That is what used to be North High School in Worcester, Massachusetts. (It's condos now, of course.) My father worked there, as a teacher and as an administrator, for more than 30 years. (His office used to be that window next to the last red door on the left.) It was a good school that drew its students from tough neighborhoods. My father loved his work, and the kids loved him.

I am not flexible about this. If you want to look tough at the expense of public-school teachers, you are a snob or a coward, or perhaps both. Every member of this MSNBC panel that Digby found, including all the liberals and all the Democrats thereon, can bite me, seriously. If I have to read one more smug, Ivy League writer from Slate talking, as the big strike goes on, about public-school teachers as though they were unruly hired help, I may hit someone with a fish. Let Matt Yglesias do 20 percent more work for four percent less pay and see how he likes it. The idea that, say, "Chuck" Lane cares more about "the kids" than do the people walking the picket lines in Chicago is damned near close to obscene.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/chicago-teacher-strike-12647402#ixzz26SCE57px