All employees whether they work for the private or public sector are entitled to raises. Without raises people would not be able to deal with the cost of living (unfortunately the raises are so low that it is hard for certain groups) and the inflation rate. I always wondered why no one complains when CEOs received millions and millions from the government as a bailout and those CEOs decided to use the bailout to pay themselves their million dollar bonuses while people lost their life savings and pension. Yet, let’s complain that teachers who have masters degrees or PhDs and given a small raise of 4%-4% (it still hasn’t been decided) that would bring the teachers’ salary to level of acceptable pittance where teachers deal with 130-150 HS students on a daily basis. Teachers do it because they love teaching and seeing students success. Listen Mom who cares, teachers deserve more than the proposed raise. It is fair and just! So before you think that the raise is too much, think about the CEOs in Lehman Bros, AIG, Enron, who got those outrageous bonuses and did not care about the employees who lost their income, benefits, pension and the means to support their children. Or do you feel there is justice in corporate america?

UFT endorsements were very important in the Comptoller and Public Advocate races because the candidates had similar views, rather than teachers votes scattered among the host of candidates the endorsees benefited greatly. This not true at the mayoral race, I don’t know a single teacher who didn’t make up their mind a long time ago. Perhaps if the UFT endorsed months ago they could have influenced non-teacher voters, maybe. It’s always about risk versu reward.

If a contract emerges w/i the next few weeks most teachers will be satisfied, and whether or not one emerges members wi ll express their pleasure/displeasure in the union elections in 3-4 months.

This democracy thing has it’s upsides.

Yanks for signing the Declaration of Independence.

I appreciate your point, but let’s not get overworked or too righteous on this. For the record, Eban’s comment on missing opportunities was not a generalization about Palestinians or Arabs or Semites or followers of Islam. It was about Yasir Arafat and his penchant for missing opportunities to reach agreements with Israel (while stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the PLO).

Give it a rest, vote and enjoy the rest of the day.