http://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/14/tell-mcdonalds-no-to-mcteacher-nights/ BOSTON, MA –Today, the National Education Association (NEA) and more than 50 state and local teachers unions challenged McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook to end McTeacher’s Nights, the corporation’s most exploitative form of kid-targeted marketing. The call, issued in a letter written and organized by Corporate Accountability International (CAI) and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), comes as McDonald’s struggles to climb out of seven consecutive quarters of nose-diving sales in the US and continues to lose families—its core customer base. The letter builds upon a growing movement of parents and health professionals who are demanding McDonald’s end its kid-targeted marketing, and an increasing number of institutions—most recently the Cleveland Clinic—that are severing ties with the corporation. On McTeacher’s Nights, McDonald’s recruits teachers to “work” behind the counter and serve burgers, fries, and soda to their students and their students’ families. The corporation heavily brands the events, even going so far as to provide uniforms and branded shirts for teachers to wear behind counters. In return, McDonald’s donates only a small portion of the event’s proceeds. The events take advantage of cash-strapped schools and use teachers to sell junk food directly to their students in order to create brand loyalty. At McDonald’s most recent shareholders’ meeting, the Chicago Teachers Union denounced the practice on behalf of teachers in the corporation’s own urban school district. “It is wholly inappropriate for McDonald’s to exploit cash-strapped schools to market its junk food brand, while miring its workers in poverty, effectively hollowing out the tax base for our schools,” said Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “In Chicago we face potentially devastating cuts to our schools, yet one of the world’s richest corporations operating in our backyard is exploiting this situation by eroding the school food environment and our students’ health in the long-run.” Steve H