Key lawmakers and AFT affiliates are successfully making the case for accountability in the charter schools movement. Last summer, the University of Toledo announced that it was exploring ways of getting out of the business of sponsoring charter schools. Universities are one venue for charter school sponsorship under Ohio law, and the University of Toledo's Charter Schools Council has come under fire in recent months for short-circuiting public oversight when it sets up new charter schools. The council, essentially a self-appointed body, has authorized seven schools, including two for-profit "virtual schools" that are now recruiting students across the state.

"I've been wondering how long they would let this charter school council run amok. It didn't seem to reflect well on the University of Toledo at all," said Ohio Federation of Teachers president Tom Mooney, who is also an AFT vice president. "They haven't followed the law. They've granted charters that are in our view clearly in violation of the law. They haven't shown any concern for taxpayers."

The council has also drawn heat from state legislators, including Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo), a former fourth-grade public school teacher in Toledo and AFT member. She has repeatedly taken the charter school council to task for failing to notify the public of important meetings, failing to comply with public information requests, making decisions without a quorum, and granting charters that violated state law. Fedor also has been an outspoken critic of charter schools that allegedly made student placement decisions in an effort to seize special-education funds and charter "cyberschools" for home-schooled students that have raided state funds earmarked for class-size reduction. "The GOP idea here is to expand on what they consider to be innovation," she says. "But, in fact, 90 percent of charter schools, have not passed proficiency exams. We're expanding on failure."

The OFT is leading a coalition of groups that is suing the state and charter school operators. The Coalition for Public Education filed suit on May 14 charging that Ohio's charter school program violates the state constitution and that state officials are not enforcing existing laws governing the privately operated but publicly funded schools. AFT affiliates and members across the state also are fighting a bill that would usher in a reckless expansion of charter schools across the state--and would also offer the charter schools council at the University of Toledo a new loophole for setting up more charter schools.

AFT locals in Chicago and other city unions are poised to reclaim many of the bargaining rights stripped by the State Legislature in 1995.

A coalition of unions met with the city throughout the summer and reached a tentative agreement on restoring many protections and giving employees a renewed say in school operations at both the preK-12 and community college levels. The agreement was approved by the Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates late this summer and crafted into language that the Illinois Legislature is expected to pass by year's end.

"The restoration of these rights has been one of the top priorities of the CTU officers," Deborah Lynch, CTU president and an AFT vice president, reported in an Aug. 26 letter to union delegates. "Your officers believe that this agreement not only restores our bargaining rights, but makes us full partners in the decision making about how to strengthen our schools and improve our professional working conditions."

Enactment of the School Reform Act of 1995 dealt a severe blow to members' rights at both CTU and the Cook County College Teachers Union/AFT and crippled the unions' ability to bargain on a range of issues, including class size, assessment policy, privatization of services and staffing.

Restoring those rights--a top legislative priority of AFT state and local affiliates in Illinois--moved forward in the last session. The Illinois Federation of Teachers and other groups helped marshal enough support from both sides of the aisle to pass what amounted to a legislative "place holder" for whatever agreement the city and the coalition of unions could reach.

Negotiations were intense over the summer and resulted in an agreement between the unions, Mayor Richard M. Daley and school system chief executive officer Arne Duncan. It opens up a broad range of issues to collective bargaining and guarantees unions' rights to enforce their contracts through a true arbitration process.

Expanded protections against paraprofessional layoffs--a major issue since Title I reauthorization--also is featured in the agreement, along with steps to ensure fair and consistent enforcement of the district's employee discipline policy.

The agreement also puts school reform back on the table: It includes language that secures a mutual commitment from CTU and the school system to improve schools and increase student achievement. "We will jointly work on issues such as developing and implementing programs, accelerating the quality of teacher training, improving the value of education programs to students, and implementing strategies to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001," Lynch told members.

Oct. 19 is the AFL-CIO's National Day of Action to educate and energize workers to take their voices to the polls Nov. 5 to demand political accountability for the corporate greed that has cost more than 2 million workers their jobs and has drained $1.5 trillion from worker retirement and savings funds since the collapse of Enron late last year.

The Day of Action is part of the AFL-CIO's multi-pronged "No More Business As Usual" campaign, which began earlier this year and included a rally led by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney outside the New York Stock Exchange on July 30. More than 1,000 workers attended that rally, including former employees of Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom.

Delegates to this summer's AFT convention in Las Vegas took a stand against corporate abuses by passing a resolution, "Protecting Workers' Retirement Security and Preventing Future Enrons," which calls on legislative and executive branch support for legislation on accounting reform and investor protections.