Tolerance

What happens to CPS Sports Programs if....

Parents, teachers, coaches, and individuals stop tolerating
tardiness
swearing
smoking
too much video games
too much reality TV
too much junk food
unfunded retirement benefits for teachers
overmarket salaries for teachers
lack of quality CPS elementary school sports programs (besides basketball)
new CPS schools built without adequate athletic facilities
not enough effort to make booster clubs
not doing homework
free lunches that are not actually free
secretarys, band instructors, and drivers instructors earning over $80,000
little effort to attract alumni money
poor school websites
picking winners and losers

You can't change what you tolerate

Comments

[TE]

Really Neil. I teach PE, coach 3 sports, run a before school program, and have a Master's degree. What is wrong with me making over 80k (86k to be exact)? I've earned it!

[urbanleftbehind]

If not for dual brake sets in practice cars, Drivers Ed teachers would be worth over 200K/year.

[well said]

well stated TE

[@TE]

Have you noticed the unemployment rate in Illinois is about 12%, for under the age of 30 it's much higher. Also, lots of people taking only part time jobs because they can't find full time jobs.

So what is wrong with you is that the CPS can find a replacement for your PE job and pay them 30% less of your PE job salary.

What's wrong is that the 30% savings could be used for other things like paying for a better weight room for the school.

[haha]

To the PE Teacher that earns over $80,000 teaching PE. What makes you so special that you feel you deserve to be over paid?
A Masters degree adds no more value teaching PE, when I can hire a fresh college grad with a BS for much less salary.

[Part 2]

How fit are your PE students?
How many city trophies to your sports teams win?
How successful is your before school program?

If what you do produces great results then maybe you deserve the high salary. Is not, why should we pay you so much?

The problem with pay in the CPS is that if you are below average, average, or above average, it does not matter, you get the same salary. This is because salary is largely based on years of service not on how good you actually are. We tolerate this system and you tell me, are you satisfied with the results in the CPS?

[TE]

I do not make 86k teaching but I do make just under 86k doing the following:

Teaching Salary- 73k
Fall Sport HS- 4600.00
Winter Sport Elem.- 1200.00
Spring Sport HS- 4600.00
Before School Elem-2500.00

My schedule is as follows:
7:30-8:55am-3/4 grade intra-murals
9:00am- 2:45pm- Teach all day minus a 35 min prep and 20 min lunch.
Fall and Spring Season: Practice from 3:30pm til 5:30. Typically leave by 6pm. On game days this is obviously later because of the bus and traveling.
Winter Season: Practice 3pm til 4:30pm. Game days my day typically ends at 6pm. Not too bad.

Whether you believe I have earned my income is your prerogative.

@ Part 2

How fit are your PE students?
Working at the grammar school level it is very difficult to measure how fit our students are when they only have PE once a week.This is totally out of my control. How fit would you or I be if we only worked out once a week?
How many city trophies to your sports teams win?
My grammar school owns 17 city titles. I was the coach of 9 of those teams. We have one of the best overall grammar school sports programs. I just started coaching at the HS level about 2 yrs ago and our team had a winning season in its first year. My fall sport team improved by 300% in terms of win totals from the previous year. I am dedicated to improving the program of both those HS teams. Only the future will tell.

How successful is your before school program?
I believe this program is very successful. It is the biggest reason why our sports program does so well. We have and develop players for a total of 6 years assuming they started in 3rd grade. The program services roughly 60-70 kids throughout the year in flag football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, and softball.

I agree with you and your statement, "The problem with pay in the CPS is that if you are below average, average, or above average, it does not matter, you get the same salary. This is because salary is largely based on years of service not on how good you actually are." I know that coaches have been caught saying they played a game and really did. They call the other coach and they agree to say one team won and report a phony score. They have been caught, busted, and are still coaching. That is ridiculous.

[ya digG?]

tolerance of drinkin is iight

preach on

[question]

How much control does Calvin Davis and his department have to change these things and how much is on the school level?

[Teachers make a difference]

We are teachers because we educate and do our jobs. don't hate. unless you have a degree and can talk, don't hate us because we went to college. Get in a car with a BAD driver whose parents don't have a car and with no practice and I teach him to drive worth my $28 an hour what can you say about that . Getting very tired of security guards cheating kids out of practicing and coaching the right way and don't push grade thats why a lot of players can't move on to college or drop out

[keep it responsible]

What needs to be not tolerated is the poor administrators that allow all of this to go on. A good administrator will recognize a poor teacher and dismiss them. A good administrator will see waste and cut it. A good coach and teacher will address poor health and addictive video game playing.

The problem is that the administration tolerates too much and allows these low lifes to thrive and endure in this system too long and then they can't get rid of them.

Two points need to be made-
1. If you want to pay teachers less, you're going to get what you pay for.

2. Not all teachers and coaches are poor at their job. They don't always tolerate it, they speak up. This is one point about unions that I hope everyone agrees with. Those who speak up often find themselves at the scrutiny of their principal. If it were not for the unions, a lot of teachers that do speak up would not be in a position to speak up about such intolerance. THE BEST WAY TO CHANGE SOMETHING, THE ONLY WAY, IS TO BE PART OF IT. You cannot change something from the outside.

Posting your opinion on here isn't going to do anything but alienate those of us who like the site for its sports coverage. Your opinion isn't going to change anything. The only thing it does is rallies lay people against educators and makes it look like all teachers/educators/coaches are bad for society. It is very irresponsible reporting in my opinion.

[CPS student]

I'm a CPS student and whenever my history teacher asks the class if they've done the assinged reading 3 or 4 people out of a class of 30 raise their hand. In my assingment notebook it says that ny senior year students should be doing between 3 or 4 hours of homework every night, i'll tell you no one is doing anywhere near that.

[Responsible is right]

Well said. This is most definitely a blog and nowhere near a credible source of news and information.

For every thing we shouldn't tolerate in CPS there is also a positive that usually goes unnoticed. Do some real investigating and report on those wonderful stories rather than taking the easy way out and highlighting how the system is broken.

[CPSfan]

I'm sure you guys probably don't know but ole Calvin is the front runner for the Shepard HS athletic director job...going to lose him

[Cal Cal may leave]

Wow!! If Calvin Davis leaves CPS will see how valuable he is. Shepard must be paying a lot of money to get him, but he's doing the work of 3 administrators right now with sports driver ed and physical education. He also does debate and decathlon. Being an AD for one school would be a breeze for this guy. He was an outstanding coach with Moon-Cookie Lewis getting DuSable, of all schools to the city's final 4 in 98. He certainly could build a winner in the south suburbs as he knows how studs are recruited. I actually hope he stays. He has haters as any top person does, but he has balls and CPS would miss him. Just my opinion.

[payaso]

@keep it responsible, very well said. If it weren't for union protection, all well-intentioned teachers who speak up against administrative corruption would immediately be cut.

[bottom line]

I think Neil should do a survey to see how many coaches will continue to coach with the imposed longer school day. My bet 30-40%. Good luck CPS... Got lights??? Are selective enrollment school kids gonna do 2 hours of homework at 8 after a long day of school/practice? The shitter awaits, even more so.

[@Cal Cal]

Shepard's loss would be CPS's gain. See you later Calvin. It will be great to see a real leader in his position. He does 3 jobs horribly.

Will you still be on his dick when he's in the suburbs.

If he does get the job, I bet he won't last long. No buddy system there to cover up your BS.

[Security Guards not allowed]

Haters like you will never be more than a un - certified ghetto assistant coach at a low level program. Your language defines you. You are just the type who should not be working with kids. I bet you don't even have a degree or ASEP certification. I can tell you are ghetto and uneducated. You have no clue about what it takes to run a district-wide program, let alone 3, and I'd bet a million that you, my man will never be at the level we're discussing. This discussion is waaay over your ignorant ghetto head. You gotta be a security-guard-coach, right.

[Bad Rumors]

Sorry to tell you but C. Davis isn't going anywhere. I just called someone close to him and asked about this. The person who started this needs to check his source.

[good bye I hope]

Clavin ain't going anywhere. He can't hide from parents like he does in the CPS and would get fired because he doesn't do shit. Take him can't get anyone wrost

[@goodbye]

Learn how to spell and express a complete thought before you critique something. You have right to your opinion but at least learn how to spell. My goodness.

here's my opinion. It's not an easy job by any means. Behind the scenes the sports director does more work than anyone knows as he works to see that every sport runs well. Think for a moment how it feels to be responsible for every school, every sport,every athletic director, every official and every coach. throw in all the issues and problem from all schools and all contests and events. You have no idea.

Most don't realize this comes with the territory for a director but they couldn't do it. Critics would last a very short time. I would not want that job

[Notice]

Notice that the Tolerance list is about 20 items long. There is only one line about high teachers salaries and guess which line is attacked and complained about by teachers. Your right the one about high teachers salaries.

See teachers complain and bitch about anyone that even dares to attack the sacred cow of teachers salaries.

Have you noticed Illinois is in a giant financial messs. Unemployment, foreclosures.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-16-of-homes-sold-in-illinois-in-3q-were-in-foreclosure-20120126,0,6701982.story

The solution always seems to be to put more money in the system, pay more for educators. Yet that is not working. Even Bill Cosby is against putting more money in a broken system:

Here is what Bill Cosby had to say in an article

“Cuts, cuts, cuts, that is what we hear, but education is not a thing that big bucks happens to be the answer [to]. The answer is — with education comes teaching children to respect and love questions, looking for the answer, reading,” he said, explaining that these responsibilities fall on the parents, teachers, and school officials.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/bill-cosby/2012/01/25/bill-cosby-says-more-spending-education-isn-t-answer#ixzz1kZNpwxxu

[lets be fair]

Their is no possible way that Calvin can solve every problem in the disaster that is CPS sports. But he should take control of the obvious ones. Whether it be the Harper Track team, the Julian transfers or the free agency period in CPS basketball.

[In the know]

The list is very good at pointing out flaws in the CPS sports programs. When you try to change a program from the ground up it is very difficult. I do not see the point of putting teacher salaries on the list because most of us can agree that coaching stipends are not the reason why many of us coach, if that were true we could go to the suburbs.

[Bureacracy at its finest]

Sadly coaching stipends are the reason many coaches in CPS coach, and therein lies the problem. There is no differentiating between coaches who put in thousands of extra hours a year to make their teams the best and look out for their athletes in all aspects of their lives and the coaches who complete the minimum number of games/meets to get a stipend.

The only thing that determines salary is the sport and the level. So cross country coaches that are competing with the suburbs and getting teams down state make less than the coaches in CPS who don't do shit. But of course they make the pay for XC coaches low because of all the shitbags that throw together a bunch of kids, don't train them, run 2-3 meets and collect a paycheck.

How about this from CPS - if you don't show up to games/meets, you don't get paid. If you don't demonstrate improvement in your program, you don't get paid. You would quickly separate the real coaches from the money grubbers AND would have more money to spend on good coaches.

But it'll never happen because it's a giant bureacracy and the good coaches are busy coaching not trying to work their way up the system

[In the know]

Great points bureacracy, this year some football teams that forfeited games at all levels had their pay docked at the level of missed games. For example, if you had 7 soph. football games scheduled and forfeited 1 you lost 1/7th of your pay, and so on.
At least that is what the coaches were told.

[So]

WHat happened to all the Cross Country coaches that failed to bring their teams to the IHSA Regionals this year?

[Nada]

Absolutely nothing...

[Sports/Longer School Day]

Coaching stipends are adjusted based on forfeitures and no-shows. Many comment here who never read the rules on transfers or for sports in general. It's amazing how much people in sports don't know. I think CPS is a giant bureaucracy but it runs a better sports program than New York or LA.

It's successful too with 9 state titles in basketball the last 5 years and one in soccer this year. A number of individual state titles in wrestling, track, cross country, gymnastics and tennis. CPS Sports aint that bad. Kids are doing well at state except football, swimming and baseball. The programs are great for kids development including scholarships. Keep the faith.

My question is; what happens to sports with the longer school day?

[lets be fair]

Remember, Calvin did rule the Julian football players ineligible but they over-ruled him. I think that opened the door for more transfer basketball players to become eligible this year.

[A CPS football and basketball fan]

Stipends are the reason teachers want to coach? You have to be kidding me...
The stipends are miniscule compared to other programs, public and private. It works out to about $5 / hour for most sports, and that is for being at school at 600 am and after school unit 600-700 pm before and during the season for the sport.
The last time I looked, it cost as much money and took as much time to get a degree in PE or a related field as any other college filed of study.
You can't have it both ways- bitch about the quality of sports programs, bitch about the salaries of the staff, then refuse to fund booster clubs and let your local school's facilities go to hell in a hand basket.
One last comment on Neil's list-
The line "unfunded teacher pensions" is the real killer. If CPS actually has to fund those obligations, and they have to put more money there soon, there will be NOTHING left for extracurricular activities like sports.
Schools are going to have to self fund, and that means parents will either make this a priority and contribute or programs will go away.
In the Chicago Catholic league, pay as you go is a way of life for student athlete families. fundraising is ongoing, and the expectation is you give all you can to the program your son/daughter is in.
The schools devote real money to their sports, and it shows in the facilities and the outcome.

[State of Illinois has lowest credit rating among 50 states-]

Illinois has 6.8 Billion in unpaid bills. It is only a matter of time before they will not be able to pay the CPS the money that is owes them.

see wall street journal article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577164944279702590.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[broke ass state]

These broke dicks are already stiffing school districts around the state. Refusing to pay money that is owed.

[Darius Smith Fan]

State runner Darius Smith was known to play upwards of 12 hours of Halo: Combat Evolved every day. He would compete in tournaments almost every weekend and get killstreaks. Clearly, as long as it doesn't effect his other activities such as school, it shouldn't be an issue.

[^@Darius Smith Fan]

Darius Smith is a fast runner, an avid video gamer, and he also apparently did not focus on academics enough because University of Houston found him academically inelgible.

Maybe if he hit the books instead of EXCESSIVE gaming the situation would be different.