Free Republic

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

In 2013, Chicago closed 50 nearly empty schools. Since then, the CTU has barred charters and other schools from using these empty buildings to provide schooling options for local students. After railing against these school closures, CTU leadership locked students out of full-time, in-person learning for 17 months during 2020-21. For Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to connect the public safety struggles of today to closing 50 virtually empty schools over a decade ago is particularly disingenuous, especially considering his peers at the Chicago Teachers Union kept students out of classes for 17 months. Many of the closed schools would not...

. Once CTU members are elected to leading positions on the new board, the CTU will plot his own political course and instead of navigating in a direction which is most advantageous for Chicago pupils, the CTU will pursue its long-sought wish list. Armed with its newfound power, with bullheaded determination the CTU will dismantle charter schools, poison students’ mind by blithely approving new, warped curriculum, disregard classrooms led by educators who distill politics with scholarship, teach apologetics, and are intolerant of alternative views. Worse, the CTU will abuse its position on an elected board to augment teacher pay and...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed former President Donald Trump for the standoff between the city and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), whose members have defied an order to return to their classrooms and threatened a possible strike. As Fox News reported, Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Janice Jackson released a statement Monday evening saying that CPS had backed down on its threat to lock teachers out of remote learning portals if they refused to show up for preparation for in-person instruction

The Chicago Teachers Union expressed support for the protest outside tech billionaire Jeff Bezos’ home, where demonstrators built a prop guillotine. The teachers’ union has tens of millions of dollars in Amazon shares themselves. The union announced they support the protest in a tweet last week. The post came in response to another tweet that showed protesters outside Bezos’ home setting up a guillotine.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday lambasted as “clearly racist” and “deeply offensive” a tweet by the Chicago Teachers Union depicting an apparent cartoon version of her tied up, wearing a police uniform and being unmasked by the characters from the “Scooby-Doo” TV show. The tweet depicts the African American mayor bound with rope, surrounded by the white characters, who have taken a police officer mask off her head to reveal that the officer is actually Lightfoot. It’s a play on the scene at the end of each episode of the Hanna Barbera cartoon, when the team of youngsters would solve...

Pension holidays, steep increases in teachers' salaries, and lopsided ratios of teacher contributions to pension payouts have caused the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund’s unfunded liabilities to shoot up to $9 billion in 2015. The Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, has threatened to strike as early as April 1 over the issue of teacher pension “pickups,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Negotiations over a new contract to replace the 2012 contract that expired in June 2015 stalled after CTU rejected the most recent offer from Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, in February. In exchange for pay increases and a moratorium on...

The Chicago Teachers Union and Action Now (formerly known as ACORN) staged yet another protest Tuesday, this time targeting so-called Chicago “fat cats.” Video from the event reveals that the local Chicago media – particularly Christian Farr of NBC 5 – is disinterested in reporting the radical nature of the union and its allies. Farr said that he’s too “objective” to report such news, even though it occurred right before his eyes. SEE THE VIDEO HERE. Only a single Chicago talk radio program - Wade and Roma on WLS-AM - has demonstrated the nerve to question the CTU leadership about...

Before scandal would shatter his grand ambitions, when he was still a Democratic congressman and the heir apparent to one of Chicago’s most prominent political dynasties, Jesse Jackson Jr. did not shy from criticizing other politicians with heavy baggage. [SNIP] “The future of black politics is bright, actually,” Maze Jackson [radio host not related to J. Jackson] said. “You’ll see a new generation of black politicians with new, innovative thought processes. The old generation looked to protect the safety net as a way to empowerment. The new generation is more interested in banking, finance, utilities — things that can be...

The successful business leaders that sit on the Chicago Board of Education must have checked their brains at the door when they went into the negotiating room with the teachers union. How else could they possibly negotiate a contract that the school district can’t possibly afford? Truth be told, if board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels operated that way, they’d be out of business. But, alas, this is government. They strike deals with unions and figure out how taxpayers will fund it later. Reuters tells us: “Chicago public school teachers returned to their classrooms on Wednesday but thorny questions remained...

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...

......A Chicago Teachers Union news release late Saturday said the agreement includes: ◆ Raises of 3 percent, 2 percent and 2 percent over the next three years, with the option to extend the deal to four years “by mutual agreement” with another 3 percent raise. ◆ Preservation of extra “step’’ increases based on experience, with new increases in the three highest steps. ◆ The hiring of 600 additional teachers in art, music, physical education,world languages and other so-called “special’’classes. ◆ The requirement that teachers be allowed to “follow their students” to other schools if the teachers school is subject to...

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...

If Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spent the last 18 months painting a portrait of public-employee unions as intransigent and selfish, the Chicago Teachers Union this week provided him with confirmation. On Monday, 25,000 Chicago teachers (average salary: $76,000 before benefits) walked out of their classrooms, leaving nearly 350,000 schoolchildren and their parents in the lurch. The teachers are fighting to protect their lavish pay and benefit packages and also trying to stave off a new accountability plan that would evaluate their effectiveness using studentsÂ’ test scores. The Chicago strike serves as a counterpoint to events in Wisconsin after WalkerÂ’s...

<p>In previous seasons, we've gotten a major death, a biological attack, Jack faking his own death, being kidnapped by the Chinese and plain ol' pontificating.</p> <p>But how will season seven of "24" click to a close? "The most I can tell you is that it is not going to end because someone cuts two wires and the clock on the bomb stops," Kiefer recently revealed.</p>

During its first five years on television, the terror-thriller "24" built a huge fan base by creating the first true superhero of the post-Sept. 11 era: special agent Jack Bauer. Ruggedly handsome and righteously defiant, Jack was willing to do anything to defend his country. That "anything" has always included torture. Jack has snipped off fingers, poisoned associates, shot through kneecaps and faked executions, all in the pursuit of national security. Against the real-life backdrop of global terrorist attacks, "24" at its peak fulfilled the fantasies of an insecure nation. It became one of the most important franchises for News...

LOS ANGELES - Kiefer Sutherland was sentenced Wednesday to 48 days in jail for racking up a second drunken-driving arrest in three years and immediately reported to a city lockup. The star of the Fox TV drama "24" was being processed at the Glendale city jail, said Officer John Balian. Sutherland, 40, who pleaded no contest in October to driving with a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit of .08, appeared in court with his attorney and politely answered the judge's questions, said Assistant City Attorney Dan Jeffries. His request to serve his time at the Glendale city jail was...

Howard Gordon, executive producer of FOX's thriller "24," says actor Carlos Bernard acted "very cool about it" when Gordon called him in his car to tell him that his character, Counter Terrorist Unit operative Tony Almeida, was not dead after all and would be returning for the show's 7th season on Sunday, Jan. 13. "But I know," Gordon says, "when I hung up the phone, I'm sure he did one of those 'Jerry Maguire' screams in the car." The most frequently seen character in "24" aside from its hero, CTU super-agent Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), Tony was introduced in season...

Jones moves into '24' Oval Office By Nellie Andreeva July 21, 2007 Cherry Jones has been appointed president on the upcoming season of "24," sources said. The network wouldn't confirm, but sources said Jones has come on board the real-time thriller, the first major casting addition to the show's upcoming seventh season. "24" producers had been contemplating having a female president next season for some time. (HR 6/22) Their decision to go for it adds another wrinkle to the closely watched Democratic Party's presidential race, in which Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner. Production of the 20th Century Fox TV/Imagine TV-produced...

Jack Bauer Doesn't Jump - More's the Pity Previously on "24' the show made sense. But Monday night's finale, when we sat through 90 minutes of set-up, waiting for the usual slam bang finish, only to have a touchy-feely episode of "Grey's Anatomy'' break out, was the end. The big finish, with Jack Bauer standing on coast, looking moodily out to sea, was some kind of weird Hallmark card for secret agents. I kept waiting for the cliff to blow up, or a black helicopter to appear on the horizon, but no, it was just our Jack, alone with his...