Others like Cathy Wright, a teacher at Michael M. Byrne Elementary on the Southwest Side, said while support from politicians like Warren is good on the surface, it’s important to be cautious of their motives as well.
“It’s nice to see that someone coming in from so far would come to support us, but it’s also political too. So you have to be very careful with that,” Wright said.
Johnson says that despite her school generally having good funding, there are still key issues affecting both teachers and students that aren’t being addressed.“There are different issues that are happening in the neighborhood,” she said. “This last school year, on our way to dismiss the students, there was a shoot-out.”
Johnson said a person was shot near the corner by the school. She wants city and CPS officials to understand how traumatic it is for a child to witness violence up close so frequently.
“The kids go through so much. They see so much, and they need so much help,” Johnson said.
For Evie Brown and her colleagues at Tilton Elementary School in West Garfield Park, they are fighting specifically for the Black and brown students on the South and West Sides who have it a lot harder than white students. They also want to fight misconceptions that the strike is about pay for teachers. Brown said there are too many issues within CPS and not enough money to address them.
“There will never be enough,” Brown said about money for equity across CPS. “We’ve been doing this for our students[and] for ourselves. Everyone needs peace of mind.”
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a bargaining meeting between SEIU Local 73 and CPS reportedly lasted for 12 minutes before ending without a new contract. CPS and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have offered the unions a 16% pay raise over a five-year contract, among other benefits. But union representatives want other issues of student and family homelessness, full-time support staff and more to be addressed in the contract.
Lightfoot has previously stated that the CTU and SEIU’s demands would cost the city about $2.5 billion.
On Tuesday, CPS announced no classes for students on Wednesday.
“These students face a lot of adversities coming here,” Brown said about her Tilton Elementary students. “We can’t do it all. We need a nurse. We need a psychologist. We need them to come in more than one day a week. These tragedies happen everyday and we do what we can, but there’s so much more that we need.”