Rally is tomorrow at 3:30 at CPS headquarters, 125 S. Clark.

Also, for some perspective: One of the things at issue is CPS's insistence that student evaluations be part of calculating a teacher's pay raises. STUDENT EVALUATIONS. That is straight up the stupidest thing I've ever heard proposed by either side.

The drinking part still happens in advertising :cool:

OKAY, fine, not Mad Men style, lol but our fridge is always stocked with some kind of alcohol.

/derail

I agree. How is a kindergartner supposed to evaluate a teacher, compared to a HS senior?? I don't see how you could ever make that equitable.

I've seen many colleagues' student evaluations as part of the college tenure process, and students do seek retribution on these when they didn't like their grade, thought the professor was too hard, etc. They offer good suggestions, too, but you do have to take these student evaluations with a grain of salt.

These of all people should know that many things that work in the higher education sphere do not work in the primary and secondary education environments.

Right, my first quarter, I got all ones from a student who was pissed off about something, and it's like "alright, whatever else you may have to say about me, you can't write that I wasn't on time to class". If a 21-year-old can't maturely handle the process, I don't know why a 9-year-old would.

I am confused about the information out there. On the Chicago Public Schools Teacher Union website, it lists the average classroom sizes for K-5, and they are nowhere near 55 students.

Kindergarten 24
1st 25
2nd 25
3rd 26
4th 26
5th 26

According to their site, they believe better educational outcomes would be achieved with a classroom of 17-20 students. That is probably true, but the information of 55 students just seems inflammatory. If that were true, wouldn't the union have it on their own site? It does list the schools that have been found to have unsatisfactory class sizes, and even those lists the largest class as one kindergarten with 45 students, followed by one 1st grade with 31.

Is the issue you are speaking of found in other grade levels maybe? I just can't find the information and haven't heard it on the Chicago radio station I stream during the day or on the national news outlets.

Hahaha, that number came from King Rahm himself:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhal...n-reforms.html

Looks like it was a gambit to get more state money, but obviously class sizes are still an issue, especially in schools where the facilities don't allow such large numbers. I have many friends who tell me their students are sharing desks because they can't fit that many desks in a room.

I'm sorry 31 first grades in a classroom is insane. Personally I feel that 26-28 first graders is a bit much.
But 45 kinders are you F*&*ing kidding me! If I were the parent I would be beyond pissed that my kid is in a room with 44 other kids and at most 2 adults. As a teacher I'd have quit already because that is INSANE!

No matter what, I support the Chicago teachers for standing and saying "this isn't cool" and "treat us like the professionals that we are" (the later more unspoken than spoken).

I agree that that is way too many kids in a classroom. But, according to the Union's own website, it was ONE 1st grade classroom and ONE kindergarten classroom. I am not sure that walking out on 400,000 students is the best way to remedy a terrible problem in 2 classrooms. If I were a parent (which I am), that would make me beyond pissed.

$2465 per month is completely possible.

$247 for tithe
$625 for house/homeowners insurance
$400 groceries/lunch/restaraunts
$125 electricity (average)
$17 Garbage pick up
$30 Water
$62 Cell Phones for 2 people
$43 Home Security
$48 Internet
$8 Netflix
$37 Pest Service
$320 Gas/Car Maintenance
$100 Personal Care
$100 Household goods
$200 Blow ($25 per person per week for miscellaneous)

$103 left over for emergency fund/savings, etc...

Yep, it's doable. Not living high on the horse, but with the exception of our student loans (and changing tithe to meet the monthly amount in question), this is our current actual budget. Thankfully, my husband and I make more than this, so our tithe is more, and everything extra is currently going towards student loans. In other words, if we didn't have student loans, we could EASILY survive on $2465 per month.

No, we don't have car payments. Yes we have a car replacement fund. No we don't ever intend to finance another vehicle. No, we don't have credit card debt. No, we don't have fancy cell phones, and no, we don't pay for cable. Are we suffering? Quite the opposite. We had fancy phones for years.... and years. Finally decided it was a complete waste of money. we've been on our no-contract phones for 8 months now, and don't plan on going back any time soon. Cable? Who needs it? We have a roku box with netflix and amazon prime. And an antenna on the chimney for local channels. We have everything we need so that we can save the extra money we have to do other stuff with.

We're also in the process of re-fi our house, which will drop our mortgage by $75 a month. Not much given the current cost of our house, but $75 a month more I can knock out those student loans even quicker with. Can't WAIT to get these suckers paid off so we can live quite comfortably, on the extra.

To warrant a strike, I think the teachers feel the issues go way beyond the class sizes in two classrooms.

I presume it is just the two of you? Once you add day care into that mix, you've blown your budget out of the water. I also noticed you don't have car insurance? With a teenage driver, my car insurance alone is $380/month. Your housing costs seem low but that varies a lot by the area and when you bought your house. If you bought a house 8-10 years ago, your mortgage would be double that, probably. Here, $625 can get you a small one bedroom apartment. You can buy a forclosed house and have that kind of mortgage payment, although not once you add in insurance and property taxes.

And, as I pointed out, I meant to say you can't raise a family on the $14/hour. $23/hour is doable, but it's still not really very comfortable. Kids are like a financial black hole at times. I keep thinking about my budget once they are done with college and I'm going to be very comfortable then!

No, no kids yet. Maybe one day. We pay car insurance semi annually to get a discount, but it's an equivalent of $85 per month. I forgot about it since we don't pay it monthly. There are several other things we pay annually as well - like our life insurance policies, etc.

My point is simply that it is do-able. You don't have to have an expensive phone, or a car or credit card payment. Those are usually the types of things that hold people back. Yes, my housing is low, but it's the area I live. We hopped the state line for housing so that we were able to get alot more house for alot less money. We have a 1300 sqft house on 3/4 acre in a typical middle class neighborhood.

Student loans?

It's difficult to compare "living wages" across geographic areas because of vast differences in the cost of living!

Interestingly, the Canadian Auto Workers are setting to strike and it is going to be a significant issue for the auto industry here. They are refusing the two tier system that the UAW accepted a few years ago.

Yeah... I already mentioned that. That's the only debt we have other than our mortgage. Everything extra we make above and beyond $2500 is going towards the student loans right now.

So your argument is that you can't survive on that amount, but other people should be able to?

That's what kills me. People struggle to make it on a low salary, and then they argue against anyone else making strides to bring up the minimum. Why do you want to stay at that level? I used to barely make it at $30,000 in Louisiana as an intern. We actually went NSF once when we both paid bills and didn't realize the other had. Living that close to the margin is MISERABLE. Can it be done? Sure. But why begrudge workers that don't have to?

I'm sorry that your reading comprehension is lacking. :rolleyes:

Read what I posted again, sweetheart. My post was about how $2500 is do-able for regular living expenses. Regular living expenses doesn't include stupid tax. Student loans are a stupid tax. Unfortunately, we learned that after the fact and now we have that price to pay. We have an aggressive goal to have them gone in 5 years or less.

My argument was that you don't "need" a fancy phone, or cable, or a new car dragging around a payment. My argument is that you CAN live on $2500 a month if you make smart decisions, and dont take out a car loan, or get an expensive phone with an expensive plan, or take out massive student loans, etc etc. I wasn't smart. I got student loans. It sucks, and now I have to pay them off. Maybe theire's a college kid out there reading this right now who is conflicted with taking out student loans - or taking out more than he or she needs to pay for classes in order to have "living expenses" rather than working through school to pay those living expenses. My point is that people whining that $2500 isn't enough to survive is wrong, because while it may not afford you an extravagant lifestyle, it's enough to survive while you get your head on straight and work harder to achieve more if you want to be able to do more.

If I didnt have my student loans, I'd be living pretty comfortably right now. You can bet I'd be saving alot more, and I'd be travelling alot more. But I have a debt to pay before I can enjoy those luxuries.

Her point was that you didn't include your monthly student loan payment in your breakdown so your whole post was disingenuous. My SL payment is somewhere around $400 per month minimum (I'm on a graduated payment plan). Even if I were to pay exactly all of the things you put in there (HA, $600 something for housing. HAHAHA), I'd still be blowing your budget out of the water by $300 every month if I added in student loans.

But please, go ahead and tell us how awesome you are at budgeting.

I think some of the breakdown is a lack of understanding of union culture from non-union workers. For example, my former best friend works for a major airline as a mechanic crew chief. This airline is the largest employer in my city. He is a raging alcoholic, and about 3 years ago began to succumb to his addiction to the point that he was still legally drunk when he arrived for work each day. He failed random urine tests 13 times in 6 months. Was he fired? No. The Union protected his job. On the days that he was randomly tested and failed (13 times), he had to spend the day sitting in a supervisor's office, on the clock. The other days he wasn't randomly tested so he was allowed to repair airplanes.

Stories like this make non-union people like me wonder if the purpose of the union is to protect the worst - to reward everyone at the same level regardless of performance. And, I have to say I have tried to read as much as I can about the Chicago situation, and while I am sure there are teachers and students who would benefit from changes, it DOES seem like part of the goal here is to protect the worst teachers. (Automatic rehire of previously released teachers, fighting performance evaluations, etc.)

I know that some students get student loans when they don't really need to, but not everyone qualifies for federal financial aid, Pell grants, and/or scholarships. And even if they do qualify for one/more of those, that's not always enough to cover the total cost of tuition/books/room/food... Student loans are, for many students, necessary. I'm not sure I'd call securing money for your education a 'stupid tax'.

Bringing up the minimum is worthless and hurts the middle class. Lower paid jobs will get a bit of a boost, but the the prices of things like groceries which are affected greatly by low-paid people (baggers, stockers, checkers, as well as middle men) go up, too. The lower paid people have gotten raises to *somewhat* offset the difference, but the middle class has not. All of a sudden, bread and milk cost 20% more, but they're being paid the same.

The re-hire is for teachers who are laid off through no fault of their own (meaning their school closed, or there were cuts at their school, not that they were fired based on performance and whatnot).

They're not fighting performance evaluations in general, they're fighting over the role that standardized testing takes in performance evaluations. Quite frankly, funding for schools based on standardized tests is backwards - right now they lose funding if they do poorly. It should be the other way around. And 40% is absolutely nutso - I read a statistic somewhere (I'm paraphrasing here because I can't remember where and don't have time to find the link), that a ridiculously high number of CPS students are impoverished. These are bigger issues that affect how students do on standardized tests. I have a friend who has to do mandatory ESL classes with her students after school - she's a math teacher. Why should her performance evaluation be so heavily based on standardized tests when half of her students don't speak English as a first language?

I really want to know which this airline this is so that I am sure to never fly with them again! Yikes!

I haven't seen this kind of culture in teacher associations. Here's a real-life story of how the teachers' association helped me, when I was a teacher in a high-poverty urban district:

I was accepted into a highly-ranked doctoral program in curriculum and instruction. All first year students had to take a cohort class that met once a week at 4 pm. Most of the students were from other states or countries and had left their jobs to enter this program, but I loved teaching and didn't want to give it up. The university was 1 1/2 hours away and I would need to leave a little early to get to this class on time. I spoke with my principal and then my superintendent and he told me to write up a proposal. I asked to be released each week on that day, without pay. This was denied. Then I asked for just the afternoon off each week, without pay. This was denied. The reason I was formally given was that this would be too disruptive to the students, and that they didn't want to set a precedent for other teachers to go on to get their doctorates. This really rankled me, and it rankled the union when I called them for help. They worked it out for me to have my class scheduled for art, PE, music, or library each week at the end of the day, and that teacher would release my class. These colleagues were happy to do it, and we kept this up for 4 years so that I could get to 4 pm classes. My students definitely benefited from my advanced education. The district benefited when they promoted me and put me in charge of math and science in the district. If it hadn't been for the union, I probably wouldn't be a college professor today...teaching teachers and leading professional development grants in urban schools.

I know quite a few new teachers who have been hired by Chicago over the past several years. One of them was featured in an article on the front page of our local newspaper a couple years ago. She talked about how she didn't have supplies for her classroom, her students were sharing a just few math books, etc. She had a list of donation requests she'd like the hometown readers to provide. I wasn't surprised that her students needed supplies, but the fact that the district was not able to supply every classroom with the board adopted text book(s) shocked me.

Could that not have happened without the union? While the concern for precedent of other teachers getting advanced degrees is indeed ludicrous (reference point: my mother earned a master's while teaching, and my brother-in-law a doctorate), I have to say I see the district's other point on the first two proposals. I do think that a teacher being gone one day a week or even one full afternoon a week could be very disruptive for students, plus there's the expense of substitutes. The proposal that was worked out seems like the obvious one to me. (It's similar to what my mother, with no teacher's union, worked out.) Was it just because administration was so condititioned to dealing with the union that it required union involvement?

Yeah, it's a stupid tax. Because it's possible to go to school without taking out loans. Unfortunately, I didnt know that before it was too late.

The description for that book specifically addresses paying loads of money for a fancy name on a diploma. There are non-fancy-named schools that still require tuition. And if the student doesn't qualify for federal financial aid/Pell grants/scholarships, then they're going to have to pay somehow. Does the book say how to get an education for free? Because if it doesn't, then there are people who need student loans.

How is it a tax? It's a voluntarily incurred debt.

I don't think the final option occurred to me...the union came up with it. I figured that if I was going to be gone, I should be docked for a set period of time that could be covered by a substitute. My lost wages would have more than covered the substitute, so money wasn't raised as a issue. I was at the point of having no other options when I called them. I really did think the whole thing was weird...how many teachers were really going to do this if I set a precedent? Plus, I was still studying education, not training for an unrelated new career. I think they just didn't want people asking for weird arrangements for who-knows-what. I had two principals during this time, and both were completely supportive.

The way it worked out in the long run really was ideal...I didn't lose any salary, my students weren't disrupted, and I was able to get to class.

Obviously a win-win for everyone, including the students and school who got the benefit of your advanced aducation. However you to the solution, I'm glad it worked out.

It's been covered above, but rehires are from the layoffs they did a few years ago, not teachers fired for cause.

And for performance evaluations, the problem is that nobody has come up with a good way to do them. Basing pay on standardized tests has not worked elsewhere. It seems, on the surface, like a nice, objective idea, but no district has implemented such a scheme and seen it work. We've seen cheating, we've seen teachers doing their damndest to get rid of their special ed kids, we've seen widely different scores for the same teacher teaching more than one section, but we've never seen it improve schools. In fact, one of my friends just left Sherman, which was one of the original "turnaround" schools because he was being worked to death, and the scores there are STILL not improving. He is a great teacher, and the CPS just lost him to the suburbs.

The cost of labor is a very small portion of the cost of your groceries in a standard supermarket. You'd have to see an extremely large increase in minimum wage before you'd see a 20% increase in the cost of bread and milk.

I disagree. Nobody "needs" loans. Ever heard of working your way through college? or going to a community college for lower costs? or joining the military to pay for school, or the peace corps or other places that help pay for your education? Or working your butt off to earn scholarships. THAT is what that bookis about.


Oh my goodess. Do you take everything at literal face value? Definition of stupid tax: something I shouldn't have had to pay for if I hadn't done something stupid. The "something stupid" in this case, is taking out stupid loans, rather than working a little more hours, or being a little more responsible with the money I DID have when I was in college. Voluntarily incurred debt - yes. Some people (like many of you, apparently :rolleyes:) think that debt is the only way to get a "good" education. I used to, too. But I was wrong. If I had done things differently, and avoid student loans, I could be living very comfortably right now. But I have the weight of student loans dragging me down, preventing me from doing things I really want to be able to do. So, in that sense, it's motivation to work harder. I'll work harder, rather than gripe and complain about how someoen else got a better deal than me.

P.S. For the record, I hate unions. yep, I said it. I wouldnt work for an industry where the only way I could get a raise or promotion is because someone else begged for it for me. I prefer to work in industries that are performance based. That's why I got out of the military - it's one big union. You get promoted based on passing a stupid exam, and if your eval was "good enough" you'll advance. So I was on the same playing field as dirt bags who didn't do squat, but tested really well, and their evals were just good enough to reward them. Thanks but no thanks, I'll go work my butt off somewhere else and earn a paycheck and a raise that I deserve. Previous example of the drunk guy... yep, that's a union for you. Dirtbag getting paid because the union protected his sorry worthless butt. Psh.

I don't know why you feel the need to respond with such emotion - it's possible to have rational discussions on GC. Well, with some people it is, anyway.

I disagree with you as well. There are, in fact, some people who "need" loans in order to pay for school. When the average cost for one year at a public institution is around $16K, it's naive to think that everyone can work full time while attending school. It's equally naive to assume that everyone is military or peace corps material.

I've agreed that there are opportunities out there that some people fail to investigate, but you don't seem to recognize that all these alternatives you speak so highly of aren't within every student's reach.

Some people need student loans.

Not to mention that tuition costs are rising among the public sector as well as the private sector, and when things were really bad in 2009/2010 with the economy, community colleges were turning potential students away because they didn't have room.

At my university, TA's get paid less than the school estimates the cost of living to be, and then puts a clause in the TA contract forbidding us from outside employment. I have avoided loans by having my own small business, but the vast majority of grad students have no choice but to borrow.

That's how it was where I earned my Master's degree as well. I avoided having to take out loans only because I worked two jobs over the summer (the contract applied only to the academic year). Since I worked two jobs, I never had any time to spend the money, so it wasn't as hard to save it as I had thought it might be.

I think the "going to community college" option is overrated too. You have to figure in the cost of buying, operating and maintaining a car into that "money saving" equation. Everybody I know who goes to CC first ends up taking 3 years at the college/university because a lot of their credits don't transfer or more specific classes were required. So were the two years at the community college really cheaper than one year at a university? No.

I know a couple kids who did the military option. Sadly, they never lived to get to go to college. There was one who went to med school who had to do his service after he graduated. He was assured there was no way, as a primary care physician, that he'd go to Afghanistan. Til he went. And was killed. That's a pretty major risk for an education. A lot of them do make it back, but it's a high risk option.

I'd have to really sit down and do the math to figure out whether going half time and working full time at a minimum wage job, taking twice as long to graduate is financially worth the lack of loans. You lose four years that you could be working at a career job instead.

Scholarships can be awesome, but a very limited of young people get full rides. I know my daughter is at one of the most expensive schools in the country and will graduate with a lot of debt, but it will only be about $4000 more than if she had attended a local "cheap" state school once the expected family contribution is figured.

We've gotten way off track from the strike thing. I'd brought up the $23/hour pay for auto workers (who rarely have student loans, truth be told, so those don't really matter in that circumstance.. but they do for teachers).

The other thing about the teacher evaluations was figuring the students' evaluations. Nuts. And if an 8th grade teacher gets kids who didn't learn to read in 1st grade, are they really supposed to make sure those test scores are up there?

Teachers' skills are not the only variable in how well a child learns. There is really no way to isolate that variable.

It actually cuts the other way, too. If your students come in performing at a very high level, there is very little room to show improvement. Further, 70% of CPS teachers teach subjects that are not tested, so their pay would be based on the school's performance, per the board's original proposal.

Also, one of the big issues for students from low-income families is summer retention. So, if you compare a student's performance year-over-year, it is not the same as comparing a student's performance at the beginning and end of the school year.