Don’t ever let anyone tell you teacher’s unions are there for the kids
(Daily Caller) City officials vowed to keep hundreds of thousands of students safe when striking teachers hit the picket lines Monday and school district and teachers union leaders resumed negotiations on a contract that appeared close to being resolved over the weekend before the union announced both sides were too far apart to prevent the district’s first strike in 25 years.
The walkout in the nation’s third-largest school district posed a tricky test for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his city, as parents and school officials begin the task of trying to ensure nearly 400,000 students are kept safe.
How far apart? Teachers are going to be given a 16% pay increase over 4 years, vastly higher than what we are seeing in the private sector during King Obama’s economic reign of terror. The teachers are upset over changes to the health plan and having to follow the state law requiring evaluation based on test scoring. Here’s where it gets real interesting
School officials said they will open more than 140 schools between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so children can eat lunch and breakfast in a district where many students receive free meals. The 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. But it’s not clear how many families will send their children to the added programs.
Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he was deploying police officers to those sites to ensure kids’ safety but also to “deal with any protests that teachers may, in fact, have†while protecting their rights. He also was taking officers off desk duties and redeploying them to the streets to deal with potential protests — and thousands of students who could be on the streets.
So, Chicago needs to deploy police officers to protect the children who will go to the schools so that they can get a decent meal from the teachers? Says quite a bit about the teacher’s union, eh?
