Ohioans should be closely watching what happens in Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to supporting unions. He is, after all, the former Chief of Staff to President Obama who attracts significant support from most major public sector unions. However, he may well be in the fight of his political life as he battles the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) over a new contract.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) strike started last Monday after the CTU and the Public school administrators could not reach a contract agreement after ten months of negotiations. Some of the key issues from the negotiations are job security, compensation and health care benefits, and a new way to evaluate teachers. The evaluation, in particular, has become the major sticking point.

This strike has negatively impacted 350,000 kids who have missed school and forced parents to scramble for childcare arrangements.

The strike has also caused a rift between the CTU and Mayor Emanuel who called it “A strike of choice and the wrong choice for our children.” The CPS made an offer to the CTU of a 16% increase in pay for the teachers over the next four years but remain in talks about job security for the teachers.

The two sides have come slightly closer to an agreement after the CPS agreed to make changes to the evaluation system. Under the latest CPS plan, 35 percent of each teacher’s annual performance rating will be based on measurable “student growth.” Twenty percent will be based on test scores, and the remainder (15 percent) will be a teacher-developed ratings measure.

However, this is where the problem lies. It seems as if the CPS are giving in to ridiculously high demands from the CTU. It bears pointing out that the average salary of a Chicago Public School teacher is over $70,000 before benefits are added in. This is around double what the average Chicagoan makes ($30,023) in a city with an unemployment rate over 11%.

According to the Illinois Policy Institute, Chicago Public School Teachers are overpaid by 31% already when compared to teachers in other states after factoring in the pay per hour of instruction.

As Ohio saw through our Senate Bill 5 debate over collective bargaining, the question becomes when are public sector workers demanding too much in a time of economic challenges? Already, layoffs and draconian budget cuts are being proposed in districts around the state due to an inability to tackle the fundamental issues surrounding compensation packages for teachers.

And the unions and education establishment have long resisted merit based evaluations and pay here in Ohio.

Admittedly, there need to be legitimate protections from entirely subjective and unfair acts by administrators. Yet, the idea that teachers are entirely different from every other type of worker that exists strains credulity. It may take work, but a system that is fair to teachers and taxpayers is possible. Ohio’s own evaluation system for teachers is slowly being developed and brought online; involving a great deal of negotiation and debate between teachers’ unions and education officials.

Unions are resisting change and drawing lines in the sand in Chicago but the demand for accountability and reform is not going away. The question you have to ask, however, is whether the system really has the best interest of the students in mind.