Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren visited with striking Chicago teachers at Oscar DePriest Elementary School on Oct. 22, 2019. Democrats like Warren must decide where they stand on the future of public education. | Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Some Democratic presidential candidates supported Chicago teachers, but on the debate stage, little is said about public education.
The Democratic Party is the party of fully funding schools — and the party of closing schools.
The Democratic Party is the party of adequate staffing and low class sizes — and the party of big staff cuts that lead to unequal education.
The Democratic Party is for early literacy and universal preschool — and for cuts in school librarians.
After the Chicago teachers’ strike, it is clear that the Democratic Party can’t decide exactly what party it wants to be when it comes to education.
Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders visited Chicago to stand with the Chicago Teachers’ Union. Cory Booker met with union leaders. Former Vice President Joe Biden called the CTU in support.
But here’s the major contradiction: Chicago goes blue in nearly every election, and Illinois has been a Democratic stronghold for decades. Yet education policy in Chicago, under leaders who claim to be Democrats, sometimes feels more conservative than progressive.
It was Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff for Democratic President Barack Obama, who made the decision to close 50 schools in one fell swoop and later ignited the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike. Now, under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, another Democrat who ran on progressive education ideals, another strike — this time over adequate school staffing, lower class sizes, and fair pay — has just ended. Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, who also ran as a progressive on education, said very little about the strike.
Some Democratic presidential hopefuls supported Chicago teachers, but it’s tough to watch them on the debate stage, where so little is said about public education.
This is not a good sign. We have seen nearly two decades of abysmal federal education policy trickle down to harmful practices in our local schools.
Make no mistake, these policies have been bipartisan — from the testing culture of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind, to the business model of schooling under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top, and now to a Trump administration that has stripped students of color, LGBTQ+ students and students with special needs of legal protections and deprived schools of funding.
When I was a Chicago educator, I saw students suffering from over-testing, schools losing resources, and educators burning out because of too much emphasis on reaching arbitrary benchmarks on standardized tests and other supposed measures of student growth.
After decades of harmful federal and local reforms, our inner-city and rural schools are skeletons of what they once were. The CTU strike highlighted the poor learning conditions in schools, all of which could be improved with more money.
Nurses often travel from school to school, providing each one with services only once or twice a week. Social workers also bounce around, in a district filled with students undergoing trauma.
Without their support, more duties fall on teachers.
Teachers must set up their own robust classroom library, paid for on their own dime, when the school cuts the librarian and closes the library. Teachers, without adequate training, must figure out how to help a student who has lost a sibling, parent, or best friend to violence. Teachers are the person whom students ask for a Band-Aid or a Tylenol, because there is no school nurse on certain days.
I now work outside of Chicago, in a district that is well-resourced. We have a full-time registered nurse, three social workers and a full-time librarian. The other high school in our district has the same. These are among the many feasible “asks” that the CTU, and many other teachers’ unions across America, went on strike to obtain.
Providing schools with adequate staff and resources seems to be a no-brainer, nationally and locally. Every student in America deserves that.
Yet I’m still waiting to hear a bona fide plan for that, from any of the Democrats running for president.
Gina Caneva is the library media specialist for East Leyden High School in Franklin Park and a former CPS teacher. Follow her on Twitter @GinaCaneva
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November 6, 2019 at 12:08PM
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