Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues
The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein published a story last week about the Chicago teachers’ strike. While Goldstein should be commended for supporting the efforts of the teachers in the nation’s third largest school district to bargain around their students’ needs for smaller classes, more counselors, school psychologists, nurses, and librarians, her article is misleading.
Goldstein conflates two important but separate issues when she writes: “These demands have risen as activists promote a broader mission for educators: a vision of schools as community centers that offer an array of health and social services to children, especially those from low income families. In Chicago, it has become clear that teacher pay is not the primary sticking point in the negotiations; after all, the city has already agreed to a raise. The Chicago Teachers Union is asking that the district enshrine in its contract a promise to hire more counselors, health workers and librarians, and to free them from tasks outside of their core duties.”
Yes, the Chicago Teachers Union has demanded that the union contract cover students’ learning conditions. But the teachers’ primary goal in Chicago has been to rectify years of neglect for their students’ basic needs. The union’s central focus was not for a newer—and also very important—idea for wraparound Community Schools.
Here are the two issues Goldstein conflates:
- First, in many underfunded public school districts today—especially in urban school districts with extreme concentrations of student poverty and in isolated rural school CONTINUE READING: Enough Basic Staffing and More Community Schools: Two Important but Different Issues | janresseger