Black Chicago Teachers Win Discrimination Lawsuit Against Arne Duncan's Mass Firings

[ensho]

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/black-chicago-teachers-win-lawsuit-against-arne-duncans-mass-firing-black-teachers


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Back in June of 2009, BAR told the story of activist teachers who sued the Chicago Public Schools for racial discrimination in the firings of hundreds of committed, experienced teachers, most of them black and female, who were replaced by younger, less experienced and mostly white teachers. Since then, the years of resistance to undemocratic “reform” by Chicago's teachers, parents and communities has borne tangible fruit. This summer some of the teachers involved in the lawsuit were elected to lead the city's 30,000 member Chicago Teachers Union. And this week, a US District Court judge ruled on their discrimination lawsuit, giving the Chicago Public Schools 30 days to come up with a plan to recall the unjustly fired teachers.

BAR talked to Karen Lewis, a high school chemistry teacher and CTU president. We asked her what the significance of Monday's court decision on their case meant.

“It means school districts cannot ignore the law. It means they can't illegally fire tenured teachers. Tenure, by the way, is not a guaranteed job. It's a guarantee of due process. Tenure just means you can't arbitrarily dismiss teachers because you don't like them and you'd rather hire your friends. So the court is just saying that teachers deserve due process, like employees on any job do.”

-snip discussing Waiting for Superman-
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good

[DirkGently]

1. Interesting. Good find.

[EFerrari]

2. Good. n/t