Showdown in Chicago
By LEE SUSTAR
Chicago takes center stage for teachers' struggles in July amid the annual convention of the National Education Association (NEA), a gathering of reform activists and the battle with Chicago's new mayor over cancellation of teachers' raises.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel added to the latest wave of attacks on teachers' unions when his handpicked school board, dominated by business executives and billionaires like Penny Pritzker, voted June 22 to cancel the scheduled 4 percent raise for members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The move--justified by a school budget deficit put at more than $700 million--could trigger early contract talks that could result in a strike.
"Our children got the shaft," Emanuel said of scheduled teachers' raise.
A week later, more than 1,000 CTU members and supporters answered Emanuel with an angry picket line that circled the block and culminated in a rally at the Chicago Board of Trade--a recipient of tax money diverted from schools, where Chicago School Board President David Vitale was once the boss.
As Marcy Hardaloupas, an elementary school teacher for 20 years on the city's Southwest Side, said as she walked the picket line:
The situation has become horrendous. Teachers are being blamed