Don’t blame budget on teachers

• Reprints

Updated: March 8, 2012 8:04AM

I get tired of seeing teachers used as punching bags by everyone who wrings their hands about the budget woes faced by the state, city, and Board of Education. Teachers aren’t the problem; insiders and the people who have been entrusted to run these various governmental bodies are.No teacher is walking away with $50,000, as did former schools chief Arne Duncan, or the almost $240,000 Barbara Eason-Watkins received. If you want to lay blame, start with these so-called leaders who did nothing to make our schools better, but contributed mightily to their current problems.

Spare me the politicians who have a vision of Chicago as a world-class city when they haven’t got the guts to properly address our utter failure to produce a thriving teaching environment in our schools.

How can the city starve, through underfunding, neighborhood schools to ensure their failure, then find millions to pour into these VERY SAME SCHOOLS because they will be run by some politically connected outfit? How many years has the state not met its state constitutional obligation to fund pensions? How many insiders have reaped millions in profits at taxpayer expense? Teachers, as you pointed out, get no medical leave or short-term disability. They also don’t receive Social Security or vacation pay, both of which are absolute must-haves in the private sector. To begrudge them the sick-day benefit is mean-spirited and short-sighted.

If our pols are really serious about fixing our various budget messes, let’s start with banning every single politician, every government employee, their relatives, business partners, et al from receiving a single dollar from government contracts. Let’s stop them from double- or triple-dipping their own pensions. Let’s stop anyone who has made a contribution to one of our sterling, sanctimonious pols from receiving one dime in government contracts. Let’s also stop this ritual of hiring so-called “consultants” who do nothing, but reap millions for our hard-earned tax dollars.

Bernie Cicirello,
Portage Park

Illinois is $35 billion in the hole, and state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago) focuses her attention on shark fins [“State mulls ban on shark fins,” Tuesday].

Pat McInerney,
Summit