Here Comes a Fight

Expect a Teachers' Strike if this keeps going this direction:

• Chicago Public School principals late last week received long overdue budgets packing $10.6 million in school-based cuts — but also omitting a negotiated 4 percent raise for teachers.

  The budgets arrived midday Friday with an e-mail from new Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard saying teacher raises weren’t included because they have yet to be approved by “newly appointed board members and they have not met yet. Therefore, we took a conservative approach and left out scheduled salary increases for now.’’

  Although the Chicago Teachers Union is entering the last year of a contract calling for 4 percent raises this coming school year, CPS can bail out of the raises and reopen the contract if officials declare by June 15 that they don’t have the money to cover an estimated $80 million in CTU raises.

The schools are operating at a $634 million deficit. The City itself is running a $500 million budget gap at last count. That's $1.1 billion in the red already and the fiscal year is just starting. Rahm is going to burn this place to the ground trying to make up Shortshanks' budget disasters.