CTU Speaks
- Home
- United States
- Chicago, IL
- CTU Speaks
Our podcast, CTU Speaks! is hosted by rank-and-file CTU member Andrea Parker and field rep Jim Staros.
Address
Chicago, IL
60612
Telephone
Website
Alerts
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when CTU Speaks posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Contact The Business
Send a message to CTU Speaks:
Shortcuts
Share
What is CTU Speaks?
CTU Speaks! is the brainchild of the Union’s member-led Public Relations and Communications Committee, hosted by committee members Andrea Parker and Jim Staros. The inaugural episode, “Are We Striking?” features segments on bargaining with the Chicago Board of Education, in-school contract enforcement, affordable housing, sustainable schools and an interview with CTU Chief of Staff Jennifer Johnson.
“We want our members to feel more empowered, better able to advocate, well informed and more organized, especially in their schools,” Parker said. “We want to build a sense of community by bringing key decision makers like CTU officers, fellow members and local politicians on the show to share information and answer some hard questions about the state of public education in our city.”
Parker, a South Side native and 15-year veteran of CPS, teaches middle school reading at Fulton Elementary, in the same neighborhood in which she grew up. She became heavily involved in the Union after becoming a delegate in 2009 at her former school, Curtis Elementary, which was taken over—or “turned around,” according to CPS—by the Academy for Urban School Leadership. Parker was also a strike captain in 2012, and is a current member of the Union’s executive board and chair of the Public Relations and Communications Committee.
Staros is an East Coast native and chair of the Social Science Department at King College Prep, where he has been teaching since 2002. He is King’s Union delegate and serves as the district organizer for Network 4A. Staros also has been part of the CTU Summer Organizing Institute and just finished the inaugural year of the CTU Policy Fellowship.
