Elect Member-Run Strike and Negotiating Committees!
Set Up ‘Solidarity Schools’ to Give Students Real Lessons!

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I., Feb. 14 — In eight days, Superintendent Frances Gallo is expected to hold a meeting with the 74 teachers at Central Falls High School, during which she is expected to hand out termination notices to every single one of them.

The Workers Party believes that, before Gallo has a chance to deliver her notice, our brothers and sisters at Central Falls should deliver their own message to Gallo: strike!

Gallo has been trying to impose a “transformation” plan on the teachers at Central Falls since last month, which involves requiring teachers to work longer hours for little or no raise in pay. The alternative is the “turnaround” plan, which is now Gallo’s plan, of firing all the teachers and hiring no more than 50 percent of the old ones back.

The Central Falls Teachers’ Union, a part of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, has made it clear that the issue is not the money, but the right of the workers to negotiate an agreement with the school’s board of trustees.

At the same time, the efforts of the CFTU are being undermined by the leadership of the RIFTHP, mainly its president, Marcia Reback, and officials of the Providence Teachers’ Union. They have signed on to the state’s support for Obama’s “Race To The Top” (RaTTT) plan, which is designed to undermine public education in the U.S.

RaTTT has been called “No Child Left Behind on steroids” and a continuation of the efforts by the George W. Bush regime to gut public school districts and privatize them.

With the endorsements of these business union officials in their pockets, and with the full weight of the White House behind them, Gallo and state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist have turned their attention to Central Falls High School.

Central Falls has become a target because of low scores on standardized tests and declining graduation rates. And as has happened across the country in recent years, responsibility and blame for these problems are being laid at the feet of the teachers.

But the students are in the best position to say how the teachers are doing. And Central Falls students have repeatedly defended the teachers against attacks by Gallo, the board of trustees ... and their own parents.

Indeed, most of the attacks on the Central Falls teachers are being fueled by the media from nearby Providence, and Gallo has been using that to egg on some parents who think that the teachers should be raising their kids and performing miracles.

Regardless, those parents supporting Gallo are in a distinct minority, with most parents and students in this poor and working-class suburb of Pawtucket rallying in support of the Central Falls teachers.

This grassroots solidarity can provide a strong basis for a powerful strike against Gallo, Gist and their unionbusting plans.

But the willingness of Reback and other RIFTHP officials to side with Obama’s RaTTT program to gut public education — i.e., with Gist, Gallo and the corporate media — means that our brothers and sisters have to take charge of any strike from the first day.

Concretely, this means electing both a strike and a negotiating committee from among the membership at Central Falls, and ensuring that any decision on ending the strike or a tentative contract be ratified by all members before bringing down picket lines.

Teachers and school workers should not only be working together for the success of the strike, through the election of these two committees, but should also plan out ways to continue providing students with real lessons they can carry throughout their lives.

“Solidarity schools,” like the “freedom schools” run during the Civil Rights movement, could bring Central Falls students together to receive valuable lessons on working together to achieve common goals, what labor unions are (and should be), the role of public education in society, and why they should not be ashamed to be a worker.

As we have seen in Detroit, Chicago, New York and numerous other cities, the attacks on teachers and public education are part of a wider attack on working people.

Teachers and school workers at Central Falls have a chance to push back against the combined efforts of Washington and Providence to gut public education for working-class youth by saying, “Enough!” to the cuts, “Enough!” to the propaganda and lies, “Enough!” to the phony “tests,” and, “Enough!” to the attacks. Strike to win!