Looks like the Chicago public school kids are getting another day off, via CNN ~ Official: No deal yet between Chicago teachers and school system.
 
Fun for the children no doubt, what kid doesn’t love an unexpected day off school? But parents – the teachers’ employers – are left scrambling to make alternative arrangements. Chicago’s school system is the nation’s third-largest, so this action by the union impacts some 350,000 students – and their parents.
 

 What’s the strike all about? “Fighting for the Schools Our Students DESERVE” as the above poster claims? Um, no. As Matthew Holzmann at the American Thinker points out, it’s really a microcosm of the larger issues facing our nation: Chicago Teacher’s Strike Defines Election Issues.
 
First, a few salient facts:
 
• Chicago schools have a 40% drop out rate
• Chicago’s teachers have the highest average salary in the country at $76,000/year
• The average salary for all Chicago workers is $47,000/year and the city is running massive deficits
• 4%/year raises have already been agreed to under contract negotiations, taking the average to $88,900/year (before benefits!) by 2016
• 9 out of 10 of the top-scoring Chicago schools in last year’s ACT testing were charter schools; average charter school salary is $48,910
• CPS has the shortest school days and year in the country compared to those of the ten largest U.S. cities
• 39% of Chicago public school teachers send their own children to private schools

 
Contract agreement has already been reached on the salary increase; 16% over 4 years. The remaining roadblocks to final settlement are accountability and union job protection. Yes, somehow the teachers’ union feels that they should be insulated from the realities those of us in the public sector must deal with as a matter of course; individual job performance and economic recession.
 

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Sample strike chants pulled directly from Chicago Teachers Union’s strike bulletin issued on Sept. 8, 2012:
 
The war on unions is a joke
Tax the rich that made us broke
 
Everywhere we go
People want to know
Who we are
So we tell them
We are the union
The mighty, mighty union 😯
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The Illinois Policy Institute does a great job of reporting on the solid-blue (as in solid-Democrat) state’s budget woes. Their 9-10-12 article, “Five things you need to know about Chicago Public Schools,” includes a video.
 
As they relate, pension obligations are simply out-of control:

If nothing changes, the school district’s contribution to the Chicago teachers’ pension fund will more than triple next year. Money meant for the classroom will instead go to pay for the retirement benefits of former Chicago teachers. By next year, these retirement costs will eat up nearly half of the education funding Chicago receives from the state.

 
Holzman compares Chicago’s problems to the recent reforms in Wisconsin ~

One of the obligations of local government is education. It is obvious that Chicago’s school district and its teachers are failing in this responsibility. Their answer is to blame the system but it is their system. They did build it.
 
In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature were able to make difficult choices that benefited everyone in the state. Teachers kept their jobs and compromised with economic reality. Public worker’s unions were reined in but retained their basic rights.
 
In education, the Wisconsin reforms allowed schools to hire and fire based on merit. School districts can pay teachers for superior performance. The law allows districts to hire and retain the best and brightest and to shop for insurance, which turns out to have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Basic stuff, but when a system is corrupted, bloat and graft and gaming the system become the norm. The Wisconsin reforms are already bearing fruit. The lack of reform in Chicago is also apparent.
 
Chicago’s teacher union is symbolic of much of what has gone wrong in our country. Self-interest, cronyism, corruption and sloth when our children need the best we have to offer, are completely and utterly unacceptable.The Chicago strike defines what is wrong while the Wisconsin reforms point to a possible solution.
 
It is the statism and crony interests of one side versus the freedom to innovate and improve of the other.

Despite all the pretense, it’s clear that the CTU strike is definitely not about the children. In fact, sad to say, it’s really not about anything except the teachers’ desperate attempt to keep their butts firmly planted on the taxpayer-funded gravy train.
 
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Related:
From Michelle Malkin ~ Chicago thuggery personified: Meet Chicago Teachers’ Union president Karen Lewis ~ Wow!