Hell No, We Won't Go (To School)

A Jabbo Special Edition
I'm including this as a post on local Illinois events. I realize a teachers' strike is a very controversial and emotional situation for both sides at the bargaining table. While I do have opinions on teachers, teachers' unions, and organized labor in general, I didn't create this blog as a forum for political polemic. I'm presenting this without commentary.

Just the facts, ma'am.

After 10 months of negotiation, the Chicago Teachers' Union initiated a strike today in which 26 thousand teachers walked off the job. This, the first teachers' strike since 1987, comes after the union felt teachers weren't receiving fair salaries, benefits, or decent job security.

Chicago educators teach in the 3rd largest school system in the nation with almost 700 schools, 400 thousand students, and a $665 million deficit. The average teacher makes $76 thousand dollars a year.

Current Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff, Democrat Rahm Emanuel, is battling the one of the larger contigents of his party's constituent base, the unions. While he has offered teachers a 16% pay raise over the next four years, he has remained firm on some of the other issues.

The biggest issue on the table is teacher evaluations. Union President Karen Lewis says that the evaluation system proposed by the school district relies too heavily on standardized test scores. She says 6 thousand teachers will lose their jobs as a result.

144 contingency locations have been opened for a half day, so students on the free meal program will get breakfast and lunch and to relieve the burden on parents. Only, students have to walk in to these contingency campuses through lines of picketing teachers weilding signs, drums, tambourines, and at least one bagpipe.

Many local churches, parks, and public libraries have also thrown together last minute programs to pick up the slack.

Parents and students have fallen on both sides of the issues, some expressing confusion and anger about the strike, some joining the picket lines with their teachers.

Josephine Hamilton Perry has assured us the teachers are prepared to strike for as long as it takes.