Schools closed in Chicago after teachers reject in-person classes

gina2011 wrote:

I am very curious how many of you negatively talking about teachers have been inside an urban school or any school in the last 2-5 years and witnessed first hand all the crap teachers put up with on a daily basis, for abojt the same pay as a fast food worker…

Just sayin': At least the fast food workers are doing their jobs right now, and without 3 months of summer vacation to look forward to.

gina2011 wrote:

Yes please explain how our nations educational system will work when you fire all these teachers?? And then please also explain who you will get to teach and educate these students who in a regular basis bite, hit, kick, scream, tell to f*** off and break up fights between students bigger than them on a daily basis so that then you can go work in corporate America and get paid 2-3-4X what those very teachers get paid.

I am very curious how many of you negatively talking about teachers have been inside an urban school or any school in the last 2-5 years and witnessed first hand all the crap teachers put up with on a daily basis, for abojt the same pay as a fast food worker…

Fast food worker should get paid more. Actually working long hours with terrible customers they have no power over. Perhaps if we make kids work as fast food workers they will see the need to learn themselves. With the internet you can learn anything on your own

interesting... wrote:

energeticlotuseater wrote:

If teachers refuse to come to work then fire them, just as it is in any other occupation.

Okay, then what?

In all seriousness, please explain what you think will happen if huge numbers of teachers are fired. I'm very interested in your ideas on this matter.

Two options

The ideal option is to override the entire educational system and make it a school voucher system. Each student gets a 20k tuition voucher to go to most private schools or any public schools in the entire state. If schools refuse to reopen for long periods of time the parents will most likely pull their vouchers and the school sill be forced t close due to lack of money.

Two-If you set a firm line and simply fire teachers who refuse to come back to work fire then you will see many teachers come back and not risk the absences of a paycheck . The teachers in Chicago currently think they will get paid whether they come to work or not. Then Offer small signing bonuses for young teachers to come to teach right out of college to replace the teachers who refused to come back. This is how it would work in most private industries, especially in “Right to work states”.

gina2011 wrote:

Yes please explain how our nations educational system will work when you fire all these teachers?? And then please also explain who you will get to teach and educate these students who in a regular basis bite, hit, kick, scream, tell to f*** off and break up fights between students bigger than them on a daily basis so that then you can go work in corporate America and get paid 2-3-4X what those very teachers get paid.

I am very curious how many of you negatively talking about teachers have been inside an urban school or any school in the last 2-5 years and witnessed first hand all the crap teachers put up with on a daily basis, for abojt the same pay as a fast food worker…

Man you got to love the leftists ability to immediately solve the problems they create. The democratic party policy has made these inner cities a mess and school environments crap. Then they scream about how hard their job is because they have to deal with the problems they create.

And no you teachers could not get paid 2-4X as much in corporate America or else you would jump ship immediately. People who work hard, don't get 4 months off a year, and in most cases are smarter get paid 2X or more in corporate America.

gina2011 wrote:

Yes please explain how our nations educational system will work when you fire all these teachers?? And then please also explain who you will get to teach and educate these students who in a regular basis bite, hit, kick, scream, tell to f*** off and break up fights between students bigger than them on a daily basis so that then you can go work in corporate America and get paid 2-3-4X what those very teachers get paid.

I am very curious how many of you negatively talking about teachers have been inside an urban school or any school in the last 2-5 years and witnessed first hand all the crap teachers put up with on a daily basis, for abojt the same pay as a fast food worker…

Chicago teachers are refusing to even come into the office but you think they should be paid 4x more? The problem is you have an entire profession, teachers, who are living in a dream realm and have no idea how most people work. Teachers just nod and say “yeah, of course we should be paid a six figure salary, get every weekend and two months off during the summer”

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again there is no profession in America that are as entitled, soft, lazy and self important as teachers. The situation in Chicago confirms this.

1: Where are all of these private schools and public schools throughout the entire state that can take on these kids? We already have schools at capacity state-wide. Plus you just fired thousands of teachers.

Moving students around doesn't help a single thing; it actually magnifies issues you're very unware of concerning equitable educational opportunities for diverse populations of students. There are also federal laws that obligate schools to provide appropriate students for diverse learners. These services require highly specialized degrees or certifications. Many private schools don't even require teachers to have a teaching license.

2- Again, you're firing teachers. And then what? What does this firm line do? It puts all of the students those teachers would have had in other teachers' classrooms. And remember point one about schools already being at capacity?

You're exacerbating the situation that is already causing the teaching strikes: too many students with too few personnel and no protection.

Public education is not a private industry. There are not enough young teachers (there aren't enough teachers period) to even staff the available positions there currently are.

The lack of available personnel is a key issue that people unfamiliar with school situations blithely ignore. The "solution" of "just fire them" would have the exact opposite effect you would apparently like to have.

energeticlotuseater wrote:

Chicago teachers are refusing to even come into the office but you think they should be paid 4x more? The problem is you have an entire profession, teachers, who are living in a dream realm and have no idea how most people work. Teachers just nod and say “yeah, of course we should be paid a six figure salary, get every weekend and two months off during the summer”

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again there is no profession in America that are as entitled, soft, lazy and self important as teachers. The situation in Chicago confirms this.

Okay, you've identified what you perceive to be a problem.

Your solution is apparently to give everyone 20k to chose their own school, apparently unwilling to understand that in doing so, you're not alleviating issues teachers are dealing with, you're just going to apparently spread them around so everyone deals with them? Except for the thousands of teachers you would have fired?

Also kind of curious where this 20k voucher is going to come from. I'm assuming since your intent is presumably the demise of public education, it would come from local education association budgets?

But wat happens to all of the students the private and charter schools run out of classroom space. Or what happens to students they just outright refuse to admit? So again, we're back to our diverse populations, that have federal law protecting their rights to a free and appropriate education...

Ah, we'll just start suing local school districts then?

But surely that'd start eating into those 20k vouchers.

Wooh, this is a tangled mess.

Please elaborate on your plan.

I teach at a middle school in Seattle. Same issues. Not enough subs to cover classes. So, all classes that don’t have subs go and sit in the auditorium and admin oversees it all. Admin is getting fed up having to deal with this every day.

I heard a rumor from a reliable source that Seattle schools will go remote on Monday.

Sorry, you can’t blame teachers for this. It is a sub shortage that is the problem.

Glad to see the teachers are using the time they are not spending teaching our kids to post pro-teacher propaganda on letsrun.

gina2011 wrote:

Yes please explain how our nations educational system will work when you fire all these teachers?? And then please also explain who you will get to teach and educate these students who in a regular basis bite, hit, kick, scream, tell to f*** off and break up fights between students bigger than them on a daily basis so that then you can go work in corporate America and get paid 2-3-4X what those very teachers get paid.

I am very curious how many of you negatively talking about teachers have been inside an urban school or any school in the last 2-5 years and witnessed first hand all the crap teachers put up with on a daily basis, for abojt the same pay as a fast food worker…

+100

Let’s have all the teacher bashers on Let’s Run teach for one week and see how that goes.

energeticlotuseater wrote:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/588294-schools-closed-in-chicago-after-teachers-vote-down-in-person-classes%3famp

It looks like teachers in Chicago are again refusing to go to work citing concerns over COVID after the Chicago teachers union vote overwhelmingly to not return to classrooms.

It appears to be a bit of a “liberal Civil War” as Lightfoot, the Chicago Democratic mayor, and the overwhelming liberal teachers union are at each others throats.

I feel bad for the kids and parents of Chicago who will be hurt by this but some of the blame has to be laid at Mayor Lightfoot’s feet. She and her fellow COVID hysteric travelers created a whirlwind of COVID fear over the past two years and now she seems dumbfounded as she tries to (rightfully IMO) to downplay the concerns over COVID variant Omicron.

Can anyone with a brain blame them? They work for pennies. They work everyday with entitled rich white kids. Who can blame them?

Former Never Trumper wrote:

CCB wrote:

I teach at a middle school in Seattle. Same issues. Not enough subs to cover classes. So, all classes that don’t have subs go and sit in the auditorium and admin oversees it all. Admin is getting fed up having to deal with this every day.

I heard a rumor from a reliable source that Seattle schools will go remote on Monday.

Sorry, you can’t blame teachers for this. It is a sub shortage that is the problem.

Glad to see the teachers are using the time they are not spending teaching our kids to post pro-teacher propaganda on letsrun.

Wow, great argument !

My last class finished at 2:45, so I’m not allowed to be on Let’s Run two hours later? Good to know. And why aren’t you working right now?

1) The free market will come into play. So, now instead of teachers getting a guaranteed paycheck whether they come to school or not they will now have to choose between receiving a paycheck or going without one. The salaries of the teachers will be directly linked to whether students are in their schools- if teachers choose not to go into school they will probably not be receiving the voucher money of the students & their parents and thus their schools will go out of business.

As far as your "diverse learner" argument comes from. The free market will provide schools for all kinds of learners -- an individual can create a school focused on arabic, Spanish, the sciences, classical learning, holistic learning, etc and the individual will be motived to have their school succeed because of the monetary incentive of the 20k voucher.

2) Again- if you give the teachers either the option to a) go to work or b) lose a paycheck I believe many of these "virtual teachers" will change their tune. However, if we release the educational system to the voucher system I described above it would be a totally free market endeavor- these new schools can hire intelligent people that don't necessarily need a teaching degree to start working at said school. It is aa similar system to how private employers hire their employees.

3) "Where do we get this 20k from?" Chicago Public schools currently spend about 20k per student (

). Instead of guaranteeing this 20k to various public schools it goes directly to to students in voucher form and they will choose which school gets their voucher money. I'm not opposed to allocating more money to the voucher system if we see benefits--just as long as the public schools are guaranteed said money.

I'm not advocating totally getting rid of the public school system. However, what I am advocating is through the voucher system I described they are formed to compete in the free market with private schools that already exist and inevitably pop up.

Chatting with a new couple at the tennis club where our daughters take lessons. They moved out of their high rise Chicago condo in mid 2020 to a friendly red state. They are both lawyers but found they can work remote as have 70 percent of their firm. They still haven't sold the chicago condo yet but no plans to ever go back.

1) Again, okay. What happens to all of these students without a teacher?

Where is the free market going to come up with these schools? Who is going to teach these students? Remember, you fired all the current teachers. There isn't a surplus of new teachers waiting for an opening. It's the exact opposite.

2) For this free market endeavor to work, you must have... employees. Where are these employees? Please address this point.

3) So you take it from the local school association. So now Chicago has nearly 341,000 students with 20k vouchers. Assumedly in this scenario you have a model school, maybe a few, that everyone would want to enroll in? What happens next?

I’d also like to point out that no profession revels in their own inflated self importance as teachers do.

The constant social media posts by teachers wallowing in their self created martyrdom because they had to go to work during the pandemic caused eyes to roll as millions of other workers did the same without posting a video about it.

At what point can Chicago tax payer start clawing back those funds, since the services are not being rendered?

Union literally holding Chicago hostage. If i were a person paying property tax, id withhold paying the city.

energeticlotuseater wrote:

I’d also like to point out that no profession revels in their own inflated self importance as teachers do.

The constant social media posts by teachers wallowing in their self created martyrdom because they had to go to work during the pandemic caused eyes to roll as millions of other workers did the same without posting a video about it.

Right!? Today at the grocery store I marveled at how the cashier was completely enclosed in a plastic box while dealing with some erratic customer ranting about some mispriced cereal.

If we could just enclose teachers in these plastic boxes and make sure we don't ever have more than 3-4 students with 10 feet of us at one time, there'd be nothing to complain about. They definitely get paid more than cashiers!

But it would probably make for some extra funny videos of classroom instruction and interaction! Like a modern-day bubble-boy. So maybe wouldn't get rid of the social media issue.

You obviously didn’t read my post as I talked about all these issues but I will summarize.

1) Fire teachers who don’t want to come to work

2) Provide parents with 20k (could be more) voucher for each student. These vouchers can be spent at the existing public school, private schools or schools that pop up in peoples homes. However, if these various schools can’t compete on the free market they have to be allowed to go out of business- includes public schools.

3) Hire teachers as you would hire any other employee. No special qualifications necessary. You don’t need a teaching degree or anything of the sort, it’s all up to the employer who they hire. However, if they don’t attract good performing teachers they will probably go out of business as parents pull their voucher money.