The Chicago Board of Education, working to avoid a Monday strike, made its first money offer to teachers shortly before midnight Friday, and Chicago Teachers Union President Jacqueline Vaughn said she was encouraged enough by the proposal to continue contract talks for at least another day.
Vaughn said the board had made a ”nice offer” and put ”some money on the table.” She characterized the proposal as ”a one-time-only offer.”
But she said she is putting off her threat to terminate the union`s contract for at least one more day, a move that would cost the school system at least $50 million and make its financial plight more desperate.
Neither Vaughn nor Schools Supt. Ted Kimbrough would say how much money the board`s offer involved, but Kimbrough said the board would have to make
”some very difficult cuts at the school sites” to pay for the proposal.
”There`s nowhere else we can cut,” Kimbrough said, raising the possibility that educational programs, school supplies or building repairs could be affected.
Talks between the board and the union were scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. Saturday.
The announcement that the board had moved off its long-standing insistence that it had no money for any sort of teacher pay raise injected the first note of optimism in the showdown between it and the union.
Earlier in the day, the Chicago School Finance Authority had dealt a surprise blow to Mayor Richard Daley`s efforts to avert a teachers strike by refusing to ease its restrictions on money the school board would like to use to raise teachers` pay.
The move left Daley speechless, and it upset at least one state senator who thought the authority would cooperate with efforts to head off a scheduled Monday strike.
The authority, which oversees the board`s $2.3 billion budget, said allowing the board to count some $35 million in future state reimbursements in its current budget in order to pay a raise this year would only exacerbate its projected $178 million deficit next year.
The board, the Chicago Teachers Union, state legislators and reform groups contend the authority should have allowed the accounting shift so that the board could offer a pay increase of almost 4 percent.
The school board and the union were in negotiations Friday night, trying to reach a settlement to a 3-month dispute over a teachers` raise this year.
”I care about the children, but I am not going to be a party to a school system going into insolvency,” said authority member David Heller. ”Some group has to say enough is enough.”
The five-member authority participated in meetings with the mayor and state legislators on Wednesday and Thursday, after it said it was willing to discuss the restriction. But authority chairman Philip Block said the authority never said that it would compromise.
The authority`s decision was ”disturbing,” said state Sen. Arthur Berman (D-Chicago).
Berman and several other legislators had a mini-summit with the authority and the mayor on Thursday.
After that meeting, the authority agreed to remain open to discussions, Berman said, adding that he thought the authority would continue to negotiate in ”good faith.”
Berman said the authority`s reason for not easing the restriction was a
”fine principle, but that doesn`t mean they couldn`t be party to discussions. Discussion on the eve of a strike doesn`t compromise their principles.”
Daley had no comment on the authority`s action, even though he had earlier expressed support for the authority`s position.
On Friday, the mayor met Vaughn, the head of the teachers union, and other union officials, and he later met with the entire school board along with Kimbrough.
Daley emerged from both meetings saying that both sides must be willing to compromise.
For the union, that will mean a raise smaller than the 7 percent increase called for in the contract, which the union has indicated it could accept.
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For the board, compromise will mean further budget cuts, a move the board insists it can`t make without causing further injury to classrooms.
After meeting Daley, board President Clinton Bristow said the group would re-examine the budget.
”We`re going to do everything we can to avoid a strike,” Bristow said.
”We`re going to look at a number of different possibilities.”
On Friday, Berman and the other lawmakers had another set of meetings designed to move the three sides-the school board, teachers union and finance authority-closer together. They met separately with the board and the union.
The group of 10 legislators, most of them black and Hispanic, seemed most pleased with their hourlong session with Vaughn and her representatives at union headquarters.
As the meeting occurred behind closed doors, a union worker, preparing for a walkout, strutted through the lobby carrying placards with ”On Strike” written in English and Spanish.
”The union is willing to give,” Berman said. ”That means they are not holding everyone to the fire for their full 7 percent contract.”
Vaughn, after her meeting with the mayor, said a strike is still possible, and the solution to the crisis lies solely in the hands of the board.
”We will do what we have to do when the board gives us an offer,”
Vaughn said.
Friday morning, legislators met with Kimbrough and the school board for a two-hour session at board headquaters.
”It was a very good meeting,” Bristow said. ”These are individuals of influence, individuals that can have some impact on helping us to resolve