I'm trying to make sense of why the Chicago Teachers Union's fight with the Chicago Public Schools has blown up into a teachers' strike (the first in 25 years).
One of my neighbors, for years a member of the local school board, said "every parent in Chicago will vote against Rahm Emanuel" in the next Chicago mayoral election. My experience of the strike, however, was being trapped in the Loop for an hour yesterday as the teachers' rally outside the school board building stopped traffic.
So, in no particular order, here are some sources of information about the strike, its geneses, and its likely outcomes:
- Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews, writing on Ezra Klein's blog, modestly provides "Everything you need to know about the Chicago teachers’ strike, in one post". My key takeaway: the CPS faces a $665m deficit this year, despite moving millions from reserves, and next year faces a $1bn deficit. (I can't wait to see my 2013 property tax bills...)
- The Tribune reports that CPS has offered 2% raises over the next four years and some concessions on its proposed policy of not calling laid-off teachers back in the order they were let go. The article doesn't make clear how the CTU disagrees with the proposal, saying the union hasn't released details.
- The local NPR station, WBEZ, asks What's really driving teachers to strike? Teachers want air conditioning, smaller classes, more social workers, and yes, last-out-first-in recalls after layoffs.
- CTU president Karen Lewis may have miscalculated, however, having "openly feuded with Chicago Public Schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, accusing them of not caring about schoolchildren or their education," which made her no friends. Still, 90% of union membership voted to strike, so it looks like they may have gotten the leadership they wanted.
- New York Times columnist Joe Nocera yesterday wrote a cogent and balanced summary of the issues that nonetheless drew a comparison between this fight and the auto manufacturing fights of the 1970s and 1980s, "with the two sides fighting each other so fiercely that neither noticed that imports were on the rise and globalization was making their squabbles irrelevant."
- And, of course, both the CTU and CPS want everyone to remember the children, who certainly have their own opinions but aren't being asked by either side.
Even though I have a natural inclination to support labor in general and teachers in specific, it looks to me like the strike over-reached and may have handed the PR war to the city. Ultimately the CPS and CTU run up against arithmetic, and the annoying problem that only the U.S. government can print money. We can't pay for the schools we have right now (or, more precisely, for the teacher pensions we owe), so the teachers won't get everything they want. Are they willing to give back on pensions and salary in exchange for smaller class sizes and air conditioners? (Of course, how medieval are we as a city that we can't provide children with adequate classrooms in the first place?)
And again, the kids are getting the worst of it. As goes an African proverb, "when elephants wrestle, the grass suffers."
I'll have something about the Chicago teacher's strike after lunch, but first, I must complain about the returning heat:
The warm-up brings Chicago its 100th day of 27°C-plus degree temperatures; another due Wednesday putting us 2 days from 2005's all-time record annual tally
Tuesday afternoon’s predicted 29°C high is an early August-level reading and 4°C above the September 11 average maximum of 25°C.
The warm-up follows a chill Monday morning, the likes of which hasn’t happened here since early June when the official morning low dipped to 9°C.
I'll probably have to turn on the A/C for the first time in almost a week. I am so looking forward to autumn...
Just when you thought it was September, along comes more hot weather. Chicago officially hit 32°C for the 46th time this year, putting us one away from tying the record number of days above that temperature in recorded Chicago history.
Can we please have autumn now?
Clearing out the ballast:
- Despite the initial forecasts, Hurricane Isaac's remnants missed Chicago.
- Beloit College, just outside Rockford, Ill., has published its Class of 2016 Mindset. Since 1998 they've published a list of facts about the way incoming first-years think. This year's list includes "Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles" and "A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space."
- The Economist's Gulliver blog bemoans Tampa's and Charlotte's piss-poor walkability, and how Tampa especially repudiates the loony-right conspiracy theory about Agenda 21.
- The wackos also got on NPR this morning with a story about yet more efforts to forbid Sharia law, which ended with the vacuous understatement "The proposals are a solution in search of a problem, according to many." Apparently NPR just wanted to shine a light on the crazy without correcting it.
- Speaking of crazy, with just four weeks left in the season, the Cincinnati Reds are the best team in baseball right now, with the Washington Nationals just behind them. The Cubs, now 51-82, earned their "E" just yesterday, fully two weeks after the Houston Astros (41-93) became the first team to earn mathematical elimination this season.
Updates as conditions warrant.
The Wind Map is one of the coolest things I've ever seen:
And apparently, Isaac is going to hit Valparaiso (and, um, us):
Hurricane Isaac is about to come ashore in New Orleans (check out the current wind map for an arresting view), and by Friday night will be giving Illinois some much-needed rain:
As of noon on Monday, August 27, the track of Hurricane Isaac could pass through Illinois on Saturday. Of course, it won’t be a hurricane – just a tropical depression. Even so, large rainfall amounts are expected to fall in parts of Illinois and Missouri.
Then, for Labor Day Weekend, it looks to bake and then soak Chicago:
Post-landfall, the storm is expected to track north up the Mississippi Valley, spreading its torrential downpours into the Midwest with the heavy rain reaching the Chicago area by the weekend.
Prior to the rain, sinking air in advance of the storm should help boost Chicago temperatures into the mid-90s Thursday and Friday. That would raise the city's total of 32°C-plus days to 45, two shy of the record 47 logged in 1988. The heat is expected to solidify this summer's spot as the city's third hottest summer, behind 1955 and 1995 for the June-August meteorological summer period.
Goose Island beer will start distributing to all 50 states by November:
The move will continue remarkable growth for what began as a small brewpub in its current Clybourn Avenue location in 1988, and has arguably become the beer most synonymous with Chicago. But a national reach also seemed inevitable once brewery founder John Hall sold the company to AB at a time when craft beer sales were soaring and macro breweries were struggling to enter the marketplace.
Production of Goose Island's biggest-selling and highest-produced beers — 312 Urban Wheat Ale, Honker's Ale, India Pale Ale and seasonal brews like Mild Winter — will expand to AB's Ft. Collins, Colo. brewery. The beers will also continue to be made at an AB plant in Baldwinsville, N.Y., as well as in smaller amounts at the Red Hook brewery in Portsmouth, N.H. and Chicago.
Colorado water? I don't think Colorado has the right amount of lead, arsenic, or radon to give it the proper flavor.
Fortunately, the high-end beers like Sofie will stay in Chicago, and presumably the brewpubs on Clybourn and in Wrigleyville will continue to make beer with proper Chicago water. We'll see.
This weekend's weather forecast in Chicago predicts the coolest weekend since May 12, 14 weeks ago. Through Sunday temperatures should be 3°C below normal (days in the low 20s, lows in the low teens), with sunny skies and cool northeast breezes. September, in other words.
The Tribune points out:
Only 6 of past 142 years have produced Aug. 18 overnight lows cooler than those expected by Saturday morning.
Not only will daytime readings be cooler than typical for mid August, nighttime lows will be cooler than normal as well, particularly in areas farthest from the city and Lake Michigan---both of which temper early season cool spells by adding heat.
Friday night/Saturday morning's predicted 12°C low would become Chicago's chilliest minimum temperature in over two months and would qualify as one of the six coolest early season readings for the date since 1871.
It will warm up mid-week, though not to the temperatures we suffered through in the warmest July in history last month. I've got the windows open, and I'll probably be able to keep them open until Wednesday.
Parker likes having the windows open as well, but he's not used to hearing the neighbors—in particular, the neighbors' dogs. I hope he figures it out, because the random, single woofs at 2am are really aggravating.
The WGN Weather Blog reported this weekend that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation has turned warm in the past couple of months, and is getting warmer. The Climate Prediction Center started noticing in July:
Nearly all of the dynamical models favor the onset of El Niño beginning in July - September 2012 (Fig. 6). As in previous months, several statistical models predict ENSO-neutral conditions through the remainder of the year, but the average statistical forecast of Niño-3.4 increased compared to last month. Supported by model forecasts and the continued warmth across the Pacific Ocean, there is increased confidence for a weak-to-moderate El Niño during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2012-13. El Niño conditions are likely to develop during August or September 2012 (see CPC/IRI consensus forecast).
Normally, warm winters lead to warm summers in Chicago, with the pattern resetting in late Autumn. That is, even this record-breaking summer could be followed by a bone-chilling winter. But El Niño years tend to give Chicago warm, dry winters. I'm all for mild winters—except that mild winters tend to cause warm summers, which I am not in favor of.
At least autumn should be lovely here.
I got back home last night after spending a week in cool, California coastal weather. Apparently I brought some of it with me:
The return of sunshine this weekend is to send temperatures higher. It's a change which will be noticed given the fact it follows the first back to back below-normal days in over 6 weeks. Saturday's predicted 26°C high represents a 3°C increase from Friday's 24°C reading—and Sunday's 29°C tacks another 2°C on the day's peak reading.
But, while warm and eminently comfortable, the readings predicted Saturday and Sunday are the lowest of any weekend since June 2-3—10 weeks ago!
Yes, we're having the coolest weather in 10 weeks. I opened my windows when I got home, and I will likely keep them open through tomorrow afternoon, which would be the first time since early June I've kept them open for a full day.
It will get warmer this week, unfortunately, but after the warmest July in U.S. history we have to expect a warm August, September, and October.
Today, though, I'm really enjoying the weather.