Lewis leads Chicago Teachers Union
Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis ’74 has been at the center of recent education reform battles, leading the recent Chicago teachers’ strike.
By Ashley Ulrich, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Monday, October 22, 2012
Former Chicago public school chemistry teacher and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis ’74 is strongly committed to her ideas for education reform and said she is not afraid to make sure that her message is heard. Lewis recently led the CTU’s 26,000 members in a strike for the first time.
The strike left Chicago’s 350,000 students — comprising the third-largest school district in the nation — out of class for seven school days from Sept. 9-17. It also brought Lewis to the forefront of national media coverage amid her public standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who formerly served as White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama.
The strike represented a strong statement by the teachers against recent limitations to their collective bargaining rights, according to Lewis. As part of a new law passed by the Illinois state legislature in 2010, teachers in Chicago are not allowed to strike for non-economic reasons and must have 75 percent of their members vote to approve a strike before they can walk off the job.
“I think that the strike was for us and our members a repudiation of our lack of power,” Lewis said. “There are so many bright, intelligent, hard-working people doing their thing [in schools] and