Chicago public school teachers returned to their classrooms on Wednesday but thorny questions remained over how Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the cash-strapped school system will pay for the tentative contract that ended a strike of more than a week.
The three-year contract, which has an option for a fourth year and which awaits a ratification vote by the 29,000-member Chicago Teachers Union, calls for an average 17.6 percent pay raise over four years and some benefit improvements.
Average teacher pay is now about $76,000 a year, according to the district, which pegged the annual cost of the new contract at $74 million a year, or $295 million over four years.
The $5.16 billion fiscal 2013 budget approved by Chicago Board of Education last month closed a $665 million deficit by draining reserves and levying property taxes at a maximum rate, while also slashing administrative and operational spending.
But that budget included no teacher salary raises with the understanding the budget would be amended once a contract was in place, according to a spokeswoman for the district. The increase agreed in the tentative contract with teachers called for a 3 percent increase in year one.
"There is really no room in the existing budget for that level of increase," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a Chicago-based government finance watchdog group.
Msall said the nation's third largest school system, which was already projecting a $1 billion budget deficit for fiscal 2014, will have to cut personnel, including teachers, and close low-enrollment schools to meet the contract's financial demands.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-usa-chicago-schools-cost-idUSBRE88I1FP20120919
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