Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: At last night's meeting. Support builds for CTU in contract talks

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: At last night's meeting. Support builds for CTU in contract talks:

At last night's meeting. Support builds for CTU in contract talks

There was a packed house at Luther Memorial Church last night for the forum on the current teacher contract negotiations. Parents 4 Teachers called the meeting and invited members of the CTU's negotiating teach along with Board Pres. David Vitale and acting schools CEO Jesse Ruiz (Byrd-Bennett is still in hiding). Vitale & Ruiz were no-shows.

CTU's Jesse Sharkey started it off, saying the negotiations are going poorly. The board is stalling. While there's a very real revenue crisis and it's questionable if the board can even afford to open schools in the fall, CPS is "broke on purpose".

Packed house at Luther Memorial last night.

More Sharkey: CPS is hiding money in reserve funds. There's lots of wasteful spending, ie. toxic interest rate swaps and the $20 million no-bid SUPES contract now under investigation by the feds.

They won't tax the LaSalle St. "gamblers", but instead are relying on illegal retiree pension take-backs and casino gambling profits for needed revenue. 

"We're looking for 3% pay increase", says Sharkey. "They're offering 7% cut."

No room for serious negotiations here. So what kind of game is Rahm and the board playing?

Members of the negotiating team made it clear that they're putting much more than teacher pay on the table. Union demands include:

• Limitations on yearly testing, including an end to testing pre-K and Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: At last night's meeting. Support builds for CTU in contract talks: