8/11/2019 On the Waukegan Teacher's Strike

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Right now the situation looks like outrage without any constructive debate. Yes,

teachers are undervalued, and yes they should get recompensed for all the work and time

they put into their craft, that's pretty easy to understand. Cut Batiste and Lamping's

paycheck- also makes perfect sense. But that's as far as most people's knowledge goes.

As far as I have seen, the community has not explored this issue to a practical, fact-based

conclusion. We don't have facts, we have signs and facebook likes. We scream without

really knowing what we're screaming for. This is the case for two reasons, One, the

community as a whole has not held our teachers or the school board accountable for their

actions. Two, neither the union or the board have made any significant attempts to give

the community an adequate voice in the education of its children.

Let me start off by saying that this is a horrible situation. Teachers who want to

teach, who love the profession, were forced into a position where they cannot do the job

they love. These teachers have inspired far beyond my 12 years of education in

Waukegan schools - from ESL, to AP classes, to Yale. Teachers are surrogate parents,

role models, coaches, club sponsors, pillars of support. For all the work they have done,

work that goes far beyond the job description, they deserve a respectable salary.

However, we are not lake forest or new trier, Waukegan is unfortunately a place of

scarcity. We have limited resources and face issues that those communities do not. When

this is the case, we need to, as a community, make informed decisions. Information is

vital, yet we as a community are highly uninformed - we have ourselves, the board, and

the teacher's union to blame.

The question is not whether teachers deserve higher salary - of course they do.

The real question is: Where will it come from? What expenses will be cut to make this

raise possible?

This question is not asked, yet it is the most important one. In this battle between

teachers and the board, we have no voice, just shouts and outrage. Instead of outrage, we

need questions and answers. To the board and the teachers union: Where are the

numbers? Where are proposals that parents can understand? How will this raise affect our

children's education? I will admit that I have not searched through the deep parts of

8/11/2019 On the Waukegan Teacher's Strike

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contracts and budget sheets to see how this change would affect our school system, 99%

of us haven't. The issue is that we shouldn't have to search and calculate these things

ourselves. The board has an obligation of transparency. And no, a biased two-page letter

from administration is not enough. Still this letter does raise some valid concerns when it

brings up that annoying repetitive phrase "financial solvency." If teachers get what they

demand, will the quality of our public school system suffer? How many classes will you

cut? How many afterschool programs will lose funding? As far as I have seen, neither the

teachers nor the teacher's union have given the community a good answer to this

question. Some answers target our ridiculously high administration expenses - as they

should. We pay people who have no direct educational impact far too much and this is

definitely an area where cuts should be made. But we should not assume that

administration is not important, they too play a role that teachers, students, and the

community need. Cutting of administrative costs should be done carefully, separating

what is essential from what is bureaucratic and overpayed. And to do this carefully, we

need information. Information that the teacher's union and the board have not given us.

I support Waukegan's teachers but I also support Waukegan's youth and their right

to an education that places them first. The strike will come and go but the impact it and

the produced agreement will have on our community will last much longer. What I want

people to understand is that this conflict is not just between the teacher's union and the

school board, it is our conflict too. As a community, como una comunidad, we need a

voice in this conflict. And for that voice to exist we must demand information and

accountability from both our school board and the teacher's union. We need to force the

school board to hear our voice while the school board needs to encourage us to use that

voice. Let us know what's going on, we'll tell you what we think.

We have a part in this fight too.

Topiltzin Gomez