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Chicago Teachers Union Demands 30 Percent Pay Raise
Heritage Foundation ^ | June 12, 2012 at 3:00 pm | Lindsey Burke

Posted on 06/18/2012 1:33:16 PM PDT by Sopater

It takes a lot of nerve to ask for a 30 percent pay raise. You’d better be sure you had a banner year. Yet in Chicago, where just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading (and just 56 percent of students graduate), the teachers union is set to strike if the district does not agree to a 30 percent increase in teachers’ salaries.

The average teacher in Chicago Public Schools—a district facing a $700 million deficit—makes $71,000 per year before benefits are included. If the district meets union demands and rewards teachers with the requested salary increase, education employees will receive compensation north of $92,000 per year.

According to the Illinois Policy Institute, the average annual income of a family in Chicago is $47,000 per year. If implemented, the 30 percent raise will mean that in nine months, a single teacher in the Chicago Public School system will take home nearly double what the average family in the city earns in a year.

According to the union, 91 percent of its members voted for the ability to strike. That vote gives the union the ability to walk out of public school classrooms as children return to school this fall.

The union argues that Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) wants to extend the school day, and that the requested salary increase would compensate them for extending the school day from 5.5 hours—among the nation’s shortest school days—to 7.5 hours. Chicago Public Schools states that under the extended school day:

On average teachers will provide 5.5 hours of instruction (an increase of 54 minutes), receive a 45-minute duty-free lunch and 60-minute prep period and supervise the passing period. They will also be required to be on-site for 10 minutes before and after school.

While the union bemoans the longer school day and is demanding a hefty pay raise as a result, taxpayers will be left holding the bill for a 30 percent salary increase and wondering whether $92,000 is appropriate compensation for public school employees.

As Heritage’s Jason Richwine notes, public school teachers should be compensated no better or worse than their similarly skilled private-sector counterparts.

…the teaching profession is not actually underpaid, nor is it an unpopular career choice among college graduates. In fact, total compensation for the average public school teacher is considerably higher than what his or her skills would merit in the private sector.

Creating a teacher compensation system that rewards the best teachers in a fiscally responsible manner is a broadly shared goal. To that end, policymakers should avoid across-the-board pay increases, focusing instead on performance pay by easing restrictions on entering the teaching profession, and basing tenure decisions on performance in the classroom.



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Illinois
KEYWORDS: corruption; democrats; democratutopia; unions
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To: null and void
For a moment there, I thought you wanted all of them turned into pillars of salt...

I'm good with that.
21 posted on 06/18/2012 2:26:35 PM PDT by Sopater (...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 COR 3:17b)
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To: Graybeard58
I was pulled out of public school in the third grade for the same reason. My mother went to meet the teacher, and I was enrolled in private school the next day. That was also in the 70s

I remember my mother telling the Principal that she had a hard enough time making sure that I spoke correct English, and I sure didn't need a teacher that speaks it worse than a 4 year old.

I come from a long line of English teachers, and my mother is still quick to correct me.

22 posted on 06/18/2012 2:26:35 PM PDT by kara37
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To: Sopater

Hey...Chicago teachez...I got yer 30% raise hangin’ right heah. Come get it. ;-)


23 posted on 06/18/2012 2:27:27 PM PDT by Milton Miteybad (I am Jim Thompson. {Really.})
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To: Sopater
That vote gives the union the ability to walk out of public school classrooms as children return to school this fall

Who cares. They are not teaching much of anything except acting like organized gangsters. Those not back in the classroom don't get paid.

24 posted on 06/18/2012 2:33:02 PM PDT by Logical me
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To: allmendream
Fire them all and replace them - it shouldn’t be too hard to find qualified teachers if you do not insist on a degree in “Education”.

The ones "insisting" are the lawmakers who are in the union's pocket. The taxpayers make no such insistence - but since when have their opinions mattered?

25 posted on 06/18/2012 2:34:36 PM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies (A free society's default policy: it's none of government's business.)
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To: Sopater

Come on folks, they deserve the raise. Have you ever tried to teach ebonics to a bunch of thugs who have no interest in learning? /sarc

How much will the 30% increase pension costs?

Anyone need more proof these communist union teachers (redundant) are doing their best to insure the Cloward & Piven strategy to collapse the system so “Fearless Reader” can fully implement his Marxist regime?


26 posted on 06/18/2012 2:36:00 PM PDT by Wurlitzer (Nothing says "ignorance" like Islam!)
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To: Sopater
I suspect they will avert a “disastrous” strike by “settling” for the actual percentage raise they wanted in the first place. Negotiate...start high...
27 posted on 06/18/2012 2:43:55 PM PDT by Tex-Con-Man (T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII 2012 - "Together, I Shall Ride You To Victory")
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To: The Louiswu
Close the public schools let the children run wild in the streets, it can’t get any worse there as it is.

The schools are giant, government run daycare centers. They babysit for Mama while she is off getting her "hair did" and nails manicured. They feed the students breakfast, and lunch. After dismissal, they are running wild in the streets anyway. The high schools even have daycare set up inside the building for the babies of STUDENTS. The government is taking over the job of the parenting the children, and the real parents don't mind, as long as their purple visa "LINK" card gets charged up at the beginning of the month.

28 posted on 06/18/2012 2:43:57 PM PDT by dznutz
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To: BuffaloJack

sort of like how when they had that doctors strike in Israel and the mortality rate went down...


29 posted on 06/18/2012 2:47:51 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: dznutz

Year round day care too.

We can’t let the poor kids starve in the summer.
http://www.benefits.gov/benefits/benefit-details/1716
I used the locator function and got 202 location just in the county where Indianapolis is located.

(don’t we pay the families to feed these little b@stards with WIC and EBT also?


30 posted on 06/18/2012 2:50:21 PM PDT by nascarnation
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To: dznutz

Year round day care too.

We can’t let the poor kids starve in the summer.
http://www.benefits.gov/benefits/benefit-details/1716
I used the locator function and got 202 locations just in the county where Indianapolis is located.

(don’t we pay the families to feed these little b@stards with WIC and EBT also?)


31 posted on 06/18/2012 2:50:56 PM PDT by nascarnation
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To: Uncle Chip

your response is so quaint, i almost began to cry.

this is CHICAGO public schools. take a look at the’parents’
or more likely grandmother, and you’ll probably reconsider.

i wish it could be so,though.

go teachers union,go. DO IT!! the more traditionally
‘democrat’ institutions p*ss off the voter, the better, in the long run. disillusionment can cause one to look elsewhere.


32 posted on 06/18/2012 2:51:52 PM PDT by americas.best.days...
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To: nascarnation

I think it is about time to hit the reset button.


33 posted on 06/18/2012 2:58:39 PM PDT by dznutz
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To: Sopater

Hell, I say give it to them and for that matter a $100,000 bonus to all.


34 posted on 06/18/2012 3:02:25 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: Sopater


35 posted on 06/18/2012 3:19:18 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Chode

15% are good readers. I say fire all the teachers and just by books for the kids. Hell, they could do better than that on their own.


36 posted on 06/18/2012 4:08:55 PM PDT by spawn44 (mu)
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To: Sopater

There’s no way to stop this crap. The teachers’ union in cahoots with the criminal school administration have the public screwel systems pretty much destroyed. 14% proficiency?

Parents can’t help. Most inner city homes have only one parent, probably an unmarried woman who’s either on welfare and watches Springer/Maury all day, or she’s working somewhere desperately trying to feed a family that some male bastard(s) walked away from.

And then these morally corrupt teachers’ union thugs get in their fancy cars after school each day, drive home to their suburban homes, and work no more than 8 months of the year.

Disgusting. Out of control. Criminal.


37 posted on 06/18/2012 4:19:43 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: Graybeard58
. . . and I'm not making this up, she said."I teaches English".

Wha' be wrong wi' dat? She larns' ar' choodren, don' she?

38 posted on 06/18/2012 4:23:38 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: spawn44
just by books for the kids

just buy books for the kids (must be having public screwel flash backs!)

39 posted on 06/18/2012 4:29:22 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: allmendream
I was told (in California) that I needed a degree in “Education” in order to teach High School.

I live in the Cleveland area and couldn't even get an interview with the Cleveland Public Screwels. Why?

1) I am "white."
2) I don't have an Education degree . . . just a Bachelor's Degree in History and Social Studies.
3) My 23 years of teaching at a family owned vocational school didn't mean squat either.

That same year, the Cleveland School system went to overseas to hire hundreds of Indian teachers, brought them over here, housed them, and today, there's not one left in the system between being beat up, robbed, raped, etc., within the schools themselves.

But . . . can't hire that "white" guy from the suburbs who doesn't have that "Education" degree.

40 posted on 06/18/2012 4:41:29 PM PDT by laweeks
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