Posted on 09/16/2012 5:24:13 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Chicago Teachers Vote to Continue Strike By STEPHANIE BANCHERO
The Chicago public school teachers strike entered its second week after the teachers union declined Sunday to call off a week-long walkout that has catapulted the city into the national debate over teacher evaluations and job security.
Only hours earlier, Chicago Teachers Union officials had trumpeted new concessions they said they had extracted from Mayor Rahm Emanuel during talks to settle the strike that started last Monday and has canceled classes for 350,000 students in the nation's third largest district.
The vote to continue the strike came Sunday night by the union's governing body, the house of delegates, after its members looked over the tentative deal negotiated by city and union leaders. The proposed contract had been finalized earlier in the day, giving the 700-member group little time to digest its details.
Union president Karen Lewis said delegates were "not happy" with the agreement and told union membership they needed a day to consult with rank-and-file teachers.
The delegates will meet again on Tuesday. "They would like it to be a lot better for us," she said.
Ms. Lewis said the earliest students could be back in school is Wednesday.
The vote came a day after the union sent out a statement late Saturday highlighting its successes in the talks, including scaling back the mayor's attempt to base 40% of teacher evaluations on student test scores. The tentative deal would base only 30% on student test scores, according to the union, a ratio already dictated by state law.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yeah, but Vitale offered a 16 percent raise over the next four years and the unions laughed. Its not class warfare to ask your friends and neighbors, “What did your raise look like this year?” Around here we’re just glad to have work. People with college degrees now help me at Home Depot. We haven’t seen raises in 4 years. And we can barely scrape together a week or two vacation time in a year. We certainly don’t get 3 summer months off, all weekends, bank holidays and spring break. Teaching can be a tough job. But it has significant pluses as well. People who teach know this going in. Complaining so loudly while the over taxed private sector struggles just comes across as repugnant.
$76K a year is huge for employees who work less than 200 days in a year, work less than an 8-hour day, get big fat old-fashioned defined benefit pensions and other outsized benefits, are no longer employees at will after a few years, and consistently score so far below the average college graduate on tests that are proxies for proficiency and intelligence.
And to think, I’m going to be hearing that fat, disgusting pig of a woman 11 floors down on Clark Street on the bullhorn again........
I am thinking Water balloons :)
Yoe’s comments are spot on. They’re paid 76K for 181 days of work. That’s $52/hr. Fire them all and start fresh.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/10389568-418/sick-pay-jackpot.html
“...How anyone can defend the school system in Chicago...”
Why are you surprised?
They’re doing EXACTLY what John Dewey - “the father of Public education” wanted - creating good little dumbed down, gov-dependent socialists who think for themselves, and who will reliably vote democrat for the rest of their lives.
Hell, I’d say they’re doing a bang-up job of it, when you look at any inner city.
“..Per AP, rahmn is going to file lawsuit to end strike.
“When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of his way.”...”
Pretty much pass the nachos and beer, sit back, watch the animals eat themselves, and enjoy the show...”Mutual of Omaha’s Chicago Kingdom”.
“Here we have the hippopotamus defending her territory...”
As of the last contract offer (last night). The union was offered a 3% raise for the next year and 2% for the next two. The fourth year is an “option” year, whatever that means.
Private sector wages are determined in a different manner in any case.
However bad conditions are for recent college graduates, it does not change the fact that college graduates make more ON AVERAGE than those without degrees. So it is not appropriate to compare average incomes with the general population’s average income.
Many teachers, my late wife was one, worked many more hours than those spent in the classroom including week-ends. She worked very hard and was disgusted by those who did not.
If the life is such an easy one, why do those with higher GREs, etc. not flock to those jobs? Why are they left for those with less intelligence? Could the actual conditions they work under be a factor? Are people afraid of the neighborhoods, the gangs and the parents?
As I have repeatedly pointed out, Chicago teachers are not as well paid as the suburbs surrounding the city. Lake Forest teachers are also on strike and their average pay is 107,000 per year for jobs which are FAR easier to do.
Public education was an all-American operation LONG before John Dewey was even born. It did a fine job of educating THOSE WHO WANTED TO BE EDUCATED for well over a century before the civil rights lawyers and the courts ruined it.
The problems of inner city education is not because of the teachers but almost entirely the result of the parents being the Welfare Class and having children out of wedlock. They are virtually unteachable because of the conditions wherein they are raised.
” They’re doing EXACTLY what John Dewey - “the father of Public education” wanted - creating good little dumbed down, gov-dependent socialists who think for themselves, and who will reliably vote democrat for the rest of their lives.
Hell, I’d say they’re doing a bang-up job of it, when you look at any inner city.”
Doesn’t have to be inner city.
I hear you, friend.
It is what it is, and the teachers aren’t helping the situation at all.
I grew up in North Philly. I know what the Public Education system is like.
My direct experience with the inner city educational system is from growing up in North Philly.
There was a wide difference between us kids who went to Parochial school because our parents sacrificed to come up with the extra money to send us (while paying for the public schools as well) versus the hoodlums coming out of the public school system.
” here was a wide difference between us kids who went to Parochial school because our parents sacrificed to come up with the extra money to send us (while paying for the public schools as well) versus the hoodlums coming out of the public school system.”
No question about it. I lived in a rural place , and for grades 1-5, I was in a Parochial school. When I switched to public school, I was a year ahead of most kids.
arrogantsob has a good point - “parents being the Welfare Class and having children out of wedlock. They are virtually unteachable because of the conditions wherein they are raised.”
I’ve seen first hand kids that were raised where the father was absent; some turned out OK, but others were in jail or dead before they were 21.
But I do think the teachers in the parochial schools had a lot to do with it too - at least, from the perspective of not being afraid for their lives just showing up for work. I know the public high school near me (85% bused-in minority), they had Philly cops on every floor at one point because of the racial bullsh*t that was going on in the 70s.
I’m sorry to hear that your wife has passed and I expect she was a dedicated teacher.
But we’re talking about market wages in general here, and how many weeks out of the year did she have off? As you well know, any salaried employees can be—and many are—expected to work without additional compensation beyond their putative 40-hour, not 30-hour, weeks.
I believe at its best teaching is a calling, but at its worst it is a government job that attracts those who like the limited work standards and bureaucratic protections. Also, on average, higher scoring job applicants like to work where they will find their peers.
There is absolutely no reason for school districts to pay people way more than they could or would make elsewhere, nor is there a single reason why they should be protected from whatever the market will bear.
It is totally irrelevant if another school district chooses to pay more money. I always chuckle when school unions claim they need their teachers to be paid more because there are some teachers being paid more elsewhere. Unless we have national wage-setting for teachers, there will be a range in salary levels.
Sadly, many inner-city schools don’t have any kids performing at advanced levels, teachers who can teach 8th-grade-level skills are all that all too many inner city high schools require.
I guess I just do not understand your reasoning. You keep citing that a college graduate should make more money and can’t be compared to private sector wages. And all I am pointing out is teachers do not work 3 months in the summer, weekends, bank holidays, or spring break. And I know people with perfectly fine degrees that are working at Home Depot (and the UPS store) and are happy to have jobs. Teachers walking out of the classroom to strong-arm taxpayers to fork over more of their dwindling paychecks, while demanding they not be accountable for actually teaching anything to me is still unseemly. But its ok that we disagree! My mother taught middle school science for 31 years (15 in a private school and 16 in public) and I know all I need to know about teacher’s unions. :p
Having lived in Chicago for almost fifty years, I can attest to the fact that 76 Gs is not that much money. You can finance a home and a car and feed your family but this is a very expensive city. We have the highest gas prices in the nation (thanks to the EPA). Only booze is cheaper here than anywhere else.
Thank you, it has been 15 yrs since she passed this Saturday.
To her teaching was a calling and she would have never voted for a strike. I do not believe public employee unions should be allowed to strike. Her off time was spent on such things as disassembling our living room windows, stripping them down to the original one and reassembling them. She was raring to go by the time school resumed.
Union rules definitely impede removing incompetent teachers
as all union rules do. But it is a fact that they also protect to some degree teachers from being unjustly fired by principals with their own agenda or at the instigation of parents whose lifestyles are threatened by a teacher’s teaching or race. Some times these decisions are not that Black and White.
Schools are a somewhat unique institutions which people used to invest heavily in. They are almost sacred in some degree so they cannot be treated like a business. “Alma mater” and all.
Inner city schools need FAR more than what an eighth grade teacher can teach if you are interested in more than plant-like survival. There is human repair which needs to be accomplished as well, the result of generations of vicious bastards. I see no evidence that there are any institutions capable of doing this outside of religious ones. Certainly the teachers unions are not.
“...which is the collapse of the Black family and the complete absorption of the school system by the Democrat party....”
It’s frigging criminal, what they’ve intentionally done to that segment of society with their welfare policies...but then again, people LET it happen to themselves too. You have to WANT to work, to lift yourself out of misery and poverty. And no one can say that they haven’t been given the opportunity to do so - hell, they’e been HANDED more opportunities than any other minority in this country.
The majority of that segment of the population seem to be very content with their new chains, from my 51 years of observations. And all the while seething with envy and jealousy.
But that’s part of human nature too, I suppose.
I would also like to send my condolences to you on the loss of your wife.
It’s never easy losing people you love.
I lost my father when I was 15, and mom a few years ago. It breaks off pieces of the soul.
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