A weeklong Chicago-style display of tough talk, strong opinions and union exuberance could end this weekend, if the terms of a new contract are acceptable to striking teachers.
That was the hope expressed late in the week by both union and school officials, who said Chicago Teachers Union delegates could agree to end the strike Sunday if they like the terms their leaders worked out with Chicago Public Schools officials. Then, some 350,000 students could return to school Monday.
“We are hopeful to have an agreement to present to the House of Delegates this weekend, and if so approved, to have children back in school on Monday,” said Robert Bloch, the union attorney, as he emerged from a negotiation session Friday. “That’s our hope.”
Board of Education President David Vitale, on his way out of talks minutes later, echoed Bloch, saying both sides had agreed on the framework of a new contract. “We’re all feeling pretty good that as our colleagues on the union side go through their process and we go through ours that we are going to have our kids in school on Monday,” he said.
But, as if to underscore that no deal is done until everyone signs off, Mayor Rahm Emanuel hours later used the term “tentative framework” to describe the blueprint in place Friday. Both Bloch and Vitale noted contract language had yet to be drafted.
CTU President Karen Lewis said delegates at a meeting Friday afternoon were not given details of the agreement. But Lewis said she was “very comfortable” with the terms.
“Our delegates were not interested in blindly signing off on something they have not seen,” she said, although some later expressed frustration at not getting details. “We think it’s a framework that will get us to an agreement.”
Lewis said they did not give details to delegates on the advice of attorneys. “They are very suspicious,” she added. “You have to understand we have been a little burnt by the board in the past. Things go on, things go off.”
Meanwhile, on Saturday, CTU will host what is being billed as a massive “Wisconsin-style” labor rally at noon in the city’s Union Park on the Near West Side.
A vote to end the strike would cap a week of demonstrations that included pickets of schools across the city and outside the offices of aldermen who opposed the strike; rallies of thousands of red-shirt-clad teachers and supporters who encircled City Hall and brought Loop traffic nearly to a halt; and negotiating sessions that sometimes began one morning and extended into the wee hours of the next.
During it all, Emanuel was called a bully and a liar by teachers, Lewis was verbally reprimanded by district officials for describing negotiations as “silly,” and pundits across the nation weighed in on one side or another.
The national attention came because the strike highlighted prominent issues such as the changing status of teachers unions and efforts to reform public education. Presidential politics also came into play, because of Emanuel’s status as a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
As all of that played out in public, negotiators behind closed doors were battling over raises, how teachers are evaluated and the process under which they could be rehired if they are laid off when schools close or consolidate.
Details on how those issues were resolved were scarce, with Vitale, Lewis and Bloch declining to discuss them before a final contract was actually written.
It was clear that teachers would get base salary increases of at least 2 percent for at least the next three years, plus additional increases for experience and further education that Emanuel’s hand-picked school board wanted to eliminate.
Standards for teacher evaluations that could lead to firings would be eased, and some higher-rated teachers could get a better shot at being recalled after layoffs, sources said.
The mayor did get the longer school day he fought so hard to achieve, though six of 181 days in school became half-days during negotiations, sources said. And principals will still have significant power in hiring teachers, they added.
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The contract blueprint “preserves more time for learning in the classroom, provides more support (for) teachers to excel at their craft and gives principals the latitude and responsibility to build an environment in which our children can succeed,” Emanuel said in a written statement.
The teachers strike, the city’s first since 1987, came after more than a year of often contentious relations between union leaders and the mayor, then later the board he appointed.
Nineteen months ago, the union declined to endorse then-mayoral candidate Emanuel. “The fact is Rahm Emanuel does not seem to support publicly funded public education as we know it,” Lewis said at the time.
Emanuel later went to Springfield and won approval of a state law that gave him the right to extend the school day and made it tougher for teachers to strike. Emanuel talked tough about previous union agreements, saying teachers got raises, the city got labor peace and students “got the shaft.”
And the first face-to-face meeting between Emanuel and Lewis was strained, with Lewis afterward accusing the mayor of swearing at her. Then, months after taking office amid tough financial times, the mayor authorized stripping CPS teachers of the 4 percent annual raise guaranteed to them in their previous contract.
Angered by the mayor’s aggressive push to rescind their raises and lengthen the school day without their involvement, teachers fought back. In June, more than 90 percent of the union’s 25,000 members authorized a strike if the two sides could not reach agreement on a contract.
They later set a strike date of midnight Sept. 9, touching off a flurry of negotiations to meet the deadline. The efforts failed, despite the district sweetening its offer to teachers: a 16 percent average salary increase over 4 years and establishing a framework to recall teachers who had been laid off.
After the strike started, the mayor launched a war of words, saying teachers could have continued to negotiate without a walkout. But many parents expressed support for the teachers.
What remains to be seen, if the strike ends Sunday, is how the agreement affects future relations between the union and mayor as the board struggles to find ways to afford the new raises, faces a projected $1 billion deficit in the 2014 school year and contemplates scores of school closings.
Money can be saved over the long run by closing schools or enrolling more students in privately run charter schools, which generally operate at lower costs and sometimes receive outside funding. The contract blueprint “doesn’t limit the growth of charters, or the closure or consolidation of existing schools that will have to take place down the road,” said Ald. Patrick O’Connor, 40th, the mayor’s City Council floor leader.
Tribune reporters Kristen Mack and John Byrne contributed to this report.
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