Obama Admin. & Rahm Emanuel On The Bad Side Of Teachers Union

School's out in Chicago as teachers strike, parents scramble

CHICAGO (Reuters) - School was out in Chicago on Monday and parents scrambled for child care after public school teachers staged the first strike in a quarter century over reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and endorsed by President Barack Obama's administration.

Some 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third-largest school district were involved, leaving parents of 350,000 students between kindergarten and high school age to find alternative supervision.

Churches, community centers, some schools and other public facilities prepared early on Monday for thousands of children under a $25 million strike "contingency plan" financed by the school district. The children will be supervised half a day and receive breakfast and lunch, allowing some parents to work.

"What are these families going to do? Are you going to stay home from work today because of this?" U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on CNN. "What is going to happen to your son or daughter?"

"Both sides need to get back to the table as quickly as possible and really stay there and negotiate through the night if necessary. Get it over with quickly so we can get these kids back in school," Durbin said.

The union has called the plan to care for children during the strike a "train wreck." It warned that caregivers for the children do not have proper training, and there are fears of an increase in gang-related violence in some high-crime areas.

The school district's charter schools will be open on Monday, meaning about 50,000 public school students will be in classes as scheduled.

About 20 teachers picketed in front of Overton Elementary School on Chicago's South Side, wearing red T-shirts, carrying strike signs and singing "We're not going to take it," the chorus from the heavy metal band Twisted Sister's popular anthem.

Several passing cars honked in support, prompting loud cheers from the striking teachers.

Emanuel, the tough talking former White House chief of staff for Obama, blamed the union for the strike and said the two sides had been close to agreement.

"The kids of Chicago belong in the classroom," Emanuel said at a late Sunday night news conference after talks broke down.

Chicago offered teachers raises of 3 percent this year and another 2 percent annually for the following three years, amounting to an average raise of 16 percent over the duration of the proposed contract,School Board President David Vitale said.

"This is not a small contribution we're making at a time when our financial situation is very challenging," he said.

SCHOOLS BUDGET DEFICIT

The school district, like many cities and states across the country, is facing a financial crisis with a projected budget deficit of $3 billion over the next three years and a crushing burden of pensions promised to retiring teachers.

Emanuel said two main issues remain to be resolved: his proposal that teachers be evaluated based in part on student performance on standardized tests, and more authority for school principals.

But union President Karen Lewis, who has sharply criticized Emanuel, said standardized tests do not take into account the poverty in inner city Chicago as well as hunger and violence in the streets.

More than 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free lunches because they come from low-income households, and Chicago students have performed poorly compared with national averages on most reading, math and science tests.

Union officials said more than a quarter of Chicago public school teachers could lose their jobs if they are evaluated based on the tests.

"Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," Lewis said in announcing the strike.

Vitale said the two sides were scheduled to meet again on Monday morning. He said the two sides were not far apart on compensation issues but were not as close on others, such as evaluations.

Emanuel is among a number of big city U.S. mayors who have championed such school reforms and Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan has endorsed them.

The outcome of the strike could have national implications for school reform.

The Chicago confrontation also threatens to sour relations between Obama's Democratic Party and labor unions before the presidential election on November 6.

While Obama is expected to win the vote in Chicago and his home state of Illinois, union anger could spill over into neighboring Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, where the election with Republican challenger Mitt Romney is much closer.

http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-teachers-still-negotiating-hours-strike-deadline-003920042.html

 

Chicago teachers strike for first time in 25 years after contract talks fail​

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Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago, the third-largest U.S. school district, as city officials prepared to look after thousands of students who could end up wandering unsafe streets.

Some 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to join the picket after union leaders announced they were far from resolving a contract dispute with school district officials. City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised -- especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence -- might be at risk, but vowed to protect the nearly 400,000 students' safety.

The walkout posed a tricky test for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he would work to end the strike quickly.
"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said Sunday night, not long after the union announced the action. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong."

Contract negotiations between Chicago Public School officials and union leaders that stretched through the weekend were resuming Monday.

Among teachers protesting Monday morning outside Benjamin Banneker Elementary School on Chicago's South Side, eighth-grade teacher Michael Williams said he wanted a quick contract resolution.

"We hoped that it wouldn't happen. We all want to get back to teaching," Williams said, adding that wages and classroom conditions need to be improved.

Officials said some 140 schools would be open between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.
"We will make sure our kids are safe, we will see our way through these issues and our kids will be back in the classroom where they belong," Emanuel said.

The school district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities.

Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers' protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.

Union leaders and district officials were not far apart in their negotiations on compensation, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. But other issues -- including potential changes to health benefits and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores -- remained unresolved, she said.
"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," Lewis said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Emanuel and the union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have recently come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

The school board was offering a fair and responsible contract that would most of the union's demands after "extraordinarily difficult" talks, board president David Vitale said. Emanuel said the district offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said among the issues of concern was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relied too heavily on students' standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years. City officials disagreed and said the union has not explained how it reached that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers improve.

The strike is the latest flashpoint in a very public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.
The district and union agreed in July on how to implement a longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining continued on the other issues.

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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/10/chicago-teachers-to-go-on-strike-after-talks-with-district-fail/#ixzz2655kTJlB​

 

Meh!

 

"Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago, the third-largest U.S. school district, as city officials prepared to look after thousands of students who could end up wandering unsafe streets" and all you say is, "Meh!"? ​

HAHAHAH!! OK, Little Joe.

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Of course. It is a democrat in charge. Now if it were a Republican, ............!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

OMG, if it were a Republican doing the exact same thing, George Soros would order his Occupy Storm Troopers to rape and pillage downtown Chicago. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would join hands and cry. Oprah would fly in on her jumbo jet and organize a "March For The Children". Obama would denounce the Republican mayor on TV and then do a flyover and maybe a pickup game with some locals to show his support and MSNBC wouldn't stop talking about this incident for three weeks.

 

The whole situation does sort of fly in the face of your usual meme that Democrats are in the pocket of unions. Or did you both fail to consider that?

 

How about it sort of flies in the face of the democratic mantra - the worker are not getting paid enough and the government need to do more! Which side were you on when Wisconsin tried to not increase the unions (mostly teachers) pay?

 

Oh, they certainly are. But, I think Mayor Rahmbo (having to actually work within a budget) has bitten off more than he can chew in this instance. He's actually having to deal with real-life issues like pensions, budgets and the way it impacts the people themselves. He's previously only had to deal with "ideas" and "philosophies" of pensions, budgets and people. Welcome to real world, Rahmbo! Unions are actually your enemy!

BTW Little Joe, I'd like to hear your opinions on this matter. Are you siding with Rahm and the Obama Administration or are you siding with the Teachers Union? Also, how do you feel about standardized tests?

 

Maybe the strike was promoted by BO's machine so that he could swoop in & act like he saved the day for the unionists?

 

Could be. Or perhaps Rahm Emanuel is just an ineffectual mayor?

 

This issue is completely unconnected to the Obama Administration. And further more, it isn't about money. The teacher's union took no raise at all last year and they were fine with it. The issues are that the city of Chicago use teacher's pension funds to balance the city's budget in the past and NEVER paid the money back which underfunded the pension fund. The teacher want to keep class sizes down because it hurts learning outcomes. Teacher evaluations are now based at a greater rate using student opinions which keeps teachers they like even if they are bad teachers. They also want laid off teachers called back first. Lots of issues, few to do with money. I don't live in Chicago so I don't care to take sides.

 

Conspiracy nonsense. You guys are so fringe.

 

What!!! You mean Obama's COS did some fancy bookkeeping? I wounder how long that has been going on!!!!

 

Oh, if that were only true for every topic of conversation in which you involve yourself it would be a perfect world.

 

Don't tell the news organizations - and I did not even include Fox!

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/09/160821554/chicago-teachers-may-strike-teach-political-lesson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/08/chicago-teachers-strike-u_0_n_1866875.html

http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-teachers-strike-era-accountability-200434200--politics.html

 

Well, as a matter of fact, it is connected:

The ABCs of the Chicago teachers’ strike: New evaluation system looms large

On Monday morning, 350,000 kids in Chicago found themselves without a classroom to bustle about as the city's teachers went on their first strike in 25 years. The sticking point? A new teacher evaluation system.
While Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the local teachers' union disagree on a long list of issues, including planned pay raises and sick day accrual, Emanuel said in a press conference Monday afternoon that the evaluation is the main obstacle to agreement. The new system would eventually use students' standardized test scores as 40 percent of a teacher's yearly evaluation. Teachers who don't improve their students' test scores would be fired.

Many Democrats, including Emanuel's former boss President Barack Obama, embrace this test-based way of judging educators. The president's "Race to the Top" federal program awarded money to states that agreed to rate teachers this way and institute other reforms, like encouraging the creation of more independent charter schools. As of last October, teachers can be dismissed in 14 states based on their students' test scores.

Union supporters argue that evaluating teachers using tests can be tricky, and that this "value-added" measurement can be volatile and inaccurate. Additionally, teachers who have a high proportion of poor students may have a harder time lifting their kids' scores than teachers who work in affluent districts. (About 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced federal lunches.) As many as 6,000 teachers would wrongly lose their jobs under the system, says Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis. "Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," she said while announcing the strike, according to Reuters. But reformers counter that teachers should be responsible for helping their students score better on tests, and that current evaluation systems provide no way for ineffective teachers to be identified or removed from classrooms.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout...strike-evaluation-system-looms-201903517.html

 

Chicago Teacher Strike Poses Test for Unions​

The massive teacher strike in Chicago offers a high-profile test for the nation's teacher unions, which have seen their political influence threatened as a growing reform movement seeks to expand charter schools, get private companies involved with failing schools and link teacher evaluations to student test scores.​

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Union leaders are taking a major stand on teacher evaluations, one of the key issues in the Chicago dispute. If they lose there, it could have ripple effects around the country.​

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The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — the nation's two largest teacher unions — have been playing defense in jurisdictions around the country as Republicans and Democrats alike seek greater concessions in a bid to improve ailing public schools.​

After decades of growth in membership and influence, the unions now are in a weaker position, said Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.​

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"They are playing on more hostile terrain and they are facing opponents the likes of which they have not had to face before," Hess said.​

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Members of the Chicago Teachers Union — the AFT's oldest local — walked off the job Monday for the first time in 25 years over issues that include pay raises, classroom conditions, job security and teacher evaluations.​

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They are pitted against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a powerful Democrat — and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama — who wants to extract more concessions from teachers while the school district faces a nearly $700 million deficit.​

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Major teacher strikes have been rare in recent years, compared with the 1960s and 1970s, when teachers went on strike frequently for better pay and improved bargaining rights. While unions generally got what they wanted in the past, they face a tougher climate today.​

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With the weak economy, unions have seen massive teacher layoffs, increased class sizes and school districts unable or unwilling to boost teacher salaries. Like other public employee unions, they are also under attack from Republican governors like Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who signed a measure last year to curb collective bargaining rights and limit benefits for state workers.​

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The 2.2-million member NEA has lost more than 100,000 members since 2010, as fewer public school teachers are hired and more charter schools open, most of which are not unionized. At the 1.5 million-member AFT, years of steady growth have leveled off.​

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"They certainly are on the defensive," said Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are under attack. A lot of times they are demonized. On the other hand there's really smart and progressive elements in the teacher's movement who want to get out ahead of this and do it in a way that's fair."​

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In the past, teachers unions could count on a Democratic White House to fight back on their behalf. But Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, is a former head of Chicago Public Schools who has pushed for many of the changes that unions oppose.​

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"In many ways the Obama administration has signed onto the very conservative set of reforms that the education community is imposing on teachers," said Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.​

 

What part of the word "former" is confusing you?

 

Chicago Teachers Dig In, Increase Pressure on Obama​

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/12/chicago-teachers-dig-in-increase-pressure-on-obama/#ixzz26Hw5CHkg​