This is How You Pay for That 16% Pay Raise

How will virtually bankrupt Chicago pay for the 16% pay raise over 4 years that is in the new teacher contract?

As I suggested last week, this headline in the Chicago Tribune answers the question:

Pushing the charter school agenda

With the CTU strike over, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushes to grow charter schools

If you reduce the unionized teacher work force by 20% over the next four years by continuing to open new charter schools and close under-enrolled traditional public schools, the city might even come out ahead. The new contract does nothing to stop this process from continuing and yet the unions are crowing like they scored a major victory.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2012 at 9:22 am and is filed under charter schools, teacher pay, teacher union. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to This is How You Pay for That 16% Pay Raise

Greg Forster says:

September 25, 2012 at 9:55 am

The leeches shrink in number and thus lose power, while their status as leeches becomes more and more obvious as the contrast (in both pay levels and performance) between them and the charter sector widens. Genius! If only they’d won a 20% raise.

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allen says:

September 25, 2012 at 11:54 am

The unions can hardly do anything but crow like they scored a victory. The beating they’ve taken over the last year and a half allows for no other interpretation of the strike.

I guess the question that remains to be answered is if the unions have the power to suppress the growth of charters in Illinois. Without the option of closing that parental escape hatch, and given the statistically well-established disfavor in which the public holds the district school, the growth of charters is a lock.

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Dave Saba says:

September 26, 2012 at 9:59 am

Lost in all the rhetoric was a horrific stat: if you are a CPS high school freshman you have an 8% chance of earning a college degree based on a University of Chicago study. Not exactly getting their money’s worth up there. http://bit.ly/QF6ei5

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Daniel Meloy says:

October 9, 2012 at 6:23 pm

These are certainly interesting thoughts. It seems that nobody can really find an agreement on how to best alleviate our financial situation. Chicago is not the only place to face such dilemmas. Similar cases can be found in parts of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the smaller towns where charter schools might not be as viable of an option.

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