CHICAGO, September 3 — J.C. Brizard, the new Chicago schools CEO by way of the Broad Superintendents Academy, is pushing a racist attack on this city’s predominantly black and Latino student body as well as an assault on teachers’ wages. He wants to add 90 minutes to the school day and two weeks to the school year in “exchange” for a 2% raise. That’s 29% more work for 2% more money.
More time in school may or may not be a good thing for students, depending on how the time is used. But contrary to the lies of Brizard and his boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, this move has nothing to do with improving conditions for students and everything to do with lowering costs to educate working-class children. This cost-cutting means that fewer students will learn to read and develop basic skills. They will be primed to fall victim to minimum-wage jobs — if any at all, given today’s massive unemployment. Many will be driven to join the military out of economic desperation.
Capitalism uses public education primarily to justify the profit system and to exploit the working class. It “educates” students to believe in the system while setting them up to accept mass racist unemployment as “natural” and to “do their patriotic duty” to fight in the bosses’ oil wars.
Brizard is doing the work he was trained to do by the Broad Academy. Its website’s home page reveals its purpose: “Wanted: the nation’s most talented executives to run the business of education.” It goes on to say, “Without dramatic changes, the U.S. economy will continue to suffer…. Our standard of living will decline, our democracy will be at risk and we will continue to fall behind as other countries far surpass us.”
U.S. rulers have not suddenly developed a soft spot in their hearts for jobless and other working-class families. Their use of words such as “our” and “we” and “us” hides the fact that it’s their economy. Their concern about economic “suffering” has nothing to do with the high unemployment and low wages that disproportionately affect black and Latino workers. Rather, they’re concerned with the falling rate of profit faced by U.S. corporations. This is due to the nature of capitalism in general and to the low wages paid to workers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in particular.
Teachers are tired of being maligned by the bosses’ media and getting blamed for the educational ills that stem from capitalism’s inequities. Strike talk is widespread in many city schools. Class consciousness is uneven, as it is everywhere today, and much work remains to be done before a strike can occur. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract expires next June 30.
PLP is helping to build for a strike. While some union leaders regard striking as a last resort if contract negotiations break down, PLP views strikes as empowering; they give workers a taste of running society in their interests instead of those of the capitalists. They’re a heightened form of class struggle. They’re potentially schools for communism.
In general, capitalists generate higher profits by paying lower wages, getting more work per hour from each worker, and moving more of the money workers pay in taxes into the pockets of the rich. In education, this can mean paying teachers less, raising class size, and using tax money for corporate welfare instead of for students.
Schemes like the New Markets Tax Credits and Tax Increment Financing allow charter school operators and their financial backers to steal millions in tax money while governments at all levels keep shrinking school budgets.
The longer school day and year proposed by Brizard and Emanuel will force teachers to work longer hours for essentially the same pay. A 2% raise for working 90 minutes a day and two weeks more per year amounts to $4.31 an hour for the additional labor. Chicago school bosses are pushing this plan in the media and directly to teachers through school principals. They have bypassed negotiations with the CTU on this issue because they want to divide and conquer teachers and to weaken the union. At the same time, the bosses aim to portray teachers as greedy and uncaring, an effort to divide them from their natural allies: students and parents.
Brizard won staff members at three schools (out of more than 600) to sign waivers to the CTU contract and agree to work 40 minutes longer every day. These schools are receiving $150,000 bonuses. Since the ruling class is stealing money from the education budget, this bonus could not possibly be given to every school. It’s a wedge used to get a small number of schools to agree to a longer day with virtually no pay increase, a dangerous precedent.
The teachers’ immediate answer to these attacks must be a citywide strike. But a strike also offers workers longer-range gains. During a strike, workers can see more clearly that governmental institutions — courts, cops, politicians — serve the interests of the capitalists. It can create an opportunity for them to rely on each other, bond as a fighting unit, and begin thinking about a world without bosses, a communist world. Chicago PLP school workers will strive to make that potential a reality.