Teachers who work for Chicago Public Schools have a contract which grants them an estimated amount of time to work. This contract states it will be renewed every 4 years and all teachers have to come to an agreement. When there isn’t a stable choice, strikes tend to happen.

In June of 2015, the CPS teachers’ contract ended. Teachers had to come to an agreement based on what the contract gave them and decided the contract did not treat them fairly.

“I think A LOT could have been done and still can be done to help the budget. Cutting the teacher’s salary and firing teachers, especially Special Education teachers, is not the answer,” said Ms. Comeford, a Phoenix Military Academy teacher.

This strike is very powerful because as everyone knows, it will force some teachers to be laid off and cause pay cuts. Which means teachers will have to go days, months, or even years without a job in public education. How will they survive? How would they provide for their family and household? Also they will enlarge the classroom due to the closing of schools and will take time out of students’ education by not having classes when they should be learning. Especially for juniors, they need to start learning and focusing on their ACT.

When it boils down to the changes made within the budget, everything is still in negotiation,” said 1SG Powell, a JROTC instructor at Phoenix Military Academy.

If you didn’t know, JROTC instructors do not strike. Why? Because they are not part of the union. They are not considered as teachers. On the other hand it does affect them. Well the budget affects them more than the strike.

“Yes, the strike does affect us [JROTC instructors].  We are cost-shared between the federal government and the state of Illinois. The teacher’s strike doesn’t affect the JROTC instructors as much as the budget will.  Depending on the amount of money allocated in the budget agreement, it could possibly cause teacher layoffs and elimination of many educational programs such as the JROTC program per school,” said 1SG Powell.

re are a lot of opinionated people who are willing to give their opinion based off how they feel about the budget shortfall.

“I do not want to go on strike, however, if CPS does not meet the teachers with some of their requests, I think we will have to,” said Ms. Comeford.

On the other hand some of the JROTC instructors in Chicago Public Schools also have their opinion on how the teachers are striking.

“The CPS officials knew that this was coming or could possibly occur.  CPS is a unique organization to be employed in, unlike other school districts, they are protecting the longevity and quality of their profession in Chicago,” said 1SG Powell.
Some feel that a person like Barbara Byrd Bennett is the one to blame and that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is to blame for hiring her. If they had honest people on the school board, this would not be a problem.