Word broke Monday that Chicago teachers had overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. I’d like to note that Mayor Emanuel could have avoided all of this by agreeing to a one-year deal that wouldn’t have cost the schools any more new money in teacher salaries.
Get ready for an eventful 2016, Chicago.
If nothing else, the deal would have bought them time to go, hand in hand, to Springfield to persuade the governor and legislative leaders to send more money to Chicago. If that didn’t work—and it was a long shot—they could try to agree on a new source of revenue. Or to agree on some new source of revenue to pay off the ever-escalating pension obligation CPS has been forgoing for the last few years.
To which the mayor responded: “After years of our academic gains, now is not the time to shortchange our children by eliminating evaluations for tens of thousands of employees or lowering teachers’ performance standards.”
But really, getting rid of teachers hasn’t been an issue in Chicago since 2010, when Mayor Daley effectively abolished tenure by enacting a system called redefinition.
At the moment, Mayor Emanuel wants Lewis and the union to sign on to a contract that would effectively cut pay by more than 10 percent by freezing salaries and hiking health and pension costs.
