The Chicago Public School teachers are out on strike for the first time in 25 years. 

Depending on whom you believe, only a couple of non-monetary terms remain to be resolved (Mayor Rahm Emanuel); or several non-monetary terms remain unresolved (Chicago Teachers Union).  Interestingly enough, however, both sides seem to agree that the strike is not primarily about money.

That’s most likely because the Chicago Public School Board already has offered a 16% increase over four years – which reportedly consists of 9% (3-2-2-2) over and above some “modified step increases,” according to a story in today’s Chicago Tribune.  The Tribune and several other sources are suggesting that those pay increases are intended to compensate teachers for the longer school day that Emanuel pushed through.

How many of the Chicago taxpayers who will be footing the bill for this largesse are guaranteed a 16% increase over the next 4 years, just for putting in the time and irrespective of performance?  Outside of other public employees, we’re guessing the answer is “none.”

But that didn’t stop the CPS Board from offering those kinds of salary increases even though rookie teachers right out of college start at more than $50,000 for what officially is a 9-month school year.  Not only does that annualize out to $67,000, but even at its face amount it exceeds the approximately $47,000 average City of Chicago family income.   

And the average annual Chicago teacher salary of approximately $76,000 annualizes out to over $100,000, not counting benefits.

Not bad, considering that (as we’ve noted many times before) it comes with little chance of being fired for poor performance; with no chance of having the job outsourced to Mexico, some other country, or even another state; and (still as of now) with a guaranteed defined benefit pension that dwarfs Social Security and many private workers’ 401(k) plans. 

That the CTU has elected to strike despite that kind of compensation for what amounts to an “office” job has caused even a bleeding heart like the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg to write (in his 09.08.12 column): “I’m one of the many wondering what planet teachers live on.  I live on Planet Glad to Have a Job.”  So do many/most of us taxpayers who guaranty those ever-increasing salaries of our public employees.

But why do we here at PublicWatchdog care about what’s going on over at CPS?

Because, like the CPS, the Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 still doesn’t have a contract with the Park Ridge Education Association (the “PREA”), our local equivalent of the CTU.  Which makes D-64 susceptible to a teachers strike.  Or to an overly-generous multi-year pay increase in order to avoid a teachers strike.

What’s happening with the D-64/PREA contract negotiations?  We don’t know because nobody’s talking.  And nobody’s talking because the contract that recently expired but which the parties continue to operate under contains a provision requiring “secrecy” about the conduct of negotiations – a secrecy provision we understand the PREA demanded and was granted by a stereotypically complicit School Board one or more contracts ago.

Why is there no new contract between D-64 and the PREA?  We’re guessing it’s for the same basic reason there’s still no new contract between the CPS and the CTU: teachers unions gain a whole lot more leverage once school has started, because a strike then is so much more disruptive to parents who count on the schools almost as much for child care as for education.

Which is why Emanuel and the CPS administration is assuring parents that they are providing “safe” places for the school-less kids to hang out while the strike continues, including libraries, park district facilities and churches.  There will be extra costs incurred for those jerry-rigged baby-sitting services, but those will likely never be figured into the calculations of what this strike will end up costing the taxpayers.

Meanwhile, back here in Park Ridge, we sincerely hope the D-64 Board and its negotiators can persuade the PREA negotiators that the best contract is one that recognizes the current economic realities and the plight of the District’s taxpayers, especially in the light of the sweet deal teaching in this upper-middle class district has been and still remains.  If not, the CTU strike may also become instructive for us in another way. 

As Chicago Ald. Ricardo Munoz is quoted in today’s Tribune: “They need to reach a deal.”

Why? 

“The parents in my ward want their kids to be in school. They don’t care who’s to blame.”

Those of us who lived through the last PREA strike in November 2003 might still remember what happens when parents who already are enjoying the economic benefit of the “free” education for their kids don’t care enough to undertake the sometimes tough analysis required to actually figure out “who’s to blame.”

It’s a whole lot easier to simply tell the School Board to just write a bigger check.

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