The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is demanding a $50 billion contract with provisions including free abortion services, cash to migrants, LGBTQ concessions, and a big hike in pay all despite falling student enrollment and worsening student proficiency rates.
The contract the CTU is set to present demands a nine percent annual raise in pay through 2028 even though the average salary of a teacher in Chicago Public Schools is already $93,182, which is about $20,000 a year more than the average pay of $73,000 a year that teachers in the rest of the state make.
The pay hike would make Chicago’s teachers some of the highest paid in the country and would ultimately set them at an annual rate of $144,620 a year by 2027, according to Fox News citing the Illinois Policy Institute.
The annual salary would also put Chicago’s teachers at nearly double the median household income in the City of Chicago.
As Fox News noted, to put the $50 billion contract the teachers want in context, the total amount of taxes that the entire state of Illinois earned in 2023 was $50.7 billion. Meaning, the teachers in Chicago feel they deserve to be given the entire tax earnings of the state.
The contract also demands that the city pay for annual retraining for teachers on LGBTQ issues to continue qualifying to be able to teach. Other radical demands on gay issues in the contract includes a demand that the city build a “gender neutral” bathroom in every school. And the CTU also wants a new rule prohibiting teachers from telling parents if kids are being transgendered in school.
The CTU is also demanding that the city give every migrant student a check for $2,000 to spend on transportation costs, “mental health counseling,” and help with academics.
Meanwhile, in February, it was reported that 55 of Chicago’s public schools had zero children that were grade-level proficient in reading and math.
Not a single student can do math at grade level in 53 #Illinois schools. For reading, it’s 30 schools. Not 1 single student. Education data from @ISBEnews
— Wirepoints (@Wirepoints) February 14, 2023
It's yet another indictment of the state’s educational system. Via @Wirepointshttps://t.co/rMZlnHjcgK #twill #SchoolChoice… pic.twitter.com/meKyUDo7sk
The huge pay hike is also being demanded despite the fact that the Chicago Public School system is seeing the number of students it serves dropping as citizens move away from the city, even with Joe Biden’s surge of illegal aliens.
According to WTTW-TV, in the 2013-14 school year, the CPS served more than 400,000 students. But by 2023, that total had fallen by some 80,000 students to about 322,106 total students.
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