By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org
    
CHICAGO – The Chicago Teachers Union is losing its battle with the city school board over the closing of 54 of public schools, so the union is moving to Plan B: replacing Rahm Emanuel as mayor.
    
Emanuel isn’t up for re-election until 2015, but CTU President Karen Lewis announced Monday that the union is laying the groundwork for an aggressive campaign to identify and train his successor, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
    
Chicago Public Schools are under mayoral control, which means whoever controls City Hall also controls the budget and day-to-day operations of the nation’s third-largest school district.
    
CTU leaders covet access to the mayorship because it would allow them to roll back many of Emanuel’s K-12 reforms, which include a longer CPS school day and more charter school options for families.
    
“If the mayor and his handpicked corporate school board will not listen to us, then we must find those who will,” Lewis said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
    
To help elect whichever puppet candidate union leaders eventually choose, “the CTU and other partners” will attempt to register 100,000 new voters in time for the 2015 elections, the Sun-Times reports.
    
“They also plan to train possible candidates for mayor, alderman and statehouse offices, and increase donations to their political action committee to financially support potential candidates,” the paper reports.   
    
In a comments made earlier this month, Lewis explained that her ideas for improving Chicago’s dysfunctional public schools center around more teachers, more “wraparound services” for students – all of which would be paid for with higher taxes.
    
Lewis said the effort will begin in May.