Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
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  Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years
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Author Topic: Chicago teachers asking for 30% raises over next 2 years  (Read 23523 times)
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #100 on: September 11, 2012, 04:16:39 PM »

This is a ready-made solution looking for its problem.

well-said
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #101 on: September 11, 2012, 04:17:09 PM »

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Sbane
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« Reply #102 on: September 11, 2012, 04:34:16 PM »


I would support a reduction in pension benefits with increases in salary (which actually would be opposed by most politicians since it would require immediate tax increases). I don't believe in burdening our generation with paying for the political capital of current politicians.

Posts like the above are the reason that I still have hope for you guy.  Underneath that PC mantle of yours is a seething core of hard headed thinking and realism, and a sense of Old Testament justice. Tongue

Uhh...thanks? Tongue
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krazen1211
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« Reply #103 on: September 11, 2012, 04:56:04 PM »

The strikers have gone waaay too far:



Krazey was right all along.  These people are savages.

Hmph. Well at least they are enacting punishment on Chicago liberals.
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Vosem
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« Reply #104 on: September 11, 2012, 05:06:22 PM »

The problem is the kids not the teachers. The kids nowadays are lazy f[inks] who don't try and whose parents are too inept to motivate them to study and do well in school. If kids actually studied and worked hard in school, these schools would be performing fine. Instead, parents excuse their terrible parenting by blaming teachers.

This goes against all of the data out there. IQ is rising, and has to be rejiggered every so often so that the average is still 100 (by 1914 standards, the average IQ today is 124): http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/04/22/are-we-getting-smarter.html

Students are reading more and doing better in mathematics: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

Graduation rates are on a sharp increase: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/figures/fig_03.asp?referrer=figures
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krazen1211
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« Reply #105 on: September 11, 2012, 07:28:54 PM »




This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.
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patrick1
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« Reply #106 on: September 11, 2012, 07:33:32 PM »



This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Wow, some unabashed trolling right there
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Donerail
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« Reply #107 on: September 11, 2012, 07:37:45 PM »

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.



Reminds me of this shade of red, no? Which major party is typically symbolized by (in most contexts) the color red...
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krazen1211
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« Reply #108 on: September 11, 2012, 07:50:55 PM »



This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Wow, some unabashed trolling right there

Well, yes, I can't figure out why the neiborhood pays that guy $75k either.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #109 on: September 11, 2012, 09:12:41 PM »

Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #110 on: September 11, 2012, 09:17:58 PM »

Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.

Reminds me of this. Tongue
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Gass3268
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« Reply #111 on: September 11, 2012, 10:30:44 PM »

47% of Chicago voters back teachers

http://www.suntimes.com/15081881-761/story.html
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Marokai Backbeat
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« Reply #112 on: September 11, 2012, 10:37:17 PM »

Rahm Emmanuel is a f-ng asshole and the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party these days.

+1
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muon2
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« Reply #113 on: September 11, 2012, 10:53:35 PM »


A subtext to this dispute is that teachers have pretty much had their way for the last two decades in Chitown along with the other public sector workers. The old machine was built on handing out public sector jobs. That's a hard culture to move against.

18 months ago while running for mayor, Rahm supported legislation that put pressure on the teachers of Chicago and was designed to prevent a CTU strike. Then he came in, cut last year's scheduled raise, and demanded longer school days and a longer school year without compensation. The CTU was very much geared for a fight after all that. A strike is hardly surprising. Now can Rahm move the voters of the city to his side?
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MaxQue
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« Reply #114 on: September 11, 2012, 11:37:46 PM »

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?
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○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└
jfern
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« Reply #115 on: September 11, 2012, 11:40:19 PM »

Romney fail, he tried to claim that Obama backs the teachers. Wouldn't he back his buddy Rahm?
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Mister Twister
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« Reply #116 on: September 11, 2012, 11:54:30 PM »


That`s an awfully small percentage for such a huge, liberal pro-union city.
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anvi
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« Reply #117 on: September 12, 2012, 04:31:01 AM »

If it were up to me, I'd offer concessions on pay, pension and school-day and school-year length.  But I'd wouldn't go along with tying merit pay or contracts to students' standardized test scores. 

Well, I guess that makes a lot of people happy that so little is up to me.
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SUSAN CRUSHBONE
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« Reply #118 on: September 12, 2012, 07:03:40 AM »

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?

...and he blames the teachers for it! Brilliant!
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opebo
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« Reply #119 on: September 12, 2012, 07:20:29 AM »



This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?

Teachers in rural Missouri start at about $28,000 and max out around $45,000 - this is merely a subsistence level salary there, as is $75,000 in a large, expensive urban center like Chicago.

Salaries for public workers should be doubled across the board and the money taken from the wealthy.
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krazen1211
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« Reply #120 on: September 12, 2012, 07:22:09 AM »



This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?


The same way that others do with $45k household income.
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krazen1211
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« Reply #121 on: September 12, 2012, 07:23:01 AM »

This guy wearing communist red gets $75k.

Jealous?
You were too dumb to get an education and are stuck working at minimum wage?

Or course there is jealousy for these greedy teachers feeding at the trough. Why would there not be in today's America?
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opebo
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« Reply #122 on: September 12, 2012, 07:27:01 AM »

The same way that others do with $45k household income.

So, we should really all make the same income?  Are you a communist?
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krazen1211
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« Reply #123 on: September 12, 2012, 08:18:29 AM »

The same way that others do with $45k household income.

So, we should really all make the same income?  Are you a communist?

Not the same, no. You asked how $75k teachers could live with less income in Chicago. And the answer is pretty obvious given how millions of Chicagoans live in such a manner.
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anvi
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« Reply #124 on: September 12, 2012, 08:34:25 AM »
« Edited: September 12, 2012, 08:36:30 AM by anvi »

Um, krazen, do you seriously propose that a teacher in Chicago should make less than $75,000?  How could they possibly live?

Teachers in rural Missouri start at about $28,000 and max out around $45,000 - this is merely a subsistence level salary there, as is $75,000 in a large, expensive urban center like Chicago.

The starting salary of $28,000 is definitely criminal, and I have friends teaching 5-5 course loads in St. Louis itself, never mind rural Missouri, for $29,000.  A friend of mine, when he started teaching at DePaul about eight years ago, had a starting salary in the low 40's.  And, just in case anybody thinks that's a killing salary-wise, it would be good to remember that teachers are also taxpayers, so it's not like any of these people clear those amounts--and this after at least ten years of training in college and grad school.  

On the other hand, I lived and taught in the Chicago area for four years--I left earning a little over 60K, and I had an apartment in Evanston and was pretty content pay-wise, I would have been able to save around $1,000 a month had I not needed to travel so much to keep up the thing with the gf.  If I had had a family there, on the other hand, the partner would have needed to be earning a decent wage.   The work, however, was very dissatisfying, so I took a pretty substantial pay cut to teach elsewhere in the state.  

But one thing I really don't like, as a kind-a sort-a "younger" teacher (early 40's)  in Illinois is that, in both institutions where I've worked, we are barred from paying into and earning Social Security and have to be enrolled in the state pension fund instead.  And the "pension" plan I have is just a 403(b), to which the school is supposed to match my contributions, but my current school still doesn't even though I've worked in the state for ten years.  What all this means is that, as far as I can tell, if I continue to teach in Illinois, I will never be able to retire.  The teachers in the state who have gone before me have pretty effectively emptied the till, both in terms of salary and benefits, and Illinois is busted several times over.

Striking for more salary and benefits in a state whose pockets have holes in the bottom just doesn't accomplish anything except incur the community's ire.  If there were money available, then everyone everywhere would be happier and there would be more point to negotiating, but as it is, agitating for anything other than better facilities so we can have better teaching conditions and resisting completely fallacious methods for improving the system like merit-pay tied to standardized testing doesn't make sense to me.  There was a strike at my university last year, and the teachers' union was basically in it for the maintaining of tenure language in the contract and a 1% raise over the course of two years.  That shook out, for me, to an extra $1.62 per day gross, and getting it meant that non-tenure track faculty would certainly be laid off (as they have since been).  So I weighed that against my students' needs and my real solidarity with junior colleagues and decided to stay in the classroom.  So, if I were in Chicago now, if the strike was just about the merit-pay scheme as currently constituted, I would strongly consider striking, because such schemes have never worked anywhere, and there are very clear reasons why they don't.  But if it was just about the money, I myself would keep going to work.

Maybe that all makes me a "slave" to the system.  I'll admit that I have a kind of underdeveloped sense of self-interest.  I want my work to be meaningful, and as long as it is, if I can live on the pay, I'll do the work.  But that's just me.  Like I said above, no one on either the state government's or the union's side would ever want these things to be up to me.
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