Teachers to picket meeting over denial of raises

Chicago Public Schools teachers are expected this morning to protest the school board’s recent decision to rescind a blanket 4 percent annual raise promised to teachers and other school union members in their contracts.

The picket lines are planned outside district headquarters as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools board meets for just the second time.
Chicago Teachers Union officials are calling on the district to open the budget books and negotiate spending priorities for the coming academic year.

Officials with the district and the unions are in the throes of hammering out dates to negotiate the board’s decision, allowed under a provision of the contract, to withhold the 4 percent salary increase in the teachers’ and other unions’ contracts as they confront a deficit now pegged at $712 million for the coming school year.

Three-quarters of district teachers still will receive raises owed for their years of experience and education levels, according to district estimates.

If the negotiations on the raise withdrawal fail, leaders of the teachers union may reopen the entire contract that is set to expire in June 2012. That could allow the district to hasten plans for a longer school day and extended academic year, though it also could raise the specter of a teachers strike.

This morning, a march organized by CTU will step off from 125 S. Clark Street and head toward Chicago’s financial district, a route intended to call attention to the city’s special property taxing districts that union officials contend “rob Chicago’s schools.”

Last month, Emanuel tasked a panel with studying the effectiveness of the city’s 157 tax increment financing districts that receive more than $500 million a year in property taxes that otherwise would go to the city’s school system, City Hall and elsewhere.

Just days into their summer vacation, teachers are expected to return from the march to the district’s offices where they will make their concerns known to the new school board that meets at 10:30 a.m.

Also on the board’s docket today: The contract for the district’s new schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard and chief education officer Noemi Donoso.

Brizard has said he will earn $250,000 for the job, though the details of the contract are not yet known.

Looking only at salary and not total benefits packages, Brizard's pay will be less than that of 44 Illinois superintendents from towns such as Niles, Park Ridge, Schaumburg and Oak Park. He stands to earn more than New York City’s school Chancellor Dennis Walcott, but less than Los Angeles’ public schools Chief John Deasy.