CTU to converge on City Hall Wednesday in ‘fight back’ day

Chicago’s teachers can’t go to school on Wednesday morning to wrap up the year because a broke Chicago Public Schools furloughed them without pay to save money.

So their union is urging its 27,000 members to converge on City Hall for a “fight back” day to demand better local funding for education.

“Let’s turn City Hall into a sea of CTU red!” the union posted on its web site. “With hundreds of millions in cuts threatened, the mayor and CEO of Chicago Public Schools want to pin all our hopes on a gridlocked Springfield. City Hall needs to take responsibility.”

The CTU staged a one-day strike on April 1 that focused on prying more money out of the General Assembly and Gov. Bruce Rauner. They’re also pressuring the city to act while state lawmakers continue to negotiate.

The union also plans to stage public actions at four other locations starting at 8:30 a.m., and then at 11 a.m. join CTU president Karen Lewis for a rally at the Thompson Center.

Those protest locations are at River Point Plaza, 444 W. Lake St., whose owner has donated to the governor’s campaign and has received millions in tax–increment financing; Citadel Center, 131 Dearborn; United Airlines headquarters in the Willis Tower; the Board of Education, 42 W. Madison, where the appointed board will hold a monthly meeting; and then at City Hall, where the full City Council will be in session.

CPS has been squirreling away cash to make a $676 million pension payment by June 30, telling principals not to spend any remaining money in their budgets. They imposed three unpaid furlough days on all employees — including Wednesday and Thursday for CTU members.

CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has warned that school might not open in September unless state legislators provide some pension relief or a change to the state’s funding formula for schools. Meanwhile he has projected $700 million in cuts to the schools system, which shake out to about 25 percent per school, according to the district.

Claypool has encouraged principals and parents to join him in lobbying Democratic lawmakers, who are in the majority, as well as the Republican governor who has proffered a plan of his own that wouldn’t net CPS any more money come September.

“We continue to encourage the CTU leadership to focus their attention on Governor Rauner, who is the only remaining obstacle to making sure that children across the state of Illinois receive equitable funding,” district spokeswoman Emily Bittner said. “With the Governor attacking Chicago students daily – whether it’s trying to push the district into bankruptcy so he can cut teachers’ pay or insulting our schools as ‘crumbling prisons’ – it’s more critical now than ever that we present a united front in this fight.”

Rauner has said his stopgap plan would hold CPS funding steady even as the district’s enrollment declines, and it would allow all districts to open in the fall while legislators continue to hash out a new funding formula.

“As Forrest is yelling at the governor and calling him the impediment, I think it’s really important to say that no other funding formula standalone (bill) has made it to the governor’s desk,” said Rauner’s education secretary, Beth Purvis. “Only one party has a unified plan that increases school funding by $240 million.”