Less than two months into a new school year, teacher strikes have popped up in Chicago and four suburbs — with a handful of potential walkouts on the horizon — despite a new state law that was expected to make it harder for work stoppages to occur.
Similar themes have surfaced in each district — the latest during last week’s one-day strike in Highland Park’s North Shore School District 112 — but officials on both sides agree that often, the issues go beyond disputes over raises. Before this year, there had been only one Chicago-area strike since 2009.
School officials say they must find new ways to prepare for uncertain budget scenarios amid a sluggish economy and growing outcry against tax increases. Teachers claim school boards are taking advantage of the recent recession, yanking back long-earned benefits and undermining respect for their profession.
“There is a mentality that schools are just failing, failing, failing and there is no focus on the successes,” said Jen Johnson, a history teacher at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “Contracts are the only way we can express our frustration and fight back.”
District 112’s brief strike ended after 17 hours of negotiations. Chicago Public Schools and districts in Lake Forest, Evergreen Park and Crystal Lake have largely settled on new contracts after walkouts. Meanwhile, unions in Carpentersville, Geneva, Grayslake and Huntley each have authorized strikes while continuing negotiations.
Experts say the recession and state funding cuts over the past few years led teachers to agree in some cases to one-year contracts, salary freezes or fewer demands. A new law that requires downstate and suburban districts to sit down with a mediator and publicly disclose their last, best offer as a precursor to a strike appears to have had little effect on the unions’ decision to walk out, experts say.
“Everyone was showing some patience and constraint in the beginning,” said Ben Schwarm, deputy executive director with the Illinois Association of School Boards. “My guess is there were teacher bargaining units that didn’t ask for much a few years ago … hoping things would improve. Now things didn’t improve, but they’re back at the table.”
Yet union leaders maintain that economic conditions are not that bad in some communities where strikes have occurred. They accuse school administrators of hoarding large fund balances that could be used to compensate employees. School officials maintain that they need those savings accounts for capital projects or potential state pension reform.
“In some places like in Evergreen Park, we see a district in excellent shape,” said Dan Montgomery, president of Illinois Federation of Teachers. “They wanted unbelievable concessions. I think some of it is the economy — even in districts that are doing well, they propose massive takeaways just because they think they can.”
Charles McBarron, spokesman for the Illinois Education Association, said “cutting costs as a philosophical point as opposed to being a need in the district is bad for the kids, and our members won’t stand for it.”
“When districts try to impose radical ideas, it is not surprising that teachers will try to push back,” McBarron said, citing as an example an attempt by some school boards to eliminate or dramatically change salary schedules.
In Lake Forest High School District 115, teachers argued that a board proposal to move new teachers up the career ladder more slowly by adopting a two-tier salary schedule would hinder the district’s ability to compete with other North Shore districts.
After a five-day strike, Lake Forest teachers agreed to lower raises than they had requested. Administrators announced that a committee will be tasked with recommending a new salary schedule consistent with recent pension-reform legislation.
In Lake Forest, and elsewhere, some residents have been vocal in opposing any salary increases that they perceive could raise their taxes.
Highland Park resident Leonard Patke, 54, for one, said he believes the teacher salary schedules are unsustainable, given the shaky economy and the state’s underfunded pension system.
He and his wife lost their jobs, he said. Their real estate taxes have doubled over the past two decades, to more than $11,000 annually, he said.
“I believe in education,” Patke, a former trader, said. “The fact of the matter is, people can only do so much. If you are going to tax them to the point where you can’t afford to live here, what’s the point?”
Some theorized that teachers in the suburbs were emboldened by the success of the Chicago Teachers Union, which after a seven-day strike in September agreed to a new three-year contract that ended a bitter dispute with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over school reforms. It was the first strike by teachers in the nation’s third-largest city in 25 years.
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“Obviously, CPS set a precedent,” said Sandy Randles, a parent in Crystal Lake-based Prairie Grove Consolidated School District 46.
Teachers went on strike for one day there before reaching a tentative agreement. In an unusual move, officials opened the last day of those negotiations to the public.
The teachers union, however, rejected the notion that they were emboldened by other districts. Kate Bieschke, a seventh-grade language arts teacher, said that although the union was happy for the success of Chicago teachers, it did not factor into the Crystal Lake teachers’ decision to strike.
“Whenever you’re faced with an issue of what is the just or true or right thing to do, there’s no bad time to stand up for what’s right,” Bieschke said.
One labor relations expert said he believes educator salaries are just the tipping point.
“I think teachers across the country just feel miserable,” said Steven Ashby, a Chicago-based labor relations professor with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“They feel all the problems of the recession — and the problems we had before the recession — of poverty, unemployment and the inner-city segregation. All these factors have dramatic impact on teachers to teach young children. They are not things they cause but are things they are blamed for.”
While teacher strikes may seem abundant this year, the numbers fall far short of those experienced before 1984, when collective bargaining became legal for education employees, officials said.
“In preceding years, when strikes were illegal in Illinois, there were as many as 40 strikes in a single year,” according to a 1985 report by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, which reported about 350 mediations that year.
Retired Highland Park teacher Paul Grant was one of the negotiators during a teachers strike in the 1980s. The district later consolidated with two others to become North Shore School District 112.
“It’s never just about money,” said Grant of Des Plaines, who joined the picket line Tuesday to support teachers. He said teachers face new pressures, such as the growing emphasis on test scores to gauge performance.
After the last strike, “it took the district 10 years to recover,” Grant said. “You will have a percentage of teachers who finish out the year and end teaching.”
Under the new law, residents can read the final contract proposals offered by school boards and unions once they have declared an impasse on the board’s website, at http://www2.illinois.gov/elrb/Pages/FinalOffers.aspx.
“My guess is this is going to improve things in the future,” said Schwarm of the Illinois Association of School Boards. “I think all final offers will be more reasonable in the future and these strikes will be shorter lived.”
Tribune reporter Sally Ho contributed.