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“The CTU is a blight on Chicago and a curse on its children,” Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints, told Chicago City Wire during last year’s strike. “It should be obliterated.”
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WIREPOINTS ORIGINAL STORIES
Audio and summary Illinois bill would override local law to allow homeless living in all public parks – Wirepoints
April 14, 2026
29 Comments
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago Fiscal Crisis Worse Than Pre-Bankruptcy Detroit, HIV Surge and Public Health Threat From Open Borders Goes Unreported
April 10, 2026
2 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times falsely blame Texas Gov. Abbott for 2020 to 2024 surge in Chicago Latino HIV, AIDS infections – Wirepoints Quickpoint
March 31, 2026
11 Comments
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
I guess getting out of bed is hard for some people.
Devoting 8 hours per day to their job does not mean 8 hours onscreen. Prepare, grade papers, talk to individual students or parents. I have had good teachers and am married to one. Good teachers take work home and don’t watch the clock. Good teachers enjoy their jobs much of the time. Why trash a [once] respected profession that is now a well paid profession via political theatre as if you are on the waterfront or plucking chickens at Tysons?
Mr. Glennon isn’t trashing the teaching profession, he is blasting the union. A modern waterfront worker would be very supportive of teachers’ unions and what they can get away with. Longshoremen command salaries of $100,000 or more and get free healthcare, even in the age of globalization. I assume you have no problem with that.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dockworker-pay-20150301-story.html
Fred, yes good teachers do that. And don’t conflate the CTU with the profession.
Excellent response! I’ve seen way too many comments here where thoser two groups are considered somewhat synonymously. If such people are thinking about Chicago ‘s school system and teachers they are closer to being right in political terms even if still wrong in reality. But, there are huge numbers of teachers in IL and certainly elsewhere that are not run by unions at all. Even if they were such systems generally are from smaller, more politically conservative communities with less of the far left philosophies espoused by the CTU. Large urban areas tend to be Democrat as do their school… Read more »
I suspect that many of the CPS teachers are currently working as instructors/tutors in the “learning pods” that are all the rage in the upscale neighborhoods. The “Pod Parents” pay cash and demand that the teachers perform in person.
This is why they have to cut those hours short, the side hustle…
That would be work, something which CTU teachers avoid. These lazy parasites want time off out of laziness, along with the mandatory rioting, looting, and stealing the election for Senile Joe
After teaching 22 years in CPS high schools I wised up and got a real job. The schools followed either a 7:15 to 2:45 schedule and an overlapping 8:00 to 3:30 late schedule. We had 5, 40 minute classes that’s only 3hr and 20min in front of young scholars. In one of the schools I worked, the principal complained that the school phone bill was enormous. He had an insurance agent, a tow truck operator, an auto mechanic, an events planner and a house painter all working their business off of the school phones on their prep periods and never… Read more »
Approximately 1/2 half of the students drop out.
Of the other 1/2 they can read at an 8th grade level when they graduate HS.
Being a teacher is basically another form of welfare.
The only thing students learn is how to join a gang and being a drug dealer.
I think they are going to have a class on “Drive by shootings” and “How to loot stores without being caught”.
Shouldn’t teacher set the example of how to work. What if a farmer only worked teachers hours?
Teachers should only have to “Work” 4 hours a day for 160 days a year.
$100,000 per year Starting with 5% annual increases and full health benefits only god can afford (or taxpayers).
Retire with $10,000,000 pensions with widows benefits starting after 25 years or 50 years old which ever comes first. Also full paid health benefits for life.
I think that the party is over for teachers’ unions. Voters in LA rejected Measure EE to fund schools, two years ago which was a major blow to LAUSD. Prop 15 which is a revision to Prop 13 that raises property taxes for commercial property looks like it’s headed for defeat. Despite the ads that say it funds schools it’s obviously just another tax hike in Calif. And of course the big Covid cuts are coming next year.
https://noonprop15.org/
This is not a rhetorical question – why does a teacher who begins their career at age 21 retire with a full pension at the age of 56 instead of 66 like those of us paying their retirement?
Because Illinois politicians granting the benefits were in cahoots with the unions and are self servants not public servants.
The stated reason was older teachers were lower quality (seriously).
Tier II has reduced benefits.
Tier II is those beginning their careers on or after January 1, 2011.
Thank you for the explanation, Mike. I was baffled by what the grueling aspect of teaching could possibly be.
The grueling aspect is that the teachers slid through easy A and easy B educational tracks at whatever university and never encountered failure. They took high paying teacher jobs based on their inflated successes in school. Once employed they met a student body that has never known success, whose parent(s) hated school. It is like a cold front meeting a warm front, a Violent thunderstorm occurs.
Add to that teachers having a meek nature and probably low self esteem and being alone in the classroom and always feeling threatened. Collective union action is a way to get even with everybody without having to individually have a backbone.
I’m going to tell my boss that tomorrow and see what he says.
“We ask that school hours online be shorten (sic),” the petition reads
Yep, probably written by not only a CPS grad but instructor too.
I is a teecheer. I no want wurk. I want munee but no wurk. Gimme munee. More munee.
Cry me a river…
Cops can work 12 hour shifts with days off cancelled…
But 4 – 5 hours of “screen time” is too much for you…???
And it’s too scary to teach in person because of a virus that’s so deadly you have to be tested for it…
I wonder if they have enough energy after they recharge with 3 months off over the summer?
Has there ever been a lazier gang of incompetent parasites than CTU teachers?
i feel bad for the teachers who dont want any part of this union, they get ostracized or removed from the system. It’s classic union BS, last hired first fired regardless of competency. I know teachers and have relatives who have bounced around for years never being able to land a teaching full time in a district because the ranks are packed with tenured lifers union to the core. If there’s a silver lining to this, BIG IF, it’s that a whole generation of potential teachers has been discarded or passed over in Chicago and it’s suburbs and will vote… Read more »
You have to feel sorry for the kids in these public schools. But after so many years of abject failure as an educational organization, you have to blame the parents who keep voting for the inept Democrat politicians who buttress the current system. The voting parents are responsible for letting the pols and the union and the school board get away with it– and their own kids are paying the price.
Union teachers threw the parents under the bus with online schooling.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/columnists/william-penn-school-district-virtual-reopening-pandemic-pennsylvania-20200927.html
Bust this Union.
Mark nailed it when he called the CTU a scourge/blight.