CHICAGO – As Chicago Public School teachers and supporters head into the fourth day of a strike in the nation’s third-largest school district, Chicago Teachers’ Union president Karen Lewis and school board president David Vitale showed optimistic signs that an agreement could be reached soon.
“We feel like we’re in a pretty good place. We’ve made a lot of progress today. We spent a lot of time on evaluation,” a smiling Lewis told reporters just before midnight on Wednesday. The originally proposed teacher evaluation system –that would be contingent upon students’ success on factors such as standardized tests– has been a hot topic of debate in the contract negotiation talks, along with layoff recalls.
According to Lewis, recent issues of school closings, consolidations and charter school openings continue to affect contract negotiations, especially the issue of recalling teachers who are laid off when schools are consolidated or closed.
“That’s why we have such an issue on recalls,” Lewis said Wednesday.
The union is adamantly against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close over 100 “under-performing” schools, because they will put several unionized teachers out of work.
“That’s a direct attack on the union,” said John Kugler, a union advocate for CPS clinicians who provide “wraparound services” for students which include nurses, psychologists, social workers and other staff.
“We are here as public sector employees. We are here to protect the children’s rights of Chicago, the children’s right to have a fair, free public education and have the resources they need to have an opportunity in this society.”
Lewis said that experienced and dedicated teachers, many of them African-American, could see their careers destroyed by the district’s plans to close these schools, since they work in many of the schools that would be closed or consolidated.
Meanwhile, on day three, there wasn’t much debate on the district’s proposal to raise salaries by 16 percent over the course of four years. Vitale contends that school closings and consolidations could free up some of the funds needed for those raises.
“Dealing with that excess capacity will yield some of the money that we would need…look at what our needs are and try to figure out how aggressive or unaggressive we would have to be,” he said Wednesday night.
Wednesday afternoon, CPS officials released their latest proposal. The CPS board of education has honored teachers’ request to re-structure raises in the newest version. During the first year of a teacher’s tenure, evaluations may not result in dismissal of the teacher. Evaluations performed later may be appealed.
“The new proposal also removes the district’s ability to rescind raises because of an economic crisis,” reported the Chicago Tribune. Last year, the board of education denied teachers a 4 percent raise.
Earlier in the day, civil rights activist Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. said he had met with both sides separately, offered to help mediate and urged them to come to an agreement soon. “The longer this battle takes place, the more painful it will be,” Jackson said to reporters early Wednesday evening.
Over 26,000 teachers remain off the job Thursday leaving 350,000 students out of school as contract negotiations continue.
Renita D. Young is a multimedia journalist based in Chicago. Follow her on Twitter @RenitaDYoung