From the Chicago Tribune: Evergreen Park teachers voted late Monday evening to strike, canceling school on Tuesday, according to school officials.
The
move comes as unresolved negotiations between unions and school boards
in Highland Park and Crystal Lake could result in strikes this month.
About
150 teachers and 60 support staff employees in Evergreen Park School
District 124 voted to strike after more than five months of negotiations
failed to lead to a contract.
Evergreen Park Superintendent
Robert Machak said union officials voted Monday evening to strike,
meaning that school will not be open to students beginning Tuesday.
Five
schools — four elementary schools and a junior high school — serving
more than 1,800 students will be closed in the south suburb after
contract talks failed, officials said. The major issues in the
negotiations were health insurance, retirement benefits and partially
pegging annual salary increases to students' test scores.
Machak
had said the district's accounting put the two sides about $2 million
apart for a three-year contract in a school district with a $24 million
annual operating budget. He had said he was hopeful a deal could be
hammered out.
Last month, teachers and support staff roundly
rejected a four-year contract offer that would see their share of health
insurance costs go up and retirement benefits go down. The union wants a
three-year contract with larger increases for paraprofessionals and
school secretaries, and it is trying to keep the current health care
benefits.
The union also opposes offering salary increases to
teachers based on their students' performance. The school board is
offering lower annual increases and a 1 percent "bonus" raise tied to
student outcomes.
The district also wants a four-year contract and
to keep salary increases for school support staff at the same rate as
teachers. The union is asking for an annual increase of $1 per hour each
year of the contract. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/ct-met-evergreen-park-teachers-20121002,0,1048597.story
This is Obama's vision for the future- get used to it.
Sunrise — 6:35, 6:54.
3 hours ago
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