Progress Illinois

    West Side community members and education activists are not backing down from their fight against charter school expansion in Chicago.

The majority of teachers and staff at the Chicago International Charter Schools' (CICS) ChicagoQuest campus on the Northwest Side are organizing to form a union.

Thirty-three out of the 34 staff members at the “game-like learning” junior high school, which centers its curriculum around systems-thinking and game design, announced publicly last month that they want to unionize in order to have a legal voice and actively participate in the school community's decision-making processes.

The charter school's staff are organizing a union "to negotiate a legally-binding contract with consistent, fair and public guidelines for evaluation, support and pay that will serve both to retain and recruit qualified and experienced teachers," the ChicagoQuest faculty members said in their mission statement delivered to school leaders last month.

As Chicago’s public schools continue to struggle in the face of budget cuts, overcrowding and a city government that seems to prefer to invest in charter schools, a group of parents hosted what they say was the first fair ever to showcase public education in neighborhood schools. Calling themselves BAM, short for “Bad Ass Moms,” the group put together a “Neighborhood Schools Fair” last month as a way to connect Chicago Public Schools families with one another and highlight the accomplishments of their children’s schools.

“What better way to defend public education then by showcasing what we have to offer,” said Rousemary Vega, a CPS parent and resident of Humboldt Park. Vega, one of the founding members of BAM, said the group formed over the summer during a backyard barbeque where CPS parents discussed the massive CPS school closures and budget cuts.