The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday defended the decision by his handpicked school board to cancel 4 percent pay raises for Chicago teachers, arguing that teachers have gotten two types of pay raises since 2003 while students got “the shaft.”
With a $712 million deficit, Emanuel said the Board of Education could not continue to honor a contract that satisfied everybody’s concerns but the only group that really matters: Chicago Public School students.
“Teachers got two types of pay raises. People in public life got labor peace. Can anybody explain to me what the children got? I know what everybody else got,” Emanuel said.
“We have the shortest school day and school year in the country. Just a little north of 50 percent of our kids graduate. Our scores haven’t moved. Yet, in all that time, not one additional minute of instructional time for the children of Chicago where they can be safe and learning. … Our future — which is what this is about, the mission of education — our children got the shaft. … I will not accept our children continuing to get the shaft.”
But, the teachers will still gets raises:
Even without the 4 percent increase, Emanuel noted that three-quarters of all Chicago Public School teachers will still get pay raises ranging from one to five percent for adding experience or for boosting their credentials.
Not a bad gig. The average public school teacher in Chicago makes
$69,000.
