CHICAGO, June 24 – Working-class Latin immigrant mothers and their supporters continued their struggle against the racist Chicago Public Schools (CPS) today. In the face of tricks and obstacles, the mothers persisted on having a meeting with newly-appointed board president Miguel del Valle  regarding the application of magnet status for their children’s dual-language elementary school.
This struggle to re-designate the school as a magnet school is the latest in a long string of battles that these working-class parents have waged against the racist CPS for the district’s attacks on their school and majority-Latin community. Comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been involved in many of these fights and continue to advocate for communist revolution as the only way to guarantee the best education for workers and their children worldwide.
Don’t back down
The meeting with del Valle today was set weeks ahead of time, confirmed through a series of emails exchanged with a PLP comrade and del Valle’s secretary. When we arrived at the president’s luxurious downtown office, however, the receptionist as well as a pair of CPS lackeys began to give us the runaround.
The lackeys first informed us that del Valle was not available, and that the plan was that on this day we would meet with other CPS representatives instead. After we showed these flunkies the email confirmations that we received that we had in fact scheduled the appointment with him specifically, the story changed into how his secretary had since sent cancellation emails to the comrade (which were unsurprisingly never found). It became obvious that CPS was really trying to get out of any obligation to meet with the mothers.
But we were not about to be moved. The mothers as well as the school principal were persistent and pushed back, continuing to show the emails until the CPS flunkies ushered us into a boardroom where del Valle and a handful of other executives magically appeared.
Capitalism fails the working class
Now that we had the CPS bosses’ attention, we were able to pressure them for answers about the status of the application to convert Whittier Elementary into the only dual-language magnet school on the city’s south side.
The school is situated in what is still a majority Latin immigrant working-class neighborhood but which is rapidly gentrifying.  Whittier is operating at a little more than half of its enrollment capacity, as more working-class families are displaced by rising rent prices.
By converting the school into a magnet school, by the parents and staff hope to draw in more working-class students who can benefit from the dual Spanish-English program, increase enrollment, and fight off the threat of the school closing in the not-too-distant future.
The application was submitted back in October of 2018, and the parents have faced a lot of racist and sexist indifference from CPS. The application was quickly denied by the district, without explanation. What’s more, the parents who have attended CPS board meetings to bring attention to the school have been made to wait for hours on end to speak. Practically all the mothers involved only speak Spanish, but were offered no translation services from CPS for one of these meetings in April in order to understand what was being discussed.
Today, the immigrant working-class mothers gave testimony on the strengths of the community-centered school and the benefits it has had for the students. One Latin mother, who was forced to move to another neighborhood to the southwest, spoke about how she still drives two of her children to attend Whittier each morning because of the positive impact it has had on their education and language skills.
The CPS bosses faked sincerity and promised to get back to us with updates and a decision in the upcoming weeks. Del Valle and Lori Lightfoot, the new mayor who appointed him, are painting themselves as progressives who are ready to defend education for working-class students. In fact, we need to see these liberals as the main danger to the working class.
Look back no further than past liberal mayor Rahm Emanuel, who championed progressive causes during his campaign and then closed fifty schools, the majority of which were in Black and Latin working-class neighborhoods. A number of his CPS appointees were charged with incompetence and corruption, including former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.
As long as capitalism treats education as a commodity and working-class students as criminals and future soldiers to be mobilized for war, we can expect more of the same. A communist education is the only one really worth fighting for, where education is not based on money or profits but is a collective, lifelong process grounded in the needs of our class.
Remember La Casita
As we were leaving the CPS office, a comrade told the bosses, “I’m not sure what your decision will be, but I’ve known these parents for many years, and I know that they’re fighters. If you cross them, you’ll have another La Casita on your hands.”
The comrade was referring to the struggle over a community center at Whittier Elementary, which immigrant workers occupied for over a month in 2010 when CPS threatened to demolish it. The bosses eventually succeeded, but many immigrant workers and PLP comrades fought and learned much in the process.
It’s those lessons and fighting spirit that we’ll maintain during the struggles ahead, part of the broader struggle to overcome all the capitalist bosses’ attacks by winning more workers to a communist future.