Reply #127: Wow again. The more that I look into this, the more it seems that Chicago is massively screwing its [View All]

[Laluchacontinua]

kids & teachers.


Our own school survey found over 200 classrooms where the Chicago Board of Education violates its own policy on the maximum number of students allowed. In one school, for example, we found 43 students packed into a third grade classroom. This is unacceptable.

Instability, mostly at neighborhood schools, begins on the very first day of school because each year the Chicago school board waits until the 20th day of the school year to announce final teacher class assignments. The result is four weeks of school understaffing and disruption of the teaching and learning that was already underway. Instead of adequate planning, the school board uses the entire first month of the school year as a "wait and see" period.

By law, Chicago Public School District 299 is the only one in Illinois with an appointed school board. The majority of Chicagoans support our call for democracy, a simple an fundamental principal, in how our school board members are chosen.

The average Chicago Teachers Pension Fund CTPF) retiree earns $42,000 per year. Of the 87,000 retired teachers in Illinois, almost one in five (17,269) receive a pension that's less than $20,000. Our retired members have spent up to 35 years educating students and count on the pension promised by the state.

We are not allowed to receive Social Security. We contribute 9% of our salary to our pension fund each payday. The Chicago Board of Education is still on a "pension holiday" and has not paid into the fund for over a decade — now our pension plan is in crisis and teachers have been blamed for the financial woes of the schools and state. Chicago corporate CEOs, many of whom will collect millions of dollar when they retire, are pushing "solutions" to take control of and reduce our pensions rather than require adequate funding for them.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2763§ion=Article


They don't get SS & the gov't is trying to defund & take over their pensions? It's just outrageous. There's way more to this controversy than what's in the news.