I pity the parents who have to send their kids back to school with these people.
Teachers said the strike was based on a “social justice” agenda and aimed to increase resources, including nurses and social workers for students, and reduce class sizes, which teachers say currently exceed 30 or 40 students in some schools. Union leaders said the strike forced the city to negotiate on issues they initially deemed out of bounds, including support for homeless students.
Lightfoot said a strike was unnecessary and dubbed the city’s offer of a 16% raise for teachers over a five-year contract and other commitments on educators’ priorities “historic.”
The Chicago strike was another test of efforts by teachers’ unions to use contract talks typically focused on salaries and benefits and force sweeping conversations about broader problems that affect schools in large, politically left-leaning cities, including affordable housing, added protections for immigrants and the size of classes.
The agreement approved on Wednesday was not immediately released but Sharkey said some of teachers’ wins could “transform” schools in the district. The full union membership still must hold a final vote on the agreement.
Broad outlines include a 16% raise for teachers during the five-year contract, a new committee to investigate and enforce classroom sizes that surpass limits in the agreement and funding to add social workers and nurses to the city’s schools.
That is outrageous. Who negotiated that deal on behalf of taxpayers, Rudy “incompetence” Guiliani?
The Chicago School system is broken (just like MPS) because of extremely excessive benefits. Unions always fail to notice this. Chicago needs Act 10 badly.
Teaching is a hard profession, but it is not because of money. People don’t want to teach because today’s parents never hold their children accountable. Implement Act 10, fix the awful parenting, and schools will improve and cost less
Sounds like a liberal prison camp vs. A school teaching valus, individuality and essential life skills.
Education and state need to be separated.
WBConservative: A liberal extremist mayor was the voice of the taxpayer whole the union an opportunity to take advantage of her. This is what Chicago will be like for the next 4 years.
The mayor gave the union everything they wanted, so why Ben strike?
A RN in every school? In most schools, that’s going to be taking care of some little kids sniffles.
Chicago is $800,000,000 in the red and this contract will cost at least an additional $500,000,000. Where ate they going to get the money? And I bet the education for kids won’t improve.
This contract is all about swelling the size of the bank accounts of (in decreasing priority) the teachers’ union, the leaders of the teachers’ union, the subsidiaries of the teachers’ union (do they have a version of WEA Trust handling their health insurance?), the politicians the teachers’ union chooses to buy, and the teachers.