How Much Do Chicago Public School Teachers Make?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CBS Chicago:

CHICAGO (CBS) – A day after Chicago Public Schools’ teachers overwhelmingly authorized a strike, CBS 2 wanted to know how much the average teacher earns.

As CBS 2’s Dana Kozlov found out, it depends on who you ask.

Salary figures provided by the Chicago Public Schools show teachers here have the highest average salary of any city in the nation. But, according to the Chicago Teachers Union’s calculations, Chicago teachers would rank second behind New York City.

During a vote taken last week, 90 percent of the city’s public school teachers voted to authorize a walkout, if no contract compromise is reached.

A top sticking point? Pay increases to compensate teachers for working a longer school day. But just how do teachers’ salaries here compare to teachers’ salaries across the country?

A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said average pay for teachers, without benefits, is $76,000.

But a Teachers Union attorney said the number provided by CPS doesn’t tell the whole story.

“When you’re looking at compensation, it’s not enough just to look at salary, because Chicago Public Schools teachers have to pay more for their insurance, and they get less of a contribution from the employer for their pension than in other cities,” CTU attorney Robert Bloch said.

Bloch said per-pupil pay is lower in Chicago than in many cities, too. He said those factors need to be taken into consideration, by both CPS and the public.

“Working conditions are part of everyone’s job, we all think about working conditions,” he said.

Block said the average salary for CTU teachers is actually lower than what CPS claims, by about $5,000. It’s a disparity neither side could explain.

By comparison, teachers in New York City earn an average of $73,751. That would be less than the average $76,000 average salary for Chicago teachers cited by CPS, but more than the $71,000 average cited by the union. Depending on which is accurate, Chicago would either be first or second in the nation in average teacher salary. However, Los Angeles teachers make $67,600. The number drops to about $54,000 in Dallas, and just over $52,000 in Miami.

Regardless of where Chicago teachers currently rank in salary, Civic Federation president Laurenence Msall said there’s one big roadblock to a big raise for teachers.

“It’s math. It’s not really politics, as much as it gets caught up in politics. The financial situation of the Chicago Public Schools is dire. The situation of the State of Illinois – that provides significant funding to the Chicago Public Schools – is dire,” he said. “The property tax payers in Chicago are beleaguered. They’re seeing a drop in their property values, and to be asking them to pay increased property taxes, so we can fund increased salaries for employees is something that’s gonna be a very tough political sell.”

Msall said there’ simply not enough money to support a significant pay hike for the teachers.

“The only way that they will find money to increase some teachers’ salary, is we’re going to have to reduce the number of teachers, and the number of employees in Chicago Public Schools,” Msall said. “There just is no other way to get around it.”

________

 

Good luck with that strike, folks...

[Geee]

The Left’s ‘Education Justice’ — Chicago Teachers on Strike

 

 

After a final weekend of fruitless, 11th-hour contract negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) made good on their long-threatened promise and went on strike for the first time in 25 years. “We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis said. “No CTU members will be inside of our schools Monday. We will walk the picket lines, we will talk to parents, we…will demand a fair contract today, we demand a fair contract now,” she said, calling the ordeal an “education justice fight.” The strike affects 675 schools and more than 400,000 students in the nation’s third-largest public school system.

After the final Sunday session, Chicago school board President David Vitale spoke with reporters, noting that the district had changed its proposal more than 20 times over the course of negotiations and had little left to offer. The district announced that teachers had been offered a 16 percent pay raise over the course of four years, along with other benefit proposals, including paid maternity leave for the first time. “This is about as much as we can do. There is only so much money in the system,” said Vitale. “This is not a small commitment we’re handing out at a time when our fiscal situation is really challenged,” he added. Vitale also noted that the latest proposal made by the district would cover four years, at a cost of $400 million.

Lewis countered that the two sides were not far apart on compensation, a major sticking point exacerbated by the school board’s unanimous vote last year to rescind the teachers’ 4 percent pay hike in the final year of their contract. Yet she also said she would not “prioritize” the remaining issues. Despite that assertion, the three key issues remaining unresolved appear to be health benefits, the teacher evaluation system, and job security. “This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could’ve avoided,” Lewis said Sunday. “Throughout these negotiations, we’ve remained hopeful but determined. We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide students the education they so rightfully deserve.”

 

Lewis and Vitale agreed to meet again Monday and resume talks.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/the-lefts-education-justice-chicago-teachers-on-strike/

[Valin]

Paul Ryan: We stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel against the Chicago teachers’ union

Allahpundit

September 10, 2012

 

Neither Jay Carney nor Romney mentioned Rahm in their respective statements on the strike (Carney punted on the matter altogether, not surprisingly), but Ryan knows a political opportunity when he sees one. In a standoff between two of Obama’s biggest cronies, his former chief of staff and the unions that bankroll him, The One’s going to strain mightily to remain scrupulously neutral. Romney/Ryan’s task: Make that neutrality as uncomfortable as possible.

 

The only surprise, says National Journal, is that it took the campaign this long to twist the knife.

 

“If you turned on the TV this morning or sometime today, you probably saw something about the Chicago teacher’s union strike. I’d like to make a couple of comments about that because it does matter. I’ve known Rahm Emanuel for years. He’s a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher’s union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

 

“We stand with the children and we stand with the families and the parents of Chicago because education reform, that’s a bipartisan issue. This does not have to divide the two parties. And so, we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former Chief of Staff Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union? On issues like this, we need to speak out and be really clear. In a Romney-Ryan administration we will not be ambiguous, we will stand with education reform, we will champion bipartisan education reforms. This is a critical linchpin to the future of our country, to our economy, to make sure that our children go to the best possible school, and that education reforms revolve around the parents and the child, not the special interest group. This is something that’s critical for all of us.”

 

(Snip)

[Geee]

Chi-Town Shakedown

 

 

Labor Day may have passed, but in Chicago school is still out for the summer. That’s because, for the first time in more than 25 years, the brothers and sisters of the Chicago Teachers Union are striking. Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary — plus benefits — the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city’s board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU’s original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.)

Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union’s lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could — horror — result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members.

On the merits, the case isn’t close. Chicago teachers currently pay just 3 percent of their own health-care costs, and nearly three-quarters of new education spending over the last five years has been gobbled up by their retirement costs. This sort of thing isn’t sustainable in a strong economy in a well-governed city in a state with its fiscal house in order, much less in Chicago, Illinois, in the midst of President Obama’s lost decade. To put things in perspective, the Chicago Public Schools system is facing a budget shortfall roughly one and a half times the size of the salary-increase offer rejected by the unions, its bonds have been downgraded by two of the “big three” ratings agencies, and the state’s teacher-pension system is less than 20 percent funded.

The question of how best to evaluate teacher performance is a bit more complex, to be sure, but the CTU and the board negotiated the current evaluation matrix in good faith just last year, and the city even agreed to make the first round of evaluations consequence-free while work is done to tweak the formula. But the CTU is already pressing for changes that would deemphasize test scores, and is leading with the assertion not that such changes would more accurately measure performance, but that they would avoid the termination-for-cause of thousands of dues-paying members.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/316488/chi-town-shakedown-editors

[Valin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTjZyHEQm9s

[Valin]

[clearvision]

So the strike is based on racist school policy now? There is no AC in black schools.

[Valin]

@clearvision

 

Deadfish is a racist I guess. We should make sure he gets an invitation to our next cross burning.

[pollyannaish]

Sigh. I would love $71,000 a year. I really would and I would work hard for it too.

 

Edited to add: In our neck of the woods, Public school teachers average in the mid 40K range.

[Geee]

Sigh. I would love $71,000 a year. I really would and I would work hard for it too.

 

Edited to add: In our neck of the woods, Public school teachers average in the mid 40K range.

 

And what do their benefits add to that number?? Ours get thousand of dollars a year worth of benefits.

[Pepper]

@Geee @Valin

 

This could blow up in their boss's (666) face. Turning down 16% / 4 year raise for less 10 months of work per year in the current economy seems kinda wacko.

[Valin]

@Geee @Valin

 

This could blow up in their boss's (666) face. Turning down 16% / 4 year raise for less 10 months of work per year in the current economy seems kinda wacko.

 

It does seem a tad...well greedy...almost like the 1%ers.