News for Educational Workers

K-12

The Labor History in the Schools bill, signed into law by the governor of Wisconsin on December 10, 2009, will make the teaching of labor history and collective bargaining part of the state's standards for public schools in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Labor History Society, December 14, 2009).

Mississippi, starting in the fall of 2010, will require civil rights as part of its U.S. history curriculum. The stories of the civil rights era will be taught, and tested, in all public schools (The Christian Science Monitor, October 4, 2009).

The beating death of a 16-year-old high school student in the Chicago school system has made politicians, educators, and economists analyze the connection between education and "a widening of the income gap [which has] left neighborhoods, if not entire cities, without an economic base that can sustain productive livelihoods." As a result, and as the first decade of this century progressed, violence in the Chicago school system worsened. Before 2006, 10-15 students were fatally shot each year. 2006-2007 saw 24 deadly shootings; 2007-2008 saw 23 deaths and 211 shootings; and 2009 ended the decade with 34 deaths and 290 shootings (People's World, October 17-23, 2009).

"New Rules in School" (The Nation, November 2, 2009) examines through multiple examples how out-of-control "zero tolerance" school discipline policies have become. Studies on this "school-to-prison pipeline" show that children who are jailed or appear in court are far more likely to drop out of school and get into trouble again. The New York Times, October 8, 2009, confirms this data by stating that one out of every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail, compared to one out of every 35 young male high school graduates.

University of Illinois Victory

The Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) won a major victory against the university after a two-day strike in November of 2009. Over a three day voting period, 92% of GEO members voted to authorize a strike against the Board of Trustees which had threatened a withdrawal of a tuition waiver for teaching and graduate assistants, a move which would be financial expulsion from the university for most of these graduate students, who provide a quarter of the instruction on campus. The strike began on November 16, 2009, and after two days of picketing in stormy weather, the GEO emerged victorious. The UIUC administration deliberated for one hour and came out agreeing to protect tuition waivers for all graduate students, whether in or out of state. For complete information on the strike, contact briandolinar@gmail.com. There is a series of videos on the strike at YouTube. Search for GEO strike at UIUC.

Neon Boneyard, Las Vegas, Nevada

University of California Struggle

The University of California erupted after the Board of Regents approved a 32 percent tuition increase for the 2010 academic year, a vote that would raise the UC tuition to over $10,000 a year. September 24, 2009, the first day of scheduled classes, experienced teach-ins, rallies, and picket lines throughout the UC campuses. On the Berkeley campus, over 5,000 students packed Sproul Plaza for a noontime rally. Over the next several months, more than 60 UC Berkeley students barricaded themselves inside Wheeler Hall, and riot police arrested 33 San Francisco State protesters after they barricading themselves in the business school. Dozens were arrested at the Davis and Santa Cruz campuses. For a detailed list of all of these protest activities, see San Francisco Chronicle (September 25, November 19, 20, December 10, 2009), People's World,(October 3-10, 2009), and The Clarion (January 2010), the newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) for the City University of New York (CUNY). Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org) hosted a special show on November 17, 2009 with both UC faculty and students. The Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) issued a statement supporting "the California students, faculty and campus workers who are fighting against budget cuts, fee increases, furloughs, and firings...