The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has sentenced a veteran teacher to death.
The teacher, who has been battling a stage 4 cancer for 18 months, applied for a “Restoration of Health” sabbatical (partly-paid leave) for the Spring 2013 term. Even though the school’s principal approved it, giving false hope to the teacher, DOE’s medical director turned it down saying she has “no chance for recovery — sabbatical denied.” The DOE didn’t even consult the teacher’s oncologist! Their answer comes down to “you’ll die anyway…but we’ll get your last drop of blood.”
The teacher was told by her United Federation of Teachers district office that she could take her case to “medical arbitration,” but the process could take up to a year!
This teacher taught all last year, during a very grueling course of both chemotherapy and radiation, missing only one period each week to get to the last appointment available each Friday. Colleagues in her department pulled together to make sure classes were covered and the students always had the same continuity in lessons as this teacher’s other classes.
This year, when new cancerous lesions were found and it became increasingly difficult to maintain the pace in school, the application for a restoration of health sabbatical was submitted and denied. This 20-year veteran teacher has been literally kicked to the curb.
As bad as this is, it is not an isolated case! Given the fact that it would take up to a year for a medical arbitrator to hear the case indicates that health sabbaticals are being denied at an alarming rate to those that need them the most. After using accumulated sick time, teachers are being forced to take an unpaid leave of absence. During this type of leave medical benefits are no longer available, and as a result, no treatments for a possible remission of terminal illness.
The DOE bosses have pushed for years to get rid of sabbaticals. They have nearly succeeded in ending study sabbaticals (intended for teachers to increase their knowledge and skills). But, under the June 2011 “agreement” between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and DOE, Restoration of Health sabbaticals were supposedly left intact. For the 2012-2013 school year, study sabbaticals were suspended to prevent any teacher layoffs, (according to the UFT).
The system that denies sabbaticals to teachers who have given their lives and health to the students of NYC tells teachers, (and other workers), that once our usefulness has ended, we’re disposable. Is it safe to say that the DOE, run exclusively by a profit-seeking billionaire mayor on behalf of his class robber barons, is killing teachers? The answer is a resounding YES!! And is it preparing our students, as well, to be disposable parts for imperialist war? YES! We need a collective effort by teachers, parents and students to expose the crimes of the capitalist system — and to end it by building our Party and preparing for a communist revolution.

CHICAGO, March 28 — Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has announced the closing of 54 schools, plus a turnaround for another six and co-shares for 11. This unprecedented attack on students, parents, teachers, and other school workers is racist to the core. Virtually all of those impacted by these actions are low-income working-class black students. Many of these students (and teachers) have been shuffled from school to school as CPS goes about the business of destroying public schools. CPS has systematically starved schools in the city’s predominately black South and West sides of the resources they need, and now they are shuttering them completely.
The attacks on education are part of the attacks on all the meager services, including health care and housing, for the working class. The capitalists are tightening OUR belts, (not theirs), as they ramp up their competition with capitalists in China and other countries. The U.S. ruling class is preparing for the inevitable war with their rivals and needs public money to pay for that war. They expect the working class to pay, as they always have, in blood and money, for ruling-class wars.
The head of CPS, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is trying to sell this attack on the students and educators as the opposite. She promises that students will get a better education in their new “welcoming schools,” saying they will all get iPads, air conditioning, and special programs. Yet, out of the other side of her mouth, she talks about the necessity to close schools to save money. The numbers don’t add up and the most likely scenario is that when schools open next August, those impacted by school actions will be in complete disarray.
There is a huge rally planned for March 27, called by the Chicago Teachers Union and other union, community, parent, and student groups, in opposition to the school closings. Other militant actions are being planned as well. However, it is unlikely that many, if any, of the school closings will be rescinded. This is an attack we have already seen carried out in a massive way in Detroit, New York City and Philadelphia.

This is just the beginning. The ruling class is going to keep hitting us with attack after attack. The reform struggle, passionate as it often is, will not do the trick. The only way to stop these monsters is to take away their power and replace their racist profit-based system with a working-class system, communism. Of course that will be a hard fight, but harder still will be life under capitalism if we don’t fight to end it.
Progressive Labor Party in Chicago and around the world is working to make that happen. In Chicago, the PLP has stepped up its sales of CHALLENGE newspaper, is winning friends to be part of our May Day event, and making a particular focus among CPS teachers, parents and students. PLP plans to take leadership on March 27 in motivating the fight for communism as the solution to school closings and the other horrors capitalism foists on the working class.

March 20, BROOKLYN, NY — “When our schools are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” Chants, led by angry students, parents and teachers of the Tilden High School Campus, rang out again against the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting today. They arrived at the meeting ready to fight, even though they knew that the panel of bosses’ puppets would approve the “proposal” to co-locate a charter elementary school in the Tilden campus, which already houses three district high schools. In fact, the PEP, whom are mostly hand-picked by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg to vote on educational policy and decisions, have always voted in favor of the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposals.
Tilden students arrived at the meeting chanting and marching. As school cops tried to push them into a barricade pen, students and teachers formed a picket line along the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the building. They held strong and kept up the loud chanting as cops tried to push them to move from the entrance.
They continued chanting as they entered the auditorium where the meeting was held, making it loud and clear that Tilden was there and ready to fight. Throughout the proceedings, as panelists spoke, students and teachers burst into chants to drown out their racist, anti-student statements. As the list of schools on the “chopping block” that night was listed, the group booed and at the end chanted, “whose schools? Our schools!”
Students and teachers found every opportunity to shout the panelists down. Several students and some teachers made strong speeches blasting the DOE for their attacks on schools. One teacher made an impassioned speech accusing the DOE of not caring about students, which he ended by announcing a walkout from the meeting. The group of students and teachers stood and chanted as they marched out of the room and spilled out onto the street.
While the PEP did go ahead and vote in favor of the co-location, those at Tilden know that we have won what’s important. Over the last two months, since Tilden was informed of the Department of Education’s proposal, students have taken this on and have learned, very quickly, how to fight back, how to lead, and how to organize for unity. Under capitalism, there are always more attacks on youth coming, and these students are ready to fight. Students are seeing these attacks right now, in the kkkop murder of Kiki Gray four blocks from the school. Some of these same students have joined the rebellions against the murder, and have faced constant fascist attacks by the cops.
In the two months since the DOE’s co-location proposal, students and teachers have responded by organizing rallies outside the school (see CHALLENGE, 2/28), traveled to the headquarters of the DOE and City Hall to rally there, and have disrupted and walked out of a DOE Public Hearing at Tilden and two PEP meetings.
Everywhere they go, they bring anger, energy and an increasing understanding that the DOE does not make plans in the interest of students. More and more they see the racism of the DOE’s actions, as black and Latino schools are shut down, turned around, or co-located without a second thought.
Students in one Tilden school’s Student Activism Club are discussing the nature of capitalist schools; that they will never serve the working class and are inherently racist. They have studied what schools could be like under communism, and what the working class needs. There is excitement about marching on PLP’s May Day this year, as we continue to tie the fight-back in our school to the need to smash capitalism and fight for a communist world!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA March 14 — Days after New York City shuts down 22 schools and Chicago plans to close 54 schools, students and workers fight to keep their community college open here. Two hundred protestors carrying signs lined Ocean Avenue in front of the entrance to San Francisco City College (CCSF) fighting against the attacks on public education. Passing cars and buses honked their horns in support.
After an hour of spirited rallying, we marched to the racist Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting to continue the protest. Despite demands from union leaders (who had called for this protest) and others who spoke, the BOT decided to use Proposition A funds to shore up the reserve funds. The protestors outside and the protestors who packed the meeting room thundered their disapproval.
Meanwhile, 150 members of the CCSF community marched two miles from the Mission District branch to City Hall to join 1,500 protestors. PL’ers and friends distributed 500 leaflets and 100 CHALLENGEs at the demonstration. Several of us played an important part in organizing it.
The marchers entered City Hall, stopped at the security desk, and held a rally making three demands:
That City Hall politicians ensure that Proposition A funds are used for education (a ballot proposition that passed by 73 percent of SF voters to do just that). Proposition A called for maintaining CCSF’s salaries and educational programs, not to shore up reserves;
That City Hall advance money to CCSF to fill any budget gap;
That City Hall call on the Department of Education to stop the ACCJC’s (evaluating committee) unjustified “show cause” sanction against CCSF. Militant speeches and chanting echoed through the building.
This is a multi-layered attack on students and workers at CCSF. They had threatened to shut it down last year, which would affect its largely Latino, Asian, black and immigrant 90,000 students, and 1,650 faculty. The attacks on us include taking away classes in African American and women’s studies. The BOT plan is to cut the number of campuses, cut wages and increase class size. They have just cut 40 part-time teachers, 18 counselors, 30 staff, and forced teachers to take an 8.8 percent pay cut after years of wage freezes!
The attack is broader than CCSF. Statewide, community colleges have lost over $809 million in cuts since 2008-2009. These racist and sexist cuts should be seen as an attack on the entire working class. The bosses see community colleges like they see elementary and secondary education: a means to churn out low-wage workers and soldiers. The U.S. bosses are preparing for more proxy and larger wars. These cutbacks and shutdowns are for the war.
At these protests, PL’ers made contacts with several fighters, one of who thought PLP only “talked about revolution and communism and didn’t have any short-range goals.” On the contrary, PLP is deeply involved in the CCSF fight-back. We want to build ties with our friends in this struggle. We will intensify our struggles with our friends to understand that these reforms won’t cut it. We can’t save CCSF, we can’t save public education through the bosses’ laws. We enter a contradiction of fighting against capitalists’ attack on public education but these schools are owned and run by the bosses.
PL’ers put this struggle in a larger context. The leaflet we distributed outlined CCSF’s problems, explaining that this attack was part of the capitalists’ plan to privatize public services. It went on to describe a communist world in which education would be free, since money and the wage system would be eliminated. Education would be planned and implemented by those who do the work and receive the benefits and would thus be part of the struggle to eliminate the differences between manual and mental labor.
Education would be international and would benefit the world’s workers and teach collectivity and cooperation, rather than the individualism and patriotism taught in capitalist schools. We would teach that all value comes from our labor and that we depend on each other to survive and to thrive. International working-class unity would replace national citizenship and national borders.
We are workers of the world and demand an education, but a communist one. This will not come through the BOT or the ballot box. It requires a mass, militant communist movement. We are meeting people through this fight and will struggle with them about these ideas.