For the Children

What happened to teachers teaching for the children?
Im sure many of you have heard about the Chicago teachers strike, let me inform you of a few details before I get to why they are striking.
 -In Chicago a teacher makes 75k a year, that is 35k or 115% above national average now I know the cost of living in Chicago is higher but not 115% higher
-50% of Chicago students score on the bottom 1% on their ACT's
-46% of public school teachers send their children to private schools
-They were offered 16% raise over the next 4 years but with that came higher accountability for teachers as well as non automatic rehires in the spring for teachers who do not preform.
-4 in 10 students do not graduate high school in Chicago.
-Chicago School system is $665 million in debt, within the next year it will exceed $1 Billion!!

Now with these facts show here it does not appear that Chicago teachers deserve a pay raise, especially not in this down economy. Where would the money come from to give these pay raises? When your system is going more and more in debt every year paying out more to 26,000 teachers is not the answer.
First off in a most other jobs and even most private schools and colleges your pay and your job is based off your performance. The Chicago teachers as a group are not performing well at all!! What in the world makes the Chicago Teachers Union think that any of those teachers are worthy of a pay increase?
The union is not benefiting anyone but the teachers pocketbook and the unions pocketbook. They are currently hurting the city, there are parents who are not working this week because they must stay home with their children. There are children who are home alone and some of them will be getting into trouble this week. They are already behind on learning and cannot afford to fall further behind. Because of the parents taking pay cuts for not working there will be less money in the pocketbook of these parents and therefore hurting the economy. Robberies from children will be up this week in places such as convenience stores costing the stores more money

But my biggest problem with this is that they are wanting to teach the next generation and cannot even be held accountable for their work. What is this teaching the children look up to these teachers? No wonder the city of Chicago is in such a dumb when you cant even hold the teachers accountable how will anyone grow up to be accountable? This is the time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to show he has a clue what he is doing. A little backbone here will go a very long way, time to step up buddy.