Early yesterday morning, the public school teachers of Chicago went on strike, and in the hours since, we’ve heard a lot about contracts, salaries, city government, and unions.
And of course, we’ve also heard both sides mention the students, but in very different contexts.
On Sunday, Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel said of the strike: “This is totally unnecessary, it’s avoidable and our kids do not deserve this.”
Meanwhile, teachers like Shee-ahn Barrett, who talked with The Takeaway yesterday, have this to say: "I think we really have to bring it back to what students need."
But while both sides claim to have the best interest of Chicago’s 350,000 public school children in mind, how do the kids, and their parents, feel about the strike? Are they taking sides? And how are they dealing with the day-to-day inconveniences of an education system in deadlock?
Dominique James is a 17-year-old high school senior at Walter Payton High School in Chicago. Vanessa James is the mother of Dominique.
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Comments [4]
When there is a war, the loosers ( the president and the people who voted and got them there) get killed or sent to jail..than everyone weeps and suffers.
Same principle happened in chicago, they voted for emanuel who i believe has problems with money matters just like bloomberg. These leaders constant problem with money will at the end affect the state, is as if they cannot control the monetary conflict that are embedded or envision in their minds..trouble seems welcomed and not fixed..
I'd love to know how a producer from The Takeaway selected this particular Chicago Public Schools student, and her mother, for this featured spot on this morining's program.
Obviously, it is one side of the debate -- students like their teachers and want them to get what they want.
I expect that The Takeaway will have a guest who will point out the extent to which Democrat-owned-and-operated Chicago is awash in billions upon billions in unfunded pension and healthcare costs for current and future public sector union employees.
Wait, I know better; that ain't happening. The Takeway will continue to tiptoe its way through the public sector union fiasco with scarcely a mention of both sides.
http://domnogin.blogspot.com The Chicago strike is a symptom of the roller-coaster economy of the Decade of Hell, where slow-and-steady salaries of teachers and nurses could not keep up with inflated housing prices thanks to the sub-prime bubble, then the tax base deflated taking their jobs and benefits and pensions with it. This South Florida resident has no illusions that teachers' unions are infallible, but this reeks of an on-going collusion to bust unions and end teaching as a forty-year career.
There is a better "Third" option - in addition to what Mayor Emanuel says, what the teachers claim:
Emanuel needs a marshal plan, that is, the guts to bust the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) like Ronald Reagan busted the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981. PATCO had become a bloated and worthless political symbol as had the CTU! And as an educator, and a 40-years resident of Chicago, I have seen it all! The failing of the National Student Testing Standards by the Chicago schools year after year has been such a disgrace that I do not consider the CTU as a worthy educational entity, but as a failed bureaucratic behemoth that deserves nothing less than a full demolition!
That is what the Chicago kids needs - not wasting more money and benefits raises after all the past wasted money and benefits raises to the CTU over the last 40 years! Nikos Retsos, retired professor
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