My dad and other Waukegan school district teachers have been on strike for the entire month of October--the schools have been closed throughout this time. There are a whole lot of reasons for this, including the fact that they are some of the lowest paid teachers in the state, while their administrators (including the superintendent) are some of the highest paid in the state, and the teachers' pay has been frozen for the last few years, even though the school currently has thousands of dollars in surplus. The school board simply will not bend and give the teachers fair pay and fair contracts. The teachers also have no health insurance while they're on strike. It's getting to the point where this is on national news, and Governor Quinn has sent the Illinois Minister of Education to personally intervene.
I'm just writing about this because much of the news coverage I've seen seems to be biased in favor of the administration, making it sound like it's the teachers' fault that the students have all been out of school for a month. They held a board meeting recently, in which the school board gave up and adjourned after only 13 minutes, because the crowd was so angry when the board announced that the meeting would be limited to an hour. Listen to their reaction when the board announced that the audience would only be given 45 minutes to speak, while the first 15 minutes of that precious hour would be given to the leader of a vehemently anti-teacher faction for a "special presentation."
Waukegan board meeting Full Video Oct 28, 2014 (min 3:36)
Before long the entire audience was standing with their backs to the school board, chanting "We support our teachers!" The article on this in the Daily Herald made it sound like the failure of the meeting was all the audience's fault because they simply wouldn't settle down.
After such an embarrassing meeting, hopefully the board will give in soon and offer the teachers a decent pay raise, but who knows when that'll happen. In the meantime, my dad and all the other teachers are out there picketing every single day.
Oh, and incidentally, teachers make some pretty awesome picketing signs:
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| Little did he know, the other guy had no insurance either... |
Learn more on their facebook page: Waukegan Teachers-Parents United
