The Waukegan teachers strike headed into its sixth school day today after contract talks ended late Wednesday without a resolution.
Representatives from Waukegan District 60 and the teachers union are due to resume negotiations this morning with a federal mediator.
Late Wednesday, an Illinois Federation of Teachers statement reported “little progress” from the day’s contract talks and said the district “continues to move slowly as if there were not 17,000 children out of school.”
District 60 Superintendent Donaldo Batiste, however, said the two sides had a “positive dialogue” where proposals and counter-proposals were exchanged.
“At the end of the day, I believe we can all agree that the compromise will be found somewhere in the middle … to avert a long, drawn-out strike that no one really wants to see happen,” he wrote in a statement on the district’s website.
Batiste said that while teachers are “a critical part of learning,” the district “cannot sacrifice our ability to invest in the programs and resources our teachers need to educate our students if w sacrifice our students’ ability to succeed.”
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Salaries and health benefits have been the main sticking points since before the teachers walked out on Oct. 2. About 2,000 people are off the job because of the strike.