More than a year-and-a-half after taking office in August 2004, the United Progressive Caucus and CTU president Marilyn Stewart finally updated some of the union’s website in early February 2006.

The largest amounts of content on the CTU website, however, still come through links with the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. More than half the sections on the new union website are effectively blank, while the website blocks any attempt to communicate directly by e-mail with union staff and officers.

The scandalous elimination of the CTU’s own history is one of the major featureres at the new CTU website (www.ctunet.com). Rather than provide the union’s readers (or other Internet visitors) with the actual record of the years (2001 -2004) when Deborah Lynch was union president, the official CTU website simply ends “back issues” of the union newspaper in September 2004. Nothing is available prior to that date — as if union history begins with Stewart’s election in 2004.

The Chicago Teachers Union now has the worst website of any major local in the American Federation of Teachers. But readers don’t have to take the word of Substance for it. The New York Local website (www.uft.org) is available for anyone to read. Other local unions (Philadelphia Federation of Teachers; United Teachers of Los Angeles) are also easily available. Just Google.

In an age when any computer literate student can immediately check out facts and confirm or refute the claims of public officials, the CTU website may eventually provide humorists with hours of fun. More dishonesty than just historical distortions? Consider: One link at ctunet.com leaves the impression that the annual Chicago White Sox Teacher Appreciation Days are “CTU” events. Not true. Why lie?

-- George N. Schmidt