The smartest parents in Chicago right now are those whose kids attend charter schools, private schools or parochial schools. Those institutions don’t employ Chicago’s unionized public-school teachers, who went out on strike (yesterday) morning for the first time in 25 years. Coverage of the strike has obscured some basic facts. The money has continued to pour into Chicago’s failing public schools in recent years. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work. The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their healthcare costs. Of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs. – John Fund, nationalreview.com/corner
Just after breakfast this morning, I was standing alone in the hushed center of the tall, narrow home sanctuary my son and I built last year to pay homage to honor the extraordinary valor of teachers we have known. A pall has hung above our home.
Inside, the lights have been dimmed ever since 29,000 talent-oozing martyrs of the Chicago Teachers Union were forced to go on strike a day ago. In my noiseless reverie, I pondered the beautiful thought formations of a chap named Carl Sannito.
Thoughtful Carl, who works darned hard some days, teaches fourth grade at Federico Garcia Lorca Elementary, 3231 Springfield Ave., in a northwestern neighborhood.
He Is Just Salivating
Thoughtful Carl is an influential model for spongy young minds – told to scram for two days now – who want to learn how they should behave toward others.
Thoughtful Carl spat in the direction of Mayor Rahm Emanuel for offering a lousy 16 percent raise over four years, especially after rescinding last year’s raise, flimsily, because, he claimed, the City of Chicago didn’t have enough money to jack up America’s highest-paid teachers. The dedicated teachers are demanding a 29 percent raise the next two years. Who can blame them?
Look how Mitt Romney lives. You don’t see him groveling for a pitiful 29 percent increase.
Before Thoughtful Carl grabbed a nastily worded picket sign yesterday morning, he confessed, humbly, to reporters that such a pending odious action “pained” him.
There is a man, Thoughtful Carl, whom I wish had taught my children. Instead of being successful today, they, too, could be spitting toward an image of Rahm the Bomb. All three could be the spitting image of Thoughtful Carl.
But the vision of Thoughtful Carl that will be sculpted longest on my mind follows.
Just before going out to walk the line yesterday, this brave example of uncompromising Chicago manhood, representing put-upon teachers the breadth of the land, not to mention the displaced 350,000 students in Chicago, not to mention the forcibly shuttered 499 grammar schools, not to mention the almost invisible $71,000 average salaries for the 29,000 classroom slaves, not to mention his own darned welfare, uttered historic words that should be carved into the hips of the hippy Statue of Liberty, who resembles Hillary Clinton, who reminds Bill more every day of LBJ’s ol’ sprawlin’ Texas spread:
“I am proud,” said a choked-up Thoughtful Carl as “America, the Formerly Beautiful,” played in the background, “to be fighting for my students, their families and for teachers.”
Praytell, someone tell me how Thoughtful Carl’s singularly courageous act of fattening his already obese wallet helps curious, devoted but union-rejected innocent children learn when he insists on prattling on about how much jack he is taking the City of Chicago for?
