While the Chicago teachers unions strike, bringing the public school year to a halt and scrambling parents’ plans by forcing them to keep their children home for the time being, the United Neighborhood Organization, a network of charter schools, said they would remain open.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
“All the charter schools will be open,” said Juan Rangel, CEO of the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), which operates a network of 13 charter schools in the city.
Teachers in Chicago’s public charter schools are not members of the CTU, and Rangel said most of the schools are not unionized.
But Cynthia Kwasinski, a charter school union leader at Aspira Mirta Ramirez, said some charter school teachers will show their support with red shirts and window signs that declare their support for CTU.
“We will be picketing with them when we are not in school,” Kwasinski said.
Rangel and other charter school leaders said they’re worried headlines about a strike at the Chicago Public Schools could confuse the parents of the 45,000 children enrolled in the city’s charter schools.
“We do not want all these public statements about a strike to hurt attendance at UNO charter schools or any charter school,” Rangel said. “It’s just not fair to the children.”
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is no fan of comparisons of the public school system with charter schools, having criticized recent films on the subject.
