CHICAGO – The Chicago Teachers Union is promoting an upcoming teacher training workshop that questions the need for police ahead of an annual “Social Justice Curriculum Fair” with the theme “Defund Policing: Fund Schools and Communities” for 2016.

The lesson comes amid criticism that Chicago Public Schools teachers are not doing enough to teach students about black history, DNAinfo reports.

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The Chicago Teachers Union’s Teachers for Social Justice sent out an email to members Tuesday about a Sept. 24 teacher training session titled “Are Police Necessary?” that invites teachers to “analyze the historical and current context from a systemic perspective and consider alternatives to policing,” according to a union flyer.

“In preparation for our 15th Annual Teaching for Social Justice Curriculum Fair whose (sic) theme is Defund Policing: Fund Schools and Communities, we invite you to join us to dialogue on ‘Are police necessary?’” the flyer reads.

“We will analyze the historical and current context from a systemic perspective and consider alternatives to policing. We seek to contribute to the ongoing conversations about the relationships between policing, funding our schools and communities, racism, state violence, and capital accumulation.”

The emailed solicitation included sketched images of two girls at a lemonade stand attempting to raise money to “help us save our teacher,” as well as an image of two black men – one shirtless in handcuffs with the word “slave” below and another seemingly the same but with a shirt and the word “prisoner” below.

The flyer, which takes direct aim at the CTU’s brethren in the city’s police unions, was sent to teachers the same day DNAinfo published a report highlighting critics and museum officials who believe Chicago schools do not focus enough on black history.

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“For a very long time, I’ve been trying to interact with Chicago Public Schools. Our kids aren’t getting a fair distribution of black history. They don’t know their own history,” said Lynn Hughes, founder of the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, a museum that honors the country’s first black labor union. “When kids come to the museum, they are touched by what they didn’t know. The young people who had no idea of this history we were never taught about these people.”

The criticism is surfacing despite efforts by CPS officials in recent years to inject more lessons centered on black issues beyond the slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. CPS officials in 2013 vowed to make improvements, but critics claim it’s made little difference.

“As a standalone course, African-American (history) has diminished. The curriculum CPS mandated is online for teachers, too, but I don’t know anyone who uses it. It’s not monitored,” Lincoln Park High School African-American History teacher Juanita Douglas told the news site. “African-American history in public schools is taught in pieces.”

Douglas, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union’s Black Caucus, believes CPS needs a fresh history curriculum for black students that focuses more on things like the history of police brutality and other issues that continue to impact blacks and divide the country.

“We need to address the issues that match up with the population of the students. We don’t each history in the way our students will need in the years to come,” she said. “In terms of Black Lives Matter, I have students who are in the Police Explorers program and they need to learn the history of police brutality.”

University of Chicago professor Eve Ewing also believes Chicago schools should focus more on the ugly racial issues that plague U.S. history.

“In the 21st century, it’s time to stop relegating things like slavery, like Japanese internment, like the genocide of indigenous peoples, to the footnotes, and to instead acknowledge these stories as cornerstones of the country we live in. That battle begins in schools,” Ewing said.

“Teaching students about a version of our national history and culture that includes black people and blackness, and people of color more broadly, at the center rather than at the margins is not only potentially good for their social and emotional development, it’s also simply accurate.”