Since Mayor Daley began reorganizing and outsourcing schools under his Renaissance 2010 plan, the lack of accountability and transparency has generated mistrust among teachers, parents, and school reform advocates alike. Considering that after five years, Chicago Public Schools officials and their charter partners have yet to pull together a comprehensive report on how the reform initiative is impacting communities and students, the district has invited suspicion that a desire to bust the teachers union is driving the plan.

These privately-run institutions aren't off-limits to union organizing, however. Earlier this month, an overwhelming majority of teachers at three schools within Illinois' largest charter chain signed off on joining the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Administrators (Chicago ACTS), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In a demonstration of how significant the unionization effort is, AFT President Randi Weingarten flew into Chicago for a rally yesterday, which was organized by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in a sign of solidarity. The Chi-Town Daily News reports:

Since the first charter schools opened in the early 1990s, unionized public-school teachers have seen them as a threat to enrollment in their classrooms, and therefore a threat to their jobs.

"We thought charter-school teachers were taking our jobs and taking our students," says Debra Blackmon-Parrish, a district supervisor at the Teachers Union and public-school teacher at Chicago's Songhai Learning Institute. "That's how we felt because that's what we were told." [...]

"It's not like that at all," she says. "They're teachers just like we are, and they have rights just like we do."

Interestingly enough, back in 2005 I reported on Northtown Academy -- one of the three Chicago International Charter Schools poised to unionize -- and, at the time, a handful of rookie teachers told me that they were satisfied with putting in longer hours for less pay than their unionized counterparts because they felt optimistic about the school's future. Catalyst recently reported on why they've changed their tune:

[I]t was workload that catalyzed the unionization push. Civitas Schools, the education management group that runs Northtown and the two other Chicago International charters that may unionize, faced a tightening budget and asked teachers to teach an additional class, [teacher Emily] Mueller contends. She says class sizes have also increased.

“It’s just kind of exhausting,” she says. “And it’s hard to get to all the phone calls [to parents] that I need to make.”

Because the staff (and public) is largely kept in the dark about the administration of charter schools, it's hard to know how CICS' books have changed in recent years. What's clear is that the instability at these particular schools had led to an increased rate of teacher turnover, a concern raised by Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) in a report (PDF) last fall.

It's encouraging to see the teachers stepping up to demand a larger role in the decisionmaking at these schools.  Indeed, Gail Purkey of the Illinois Federation of Teachers tells us that the induction into the union, which is pending review by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, is "an important step for these charter schools [in] leveling the playing field."