I can't believe that WTTW chose Phil Ponce to interview his neighbor Rahm Emmanuel. Nail Rahm to the wall and there goes your snowplowing, garbage pick-up, etc. Both Phil and Rahm need to read the contract between the Chicago Teacher's Union and CPS. It can be found on the CTU website.

If the media did it's homework, they sure wouldn't believe half what Rahm says and call him outon his lies. Wheat follows is an earily verifiable blatant lie:

Numerous times during the interview, Rahm said that ALL REACHERS RECIEVE A YEARLY STEP AND LANE INCREASE IN PAY. Read the contract. There are only 15 step increases, one per year, up until the 15th year of teaching. There are no step increases from the 16th thru 35th year, retirement under the old pension system. I think the new law now requires 45 years of teaching for a full pension. If we assume that half the teachers have less than 18 years of teaching experience, and the other half have more than 18 years, half of the teachers get no yearly step increase. Those nearing retirement haven't seen a step incrase in 20 years. Under the new pension system, it will be no step increase for the last 30 years of teaching in Chicago.

ALL TEACHERS GET A YEARLY LANE INCREASE. There are six salary lanes:
1. Bachelor's Degree in a CPS recognized field
2. Master's Degree in a CPS recognized field
3. Master's plus 15 semester hours of approved graduate credit (note APPROVED)
4. Master's plus 30 semester hours of approved graduate credit.
5. Master's plus 45 semester hours of approved graduate credit.
6. Doctorate Degree in CPS recognized field

Divinity and Law, among others, are not recognized or approved fields. Note tha there are no salary lanes beween Bachaelor's and Master's degrees, as with almost all suburban schools, to encourage higher educaton. For those who do not know, most Master's degree programs consist of an average 36 hours of sequenced graduate courses. It can be done in 3 semesters of full time college attendance, but usually not possible because of the availability of advanced courses (and most are available only in the evenings). The usual route is six years of night school to achieve a Master's degree. In suburban schools you find a lot of teachere's with Master's degrees, but not in Chicago, where there is little financial incentive. The pay increase will never cover the cost of tuition, yet many teachrs in Chicago do have Master's degrees. So stop and think. How many teachers in CPS actually are able to move to a higher salary lane each year? But Rahm says, ALL TEACHERS GET A YEARLY STEP AND SALARY LANE INCREASE. Most teachers haven't seen one of those increses in years.

Yet Rahm has the gall to outter that out and out lie. Then he says that the 2 percent raise offer is a GOOD OFFER. Reneg on the scheduled 4 percent raise and then 2 percent is a good offer????? 29 percent more hours on the job for a measly 2 percent salary increase. If you look at the addition 1.5 hours as overtime, it computes to far less than the minumum wage in this state. No one in the private sector would be happy with overtime at straight time, but who would expect less than the minumum wage for the overtime? Teachers have been getting a lot of bashing as of recent, but would anyone accept less than minimum wage for overtime? 29 percent more time should obviously equalte to a 29 percent pay increase at the minimum.

Just inceasing class time does not equate to higher scores. If this were so, then let's hear about a big city, mostly minority, school system where this is happening. There are vitually no big city school systems thar doing significantly better than CPS, even with extended hours. More time has never resulted in incresed productivity, minute for minute, in any endeavor. If anything productivity decreases during the extended time period. These are kids we're talking about, not adults. They are not going to produce much more from an extended school day. They just don't have the samina of adults. Just stop and think. Do you think your average 6 year old can tolerate a 7.75 school day?

Can you believe Democrats are doing this? What is going on in Chicago is far worse than anything being done to the teachers in Wisconsin. Well this is what you would expect when you put a business person in charge of the city and the schools. Wish we could get to see their high school transcrpts. Bet we'd see nothing but D's and F's in math.

Makes me wonder if Ponce and the staff of Chicago Tonight read any of this stuff. If they did, Phil wouldn't be asking such soft ball questions and not let the person being interviewed be so evasive and untruthful. I guess the interviewer would have to be fully informed himself and research the question before asking it. Next let's see the President of the Chicago Teacher's Union on the program to verify what I just wrote.