitably, the discussion in comments turned to teacher perks. 

I don't get this us versus them mindset that seems to prevail whenever parents and teachers begin to bemoan the problems of a deeply imperfect and under-resourced system. I truly do not understand why we as a society cannot view the school environment as a school environment (even if it is a work environment for teachers/administration) and not as a corporate environment. As Dorothy Shipps chronicled in her book, School Reform, Corporate Style, business has been trying to modernize schooling to corporate ideals for over 90 years. Now the “free market capitalist” mindset toward public education has so infiltrated our collective psyche that the public is in on the cry for modernization as well. Even worse, we think it’s OK to compare every public service and agency to a private one. 

As I wrote last year, I believe in the teachers union. Even more important, I believe in the teachers themselves, and in the strength and integrity of their profession. I have been extremely fortunate that I have met only a handful of less-than-great teachers, and my children have been taught pretty much exclusively by good to great teachers. 

The mindset that teachers have it so easy--summers off, the laundry list of holidays, make more than the rest of us, automatic pay increases, work partial days, have funded pensions, to name a few things I've read about teachers lately--is farcical. It implies that there is only so much pain and suffering and general pain-in-the-assishness to go around, and that office workers have a lock on it. 

The teachers versus corporate workers comparison is reminiscent of conversations in the Great White Moose of an afternoon: does The Boy's loss of his favorite jacket trump The Girl having to be partners again with the boy next to her in line? Or does The Tot Who's Not trump them both because he's mortified that I told his uncle a story about The Tot and gummy bears?  

The fact is: if you're not a teacher, you have no idea how much the work day or work week can stink. (And if you've never worked a crummy corporate job, you've likely no idea how much the work day or work week can stink.)  That corporate America no longer gives the so-called white-collar knowledge worker a sense of purpose and control over his/her work environment is a great point of sociological discussion, but it has no bearing on what is happening systemically in public education or other public agencies. 

Strikers

So it's the end of Day 3 of the 2012 CTU strike and I'm feeling much the way I felt on August 27: utterly sick of my children. To quote a fellow Disney II parent, "I've grown tired of attempting to be cheerful with my kids." The boredom-induced bickering is just one of the reasons that I hate summer. 

But. 

I get that this is what the CTU and our teachers need to do. And suffering through more stretches of time in forced home-schooling with my children during this strike is the price that I'm willing to pay for (possibly) real education reform. Because Ms. Lewis's "real schools" comment had nothing to do with $7,500/year private school. To borrow a tired sports analogy, I'm willing to take one for the team on this.

Because I recognize that we, on the NWside of Chicago, live in a bubble. Our children, in large part, attend schools that are CPS's education superstars. Our teachers willingly gave up extra pay to give their students extra classroom time. Our teachers work evenings and weekends, and they are pleasant to us when we run into them in our daily lives when school is not in session. Our teachers have our support as parents every hour of every day. But it's not like this for every teacher or at every school. I think it's like this for very few teachers at very few schools within the system. Some of them are schools that I never want to enter to confirm that what they report is true. 

Like many parents, I'm frustrated by the necessary lack of transparency in what the hold-up is between CPS and CTU at the contract negotiating table. Why can't they compromise? Karen Lewis and Mayor Rahm Emanuel seem locked in a battle of wills that's holding the rest of Chicago in a captive standstill. It's anyone's guess who'll prove him or herself to be the biggest donkey in the end. 

But I'm also frustrated by what is reported in and opined by the media. Like balanced government, balanced reporting also seems to be a thing of the past. I've long known that the Chicago Tribune is a screamingly conservative paper, so maybe it's not surprising to anyone else that the only source in Jon Kass's opinion piece from today is from a man who formerly led a group called Americans for Limited Government before he came to lead the neutrally named Illinois Policy Institute. The IL Policy Institute's directors also include an equity firm partner, a portfolio manager, a lawyer and political appointee in the Reagan administration, and a former CEO who now works to "reduce government involvement in commercial enterprise." To quote The Girl: seriously?

Mr. Tillman, will your "nonpartisan" group consider reducing the involvement of commercial enterprise in (setting policy for) government? The only thing that introducing corporate practices to the public education system has done for it is to make it as unstable as corporate America. I'm neither a Republican nor rich, and I was fortunately raised in an educational era where learning to think--and speak/write--critically was more highly valued than not seeming to fall behind my peers, so I'll be lucky if five people read this. But I must say it: Of course executives like Mr. Tillman are anti-union. They're not offshoring their jobs to India or Bangladesh; they're just offshoring their money.

Union labor got its start in the Gilded Age, as a response to the rich-get-richer and the poor-get-poorer political climate of the late 19th century. Some Many argue that the need for unions is over, and that many protections advocated by union labor have been codified in our society. But I look around at the rapidly disappearing middle class and think we're headed back to the Gilded Age, if we aren't there already.  "Soon the government was protecting the rights of wealthy Americans instead of all Americans." (italics mine)

Mr. Tillman's statement is disingenuous. People like Mr. Tillman are trying to break the union because they think that teachers are like widgets--entirely interchangeable. I'm quite sure there are teachers within CPS who phone it in--just as there are employees everywhere in America who phone it in. But what a huge disservice it would be to Chicago's children to get rid of teachers with 20 years of experience because they've gotten too expensive for the district's books. Too bad we can't offshore teachers, eh? 

But even if CPS can separate the wheat from the chaff, can the best teachers overcome poverty in the absence of adequate resources and supports (and the funding for these)? This Tribune editorial conveniently omits some critical points in its assessment of the importance of great teaching: 

First, the metro areas mentioned in the editorial--Boston, NYC, Houston--put their money where their mouths are. All of these cities spend more per student than Chicago does. Houston ISD ties teachers' pay to student test scores, although what that actually means will be anyone's guess in the next few years as most of the country moves to the Common Core State Standards while Texas remains with its state-developed STAAR. 

Second, Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust mentioned the importance of great teachers in her statement. But she didn't just say strong teachers. She said strong, well-supported teachers. And this is what teachers on the line are asking for: more/better resources. It's not just about pay. But because of SB7, pay becomes the focal issue.

The Tribune bills Education Trust as an advocacy group. It doesn't specify for what or whom the Education Trust does its work. Not surprisingly, the group's senior leadership has strong ties to the Children's Defense Fund, which in turn has strong ties to Stand for Children and charter schools. It's not that difficult to understand why Ms. Lewis isn't going to urge her teachers back to work without a contract while they work the details out. This infamous video is partially why. That and they've been negotiating for over 10 months already.

The Trib wrote, "Parents and principals need to know which teachers excel and which take up space." I agree with this because I already know which teachers excel and which take up space. As do most parents who are nominally involved in their children's education. I consider this part of my job as a parent. Good principals know this too. 

Finding my own voice

Chicago Public Schools' independent fact finder report was released this week, and as all news outlets are reporting, both sides rejected the report's recommendations.

At yoga with a group of moms yesterday morning, the pre-pranayama chatter was all about whether CPS teachers are going to strike. On Facebook, everyone is asking the same question. The fear of the unknown is palpable. Working parents everywhere feel the shadow over what remains of the kids' summer vacation.

Although I follow CPS closely, I have no idea whether a strike is imminent or avoidable. My reaction to public issues is often so far outside of popular opinion that I cannot trust that my gut reaction to any particular issue is in any way predictive of outcome. 

Oddly enough, I feel fairly calm about the whole thing. The Dad is worried about a possible strike interfering with the kids' schooling, but I think a labor dispute could provide a standalone education lesson that The Boy, at least, would find interesting. I mean, this is the kid who found WBEZ's recent On Point story so riveting that he asked if we could continue to listen to it in the house. 

I came to my own interest in civics a bit later than the age of 9: although I studied Political Science in college, I pursued a (corporate) writing career. When I left UIUC in 1997, I also left late-night discussions about Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and the future of the EU to wither in my memory of Urbana's Espresso Royale.

Raising children in the city of Chicago--with its long history of both the good (architecture, arts, social work) and the bad (crime, graft, greed, corruption) in society--has been my political reawakening.  Don't tell my father-in-law, who is fond of quoting Winston Churchill, but as I get older, I've become more of a social democrat.

That said, I've been rather wishy-washy on the issue of the CTU, and of unions in general. I've yet to meet a white-collar professional/manager with something positive to say about union labor. But as I've read the news reports, and the editorials, and the public rants about the CTU's greed, I've come to an interesting realization about how I feel about the union versus free-market debate. 

And that is: I believe fundamentally in the unions. As a Chicago resident, I often find Karen Lewis's public statements to be irritating. But even with the CTU's bad (or nonexistent) PR, I don't think the usefulness of union labor has ended.  Without unions, we wouldn't have (had) a fair wage, a reasonable work week, and decent working conditions -- all things that helped to create a middle class, even as that middle class rapidly disappears. Even when I worked full-time, I often wondered why my field was not unionized. After all, in some ways, unionization is codification of an industry. Codification is really information. And information is power.  

I do not actually believe that the CTU wants or expects a 23% pay raise, but thanks to SB7, the CTU cannot negotiate on anything else unless/until CPS brings it to the table. So the teachers end up looking like greedy assholes in the press/public opinion. And the mayor wants this negotiation played out in the press; Karen Lewis isn't the only one who can play that game.

As an employee, the most important things to me were time, time, and culture (whether I felt respected by my co-workers and boss, and felt like I was contributing)--not pay. Of course "a day's pay for a day's work" is important, but no one in his right mind would argue that teachers in the United States go into the field for the money. 

As discussion of the fact-finders report and next steps continues, the online discussion invariably turns to what happens in the private sector (lack of raises, job security, etc.). In the private sector, we negotiate one-on-one with our employers about vacation time and benefits as well as about salary. To me, the CTU-CPS negotiations are no different.