Long-time union guy, first-time striker . . .

From the picket line . . . .

#PutItInWriting

People always want to boil it down to teacher pay.

Yes, teacher pay is always at issue but that is far from the only one. Speaking personally, moving to Chicago Public Schools from a district in NW Indiana just this year, I have already gotten a pretty big raise, so I'm not really striking over teacher pay, per se. Let's be clear though, teachers DO deserve to paid more. I have seen good people, who were good teachers, leaving the classroom behind ENTIRELY because, for all the stress and headache involved, payday was just too marginal. Those among us who have been in education for 10+ years have seen this MANY times. Good folks decide to become principals or college professors, or they leave education entirely, and you can't even blame them. Yet we NEED good classroom teachers!

#SmallerClasses

I'm striking for smaller classes. My two most difficult classes contain 34 and 36 early high school students. They are my largest. It is NOT a coincidence that my two largest classes are my two most challenging, as any teacher will tell you. There are simply more behaviors to help guide, and to manage . . . in my largest class, there are more students than desks. Yesterday one of those classes had a TON of students absent, possibly because everyone knew the strike was looming, and human nature dictates that when a break is due, we tend to want to extend that break.

At any rate, with a large number of my west side students missing, my usually-extremely-challenging group of 34 was pared down to around 20-22. Well guess what? With a much smaller group, the class ran as smooth as butter melting on a warm griddle; like . . . waaaaay better than it usually does.

Any educator will tell you, and plus it's common sense: SMALLER CLASSES MATTER. That's why I'm striking today. I have a daughter who will attend CPS schools. I demand that she have smaller classes, rather than larger ones. That's what it's about for me

#PayTheParas

Another heartbreaking reality of living in this expensive-ass town, is that many of our support staff are BARELY making it right now. Full time teacher aides, school clerks and secretaries, and other paraprofessionals who spend their entire work lives in schools, shouldn't have to eke by on public assistance because they can't make ends meet. And we need MORE of them. Too many schools (like mine) have no librarians, or no nurses, or social workers. Our students need WRAP AROUND service.

Everyone in this district, including the mayor and CPS' CEO SAYS they want do the right thing on these issues. That's why the hash tag #PutItInWriting was adopted. A couple years ago, the state of Illinois FINALLY changed the funding formula to make school funding for the city more equitable to what downstate gets. CPS is FLUSH WITH CASH that was earmarked EXACTLY for the issues listed above. Now they are trying to slow-walk spending the money on what it's intended for. They can't be allowed to get away with it. CPS has a $1 billion that IT DIDN'T HAVE LAST YEAR. (They'll have a $1 billion more next year too.) The district cannot credibly claim poverty. We want smaller classes, more and better-paid paraprofessionals, librarians, nurses in every building, and we want it IN WRITING, not in the form of "lip service," and slow walk towards: "Well eventually we'll do something about all this." CPS HAS THE MONEY. DO IT NOW.

REALITY: this strike is going to cause financial hardship to every single one of the tens of thousands of us who isn't going to work. Whether we strike for one day, or twenty, we won't be getting paid for strike days. We are putting it on the line for our students, our own kids, and our city. They MIGHT agree to add school days at the end of the year, but I can't tell my mortgage company: "Hey, I got you in July 2020."

This strike is special because we are joined in solidarity by SEIU 73 — which services many of the security guards, secretaries, paraprofessionals, custodial staff, and teachers’ aides in our district. That did NOT happen last time. (The second picture above was from a solidarity strike with nurses trying to organize with SEIU at Mt. Sinai Hospital.)

WE ARE POWERFUL TOGETHER. AND WE ARE GOING TO WIN.

That’s all I got.

Solidarity.