Chicago Schools Implement Longer School Days without Angering Teachers’ Union
How do you make two parties who want opposing things happy? Well, if one party is a mayor who wants a longer school day and if the other is a teachers’ union that wants to keep their work day the same length of time, you can look to Chicago to find the answer.
Instead of forcing the current teachers to work a day that is 20 percent longer than the days they worked last year, the city has decided to hire more teachers to make up the extra time. The extra time in the school day will be filled with extracurricular classes, such as art, music, and PE.
Just where will these teachers come from? That’s another brilliant part of the solution: the teachers will be selected from a pool of teachers who were laid off since 2010.
However, the question still remains as to where the school district will find the $40-$50 million required to pay all of these new/returning teachers. Read the rest of this entry »