I marched today along with over 5,500 CPS Teachers and Staff because we are tired of being disrespected by people who are not educators. We the educators, the people who work with students, work with parents, and are invested in our school’s communities, know what will work for our students.

In the course of caring about our students, we have to care about ourselves. We have to care about the policies that we are asked to implement. We have to care about our compensation as educators. We have to care about full rich curriculums. We have to care about schools with counselors, librarians, psychologists, and social workers. We want to teach in a school system that values and respects every child, no matter where they live. We want to teach, but until we are allowed to teach and feel that our students best interests are at heart WE WILL MARCH.

Let’s be clear the strike vote does not mean we teachers are going to strike. This vote legally authorizes teachers to strike if; the appointed board of education with zero educational experience, the “CEO” of CPS and the Mayor continue to bash, antagonize, and disrespect public school teachers. Zero progress continues to be made on the contract negotiations, not because the Teachers and CTU have stopped negotiating, but because the Board’s proposals are harmful for students, parents, teachers, and overall our city. Schools are not a business and should not be run as such. The Board of Education should be made up of teachers, parents, community members, not multi billion and millionaires with no respect for public education who choose to send their own kids to private schools that have art, music, gym, and world languages every day, while the public schools do not. I will vote for the strike authorization vote, because the board and mayor need to know how serious we educators are. A strike helps no one, but since Rahm has come into office he has bashed us and blamed us for anything he can. A time comes when teachers must stand up to harassment by the only means we have left to do so. No one wants to strike, but the mayor is leaving us with no other options. So we will authorize a strike, then let it be up to him if he wants to work with us or continue to bash us. Whatever rout Rahm chooses will determine if we actually have to strike or not in September.

Closing the Red Line from Chinatown to 95^th for 5 months is at best an appalling idea and at worst a blatantly racist move, by according to multiple reports the most racially segregated city in the country. We have had one of the most violent springs in Chicago history so the question needs to be asked; Is the proposed closing of the Red Line in May of 2013 the city’s plan to make sure none of the violence on the South Side is able to easily come downtown or to the north side? The question is not as afar fetched as it may seem, many European cities like Paris for example do not provide adequate transportation to allow residents from lower income neighborhoods to get easily to the city center. This lack of mobility was one of the key reasons that the Paris riots of 2005 and again of 2008 occurred.

When Chicago improved the Brown Line (which runs entirely on the North Side) it kept the line running and closed one station at a time. The justification is by closing the entire Southern portion of the Redline it will save $75 million for the city. The Brown line reconstruction cost the city $530 million and the South Side reconstruction will cost the city much less, but still the city claims it is necessary to close the Red Line entirely. Are residents on the South Side not worth as much? Are South Side residents not worth as much because many are African American or Latino? Is it because there are higher levels of poverty on the South Side than the North Side? Whatever the answer as a resident of the South Side, a CPS educator on the South Side, and more importantly a citizen of this city, this plan is offensive, ill planned, and morally wrong. I along with thousands of South Side residents absolutely do not support and am extremely offended by this plan.