The Chicago Public School teachers are out on strike for the first time in 25 years.
Depending on whom you believe, only a couple of non-monetary terms remain to be resolved (Mayor Rahm Emanuel); or several non-monetary terms remain unresolved (Chicago Teachers Union). Interestingly enough, however, both sides seem to agree that the strike is not primarily about money.
That’s most likely because the Chicago Public School Board already has offered a 16% increase over four years – which reportedly consists of 9% (3-2-2-2) over and above some “modified step increases,” according to a story in today’s Chicago Tribune. The Tribune and several other sources are suggesting that those pay increases are intended to compensate teachers for the longer school day that Emanuel pushed through.
How many of the Chicago taxpayers who will be footing the bill for this largesse are guaranteed a 16% increase over the next 4 years, just for putting in the time and irrespective of performance? Outside of other public employees, we’re guessing the answer is “none.”
But that didn’t stop the CPS Board from offering those kinds of salary increases even though rookie teachers right out of college start at more than $50,000 for what officially is a 9-month school year. Not only does that annualize out to $67,000, but even at its face amount it exceeds the approximately $47,000 average City of Chicago family income.
And the average annual Chicago teacher salary of approximately $76,000 annualizes out to over $100,000, not counting benefits.
Not bad, considering that (as we’ve noted many times before) it comes with little chance of being fired for poor performance; with no chance of having the job outsourced to Mexico, some other country, or even another state; and (still as of now) with a guaranteed defined benefit pension that dwarfs Social Security and many private workers’ 401(k) plans.
That the CTU has elected to strike despite that kind of compensation for what amounts to an “office” job has caused even a bleeding heart like the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg to write (in his 09.08.12 column): “I’m one of the many wondering what planet teachers live on. I live on Planet Glad to Have a Job.” So do many/most of us taxpayers who guaranty those ever-increasing salaries of our public employees.
But why do we here at PublicWatchdog care about what’s going on over at CPS?
Because, like the CPS, the Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 still doesn’t have a contract with the Park Ridge Education Association (the “PREA”), our local equivalent of the CTU. Which makes D-64 susceptible to a teachers strike. Or to an overly-generous multi-year pay increase in order to avoid a teachers strike.
What’s happening with the D-64/PREA contract negotiations? We don’t know because nobody’s talking. And nobody’s talking because the contract that recently expired but which the parties continue to operate under contains a provision requiring “secrecy” about the conduct of negotiations – a secrecy provision we understand the PREA demanded and was granted by a stereotypically complicit School Board one or more contracts ago.
Why is there no new contract between D-64 and the PREA? We’re guessing it’s for the same basic reason there’s still no new contract between the CPS and the CTU: teachers unions gain a whole lot more leverage once school has started, because a strike then is so much more disruptive to parents who count on the schools almost as much for child care as for education.
Which is why Emanuel and the CPS administration is assuring parents that they are providing “safe” places for the school-less kids to hang out while the strike continues, including libraries, park district facilities and churches. There will be extra costs incurred for those jerry-rigged baby-sitting services, but those will likely never be figured into the calculations of what this strike will end up costing the taxpayers.
Meanwhile, back here in Park Ridge, we sincerely hope the D-64 Board and its negotiators can persuade the PREA negotiators that the best contract is one that recognizes the current economic realities and the plight of the District’s taxpayers, especially in the light of the sweet deal teaching in this upper-middle class district has been and still remains. If not, the CTU strike may also become instructive for us in another way.
As Chicago Ald. Ricardo Munoz is quoted in today’s Tribune: “They need to reach a deal.”
Why?
“The parents in my ward want their kids to be in school. They don’t care who’s to blame.”
Those of us who lived through the last PREA strike in November 2003 might still remember what happens when parents who already are enjoying the economic benefit of the “free” education for their kids don’t care enough to undertake the sometimes tough analysis required to actually figure out “who’s to blame.”
It’s a whole lot easier to simply tell the School Board to just write a bigger check.
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9 comments so far
Good article; I have been trying to find out more about the PREA negotiations, and can’t find any link on the D64 website that would enlighten me on the issues. I am thinking of attending the D64 meeting tonight in the hopes the school board can inform us why there is no contract yet, and what issues seem to be holding it up. I don’t know how a budget can be put together without firm numbers in terms of salary costs.
Anyone?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks. We don’t know how a budget can be put together without firm salary numbers, either, but we’re confident the deep thinkers on the D-64 Board will clue us in eventually – when it’s too late to do much about it.
We’re writing big enough checks as it is.
Hello, school board: Start telling us what’s going on, please.
PW, any thought to publishing email addresses or phone numbers of school board members so we can ask them directly?
EDITOR’S NOTE: E-mail addresses for the D-64 Board members can be found at the following page of the D-64 website: http://www.d64.org/subsite/dist/page/contact-board-education-985
I’ve got two fairly recent college graduate children from well regarded universities who are not working in their chosen fields and who are making less for 12 months of work than what a starting D-64 teacher makes for 8-9 months. I can’t wait to hear what kind of salary increases our school board is going to be recommending.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re sure it will be something appropriate for those practitioners of an extremely underpaid and under-respected “profession.”
You seem to be saying that the teachers are at fault here when it looks to be the PREA and the School Board. Teachers are the good guys. You, sir, are jjust another Teabagger who opposes public sector unions.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Wake up! The teachers ARE “at fault” – to the extent they elect and support their PREA representatives – just like all those CTU teachers are “at fault” for electing someone like Karen Lewis AND for voting to give her strike authority, which we understand they did in overwhelming numbers. For people to now say none of this is the teachers’ fault is delusional, unless at the same time they are saying that the individual teachers are simpletons who elect representatives who don’t really represent them.
We DO oppose public sector unions, just like FDR and the late AFL-CIO president George Meany did. But we’re not sure exactly what a “Teabagger” is, but maybe that’s because we’re coffee drinkers.
Home run, Dog. It’s time teachers took responsibility for what they are doing both inside the classroom (teaching) and outside (union activities).
EDITOR’S NOTE: We would think that should be self-evident, but apparently not to those who want power without responsibility…teenagers, for example.
Dog, sorry for the late post, but reliable sources say a significant number of D64 teachers were seen wearing Red the past couple of days in obvious support of their comrads in Chicago. Is is this an obvious sign of things to come in PR?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Solidarity is understandable, but while we may suspect a problematic outcome of the D-64/PREA negotiations, we aren’t going to presume it – red wardrobes notwithstanding.
As I’ve watched the strike in Chicago, I’ve come to feel like I support the teachers but not the CTU, the leadership and delegates of which I don’t think are necessarily representative of the rank and file. I think the teachers are caught in a political game between the CTU and the Board of Ed.
An any case, I’m not sure what all of this means for D64. I hope that they are nowhere near the breakdown that CPS has been undergoing for well over a year now.
As you’ve said, we have no idea. I’d think, however, that word would be leaking out somehow if the parties were headed for an impasse. The school year here is well underway and teachers seem energetic and focused on their work, unlike in Chicago where the rumblings of a strike began last year and loomed largely over the first week before the strike began.
It will indeed be interesting to see what happens in Chicago, but it could be a while. And therefore probably even longer before we can figure out its implications for our own district.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The “leadership” of the CTU which you don’t believe represents the rank and file teachers was chosen by…wait for it…the rank and file teachers. If they vote for people who don’t represent them, and those non-representatives vote to go on strike, then shame on those teachers; and shame on them for walking a picket line if they don’t believe in it.
First of all, fyi, looks like the last two paragraphs of my comments got pasted into your response (CTU comment above).
I think the relationship between CTU and many of its teachers is complicated. And maybe that’s indicative that the union is outdated. Membership is mandatory, costing members nearly $1,000 per year. That the leadership is disconnected from many of its members shouldn’t be a complete surprise — the union is vast and if I recall bitterly divided over its candidates for president. And yes they overwhelmingly voted to strike but my sense was that for many the vote was made under a bit of pressure. Of course they’re going to present a united front now, I can’t imagine that any teacher who may disagree with the strike actually challenging what’s become the status quo.
In any case, one of the reasons we moved to PR is that the school district is not vast and unwieldy like CPS. I’d hope that contract negotiations would likewise be more efficient.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks for the head’s up – we corrected the problem.
Labeling simple things “complicated” is the classic passive-aggressive excuse for gutless people not doing hard/unpleasant but necessary/useful things.
Teachers unions are no more “outdated” than most other public-sector unions where the leadership colludes with ethically-challenged public officials to rip-off the taxpayers for the benefit of the very same union leadership, the very same politicians and…wait for it…THE UNION MEMBERS – in this case, all those poor teachers whom you claim are feeling “a bit of pressure” to go out on strike for (and, of course, accept) more money, better conditions and even less accountability than they currently have.
If you actually believe this drivel, we feel sorry for you because if somebody hasn’t already taken your lunch money, it’s only a matter of time.
I’m sorry but I do think it’s simplistic to paint every single teacher with the same broad brush. I personally know many teachers who are teaching in poverty-stricken, dangerous neighborhoods with next to no resources not for the money but actually…wait for it…for the kids.
But as much as a sympathize with (most) CPS teachers, I’m not sure I’d feel as much goodwill toward D64 teachers if they threatened to strike. Let’s not kid ourselves that D64 in any way parallels CPS. The populations they serve and the resources at their disposal are like apples and oranges.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As Madison observed in Federalist No. 51: ” If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Public policy is not made for the Albert Schweitzers and Mother Teresas of the world: are all those teachers walking the picket line “for the kids”?
Teaching poor black and Hispanic kids in Chicago’s inner city might be a lot more challenging than teaching the white-bread-with-the-crusts-trimmed-off Park Ridge youth, but it’s also $5,000+ more lucrative to start. And those inner-city teachers are held to an even lower achievement standard than the D-64 teachers, if only because Park Ridge parents might expect a bit more for their RE taxes than do their ghetto counterparts.
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