ROCKFORD – This week, the Rockford Education Association (REA) will file an unfair labor practice (ULP) against the Rockford Public School (RPS) District 205. RPS is knowingly ignoring an Illinois law when it comes to class sizes for mostly Hispanic, bilingual students. In addition to overcrowding Hispanic student classrooms, the district is also failing to fairly compensate educators for additional students.
The REA has two pending grievances against the district. The first regarding classroom conditions and overcrowding for dual language learners. The second focuses on compensation issues for educators with larger class sizes. The REA is now filing a ULP in regard to the first grievance. And, Tuesday night, the REA executive committee voted to send the second grievance to arbitration.
“What’s happening here is just wrong. Our students deserve better than this. There’s a law in a place for a reason. It’s to make sure all our students, no matter the color of their skin or what language they speak, have equitable learning conditions and the same access to the high-quality education their peers are receiving,” REA President Claudia Marshall said.
State law requires districts to maintain bilingual class sizes that are no more than 90% of the average size of the monolingual class sizes for each building grade level.
“It’s really crazy that we have to go to these lengths to get the school district to support all our students, as they’re required to do by law. On top of that, they’re violating our new contract they just agreed to a month ago. The ink isn’t even dry on this thing, and they’re already blatantly ignoring it,” Marshall said. “They’re telling the community they don’t care about our Hispanic students; they don’t care about our parents and community members; and they certainly don’t care about our teachers.”
REA’s contract language states bilingual classroom teachers should be paid based on the number of students assigned to their classrooms. However, the district is attempting to pay educators based on student attendance.
“Our teachers are preparing their lessons for the number of students in their class, not the number of students that show up that day. Regardless of how many students are sick, our educators are still doing the work to make sure all students are accounted for. Their pay shouldn’t be docked because a student is sick. In fact, it’s actually more work when a student is absent because the teacher then has to make sure that student gets caught up,” Marshall said.
REA represents nearly 2,000 teachers, social workers, counselors, speech pathologists, nurses, psychologists and other licensed staff working and supporting nearly 28,000 students in RPS.
The ULP will be filed with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB) this week. More details will be forthcoming.
###
The 135,000 member Illinois Education Association (IEA-NEA) is the state’s largest union. IEA represents Pre K-12 teachers outside the city of Chicago and education support staff, higher education faculty, retired education employees and students preparing to become teachers, statewide.
