Is the Chicago Teachers Strike Helping or Hurting the Education System?

The choice to teach summer school is just that, a choice, not a requirement so they do have summers off if they choose. The continuing education classes can be taken at any time through out the year and many schools offer credit for in school training hours toward those classes.

I know there is a certain amount of prep and gradeing to do. That is what planing periods are for as well as the paid hours before and after student time.
You assume that memories are my only source of information...wrong answer.
I spent 7 years as the chair for our high school citizens advisory committee.
Because I worked shift work I was available to volunteer a minimum of 10 hours per week in class rooms assisting teachers. Now that I am a grandmother I do the same for my grandchildren.

Oh and my oldest daughter is a teacher. She has taught in 2 states and 3 counties as a result of moves and getting married. She is an excellent teacher and makes good use of her in school hours. Her chief complaint is teachers who sit around and gossip and complain when they should be prepping and planing then cry that they have to take work home. She is not a member of the union and has taken a lot of heat for it but she thinks for herself.

I don't know where you live but we pay property tax on top of school tax, last year alone it amounted to over $10,000.00. Gee my home is worth 1/2 what it was 6 years ago but the rates we pay have not dropped a dime. Teachers don't care where the money comes from as long as it comes.

Thug yes! Teachers that strike do so to bully school boards to get what they want. They must not give a rats behind how that action effects family's with school age children. Just watch them on the march, thugs yes.

Inflated absolutely! The pay and benefits package for teachers is over the top. No wonder they don't want to be evaluated.

Let me start by saying sorry about the novella...and writing about Education as a whole.

The entire NATION is hurting so severely due to the cost of living and yet they ask for more.

I dare to say most of us have worked our entire lives in order to earn a better way of life.. period.

Whether it be while raising & teaching our own children, some of our grandchildren, and/or learning a new career? Attending classes ourselves so we'd be viable and relevant in today's workforce.

WE'VE had to make substantial changes over the last few years in order to survive.

WE THE OTHER PEOPLE want our own negotiator who can stop those who keep our lives in one way or another in hostage situations until they get what they feel they deserve.

I'd like to know just how many companies have given cost of living raises that actually have kept up with inflation?

If you have been given one, gas alone has taken the better part of it. Not to mention food costs.

After selling my 19 yr business, I actively sought employment decidedly not to file for unemployment because I knew I was a viable candidate for something.

During my search we struggled to make ends meet, even after downsizing considerably, cutting costs at every single juncture in our lives.

And that meant cutting way back on our charitable donations. Which I know has happened across this once great nation on a grand scale. Individual tithe has been cut back as well.
Many of those dollars had gone to daycare, shelters...helping the poor, keeping their doors opened .

From 1984 to 2001 we've had children in our public school system. Each year, we begun by school shopping, starting with clothes, backpack, all the necessity to fill that backpack, paid for books, lunches, after school programs, sports programs, musical programs, uniforms, transportation, team snacks, held fund raising events to raise MORE money for whatever the school needed..and this was just K-12!

College was a completely other financial escapade, but...my American born & raised children actually worked part time while going to college which enabled them to pay for things on their own such as car/gas/insurance, essentials while we footed the bigger part of their education. Don't get me started on the Dream Act here in AZ.

There are ways of giving children what they need without taxing us further...or throwing more money at districts who can't function on what they have been given to begin with.

Classroom/district audits need to take place each and every year. As well as a fundamental test to teachers who can't put a simple yet interesting curriculum together.

If children don't go to school, well, then that's a different story...sounds like our tax dollars would be well spent on forming a truancy squad and setting up a vocational school on how to make license plates, train animals, farming, because that's what I'm told people do while imprisoned.
Makes me SICK.