Board of Ed Breaks Its Promise
We know that as teachers and paraprofessionals, we are in our schools every day—working 50 and 60 hour weeks, coming in early and staying late—all to ensure the best possible future for our students. We’ve kept our promise to them. But today the newly appointed Chicago Board of Education voted to break its promise to us and not fund our 4% raises for the next and final year of our contract.
Chicago Teachers Union Protests CPS Executive Pay Raises, Chicago School Board: MyFoxCHICAGO.com
After Rejecting Teacher Raises, CPS Set To Approve Pay Hikes For Executives
In their unanimous vote last week, the board said the city could not afford the $100 million price tag for teacher raises, even though they were laid out explicitly in the teacher union's contract that was approved in 2007. The teacher's union has asked the board for a detailed budget outline to support their decision, but the board has yet to provide one.
School board president David Vitale described the administrative pay raises as "appropriate" to the Sun-Times, given their enhanced responsibilities and the need to compete with other districts throughout the country. In the case of Cawley, Vitale continued, he will be overseeing twice as many departments (eight) compared to his predecessor (four).
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Chicago Teachers Union Protests CPS Executive Pay Raises, Chicago School Board
Chicago - Hundreds of teachers from the Chicago Teachers Union protested at Chicago Public School headquarters Wednesday, days after the board denied teachers a 4 percent raise.
The protest consisted of 1,500 teachers by some estimates. The crowd chanted and walked from CPS headquarters at Clark and Adams, blocking Clark Street for a time, then in front of the Bank of America and the Board of Trade.
Teachers said it's unfair to deny them their negotiated 4 percent pay raise when they'll be asked to work longer school days and especially when the board is voting to increase the salary of the new CEO and others.
The board was voting Wednesday on giving pay raises to five new executives.
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/...
Seven other unions join teachers to negotiate lost raises
Seven other unions have now joined teachers in asking Chicago Public Schools officials to negotiate rescinded salary increases.
Seven other unions have now joined teachers in asking Chicago Public Schools officials to negotiate rescinded salary increases.
CPS officials said Monday they've received written notices from the other unions, asking to sit down at the table and negotiate over wages. The other unions, which represent everyone from cafeteria workers to school engineers, include the Service Employees International Union, International Union of Operating Engineers and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
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We’ve expressed a desire to work with CPS on many issues. In return, CPS has not demonstrated any effort to collaborate on budget matters prior to this decision. Until now, neither CPS representatives nor the Mayor’s office have approached the CTU to discuss the situation.
To make matters worse, the budget itself is opaque and misguided. While CPS continues on the path of financial malfeasance—spending millions on debt service, high interest loans, overpaid vendors, over-testing our children, and inequitably distributing facilities monies—our students are expected to bear the burden.
We have been sent a signal that Mayor Emanuel and his appointed Board of Education would rather go to war with us than address any of the systemic problems we face in ensuring a bright future for Chicago’s children.
No pay hike for CPS teachers, but executives are getting raises?
Newly installed Chicago School Board members Wednesday will be asked to approve six-figure salaries for new Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and four other new top executives that represent raises over what their predecessors were paid.
The vote on whether to boost executive Chicago Public School salaries comes only a week after the same board members, in their first official action, found the deficit-ridden system did not have enough money to pay for 4 percent raises to teachers and other unionized school workers worth $100 million.
School Board President David Vitale said the new salaries were recommended by board staff based on a combination of factors including enhanced responsibilities, what prior employees were paid, and competitiveness.
“The due diligence done on all these things suggests these salaries are appropriate within the context of all that,’’ Vitale said.
Some were skeptical.
“It’s not a good way to start a new administration when you elevate the salary level of a lot of administrators and tell the teachers they cannot get raises without putting a plan on the table for higher performance,’’ said Andy Shaw, president of the Better Government Association.
“People who take over a struggling school system ought to implement some positive changes before they are paid higher salaries [than their predecessors]. You could argue previous salaries were too high because the performance level of the schools was dismal,’’ Shaw said.
“This will only further incense teachers.’’
Brizard’s base salary of $250,000 is $20,000 more than predecessor Ron Huberman made before taking furlough days; more than the $213,000 drawn by the New York City Schools Chancellor, and more than any other city executive — including Mayor Rahm Emanuel — except for New Police Chief Garry McCarthy.
However, among the nation’s five other big-city districts, it is also less than the superintendent salaries in Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas’ Clark County. Brizard has said he also expects to be allowed bonuses tied to district performance in a new contract up for a board vote Wednesday.
CPS Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley is due for a $215,000 salary, up from his predecessor’s $179,167, and Chief CPS Communications Officer Becky Carroll is in line for a base of $165,000 — up from her predecessor’s $130,383 and higher than the base salary of mayoral communications chief Christine Mather, who is taking home $162,492.
However, Vitale said Cawley will oversee eight departments, compared to his predecessor’s four. Carroll said she expects to also be in charge of internal and external communications as well as media.
New Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso’s $195,000 is up only slightly from her predecessor Barbara Eason-Watkins $192,850. New chief of staff Andrea Saenz is to be paid $165,000, compared to $116,000 of her predecessor. However, Vitale noted that back in 2009, the post carried a base salary of more than $163,700.
Also Wednesday, board members will be asked to give Cawley a two-year, rather than the traditional six-month, extension to move into the city to meet residency requirements. Cawley is a Winnetka resident and he and his wife would like their daughter, adopted a year ago from the Ukraine, to finish seventh and eighth grade in the suburbs before the family uproots and moves to Chicago, Carroll said.
http://www.suntimes.com/...
CPS may grant residency waiver for high-ranking official
Chicago's school board is expected to decide today if it will grant a waiver allowing its new chief administrative officer to live outside the city.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has endorsed the two-year waiver so that Tim Cawley, the third-ranking CPS executive, can continue to live in Winnetka.
CPS grants waivers for teachers in high-need areas like special education and math, but this would be a first for an administrator, district officials said. And the waiver would come at a time when the district has been vigorously enforcing the residency rule.
Jackson Potter, staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union, questioned making an exception for a high-ranking executive.
"It seems to me if you're going to have a standard for one group of people and you're going to apply it in a Draconian fashion and another group doesn't have to follow those same rules, that's not fair," Potter said.
Cawley, who is expected to make $215,000 this school year, came to the district from the Academy for Urban School Leadership, where he was the managing director for finance and administration for the organization, which runs turnaround schools in the city. Before that, he had worked at Ameritech and then Motorola, where he was a senior vice president.
Martin Koldyke, a venture capitalist who founded AUSL and started the Golden Apple Foundation, a nonprofit organization that recognizes outstanding teachers, says he was "smitten" with Cawley when he first met him.
"What Tim was able to do at AUSL was make sure we did a good job of fiscal management," Koldyke said. "He's an executive who brings energy and the ability to carefully analyze situations."
Cawley, who was initially named by Emanuel to be CPS' interim chief operating officer, will be given the title of chief administrative officer on Wednesday. He will be responsible for running the district's day-to-day operations such as finance, transportation, facilities, security and safety — everything outside the classroom.
Though CPS has had a residency rule for three decades, it began a vigorous crackdown last year. More than 70 cautionary notices were sent out to staff who lived outside Chicago, letting them know they had six months to move into the city. About 23 CPS staff, 10 of them teachers, eventually lost their jobs because they didn't live in the city.
This April, the board updated its policy to allow teachers in certain high-need positions to be able to live outside Chicago: special education, mathematics, science, reading, bilingual, world language and physical education. Librarians, school psychologists, guidance counselors, speech pathologists and school nurses were also given waivers.
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