Nearly to the day, one year ago, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is facing off, once again to the 30,000 strong Chicago Teachers Union, over the 7 percent pension contribution that the city contributes to teacher pensions. And, on Wednesday Emanuel, said that he hopes the teachers will part of the solution, and not the problem as the old adage goes. He said, “The public expects and wants them to be part of it so they can continue to strengthen the classrooms, [achieve] academic excellence while strengthening CPS overall finances, which are mainly about the teachers’ pension. And they will be the beneficiary of both.”
It’s a different tack than he used in 2012 when he became combative with the Union headed by the often fiery Karen Lewis, a veteran of turf wars in the often combative world of Chicago politics. Not to be outdone, she countered that should the pension contribution be rescinded that her members would strike. But, then again she also said the same thing when she told the press, “I don’t have to call for a strike, I think that our members will do it for themselves.”
What is different this year is that the players are re-aligned and using different maneuvers. Lewis has noted the mayor’s declining ratings over the mishandling of the Laquan McDonald case, and some say the deliberate hiding of the tape that showed the black teenager being shot 16 times by a white officer. By framing him as inept she hoped to gain sympathy from like-minded people.
Emanuel, on the other hand, has decided, to cooly frame, this time, the teachers as the block in the negotiations, and that if they weren’t so selfish they could focus on the real improvements that public school students have made in reading and math. And, for some this is often the view --- but against the background of traditional racial segregation in the nation’s third largest city, not to mention school district, the bases are loaded. Most students are either African American or Hispanic; groups that often lack the political power to counter the image that they are either incapable of learning, or not worth the time.
Now add Public Schools CEO, Forrest Claypool, a crony of Emanuel, to the mix and then the script plays out: teachers have already been given enough, and they will still do well, without the 7 percent, he said, refusing to see the teacher’s view that this is a pay cut. “The Jan. 29 deal had an average, 6 percent-plus pay raise for teachers AFTER phasing out [the] pension pick-up,” Claypool wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun Times.
"At some point a line has to be drawn in the sand. Chicago teachers do not seek to go on strike. We want to return to clean, safe, resourced schools. We want a fair contract," Lewis added. "We will not accept an imposed pay cut."
The question remains: Can Emanuel and Company can force the change on the teachers?
Adding further to the scenario is the threat of classroom cuts -- or to be succinct further classroom cuts, beyond the recent budget that took some from Paul, robbed Peter and made everyone anxious. Under the current plan, the mayoral administration has given Chicago taxpayers a property increase of $250 million to pay for teacher pensions, and in a rare offer, the state of Illinois will give $215 million to CPS -- but with the caveat, that there is agreement on a state budget - absent for over a fiscal year - in January; if not, then here come classroom cuts.
Often forgotten, except by the teachers, is that the 7 percent city contribution was a negotiated term, in lieu of a pay cut. As Lewis noted on Tuesday, at a press conference, “The Chicago Teachers Union has been clear. If the Board of Education imposes a 7 percent slash in our salaries, we will move to strike. Cutting our pay is unacceptable, and for years, the ‘pension pickup’ as the Board has called it, was part of our compensation package. This was not a perk. This was negotiated compensation with the Board of Education.”
While Emanuel attempts to draw the taxpaying public to his side, his reputation, especially among black residents, was tarnished when he closed over 50 schools in mostly their neighborhoods.
With an aging physical plant, Chicago public schools, and students, face a myriad of sanitation issues, and as Lewis noted, “Our members are returning to more than 500 school buildings that are filthy due to bad CPS outsourcing; with contaminated pipes that may have exposed children and employees to lead poisoning; and in a climate where random gun violence and neighborhood conflicts have gripped significant parts of our city in fear.”
She continued by noting that, “Our members are returning to campuses where their colleagues have disappeared, by no fault of their own, but because of mandates from the Board that principals reduce positions and cut school budgets to the marrow. Fewer employees—including teachers’ aides—mean enormous class sizes. The more students in a classroom mean fewer minutes of personalized instruction for each student.”
Supporters counter that Emanuel and Claypool are asking teachers to do more with less, a fact that Lewis statements sustain. They wonder what the definition is of “breaking even” that the latter has asserted with the January negotiations.
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