Posted on 09/13/2012 9:12:48 PM PDT by PBRCat
Having spent the better part of a week asking teachers why they'd risk a public backlash by going on strike, I've concluded that the answer is best summed up by what one told me at their Labor Day rally: "Mayor Emanuel's pushed us to the limit. He's the world's biggest asshole."
Actually, I think he may have dropped the F-bomb once—or twice. But I'm trying to clean things up since this is a family newspaper, dammit!
But here's the bottom line: so much of this fight is fueled by the animosity of thousands of teachers toward one man. Emanuel increased their hours, cut their pay, portrayed them as money-grubbers, closed unionized schools, and opened more nonunion charters, thus depleting the union's power through attrition. And I haven't even gotten into the merit pay issue, which he's also tried to shove down their throats.
And you wonder why teachers are so angry they went on strike.
Still, keep this in mind before you join the rip-the-teachers chorus. Mayor Emanuel's pushing us toward a system in which all teachers—charter and union—are lower-paid, at-will employees who have about as much job protection and say in their workplace as grill-line workers in a fast-food restaurant.
Please tell me how that's good for kids.
much as I despise rahm emmanuel for his politics, he wants the teachers fired if they are proven to be les incompetents and they want union protection for their jobs whether or not the subject matter gets taught to the kids. THAT IS WHY THEY HATE HIM
How much ya wanna bet every darn one of them voted for him. LOL!!!
With an average salary of 76k and 93 percent illiteracy, I doubt Rahm had anything to do with the strike. These letches just want more, more, more.
Rohm should do what Reagan did with the air controllers ... fire them all (after all, they are turning out illiterate kids), hire teachers that are willing to “teach”.
In most of the Chicago Public Schools, it is impossible to be an effective teacher. There are a handful of privilege academies within the school system to serve the needs of the politically connected and the elites, but the middle class abandoned the system decades ago. The student population of most schools is almost exclusively composed of impoverished children from single parent ghetto households. There are police stationed at most schools and metal detectors are provided at the main entrances.
Dollars-to-donuts they’ll vote for him if he runs for mayor again.
I suspect that if Rahm had kept his foul mouth in check and not gone to such lengths to antagonize the teachers there may not have been a strike in 2012.
For what it is worth, Rahm’s three children do not attend the public schools. They are enrolled at the University of Chicago lab school. Most of the local politicians with children do not have a stake in the public schools. Their children attend private schools.
I read somewhere that a really high number of the teachers send their own kids to private schools too.
If Rahm keeps this up... I may even start to like him.
news flash—it’s that way everywhere
the minute they let the cops in school was the death knell
I completely agree
I am not a Rahman fan, but other than the language, this article makes the Mayor seem alright... When you have an overpaid, underperforming, workforce on the public dole - you need to fix it. The basis of this article is that.he is trying to fix it...
No, the initial article is correct. Rahm “The Wonder Horse” provoked this strike. The unions are so tied to the Democrat Party that they have no where else to go.
He understands that the unions have become too powerful and are going to have to be taken on so he decided to do it before Republicans have a chance.
Teachers are already evaluated and it is a MYTH that they cannot be fired.
They also use Class Warfare as much as the Left. And act as though 76 Gs is some princely salary.
Chicago teachers earn about 75% of what teachers in the surrounding suburbs make. The latter do not have to deal with armed gangs, uneducated parents, pupils mainly born out of wedlock and completely without discipline, lack of supplies, dilapidated facilities and insane bureaucracies.
No workforce short of Marine drill instructors could do much better with the Welfare class. There is little or no family support because there are very few real families to speak of.
“I read somewhere that a really high number of the teachers send their own kids to private schools too.”
That’s true almost everywhere. I know that here in Northern California it’s true and the community where I live has “good” public schools. It seems that the teachers know that they are not doing the job and don’t want their own kids to be products of their crappy efforts.
The comments have gone off in a number of different directions. Emanuel went to great lengths to offend the teachers and he was shocked when the union accepted his dare and went on strike.
Remember chaos is the way the Marxist liberals operate...the more the better. So you have the one who loves a crisis with the ones who love a crisis and there you have it...the chaos they love to live in.
I agree if Rahm had any intention of solving this problem he would fire them all and hand the schools over to the Charters.
Rahm and his teacher’s crisis...shiney object or candy put before you to distract from the Owebamanation...good timing, what?
(Teachers are already evaluated and it is a MYTH that they cannot be fired.)
Many of the teacher contracts include so many restrictions on firing a teacher that they make it near impossible to fire. When you have entire huge districts that include thousands of teachers result in only 1 or 3 teachers fired during a whole year, you know something is horribly wrong. Bad teachers instead get reassigned. The process happens so often that they have a name for it. They call it the dance of the lemons.
Chicago teachers are evaluated and can be fired. The problem is the firings are mostly political when principles don’t like someone personally or want to bring in a crony.
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