[RealJustme]

One again, union thugs hold tax payers hostage.

The smartest parents in Chicago right now are those whose kids attend charter schools, private schools, or parochial schools. Those institutions don’t employ Chicago’s unionized public-school teachers, who went out on strike this morning for the first time in 25 years.

The coverage of the strike has obscured some basic facts. The money has continued to pour into Chicago’s failing public schools in recent years. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.

The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs
But beyond the dollars, the fact is that Chicago schools need a fundamental shakeup — which of course the union is resisting. It is calling for changes in the teacher-evaluation system it just negotiated by making student performance less important.

Small wonder. Just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and only 56 percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.

The showdown in Chicago will be a test of just how much clout the public-employee unions wield at a time when the budget pressures they’ve created threaten to break the budgets of America’s major cities.

[RealJustme]

Aretta Brown, a single mother of 6, watched with her 5-year-old son, Michael, and 6-year-old daughter, Loretta.

“Rahm Emanuel is wrong,” she said. “He is just dead wrong. He should just give the teachers more money. We don’t want our kids in the street selling drugs and stuff, if they do it's his fault. Why he doing this?”

:!:

Any bets on who she'll vote for?

[PainfulTruth]

She'll probably just stay home this election. A lot of the Useful Idiots will after that hope and change thing didn't work out so well.

Public school teachers are violently opposed to vouchers because they know they will be out of a job if vouchers are available to allow parents to send their kids to schools that actually provide an education.

If parents can't get vouchers, then tenure should be eliminated, merit based pay instituted and testing of teachers to assure they know the material must be established.
Of course, public school "teachers" hate all those ideas as well.

[RealJustme]

The Chicago Parents for Quality Education report that kids in Chicago's public schools spend just five hours and 45 minutes in school a day. It's one of the shortest school days in the country. Chicago teachers are required to be on school grounds 6 hours and forty minutes, which includes a 40-minute lunch break and two 15-minute breaks. Total time working is 5 hours and 30 minutes. Of those 5 hours and 30 minutes, school districts in Chicago require they provide a minimum of 1 hour and 30 minutes for grading papers and preparation time. That leaves a maximum of 4 hours per day of classroom time. The average Chicago school teacher actually spends approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes per day in the classroom. Union rules strictly prohibit teachers working on school matters such as grading papers outside of school hours, to do so would result in reduced number of teachers required.

The Chicago Parents for Quality Education reports that there are only 180 class days in Chicago with teachers receiving an additional 3-6 weeks off for vacations. Additionally the average teacher takes 13 sick days off during the school year. They report the average annual salary for a teacher in Chicago is $75,400.00 with an additional $39,500.00 in benefits.

The Chicago Parents for Quality Education question why Chicago teachers should receive pay increases since based upon hours worked they are the highest paid public workers in the State and receiving almost double the compensation of the average private worker who works nearly 3 times the hours during the year as Chicago’s public teachers. They also point out that the average private worker receives no where near the $39.500.00 in benefits Chicago teacher do.

The fact that these lucratively compensated teachers would strike for more money forcing many parents to stay home and lose their incomes points out the urgent need for real public school reform in America. It's time children become the focus of public schools rather than milk cows for teacher unions.