Teachers: The Spoiled Victims in America

It is hard to believe only a year and a half separates Governor Walker’s standoff with the Wisconsin teachers’ unions over collective bargaining rights and the most recent Chicago Teachers Union strike that closed Chicago Public Schools for seven days and kept 350,000 kids out of the classroom. Events like these have increasingly forced the issues of union rights and education reform into the public eye.  These discussions are by no means stale, as new policy ideas and contract renegotiations constantly breed new opinions of public employee unions.  In the past 18 months, public sentiment toward teachers and unions has shifted back and forth as events like the CTU strike provide more insight into the messy world of union rights. And I’ve shifted too.

Unsurprisingly, these discussions are radically polarized along the lines of political ideologies. On one side, there are the Democratic pro-union activists who believe teachers are belittled by the government and work hard for their modest salary. On the opposite side, there are the Republican businesspeople that witness the private sector struggling while teachers are safely insulated from the economic crisis by their wrought-iron employee contracts. Is there any hope of reconciliation between these two interest groups? If you had asked me that question back in February 2011, I would have vehemently responded in defense of the teachers’ unions and condemned Governor Walker as just another Republican politician obsessed with cutting costs at the expense of critical public institutions, such as schools. Now, 18 months later, ask me the same question, and I’d be hard pressed to come up with an inkling of sympathy for the teachers’ unions.

What changed? It would seem that such a severe shift in my loyalties must have been triggered by an incident equally as extreme. In actuality, my crossover stems from something that has remained fairly consistent throughout this time span: the economy. From the time of Governor Walker’s standoff with the teachers’ unions up until today, the economy’s perpetual stagnation has directly coincided with my declining support for teachers’ unions. I look around and I see my peers graduating with limited job prospects, my parents and their friends delaying retirement, and others who are being laid off because their employers can no longer afford to pay their salaries. At the same time, teachers’ unions fight reductions to salary increases, complain about the limited staffing of nurses, counselors, and librarians, and are outraged over new evaluation procedures that threaten to usurp a long established veteran’s hierarchy that ensures the newest teachers are the first to get the ax. The majority of private sector workers are not permitted such luxurious job security. Are the teachers’ unions really living in the same world as the rest of us?

The teachers’ unions are portraying themselves as victims to gain public support, but to what extent are they suffering any real injustice? According to Time Magazine, Chicago Public Schools’ teachers are some of the highest paid in country, with a starting salary of $49,000 and an average salary of $76,000. Up until the new contract, CPS had one of the shortest school days and shortest school years in the country. Despite the fact that they are amongst the highest paid in their profession and work the fewest hours, the Chicago Teachers Union still fought for salary increases that they felt they rightly deserved. After negotiations, the CTU and CPS agreed to three years of salary raises at 3, 2, and 2 percent with a possible fourth year at 3 percent.

How the district will finance these salaries remains unresolved. School districts throughout the country are suffering from severe budget contractions and are constantly looking for ways to maintain education quality while staying financially afloat. The federal and state governments do not make this easy for them. School districts are promised grant money that they budget for years in advance only to find out that the government can’t, and won’t, pay the full amount. Last year the Chicago Tribune reported that Illinois owed its public schools $981 million, and proposed budget cuts meant that the school districts would have to shoulder even more costs. Some districts attempt referendums to raise property taxes as a greater source of revenue, but trying to raise taxes in the midst of this economic crisis is a losing battle. The school districts are bled dry, but the teachers’ union is relentless.

I sincerely believe teaching is one of the highest, noblest professions and that teachers’ salaries and benefits are fully deserved; but that being said, poor economic growth has persisted to a point where teachers’ unions are asking too much from districts that have too little. The teachers’ unions should not be fighting the district for money they don’t have, but rather targeting the state and federal government to make due on the tax money that was never rightfully handed over to the school districts. Strikes, like that of the CTU, do little to alleviate the long-term debt problems that burden our nation’s schools. The teachers, in their insatiable quest for greater benefits, have only succeeded in deflecting attention away from the true victims: the students.