The following article was selected from the Internet Edition of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser to http://chicagotribune.com/. ----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding---------------- Article forwarded by: Cayata Dixon Return e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Article URL: http://chicagotribune.com/news/local/article/0,1051,SAV-0105140007,00.html ---Forwarded article---------------- Lump-sum raise for teachers tops election issues By Michael Martinez A pay raise last month for 33,000 teachers and support personnel has surfaced as the key issue in a contentious election this week for president of the Chicago Teachers Union. That $11 million salary increase, representing a 1 percent, one-time payment, was in addition to the teachers' annual 2 percent raise--a bonus that challenger Deborah Lynch Walsh says equates to the Board of Education buying votes to support incumbent Thomas Reece. In Friday's election Walsh, 49, a former union staff member and an 8th-grade teacher at Marquette Elementary on the Southwest Side, is once again challenging Reece, 63, union president since 1994. The Chicago Board of Education quietly approved the lump sum payment for 27,000 teachers and 6,000 support personnel. Board officials and Reece said the salary increase had been discussed for several months and that the funds were provided for in the current four-year contract. Reece has beaten Walsh in the past two races, but Walsh has been gaining ground, securing 28 percent of the vote in 1996 and 42 percent in 1998. Last year, Walsh successfully led a movement--even joined by Reece--to amend the union's constitution to force the publication of school-by-school vote counts in all elections. The change was approved by 93 percent of union members. Reece had favored only summary counts and had opposed school-by-school counts in a clash in 1999 with Walsh, who alleged vote fraud in the membership's approval of the union contract with the school board. Reece has enjoyed widespread support in the city's 492 elementary schools, where most of the teachers work. He said he has helped teachers regain their stature under the nationally watched turnaround of the Chicago Public Schools, once deemed the worst in the nation. He meets monthly with schools CEO Paul Vallas."One of the big things about the success here is now there's good publicity," Reece said. "People are talking about the good things. If you think we had the attitude that Debbie Walsh has, do you think that Boeing would be here? We are part of this city and ... this renaissance." Walsh has built a base in the city's 80 high schools, where the school board has leveled its most dramatic sanctions. Those sanctions include shutting down and reconstituting the faculties of seven secondary schools in 1997 and more recently threatening to summarily fire teachers in five of the worst high schools. Even though she lost in 1998, Walsh's caucus members won all six high school functional vice president seats on the 47-member executive committee. "The feeling of excitement and readiness for change seems stronger in all the schools that we're visiting," Walsh said. "In our view Mr. Reece has been doing the bidding of the mayor and management at the expense of his membership. Instead of what he claims is a collaborative cooperative relationship, we feel he has been co-opted." The teachers' raise last month came from funds set aside for a planned increase in pensions that failed to receive state approval, Vallas said. Union members were asked in a March 23 referendum whether all members should get a one-time, 1 percent raise, or whether the money should be spent on bonuses of less than 1 percent for only those teachers who worked summer and after school. Walsh and Reece both have denounced the board's intervention crackdown, in which the board can summarily fire teachers after a year's evaluation. Last week, Vallas said he didn't have figures on how many teachers will be summarily fired at the five high schools. "I expect the number to be very tiny. I don't expect the number to be high," said Vallas, who has campaigned on Reece's behalf. "That's what I'm hearing from the principals. Their recommendations are going to be small numbers." ---------------------------------------------------- This is the CPS Mathematics Teacher Discussion List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
