Last Stand for Children First: Extending School Day is The Answer to All Our Problems

Last Stand for Children First: Extending School Day is The Answer to All Our Problems:

Extending School Day is The Answer to All Our Problems

by Last Stand for Children

Last Stand for Children First has been involved in the education reform movement in Chicago since last winter when we were asked by Mayor elect Rahm Emanuel and business leaders in the Civic Federation to help with their grassroots efforts to fundamentally change education in the city. This effort came to fruition with the passage of SB7 and now with Mayor Emanuel's attempts to impose a longer school day.

The teachers are being most uncooperative really. After having their 4% raise voted down because the schools didn't have enough money, we promised to find a way to give them half their raise if they would only work another 327 1/2 hours. That's a tidy little $3.08 per hour for a beginning teacher. When Jimmy Carter signed the law in 1977 to raise the federal minimum wage to $2.90 an hour in 1979 and $3.10 an hour in 1980, I don't think he realized he was insulting teachers with this paltry raise. Throughout the early 1980s beginning fast food workers and dishwashers lived on