Activist infiltration in schools: The History of the Caucus of Working Educators, the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, and the Administration of the School District of Philadelphia

The Caucus of Working Educators, a caucus within the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers, was formed in 2014. According to its members:

“The Caucus seeks to build a more powerful teachers union in order to advance social, racial, economic justice. We do that through the mechanism of union organizing, the mechanism of building democracy within our union, conducting political education within our union, helping buildings become places of solidarity and trust between members. That kind of ideological political work, when it’s scaled up, eventually will get us access to something like a union budget. It will eventually get us access to, “Hey, you can’t be mayor unless you do the right thing for student healthcare. You can’t be mayor unless you help take police out of our schools.

That is, I think, broadly the role of the Caucus. It sees itself as part of a long-range political movement to increase the politicization of educators within the school district to advance a more unapologetically left, coalition-minded union, and then on a brass-tacks level, to have the money, the electoral organizing and the school-based organizing capacity to take shit from nobody.”

Unsurprisingly, as mentioned by the CWE member in the above-quoted interview, the PFT has member DSA members within it - and so the CWE was almost a fait accompli in Philadelphia.

But, at least according to Keziah Ridgeway, the CWE doesn’t go far enough for members of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee - explaining why they split to become a separate entity.

Origins of the CWE

The Caucus of Working Educators was formed out of the Teaching Action Group (TAG)-Philly.

TAG-Philly is an activist group which believes teachers should be “political actors' and should, according to one of the panelists at its 10 year anniversary, fight against “capitalism” and “white supremacy” in schools. It holds Inquiry to Action Groups (ITAG)- “study groups” made up of educators and community activists. The ultimate goal of these groups is to form activist groups targeted at specific actions.

Here is Christopher Rogers, previously of the Black Lives Matter at School group, now with the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction talking about the ITAGs and how the study groups are a place where they can plan “resistance.”

Kelley Collings talks about the history of the CWE at the WE convention in 2015:

The CWE was created in 2014 but Collings notes that the seeds for the CWE were sown five years before 2014. Many of the founders of the Caucus were active in TAG and

“organizing, developing leaders, waging campaigns…building relationships not just with other teachers but with other organizations around the city…for five years. We’ve also been developing relationships with folks across the country for five years..attending conferences like “Free Minds, Free People” and hooked up with folks from Chicago who after they took the reigns of power from the great CTU, they decided there are folks all over the country who have visions of what we have. So they started pulling people together on an annual basis…United Caucus of Rank and File Educators….what Chicago was doing was basically sowing the seeds of revolution in locals across the country and TAG members were there.”

CORE members came to Philly in 2014 to help TAG members set up the CWE.

In the speech, Collings notes the work of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee in combatting “structural racism.”

CORE members came to Philly in 2014 to help TAG members set up the CWE.

Inspired the progressive CORE caucus in the Chicago Teachers Union which has managed to take over the leadership of the CTU, the CWE has hopes to do the same within the PFT. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful in their efforts. Still, they call for an end to “status quo unionism” and a move to “social justice unionism”.

At the 10th annual TAG Education for Liberation Conference, held in 2019, Kelley Collings, is flanked by Ismael Jimenez, core member of the CWE, the RJOC and also the Director of Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia, and Christopher Rogers, educator with the W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction (the School takes on TAG’s formula of “study groups” to strategize for revolution and liberation), on whose board Jimenez sits in an “advisory” capacity.

In the full video of the panel, posted below, Ismael Jimenez is sitting next to Keziah Ridgeway.

Watch Jimenez and Ridgeway discuss their involvement with TAG and the CWE below:

So, even with the activist bonafides of coming out of TAG-Philly and being set up with the training and advice of the Chicago progressive CORE caucus, and a progressive platform:

the members of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee decided to separate from CWE in 2020. Evidently, CWE wasn’t progressive enough for them.

At the second annual convention for the Caucus of Working Educators, held in 2015, Ismael Jimenez, co-founder of the Caucus gave a speech.

“..the victory that I’m talking about isn’t just the PFT election. This is a means to an end. And that end is justice.” - Ismael Jimenez

In this video introducing Jimenez as a CWE candidate he talks about being inspired by Malcolm X, that social activism motivates him to be the best educator he can be and he thinks his leadership strengths lie in “creating the conditions for people to talk about issues that aren’t normally talked about but need to be addressed in our society and our schools.” His vision for PFT is for it to “ be a force socially and politically within our city. To influence change and to hold off the tide of neo-liberal deform.”

In 2017, representing the CWE, in a speech, Jimenez says “In America, it’s always been divide and conquer.”

A reminder that this man is in charge of the social studies curriculum (including American history) for the entire district.

So what caused the split? CWE’s inability to emulate the success of CORE? Or, as Ridgeway seems to assert, the fact that it just wasn’t progressive enough for the extreme activists within the School District of Philadelphia?

In summary: The Caucus of Working Educators was formed out of an activist organization, TAG-Philly, sees its role as encouraging political education and activity within SDP, and got training and strategy from the ultra-progressive CORE caucus which now has control of the Chicago Teachers Union. The Racial Justice Organizing Committee formed as a committee within the CWE to focus on “structural racism” within education but was dissatisfied with the CWE, potentially, as Ridgeway hints, for its ideological shortcomings and so set out to be its own organizing influencing the district. All the while, Ismael Jimenez, connected to TAG, RJOC, CWE and the Abolition School, was made the District head of Social Studies Curriculum in 2022 - the first person to hold that position in over a decade.

It would certainly be interesting to know who made the decision to elevate Jimenez to that role and why.