CHICAGO — The Chicago Public Schools system
sought a preliminary injunction on Monday to end the city teachers’ strike
immediately, maintaining that state law “expressly prohibits” teachers from striking
over noneconomic issues, including layoffs and teacher evaluations.
But a judge declined to hear the city’s
case on Monday, said Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department.
A court hearing has been set for Wednesday morning, so hopes for a return of
students to classrooms as soon as possible this week may again rest on the
nearly 800 union representatives scheduled to vote on Tuesday afternoon on
whether to lift the strike. If delegates do not vote to lift the strike, city
lawyers will be ready the next morning to make their case.
On Sunday, the teachers’ union announced
that it would continue striking, even after the union’s leadership reached a
tentative deal with public schools administrators on Friday.
The announcement came after nearly 800
union representatives, the House of Delegates, had convened for several hours
to decide whether to end a walkout that has drawn national attention in the
debate over teacher evaluations, job security and the length of a school day.
“This union is a democratic institution, which values the opportunity
for all members to make decisions together. The officers of this union follow
the lead of our members,” Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union,
said in a statement on Sunday. “The issues raised in this contract were too
important, had consequences too profound for the future of our public education
system and for educational fairness for our students, parents and members, for
us to simply take a quick vote based on a short discussion. Therefore, a clear
majority voted to take this time, and we are unified in this decision.”
The delegates voted to reconvene on Tuesday
afternoon.
The decision forced 350,000 students in the
nation’s third-largest school system to begin another week without classes and
with no strong indication of when they might resume.
In some neighborhoods on Monday, teachers,
apparently worried about losing support from Chicagoans, handed out letters to
passers-by.
“Thank you for your continued patience and support,” a letter handed
out near William H. Ray Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side read. “We
understand that our work stoppage has created disruption and uncertainty in the
lives of your children and families. Please trust that we are doing everything
we can to encourage a speedy conclusion to our contract talks. This has been a
disruption for our families as well.”
At least a few parents appeared to have had
enough. A group of parents was planning to gather at the city’s Merchandise
Mart on Monday afternoon to protest the strike and encourage teachers to go
back to school.
“If you are sick of having your kids out of school, having your voice
ignored and being spoken about in the third person, I encourage you to join me
today,” said a message from a parent on CPS Obsessed, a Web site that focuses
on public schools issues.
The sense among teachers on Monday was that
the union delegates were being unfairly rushed to endorse a lengthy contract.
“There was probably a sense that the teachers’ union had been
outfoxed and the negotiators should never have raised expectations about
Monday,” said Ira Abrams, an English teacher at Chicago Military Academy, a
selective public high school.
But other teachers said the strike, which
has mixed local concerns about pay and working conditions with a protest
against an educational reform agenda that stretches far beyond Chicago, did not
necessarily need to continue for a debate about testing and teacher evaluations
to go on.
“The general consensus from me and all my colleagues is that we want
a fair contract and we want to get back in the classroom as soon as possible,”
said Walter Kinderman, a chemistry teacher at Walter Payton College Prep, a
selective high school.
While Mr. Kinderman said he did not believe
that student performance on standardized tests was a fair way to measure
teachers, he said, “I don’t know if I feel that teachers can’t resolve these
issues without getting back into the classroom if we have a good-faith proposal
from the Board of Education to look at what our concerns are.”
Many Chicagoans had assumed school would
start again on Monday, after union leaders and city officials reached the
outlines of a deal on Friday, ending what had been days of long and sometimes
contentious talks.
But inside the closed-door meeting of the
union’s House of Delegates on Sunday, opinion was split. Some delegates wanted
to accept the deal and return to school immediately, while others said they
needed time to digest its details, which they had not known until Sunday’s
meeting. Still others objected to the new terms of the contract entirely,
suggesting that a resolution of this entire chapter may yet be far from reach.
“I think everybody wants to be back in the classroom, but I think
everyone is nervous about a bad contract,” Kevin Hough, one of the delegates,
said as he left the meeting on this city’s South Side, where delegates had
decided in a “standing vote” to continue their strike. A clear majority, those
present said, wanted to wait. “In the end I think it’s wise for members to have
a day to review the contract,” Mr. Hough said.
The decision infuriated school system
officials, who had advised parents on Friday to be ready to return their
children to school on Monday, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has suggested since
the teachers began striking a week ago that they ought to return to the
classroom even as negotiators finished the contract. He deemed the strike
“illegal on two grounds,” saying that it was called over issues that teachers
are not legally permitted to strike about and that it endangers the health and
safety of children.
“I will not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as
pawns in an internal dispute within a union,” Mr. Emanuel said in a statement.
“This was a strike of choice and is now a delay of choice that is wrong for our
children. Every day our kids are kept out of school is one more day we fail in
our mission: to ensure that every child in every community has an education that
matches their potential.”
As they had a week ago when the strike
began, schools officials said Sunday that they would open 147 schools with
nonunion workers as a contingency plan for children with nowhere else to go.
Attendance at those alternative programs had been low in recent days, as
parents said they felt uncertain about sending their children to schools they
did not know and supervisors they had not met.
Sunday’s developments came as a setback to
the union’s bargaining team, which felt it had secured an agreement its
delegates might accept, even if it did not quell every concern voiced at
protests across the city over the last week.
The earliest that schools could open would
be Wednesday. Eventually, some 26,000 union members will need to vote on
whether to ratify the new contract, but the delegates had been expected to end
the strike well before a vote could be completed.
It is unclear whether the tentative
agreement merely needs study by union delegates and members, or whether its
terms are in more serious jeopardy. All along, the contract fight here has
focused on an wide array of issues, including teacher evaluations, job
security, pay, benefits and more.
Earlier, negotiators for the schools and
for the union had seemed satisfied with the tentative deal they had hashed out.
Both sides were claiming victory about its contents.
Leaders from the school system said the
most important provisions for changes — shifts pressed most notably by Mayor
Emanuel — lived on in the latest proposal: students here would attend school
for more hours and more days a year than before; principals would decide which
teachers were hired; and teachers would be evaluated, in part, based on student
test scores.
But Ms. Lewis and the union negotiators
said their strongest wishes were intact in the proposal they brought to
delegates on Sunday. Among their claimed victories: Teacher raises were to be
maintained for those who seek additional education and for those with a certain
experience level; the schools would agree to hire additional teachers to handle
longer school days; and most experienced teachers could not be fired for the
first year of the new evaluation system, which would be something of a test
run.
The proposed contract — a three-year
arrangement with an option for a fourth — would have given an average teacher a
more than 17 percent raise if it ran all four years, more than had been offered
a week ago, the school system said. It was uncertain how the schools were going
to pay for raises, which were predicted to cost in the “high $300 million”
range at a time when the system has a significant budget deficit, estimated at
$1 billion next year. Chicago Public Schools officials say an average teacher
here makes $76,000 a year, though union officials have said the figure is
lower.
On Sunday, as David Stieber, a delegate,
left the meeting, he said he wanted more time to examine the contract in all
its detail. He said he also wanted other teachers at his school on the city’s
South Side to have a chance to look, and see what they thought.
Of the decision to continue the strike, he
said, “We’re showing you an example of true democracy, and that means talking
to everybody — even if that takes a little extra time.”
Motoko Rich contributed reporting from
Sebring, Ohio.
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