PHOTO COURTESY OF gEORGE n. sCHMIDT, WWW.SUBSTANCENEWS.NET

CTU 2010 Election:

PACt-Endorsed Candidates

PACT Campaign Team:

Deborah Lynch, PACT Chair, Gage Park High School

Myrtise Allen-McGhee, City-wide Specialized Services

Allen Bearden, Bronzeville High School

Maureen Callaghan, Curie High School

Carolyn Carroll, Dyett High School

Kevin Condon, Stevenson Elementary School

Diane Dennis, Julian High School

Mary Edmonds, McDade Elementary School

Bernie Eshoo, Steinmetz High School

Susanna Fandl, Hurley Elementary School

Chuck Feeney, Jamieson Elementary School

Rosemary Finnegan, City-Wide Psychologist

John Foley, Marsh Elementary School

Julie Gabrick, Darwin Elementary School

Darlene Green-Gates, Parkside Elementary School

Cindy Heywood, Vanderpoel Elementary School

Timothy Kelly, Kennedy High School

Tanya Leiser, Hanson Park

Frank MacDonald, Washington High School

Cathy Manno, Hurley Elementary School

Lawrence Milkowski, Carver High School

Carol Moriarity, Barnard Elementary School

William O’Malley, Dawes Elementary School

Sandy Pardys, Sullivan High School

Josephine Perry,Tanner Elementary School

Louis Pyster, Retiree Delegate

Sue Real, Washington Elementary School

Mary Ellen Sanchez, Byrne Elementary School

Robert Schubert, Marquette Elementary School

Marlene Slavitt, Northside Special Education HS

Cynthia Smith, Hanson Park Elementary School

Joan Springer, City-wide Hearing & Vision

Danny Vanover, Taft High School

Jacqueline Ward, Marquette Elementary School

_________________

Lynch ready for another run for teachers union president

by Patrick Thomas

As the primary election season kicks into gear, political storms are brewing—and that includes the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

Unless they are part of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), many

It’s a political arena few want to enter. But Deborah Lynch, a

native, is back time after time. President of the CTU from 2001 to 2004, Lynch is running again.

“I’m just … tenacious,” said Lynch. “I tried three times to get in.”

The election for CTU president takes place next May. Campaigning usually picks up around the beginning of the year after the holidays, but this campaign has been an all-out push since last spring. With such wrangling, the union has become synonymous with discord.

Candidates from four different caucuses are planning to challenge President Marilyn Stewart, including her own treasurer, whose position the union recently voted to eliminate. Many insiders believe the move was politically motivated.

Politics have caused the caucuses to form within the union, much like the infighting of political parties. But the divisiveness is also a result of an election that could prove pivotal. The increase in charter schools has decreased the number of union members, while a difficult economy and a round of lay-offs targeting teaching aides earlier this year have caused further strain. Emerging issues include year-round schools, overcrowded classrooms, healthcare and a two-tiered pension system designed for incoming teachers.

A graduate of

, Lynch said she is running to stop major losses in the union’s membership and reserve funds. She pointed to the union’s fall from 36,000 members when she left office to fewer than 32,000 currently. She also raised concerns over CTU reserves, which she said plummeted after she left office.

The reserves showed signs of a rebound last year, but the union has also had to take out millions in loans, Lynch said. She blames large financial losses on perks given to Stewart’s appointees. Besides a six-figure salary and $7,000 yearly pension, Stewart’s 30 staff members and officers receive a $23,000 annuity through AIG, $18,000 pensionable expense account, and a one-week holiday bonus of $2,000.

If elected, Lynch vows to eliminate the perks, but she also wants a stipend for teachers with class sizes of more than 25, a 5-percent pay raise, a freeze on healthcare costs, and a reduction in the annual $1,000 member dues.

The turmoil within the union has her convinced the job is hers to regain.

“There is great discontent out there,” said Lynch, who is slated to run for president on behalf of the ProActive Chicago Teachers and School Employees (PACT) party.

Other challengers have expressed discontent. Among the other CTU presidential candidates is Linda Porter, the former treasurer of Stewart’s team, who split from Stewart’s United Progressive Caucus (UPC) and joined the Coalition for a Strong Democratic Union (CSDU). Marcia Williams, who ran in 2004, is returning to represent the Independent Caucus (IC), and a new group, known as the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), has selected potential nominees but has yet to announce its candidate.

In a letter posted on the CTU’s Web site, Stewart said it’s time for the bickering to stop. Although she admits the losses, Stewart said the union is moving in the right direction fiscally.

“Over the past two years since I first initiated reform within our union ranks, our fiscal condition has improved dramatically. We have moved from a deficit of more than $600,000 to a surplus of more than $2 million,” Stewart wrote.

“Of course, we need those funds for the battles we must wage with the Board of Education over its policies that hurt our members. It’s time for us to stop fighting with one another and intensify our work to hold the Board accountable.”

On Oct. 23, Lynch, a reading teacher for freshmen at

, kicked off her campaign with a fundraiser for 250 supporters. She lost in a closely contested runoff election in 2004 and lost convincingly three years later in 2007 when Stewart offered more promises in negotiating an upcoming contract.

Lynch said those promises were never fulfilled, and the union has gone backwards in that time.

She said of the 435,000 students who were attending CPS schools when she was in office in 2004, approximately 70,000 students have since left for charter schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s controversial Renaissance 2010 program. She said those numbers will only grow, and the union will continue to decrease in size.

“By next year it’s going to be 81,700 kids and thousands and thousands of teaching positions that have gone out the door with those kids,” Lynch said. “To me, I’ve seen the Renaissance 2010 as a total abdication of the Board of Ed’s responsibility.”

Citing a

study comparing students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, Lynch said charter schools do not fare better than public schools.

“We’ve got an entire agenda of dismantling 100 schools, turning them into charter schools when the research suggests that maybe 17 percent of the kids would have done better if they never left their neighborhood school,” Lynch said. “The myth that has perpetuated out there is that the charter schools are better, and the union has not been a voice or spoken up for the members, hasn’t spoken up for the people working in traditional regular public schools; it hasn’t fought; it has not launched any campaigns. There’s no vision for the union promoting itself as even interested in improving our schools. There has been a lack of vision, a lack of leadership, and silence.”

Lynch, a critic of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, blames him, the former CPS CEO, for closing schools in impoverished areas of the city. She said shuttering schools has never led to student achievement.

“You’ve got an agenda out there and no one on the union side speaking for the hardworking people in the union who use their own money to buy their students a coat for graduation, tickets to homecoming, give them bus passes or whatever they need,” she said.

Lynch prides herself on delivering the union’s highest four-year raise in 20 years when she negotiated a 4-percent increase each year for four years along with sick day increases.

Stewart’s camp argued that additional healthcare costs prohibited those increases from making an impact. The current contract for teachers expires in 2012.

“We’re pressing for improvements and to make change,” Lynch said. “We ask people to look back at the last five years and see what we lost, remind people what my group and I were able to accomplish in our three short years in office.”

Under a proposed two-tiered pension system for teachers, new teachers would receive a different pension from that of seasoned teachers. Despite public demand for pension reform, Lynch said she will reject the two-tiered system.

“We work hard, and in exchange for the big salaries and benefits one might get in another profession, [the pension] is one of the benefits of being a teacher,” she said.

Lynch said PACT wants to ensure union contracts are enforced and that the union has input on issues like class size or making sure teachers have enough textbooks and desks.

“The motto of our team is good working conditions are good learning conditions. We’re fighting to reduce class sizes because it’s better for kids. We’re fighting for more truancy officers because it’s better for kids,” Lynch said. “That was my passion. I wanted to leave the place better than when I found it. I really believed in unionism, and the union is a vitally important part in improving our schools.”

This is part of the December 2, 2009 online edition of The Beverly Review.

_______________________________________________

PACT Campaign Kick Off Event

October 23, 2009

Remarks:  Deborah Lynch, PACT Chair

Welcome to our PACT 2010 Campaign Kickoff--we are so very glad you are here!  This month marks the 14th anniversary of PACT's founding. For 14 years, we have been standing up and speaking out on the critical issues facing CTU members.  We have opposed unjust school closings, protested draconian school board policies, demanded members' rights be honored, and even fought the lack of democracy within our own union...  In 3 years in office, we lowered union dues, won the unprecedented pension enhancement, won career service seniority benefits and bonuses, teacher longevity days, a shorter school year; aggressive class size enforcement and we won respect for CTU members.  We also helped a then-little known state senator get his start on the road to the White House with the first union endorsement of his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

In the past 5 years under Marilyn Stewart, 5,000 union jobs have been lost.  Over 75 schools have been closed/turned around with 25 more scheduled for next year, and CPS has lost 70,000 children to charter schools, despite the fact that research shows overall they are no better than our traditional neighborhood schools.  In Stewart's contract we lost our hourly rate for overtime work and members are paying more for health care, with greater increases scheduled for years 4 and 5 of her contract.  Internally, the Stewart team has had a meltdown with her expulsion of her own vice president (at a cost of over $1 million of CTU dues) and her own treasurer is now running against her.  The Dallas buy-out- included 1/2 million to kick him out of the union and the other 1/2 to settle with him.  His lifetime pension is now $135,000 per year. 

The Stewart team virtually bankrupted the CTU, drawing down a $5.6 million reserve fund and borrowing $3 more million on top of that.   Sadly, these funds did not disappear in the service of CTU members, but in the pockets and back accounts of Stewart and her cronies: annuities, holiday bonuses, pensionable expense accounts, severance pay--unbelievable perks and benefits given to a chose few--and without any authorization from the House or membership. 

Stewart also sold out the new teachers.  She has consistently refused to enforce the contract and policies which provided safeguards and protections for PATs so that she could blame principal abuse on the Lynch team.  She also eliminated our highly successful CTU Principal Evaluation surveys which shone a light on abusive principals.  Under our team, no PAT would ever be displaced without a reason or a fight from his or her union.  PATs deserve so much better but they were left hanging in the wind strictly for political reasons. That is unconscionable.

There are other threats facing us.  Charter schools will have 82,000 CPS children by next year and Stewart supported legislation this spring allowing the creation of 45 more charter schools.  A major study out of

There are threats to our pension fund, which a weak, splintered, passive union leadership cannot--or will not--fight back.  A Lynch/PACT team will aggressively fight pension attacks, pension holidays and any talk of a 2-tiered pension system for CTU members.  And we are supporting PACT member and former pension trustee Rosemary Finnegan in next week's pension election in the schools.  Rosemary has the knowledge and experienced to keep our pension fund solid and strong.

So here we are, running again because we have to.  Our PACT team has the knowledge, the experience, the commitment and the tenacity do what must be done.  At this time I would like to ask all of our candidates for officer and executive board to stand and be recognized.   

Yes, we have a great team, but we need you, too to help us take back our union.   Here are 4 ways to help:  1.) join the campaign by becoming one of the 150 candidates we will be slating for AFT-IFT convention delegate.  Elected convention delegates get to participate at annual state or national conventions, at union expense, and provide voice and direction to the union at the state and national levels.   2.) help set up a school visit at your school.  School visits are where the campaign action is at.  The more schools we can get to get our message out, the greater are our chances.  If you are not the school delegate, please talk to your delegate about having us in to talk to your colleagues about everything that is at stake in this union election.   3.) spread the word.  Word of mouth is the next best campaign strategy.  Share the information we have, pass out our flyers and materials to colleagues and friends.  Call and email people you know in other schools.  Help us get the word out; and  5.) contribute what you can in time and/or money. Just being here supporting this fundraiser is so important.   All of our vendors today are donating a portion of their sales to the PACT campaign and we are very happy to have them here.  So buy a lot from them!  If you have the time, come out to our monthly campaign strategy sessions.  You may be able to share a new idea or just help us lick and stick an election mailing.  Do anything you can do, because doing nothing can't be an option.  It's up to all of us to do what John Kotsakis, my union mentor, always exhorted us to do:  leave the place better than when you found it.  Our union is our mechanism to leaving the place better than when we found it, to stand up and be counted, to fight the good fight.  Let's go.  There's not a moment to spare.  Thank you!

Copyright PACT. All rights reserved.