SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Driven by their religion to make life better, Muslim volunteers in Chicago are joining hands to serve social justice for poor Americans.

“Charity is an important part of our religion,” said Dr. Adiba Khan, a staff member of Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) in Chicago, told The Washington Post.

Volunteers from several Muslim NGOs have been working to improve living conditions for residents in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

One of these NGOs is IMAN, which has opened a free clinic to offer medical help for poor residents.

“The quality of the care is excellent,” patient Yolanda Voss said, while waiting to see a doctor for a follow-up visit about her high blood pressure.

“The doctor is very understanding.”

IMAN, which is run by Rami Nashashibi, a 40-year-old Muslim activist, is also helping ex-convicts in Chicago to find jobs and housing.

It has also hosted a series of poetry slams and urban street fairs to connect Muslims to the arts and social justice work.

Similar initiatives are championed by other Muslim NGOs as the Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals, which organizes the country’s largest political gathering of young Muslims at the Illinois State Capitol each spring and the Webb Foundation, a group dedicated to shaping a new model of diverse, indigenous US Muslims.

Young Muslims “are going about the process of institution building in concretely American ways,” said Kambiz GhaneaBassiri of Reed College.

GhaneaBassiri, the author of “A History of Islam in America,” opines that the 9/11 attacks shaped a generation of young Muslim activists.

“The sheer numbers are absolutely new and the funding available for these organizations is absolutely new.”

Chicago has the largest Muslim community in the United States with about 400,000 Muslims live there.

The United States is home to a Muslim community of between six to eight million.

Islam Story

Observers opine that the growing Muslim activism reflects the true image of Islam in the United States.

This surge in new Muslim institutions, led by a nationwide network of young activists, “is the most important story in Islam in America right now,” Eboo Patel, founder of the college campus-based Interfaith Youth Core, told The Washington Post.

Jane I. Smith, a former dean at Harvard Divinity School, agrees.

“There are good things happening in many places, but Chicago seems to me to kind of have it all,” he said.

“It’s got all different backgrounds represented, and different ways of approaching Islam.”

The success of IMAN and other NGOs in Chicago has inspired many Muslim activists across the country to launch similar initiatives in different cities, including Detroit, Atlanta, New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Efforts of Muslim activists in Chicago were not confined to only social service, but also extended to clear misconceptions about the religion.

Recently, Muslim activists have launched a campaign to reclaim the true meaning of Jihad as believed and practiced by the majority of Muslims.

The campaign has later expanded to San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

A recent US survey had revealed that the majority of Americans know very little about Muslims and their faith.

A Gallup poll had also found that the majority of US Muslims are patriot and loyal to their country and are optimistic about their future.-www.shfaqna.com/English

Source: On Islam

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – US internet activist Aaron Swartz, who was an outspoken critic of US President Barack Obama’s policies and was recently found hanged in his apartment, has been laid to rest in Chicago.

The 26-year-old blogger and computer prodigy was found dead in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York City, on January 11.

Swartz died weeks before he was scheduled to face a trial on accusations of hacking a website and downloading millions of academic papers.

Brooklyn’s chief medical examiner ruled the death a ‘suicide by hanging,’ but no further details were available about the mysterious death.

Last year, Swartz openly criticized Washington and the Tel Aviv regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran.

He was also critical of Obama’s “kill list,” a list of individuals who are suspected of terrorism by the US and are listed for targeted killing after final approval by the US president himself.

Swartz was also widely credited for co-authoring the specifications for the Web feed format RSS 1.0 (Rich Site Summary) at the age of 14. RSS is designed to deliver content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages, to users.

He was critical of the monopoly of information by corporate cartels and believed that information should be shared and available for the benefit of the society.

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,” Swartz wrote in an online “manifesto” in 2008.

Based on that belief, the computer prodigy founded the nonprofit group DemandProgress.

The group launched a successful campaign to block a 2011 bill in the US House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Had it been approved, the bill would have allowed court orders to restrain access to some websites considered to be involved in the illegal sharing of intellectual property.

DemandProgress argued that the thwarted SOPA would have broadly authorized the US government to censor and restrict legitimate Web communication.-www.shfaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- The 2012 murder rate in Chicago has reached 500, the highest in four years and surpassing New York City, which stands at 414, according to police officials.

Authorities say the two American metropolises have shown a sharp contrast, even though the Big Apple has three times the population as the Windy City.

Police commissioner Garry McCarthy issued a statement on Friday calling the milestone a "tragic number that is reflective of the gang violence and proliferation of illegal guns that have plagued some of our neighborhoods".

But the police department went back and forth on Friday, first verifying the 500th killing, then backing off and saying an earlier death was still being investigated.

By late Friday, police confirmed 40-year-old Nathaniel Jackson had become the 500th homicide victim when he was fatally shot in the head outside a convenience store on the city's West Side.

Chicago, which is plagued by gang violence, had a total of 422 homicide cases last year, while the highest rate recorded was 512 in 2008.

The rise in homicides has frustrated Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who vowed to make the city's streets safer on taking office in May 2011.

Commissioner McCarthy attributed the 18 percent rise to gang violence and said it was "unacceptable".

He blamed the violence on the rise of new factions that are vying for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.

McCarthy also said that 80 percent of the homicides were gang-related and 80 percent of the victims were African-American, though they only make up 33 percent of the city’s population.

"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said, who added that Chicago faces a larger illicit gun problem than either New York or Los Angeles, the first and second-largest US cities.

After mounting criticism of Emanuel and McCarthy earlier this year, the police chief announced a shakeup of his department, transferring some police managers to other districts to bolster the battle against gangs.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — A Cook County judge dismissed charges against 92 Occupy protesters arrested in a Chicago park last October, ruling that the city’s overnight park curfew violated the First Amendment and was being enforced selectively.

Associate Judge Thomas M. Donnelly noted that police had arrested hundreds in a crackdown on the protesters' encampment when the park closed at 11:00pm local time, but had not moved against the 500,000 people who came to see Barack Obama after he won the presidency in 2008.

"The city arrested no one at the Obama 2008 presidential election victory rally, even though the Obama rally was equally in violation of the curfew," Judge Donnelly wrote.

The judge added that the selective enforcement of the curfew, combined with the Chicago Police Department's harassment of protesters in the days leading up to the arrests, supported “a finding that the city intended to discriminate against defendants based on their views.”

Judge Donnelly threw out the arrests, and slammed the city for denying the protesters their First Amendment rights. Citing the park's long history of political rallies dating back to Abraham Lincoln, Donnelly quoted early city leaders who resolved in 1835 that the land that became Grant Park "should be reserved for all time to come for a public square, accessible at all times to the people."

The judge's opinion stood in stark contrast to that of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, which in the months leading up to the NATO conference in Chicago had repeatedly pointed to the handling of the Occupy arrests as a new model for respecting protesters' rights.

The city plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.

It is also unclear whether the ruling would affect the cases of the more than 200 arrested protesters who were earlier placed under court-mandated supervision to avoid having a conviction on their records. — www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — One week ago, the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Board of Education reached an agreement on teacher contracts. But, what most pundits still don't realize is that the strike wasn't really about the contracts or the unions. It was about stopping the assault on public education, teachers, and children.

You know what's hurting kids in Chicago and elsewhere? Contrary to media reports, it's not the teachers union. It’s the corporate reform takeover—mayoral, not local control, closing schools and turning them over to charter corporations, evaluation of students and teachers with test scores, and weakening teachers unions. These policies are backed by billionaires, many of whom have never stepped foot in a public school classroom in their lives and they've blossomed thanks to the passing of President Bush's No Child Left Behind and President Obama's Race to the Top initiative.

In Chicago—as in many places—Mayor Rahm Emanuel and corporate reformers have waged a war on teachers. During the strike we heard that Chicago teachers are overpaid—elementary and secondary teachers combined earn an average of $71,236. An analysis found that public school teachers make 94 cents for every dollar earned by workers in 16 comparable occupations. Why are the people who hold our children's minds in their hands paid the lowest of the low? Politicians who say that teachers are overpaid are living in a parallel universe. Many of my teachers pay for classroom supplies out of their own pocket. And they work damn hard. Please show them some respect.

Next is the fuzzy teacher evaluation system. Under Obama's Race to the Top initiative, for states to be eligible to receive funds, they were forced to revamp their evaluation systems to allow for standardized test scores to be tied to teachers’ evaluation. Emanuel followed his former boss' lead. Now, he wants test scores to represent as much as 40 percent of evaluations. His logic behind this is very crooked.

Unless you balance every classroom in terms of ESL, special education, behavioral tendencies, and socio-economic status, tying scores to evaluation is "flawed, dubious, and inaccurate" on many levels. The director of the University of Chicago Lab School, the very school where Mayor Rahm Emanuel's kids attend, has even publicly criticized the use of standardized test scores for teacher evaluation measures.

When you have such evaluation changes, teaching to the test becomes the dominant pedagogy in classrooms, because if scores aren't raised, teachers are fired. Instead of educating the whole child with math, English, science, social, studies, the arts, music, and physical education, for most students, an entire month of schooling is allocated to drilling, killing, and bubble filling. Emanuel has made the testing corporations very wealthy in his tenure as Chicago mayor. Schools have become test prep factories, churning out obedient and submissive graduates year after year.

The job of a teacher isn't to raise test scores, but rather to create lifelong learners and active participants and citizens in our democracy. Stephen Covey once remarked, "Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools." I am not a number; I am a human being. It's time to finally acknowledge the national testing experiment has not only failed miserably, but has gone haywire. We need to end this inappropriate high-stakes testing regime.

Why should politicians with no teaching experience come in and tell teachers how to do their job? Parents and teachers should only begin to believe a politician's education proposals if they will send their own children to the schools they prescribe for others. Emanuel would certainly scoff at such a suggestion.

The strike may be over but the root issues still exist. Instead of corporate reform, if we want to really create change in schools, we need to trust teachers, give them autonomy, and most importantly, treat them like professionals. Is that too much to ask?—www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Good

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — In a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, 800 union delegates voted overwhelmingly to suspend the strike after classes had been halted for seven school days, which left parents at loose ends and City Hall taking legal action. The delegates, who had chosen on Sunday to extend their strike rather than accept a deal reached by negotiators for the union and the Chicago Public Schools, this time decided to abandon their picket lines.

Karen Lewis, the union president, described the voice vote as 98 percent to 2 percent in favor and a sign that the deal was seen as good, though hardly perfect.

“We said that it was time — that we couldn’t solve all the problems of the world with one contract, and that it was time to suspend the strike,” she said.

The contract still requires ratification by the union’s 26,000 members. That process was expected to take several weeks, though Ms. Lewis said passage was expected.

The terms, which appeared to provide some victories for both sides, would give annual raises to teachers, lengthen the school day and allow teachers to be evaluated, in part, with student test scores. The school system would also aim to guide laid-off teachers with strong ratings into at least half of any new job openings in the schools.

While a halt to the teachers’ strike, this city’s first in a quarter century, may end the immediate, local contract fight over pay, working conditions and job security, the episode brought to the forefront larger questions, still unanswered, about the philosophical direction of public schools here, a national agenda for educational change and the potency of unions.

And although the political players in this fight were Chicagoans — some saw it as a highly personal standoff between Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat in his first term, and Ms. Lewis — the matter swept in national politics as well. Even as schools were closed all across President Obama’s hometown, he did not publicly take sides in a showdown that pitted Mr. Emanuel, his former chief of staff, against labor, a bloc that Democrats depend on in election years like this one.

“This settlement is an honest compromise,” Mr. Emanuel said at a news conference. “It means returning our schools to their primary purpose: the education of our children. It means a new day and a new direction for Chicago Public Schools.”

Officials at the Chicago Public Schools and City Hall, which had been seeking an injunction to end the strike under a state law that bars teachers from striking over noneconomic issues, indicated that a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday would be canceled. The city said it would withdraw its request for immediate relief, but for now was not expected to drop the case entirely.

Parents, weary and impatient as one week of the strike stretched into a second, said they were deeply relieved that it was over. Within minutes of the announcement, some had already begun loading backpacks.

“I’m hopeful that parents and teachers and administrators can now focus on the kids’ learning,” said Maura Robbins, a parent of two children.

Ms. Robbins said she worried about lingering tensions in the schools, fearing that the “spirit of working together” might be irretrievably damaged. “I hope everyone can put their feelings about the strike aside and cooperate again,” she said.

Until the vote on Tuesday, the fate of the deal — and how long a strike might last — was entirely unknown. After a meeting of union delegates on Sunday ended with a vote to extend the strike and no clear resolution in sight, some indicated that they still had questions and qualms about the proposed contract.

In a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, 800 union delegates voted overwhelmingly to suspend the strike after classes had been halted for seven school days, which left parents at loose ends and City Hall taking legal action. The delegates, who had chosen on Sunday to extend their strike rather than accept a deal reached by negotiators for the union and the Chicago Public Schools, this time decided to abandon their picket lines.

Karen Lewis, the union president, described the voice vote as 98 percent to 2 percent in favor and a sign that the deal was seen as good, though hardly perfect.

“We said that it was time — that we couldn’t solve all the problems of the world with one contract, and that it was time to suspend the strike,” she said.

The contract still requires ratification by the union’s 26,000 members. That process was expected to take several weeks, though Ms. Lewis said passage was expected.

The terms, which appeared to provide some victories for both sides, would give annual raises to teachers, lengthen the school day and allow teachers to be evaluated, in part, with student test scores. The school system would also aim to guide laid-off teachers with strong ratings into at least half of any new job openings in the schools.

While a halt to the teachers’ strike, this city’s first in a quarter century, may end the immediate, local contract fight over pay, working conditions and job security, the episode brought to the forefront larger questions, still unanswered, about the philosophical direction of public schools here, a national agenda for educational change and the potency of unions.

And although the political players in this fight were Chicagoans — some saw it as a highly personal standoff between Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat in his first term, and Ms. Lewis — the matter swept in national politics as well. Even as schools were closed all across President Obama’s hometown, he did not publicly take sides in a showdown that pitted Mr. Emanuel, his former chief of staff, against labor, a bloc that Democrats depend on in election years like this one.

“This settlement is an honest compromise,” Mr. Emanuel said at a news conference. “It means returning our schools to their primary purpose: the education of our children. It means a new day and a new direction for Chicago Public Schools.”

Officials at the Chicago Public Schools and City Hall, which had been seeking an injunction to end the strike under a state law that bars teachers from striking over noneconomic issues, indicated that a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday would be canceled. The city said it would withdraw its request for immediate relief, but for now was not expected to drop the case entirely.

Parents, weary and impatient as one week of the strike stretched into a second, said they were deeply relieved that it was over. Within minutes of the announcement, some had already begun loading backpacks.

“I’m hopeful that parents and teachers and administrators can now focus on the kids’ learning,” said Maura Robbins, a parent of two children.

Ms. Robbins said she worried about lingering tensions in the schools, fearing that the “spirit of working together” might be irretrievably damaged. “I hope everyone can put their feelings about the strike aside and cooperate again,” she said.

Until the vote on Tuesday, the fate of the deal — and how long a strike might last — was entirely unknown. After a meeting of union delegates on Sunday ended with a vote to extend the strike and no clear resolution in sight, some indicated that they still had questions and qualms about the proposed contract.

Pressure mounted in recent days as union leaders grappled with a complicated equation: how to find agreement among hundreds of delegates with vastly different views and concerns, while balancing the risk of losing public support as the strike stretched on.

By Tuesday, there were signs that union leaders realized they needed to move quickly. The union issued a leaflet aimed at maintaining patience from Chicagoans, which read, in part, “We would like to express our profound gratitude for your support in our fight for quality public education and a fair contract.”

Outside the meeting on Tuesday, many delegates said that they simply wanted to return to their classes, and that the contract terms, while not everything they had hoped for, would have to suffice.

“I think this is the best contract that we could have gotten in this atmosphere,” said Barbara Relerford, a delegate. “I think the power of the union has been amplified all over this nation. And we miss our kids. We’re ready to go back.”

The tentative contract deal, a full copy of which had not yet been made public, was reached over the weekend after difficult, lengthy talks. It spans three years with an option for a fourth.

At a time when the school system says it faces a $1 billion budget deficit next year, the contract offers an average teacher more than 17 percent in raises over the full four years, including pay increases for higher levels of experience and additional degrees, school officials said. Currently, teachers here make $76,000 a year on average, according to the school system, though the union has said the number is lower.

Counting student test scores in teacher evaluations was a provision that concerned the union, but that process would be phased in gradually and include a way to appeal contested evaluations. By the third year of the contract, student scores would constitute 30 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, in keeping with state law.

In a system that had one of the shortest school days in the country, school would last seven hours for elementary-school students, as Mr. Emanuel had pushed for, instead of less than six. The district agreed to help make up for the extra time by hiring additional teachers from a pool of laid-off teachers. In addition, the schools would aim to hire laid-off teachers who were deemed proficient or excellent to fill at least half of any new job openings.

Even with the strike ending, though, some Chicagoans said that the issues would not fade away easily, and that the atmosphere felt changed and toxic. Others said they believed the strike and picket lines had been an important show of union force — a reminder of the power of labor and the notion that a new national agenda in education would not be pressed through without the notice of teachers.

“The key is that we are trying to have people understand that when people come together to deal with problems of education, the people that are actually working in the schools need to be heard,” Ms. Lewis, the union president, said. “And I think that this has been an opportunity for people across the nation to have their voices heard. And I think we’re moving in the right direction.”—www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: NY Times

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is turning to the courts to try to put an end to a teachers strike that's entering its second week and has left parents scrambling to make alternative child care arrangements for at least two more days.

The union and school leaders seemed headed toward a resolution at the end of last week, saying they were optimistic students in the nation's third-largest school district would be back in class by Monday. But teachers uncomfortable with a tentative contract offer decided Sunday to remain on strike, saying they needed more time to review a complicated proposal.

Emanuel fired back, saying he told city attorneys to seek a court order forcing Chicago Teachers Union members back into the classroom.

The strike is the first for the city's teachers in 25 years and has kept 350,000 students out of class, leaving parents to make other plans.

Working mom Dequita Wade said that when the strike started, she sent her son 15 miles away to a cousin's house so he wouldn't be left unsupervised in a neighborhood known for violent crime and gangs. She was hoping the union and district would work things out quickly.

“You had a whole week. This is beginning to be ridiculous,” Wade said. “Are they going to keep prolonging things?”

Months of contract negotiations have come down to two main issues central to the debate over the future of education across the United States: teacher evaluations and job security.

Union delegates said they felt uncomfortable approving the contract because they had seen it only in bits. The union will meet again Tuesday, after the end of the Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

“There's no trust for our members of the board,” Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis told reporters Sunday night. “They're not happy with the agreement. They'd like it to actually be a lot better.”

Emanuel said the strike was illegal because it endangers the health and safety of students and concerned issues — evaluations, layoffs and recall rights — that state law says cannot be grounds for a work stoppage.

“This was a strike of choice and is now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children,” Emanuel said in a written statement.

The strike has shined a spotlight on Emanuel's leadership more than ever, and some experts have suggested the new contract — which features annual pay raises and other benefits — is a win for union.

“I'm hard-pressed to imagine how they could have done much better,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “This is a very impressive outcome for the teachers.”

With an average salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation, and the contract outline calls for annual raises. But some teachers are upset it did not restore a 4 percent raise Emanuel rescinded last year.

Emanuel pushed for a contract that includes ratcheting up the percentage of evaluations based on student performance, to 35 percent within four years. The union contends that does not take into account outside factors that affect student performance such as poverty and violence.

The union pushed for a policy to give laid-off teachers first dibs on open jobs anywhere in the district, but the city said that would keep principals from hiring the teachers they think are most qualified.

The union has engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents about problems that include a lack of important books and basic supplies.

Some parents said they remain sympathetic to teachers.

“I don't think they're wrong. The things they're asking for are within reason,” said Pamela Edwards, who has sent her 16-year-old daughter to one of about 140 schools the district has kept open during the strike to provide meals and supervision.

Others said they understand why teachers are taking their time.

“As much as we want our kids back in school, teachers need to make sure they have dotted all their i's and crossed their t's,” said Becky Malone, mother of a second grader and fourth grader, who've been studying at home and going to museums over the last week. “What's the point of going on strike if you don't get everything you need out of it? For parents, it'll be no more of a challenge than it's been in the past week.”—www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Tehran Times

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced that he will seek a court order to end the first teachers' strike in the city in 25 years, which escalated on Sunday when the teachers' union decided to extend their walk-out.

The strike has cancelled classes for 350,000 kindergarten, elementary and high school students in the United States' third-largest school district and will enter its sixth day on Monday.

It risks friction within President Barack Obama's political coalition, where many Democrats differ over approaches to education reform, ahead of the November 6 Presidential election against Republican Mitt Romney. Emanuel is Obama's former top White House aide.

The mayor called the strike "illegal" on Sunday and said he would go to court to seek an injunction to block it.

"I will not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union," Emanuel said, adding that the union walked out over issues that are not subject to a strike under Illinois state law.

Education reforms

Teachers revolted last week against sweeping education reforms sought by Emanuel, especially evaluating teachers based on the standardised test scores of their students.

They also fear a wave of neighbourhood school closings that could result in mass teacher layoffs. They want a guarantee that laid-off teachers will be recalled for other jobs in the district.

The showdown left in doubt a deal on wages, benefits and education reforms for 29,000 unionised teachers that negotiators had hoped would end the biggest labour dispute in the US in a year.

Union delegates will reconvene on Tuesday to discuss the feedback from members, union President Karen Lewis said, adding that parents should plan for their children to be out of school until at least Wednesday.

Before the meeting of delegates on Sunday, Lewis had called the agreement a "good contract". But after the decision to extend the strike she backtracked, saying: "This is not a good deal. This is the deal we got."

Emanuel's chief negotiator, School Board President David Vitale, said the union should allow children to go back to school while the two sides complete the process.

"We are extremely disappointed that after 10 months of discussion reaching an honest and fair compromise that they decided to continue their strike of choice and keep our children out of the classroom," Vitale said.

An Emanuel overreach?

During the first week of the strike, opinion polls showed parents and Chicago voters backing the union, with some parents and students joining boisterous rallies. A key question is who the public will support now that the strike is dragging on.

Former Chicago city council member Dick Simpson said Emanuel may have made a mistake by going to court to block the strike.

"If I were advising the mayor, I would have advised him to be patient for a couple of days," said Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

By waiting, Emanuel could have put the onus on the teachers if they rejected the contract later this week, Simpson said.

Both sides appeared to win some concessions, according to details of the tentative agreement released by the parties.

Emanuel compromised on the design of the first update of the evaluation system for Chicago teachers in 40 years. He agreed to phase in the new plan over several years and reduced the weighting of standardised test results in reviewing teachers.

Teachers won some job-security protections and prevented the introduction of merit pay in their contract.

Rise of charter schools

The Chicago strike has shone a bright light on a fierce national debate over how to reform failing inner-city schools. The union believes that more money and resources should be given to neighbourhood public schools to help them improve.

Emanuel and a legion of financiers and philanthropists believe that failing schools should be closed and reopened with new staff to give the students the best chance of improving.

In Chicago, more than 80 neighbourhood schools have been closed in the last decade as the enrollment has declined by about 20 per cent. The Chicago Tribune reported last week that another 120 of about 600 city public schools could be closed.

At the same time, 96 so-called charter schools have been opened. Charters are publicly funded but non-union and not

subject to some public school rules and regulations. Their record of improving student academic performance is mixed.

Lewis and the union argue that charters are undermining public education.

The agreement calls for a 3 per cent pay raise for teachers this year and 2 per cent in each of the next two years. If the

agreement is extended for an optional fourth year, teachers get a 3 per cent increase.

Chicago union teachers make an average of about $76,000 annually. The deal could worsen the Chicago Public Schools financial crisis. Emanuel said the contract will cost $295 million over four years, or $74 million per year.

Debt rating agencies had previously warned that the new agreement with teachers could bust the school district budget

and lead to a downgrade of its credit rating.—www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago, the third-largest U.S. school district, as city officials prepared to look after thousands of students who could end up wandering unsafe streets.

Some 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to join the picket after union leaders announced they were far from resolving a contract dispute with school district officials. City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised -- especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence -- might be at risk, but vowed to protect the nearly 400,000 students' safety.

The walkout posed a tricky test for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he would work to end the strike quickly.

"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said Sunday night, not long after the union announced the action. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong."

Contract negotiations between Chicago Public School officials and union leaders that stretched through the weekend were resuming Monday.

Among teachers protesting Monday morning outside Benjamin Banneker Elementary School on Chicago's South Side, eighth-grade teacher Michael Williams said he wanted a quick contract resolution.

"We hoped that it wouldn't happen. We all want to get back to teaching," Williams said, adding that wages and classroom conditions need to be improved.

Officials said some 140 schools would be open between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.

"We will make sure our kids are safe, we will see our way through these issues and our kids will be back in the classroom where they belong," Emanuel said.

The school district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities.

Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers' protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.

Union leaders and district officials were not far apart in their negotiations on compensation, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. But other issues -- including potential changes to health benefits and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores -- remained unresolved, she said.

"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," Lewis said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Emanuel and the union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have recently come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

The school board was offering a fair and responsible contract that would most of the union's demands after "extraordinarily difficult" talks, board president David Vitale said. Emanuel said the district offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said among the issues of concern was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relied too heavily on students' standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.—www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Tehran Times

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — A bitter dispute between unionized public school teachers and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has residents of the third-largest U.S. city bracing for a possible strike on Monday in a showdown over education reform that has national implications.

Nearly 30,000 public school teachers and support staff represented by the Chicago Teachers Union have vowed to walk off the job starting at 12:01 a.m. on Monday if an impasse in contract talks with the city is not broken.

Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a speaker at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, has made reform of Chicago's troubled public schools a top priority. Emanuel cut short his trip to the convention in Charlotte to deal with the teacher crisis.

Earlier this year, he succeeded in pushing through a longer school day. But the union is opposed to other proposed reforms, including tougher teacher evaluations tied to student test scores and giving principals wide latitude in hiring.

The union also wants a larger pay increase than the 8 percent raise over four years that Chicago is offering.

The threatened walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years and one of the largest labor actions nationwide in recent years, comes at an awkward time for Emanuel's former boss, President Barack Obama, who spent much of his adult life in Chicago and owns a house in the city.

Obama and Democrats facing voters on November 6 are counting on unions such as teachers to get out the vote around the country in a close election.

Chicago's public school system has more than 400,000 students enrolled, making it the third-largest in the country behind New York and Los Angeles.

Both sides in Chicago agree the city's public schools need fixing. Chicago fourth-grade and eighth-grade students lag national averages in a key test of reading ability, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Until Emanuel forced through a longer school day, which began last week, Chicago elementary and middle school students received instruction for fewer hours a year than any of 30 major cities studied by the National Center on Time and Learning, an education reform group.

Emanuel, a tough negotiator called a bully by the teachers union, wants to close underperforming schools, expand non-union charter schools, and let corporations and philanthropies run some schools.

He also wants principals to have the authority to hire who they want, and he backs the use of standardized test results and merit pay to evaluate and reward teachers.

The union wants to drastically reduce class sizes and increase funding for education. It is suspicious of efforts to erode traditional job protections such as tenure, teacher autonomy and seniority. The union believes charter schools - which are taxpayer-funded but not subject to all public school regulations - will undermine public education.

“What Emanuel represents is a new breed of urban mayors, pushing for a whole system of school improvements ... responding to public demand,” said Kenneth Wong, director of the Urban Education Policy Program at Brown University.

Carroll said the two sides were still meeting late Thursday afternoon and planned to convene again on Friday.

Additional talks were possible over the weekend but a final schedule has not been agreed, she said.

The city of Chicago has allocated $25 million for what school district spokeswoman Becky Carroll called a “last resort” strike contingency fund.

The money would be used to provide breakfast and lunch to students in the district - 84 percent of whom qualify for free and reduced-price meals at school - and to pay for four hours of supervision at 144 of the city's 675 schools.

Children also would be housed in other public facilities and in churches.

Olga Lyandres, whose 6-year-old daughter is in the first grade at Chicago's Nettelhorst Elementary School, said she has not yet told her daughter about the possibility of a strike.(AP photo)

“I've just been waiting to see what's going to happen,” she said. —www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Tehran Times