while i understand your point, i still dont think teachers should be paid as much as most americans working corporate jobs that go 9-5 5 days a week all year. teaching is a really easy job, there's no denying it.
The main issue this time around is the
removal of class caps- this effectively means that they can cram as many kids into a room as they feel like, as long as the door shuts behind them. Not only will this drop the standard of education, because, I mean come on, 30 kids is enough already, but 40 or 50? How in the love of forget does a teacher give enough attention and answer enough questions for 50 kids in 50 minutes of class time? Giving attention to every student in a class would mean only one minute per student- that stuff's bad. As a result, educational quality would also drop.
Despite the pay, you should see the state of CPS highscools. Some of the rooms look like utter stuff. As an education budget, teachers are given very limited funds, and there are quite a few who pay out of pocket for necessary supplies. Our Calculus teacher is paying for toolsets for us at his expense because there was no room in the school budget for a classroom set.
There isn't even enough money for enough books for stuff's sake. A lot of our classes we only work in-room because our teachers only have enough books for 30 kids.
Maybe it isn't as bad elsewhere (my suburban school was boss and we had chromebooks instead of normal books) but the chicago public school system is underfunded, and it is very, very apparent.