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More School Strikes in the Coming Weeks

January 30, 2013 By 8 Comments

WestChicagoStrikeWest Chicago District 33 appears to be headed for a strike starting Monday, February 4th.

Negotiations have been ongoing for 16 months. Issues that remain unsettled include class size, teacher appraisal, salary, health insurance, and retirement provisions for employees, officials have said. The school board declared an impasse last month.

Barrington District 220 has now set a date of Feb. 21 to strike if no agreement is reached.

Barrington Unit District 220′s school board and teachers union have agreed to shift the timeline for their post-impasse contract negotiations by one day, pushing the earliest possible start of a teachers’ strike out to Feb. 21.

That also allows Wednesday night’s scheduled negotiations to take place before the deadline for both sides to submit their last and final offers to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board — now 5 p.m. Thursday.

This follows the 3 day strike in Grayslake just 2 weeks ago and multiple other strikes this school year.

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About Lennie Jarratt

Small Business Owner, Education Watchdog, FOIA expert, Founder of For Our Children's Future

  • Wolf

    Is it not time to reform and restructure these dysfunctional Public Education Systems. It is time to save the Children from this mediocre Public School System that destroys their future and rescue the taxpayers from these exorbitant costs of these operations with their 50% over staffing and compensation levels plus their multi-million dollar pension packages. We need to introduce a $7K per annual student Voucher that the parents can take to any School System of their choice (Public, Private or Parochial) thereby introducing real competition here and capping the outlandish and runaway Public School Operations. If we were in the 21st Century and employing the available technology for Education, we would create “Virtual Schools” for all grades Junior High and above. Allowing all students to be taught by the “Subject Matter Expert” and have the proficiency established continuously through thousands of non-repeatable exercises and experiments as the learning process. All the progression would no longer be based on a calendar year or age but rather on true subject matter understanding and usage in analysis. These “Virtual Schools” can be established at less cost per student than even the proficient and effective Parochial and Private operations of today. There would be major additional cost reductions in the unnecessary infrastructure that now supports these mediocre Public School System operations. These same “Virtual School” programs can be extended and used for supplementary learning and instruction in the lower grades allowing for timely support to students who may be experiencing certain learning difficulties. The reform here would not only substantially lower the costs to the taxpayers but it would also end the money laundering scheme between the Public Sector unions and the Politicians. It is time for major strikes here in order to introduce the long overdue changes. There is absolutely no reason for any further salary, benefit or staffing increases in these massively bloated operations. What is needed is the courage for us to save the Children from the continuation of these Public Schools that rob them of a World Class Education.

  • disqus_qHJaeAlJ6d

    Virtual schools are “jokes.” The owners of these schools reap huge profits while students sit at home and look at a computer screen. I am sure that many would like to keep poor children locked in their basement with “virtual” learning, but poor kids deserve a decent education as well. Wolf must work for one of these companies that push virtual charter schools. I would suggest making your money somewhere else. If you really care about education, you will pay teachers more, causing more bright young people to want to become teachers. We should support unions and teachers, and not rip them down. Smaller class size and teacher experience matter- a lot! This arguing for computer learning is very ignorant, and these kinds of arguments only seem to happen in America. You don’t see these debates in Germany, for example, where they would laughed it. It is too bad people are so ignorant that they believe these blatant lies. The best school systems in the world are heavily unionized and people actually support education.

    • concerned taxpayer

      Teachers already earn huge salaries and attract bright young people who are attracted to these salaries. Unfortunately,the tenure system prevents these eager young people from getting teaching jobs. Currently there is a huge oversupply of certified teachers who want teaching jobs but can’t get them. Paying tenured teachers more does NOT improve education because they have no motivation to work harder since they can’t be fired (in most cases).

  • disqus_qHJaeAlJ6d

    No, anyone involved in the school system knows that the best teachers are most of the time (90%+) the veteran teachers. These young, bright, hypothetical teachers you speak of cannot compare to the old-school teachers who grew up in much more rigorous, strict (conservative) environment. Most young teachers I have interacted with are not well read or educated in the way that older generations were in their subject matter. This is a myth created by people who want to destroy unions and teaching as a profession. It takes years to become an effective teacher. I have never seen a young teacher succeed right from the beginning. This is why Teach for America is a joke. There is a period of time, usually at least four years that it takes to start to become a good teacher. Most teachers continue to improve throughout their careers. Experience matters. Do you want a first-year doctor operating on you? Do you want a 22 year old kid who has never read a book for pleasure teaching your children English with some B.S. education degree? The people propagating the “myth” of these dynamic young teachers don’t know a thing about teaching. The veteran teachers who have toiled in the “trenches” of education for their entire careers deserve every penny they earn- believe me. Teaching is exhausting and never ending. Why don’t you give five 50 minute speeches every day and get back to me! Why do you think 50% of teachers quit within 5 years? Find another target. Teachers are not the enemies, quite the contrary. Talk to a relative who is a teacher and they will set you straight. That’s how I (as a conservative) learned the truth!

    • LennieJarratt

      “The dozens of analyses of teacher experience show that it matters a great deal in the early years on the job (also see here, here, here and here). There is general consensus that the returns to experience are strongest in the first year of teaching. Then the rate of improvement starts to level off quickly – usually stagnating within about 4-5 years (time frames vary a bit). After that, most teachers tend to remain relatively stable in terms of their effects on student test scores (though a very large proportion leaves the profession before that point). ” ~ http://shankerblog.org/?p=1319

      • concerned taxpayer

        I agree. Although I am not a teacher, I have worked in public schools for 13 years. My observation is that teachers work very hard for the first 4 years until they are tenured. After that, unless they have a principal who really “cracks the whip,” they tend to stagnate and re-use materials and lesson plans from previous years. If they have to learn something new, which most are now being forced to due to the Common Core and RTI, they expect to be paid more money and complain a lot. Yes, teaching is hard work, but so are many other jobs like health care. Nurses work incredibly hard, for example, yet often go years without any kind of a raise.