CPS teachers claim that increasing the school day by 90 minutes will give them 30% more work (meaning they currently only work 5 hours/day), and they are therefore demanding a 30% raise. People in Chicago have been discussing it on local forums and I have the hardest time convincing them that we already overpay CPS teachers. In fact, the average CPS teacher makes over $70,000/year from the school system (not counting any summer jobs). The 30% raise they want would mean their average salary would jump to around $95,000. This is on top of the extremely generous public-sector benefits they get and their pensions. In order to prove this to people in Chicago, I had to download a PDF of salary data from the CPS website and extract it all into Excel. They didn't believe it. There were also several teachers who posted their opinions about how hard they work, how little they make, and how we should literally kiss their asses (I'm not kidding).
Anyway, over 90% of the union members voted to authorize a strike, and I hope they do it. I hope the media starts reporting these jokers' salaries in the news every day along with the miserable achievement statistics when they report on the strike. Honestly, if I was the city, I would use their ridiculous 30% raise request along with their already high compensation to force them to take a pay cut or quit entirely. Screw 'em.