Yesterday, I took from the McHenry County Republican web site something State Rep. Mike Tryon had put up about educational reform.
It contained “Talking Points for Educational Reform.”
Undoubtedly handed out to all Republican members of the Illinois House.
The new educational reform bill does nothing to deter strikes by teachers outside of Chicago. This is a picture of Huntley teachers meeting durring their strike.
One point, however, does not apply outside of Chicago:
“Averting teacher strikes is another key component of these reforms.”
There is a requirement for an extraordinary majority to authorize a strike in Chicago, but not impediment elsewhere in Illinois can be found in the bill.
Oops.
If you look at the photo shown of the Huntley teachers can you find any male teachers in that photo?
The female teachers DOMINATED the decision to STRIKE and screw up anything for any parents and kids who are affected.
There were plenty of LET’S MAKE PUBLIC SCUM female teachers.
You do realize that there are far fewer men in education than women right? According to menteach.org, “in Illinois, fewer than 1 in 4 teachers between kindergarten and high school are men and this is declining, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.”
Maybe that accounts for the lack of men in the picture. Btw, I do see at least one man (I believe there is a man in green on the right hand side with sunglasses on) but couldn’t testify to the number of men in the picture because there are not many individuals in the picture where their face is easily viewed or where there is definite proof of gender.
Females are going to dominate the decisions in education because there are more of them. Seriously, come up with a better argument than female teachers suck.
Here in “Sesame Street” indeed some male teachers ‘suck’ as well!
Back to the issue at hand.
Cal’s point that the Education Reform legislation makes it more difficult to strike in Chicago than the suburbs is an important point.
Here’s what happened in general.
Education Reform is SB 7.
Originally in mid April 2011 all the Teacher Unions (IEA, CTU, IFT) publicly supported SB 7.
IEA is Illinois Education Assocation
CTU is Chicago Teachers Union.
IFT is Illinois Federation of Teachers.
CTU is the Chicago affiliate of IFT.
The support was based on the Union leaders supporting the legislation that resulted from many Education Reform Committee Meetings in the Senate involving stakeholders from all parties (Management, Labor, Private Ed Reform Groups, Legislators, etc.).
That support apparently occurred without the rank and file unions members having the time to fully review the proposed legislation and comment on it.
When that review did occur in CTU, all heck broke loose.
In particular, the CORE caucus within the CTU, which is a reform group within CTU which came to power June 2010, discovered SB 7 contained a provision that 75% of their entire membership (not just those voting) was required to strike. They had some other problems with the bill too but that was the big one.
CTU held a vote which resulted in CTU not supporting SB 7.
So CTU and its parent IFT publicly changed its position of SB 7 from support to no support in early May 2011.
The unions decided to stick together, so the IEA changed its position to “neutral” even though they otherwise support the bill.
Of course the unions don’t tell the public this. Here’s what the IEA reports.
“Technical problems with the bill caused the CTU and IFT to oppose passage in the House. Also, because of the problems, IEA was officially on record as “neutral” on SB7, despite the belief that SB7 is historic legislation that moves public education forward in Illinois.
It is expected that there will be a second bill (called a “trailer bill” because it follows and is linked to another piece of legislation, in this case SB7) that will address the concerns raised which caused the unions to temporarily drop their support. Legislative leaders have indicated a willingness to move the bill as soon as all parties are agreed on the final language.”
The teacher union in most Chicago suburban school districts is IEA.
The IEA supports this bill, with the exception of the issues that only apply to CTU.
You can see how powerful the IEA is.
IEA only needs 51% of membership approval to strike. That is not a “reform”. That is already in place.
If Quinn signs the SB 7 and no trailer is added, CTU needs 75% membership approval to strike. That is a reform. I think they need 51% membership approval now to strike, although I am not sure if that’s all membership or just the membership that votes.
What I would have liked to seen in SB 7 is the IEA would also be required to have 75% of all members vote to strike. That would give Management (Board/Administration) more power in collective bargaining to level the playing field. That would be real meaningful Education Reform.
As it is now, the Union typically threatens to strike whenever Management asks for meaningful concessions, and Management concedes.