Obama's Illinois: More Teachers On Strike

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.