CHICAGO -- City officials vowed to
keep hundreds of thousands of students safe when striking teachers hit
the picket lines Monday and school district and teachers union leaders
resumed negotiations on a contract that appeared close to being resolved
over the weekend before the union announced both sides were too far
apart to prevent the district's first strike in 25 years.
The
walkout in the nation's third-largest school district posed a tricky
test for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his city, as parents and school
officials begin the task of trying to ensure nearly 400,000 students are
kept safe.
School officials said they will
open more than 140 schools between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so children
can eat lunch and breakfast in a district where many students receive
free meals. The district asked community organizations to provide
additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries
and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities. But it's
not clear how many families will send their children to the added
programs.
Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he
was deploying police officers to those sites to ensure kids' safety but
also to "deal with any protests that teachers may, in fact, have" while
protecting their rights. He also was taking officers off desk duties and
redeploying them to the streets to deal with potential protests -- and
thousands of students who could be on the streets.
Emanuel said he will work to end the strike quickly.
"We
will make sure our kids are safe, we will see our way through these
issues and our kids will be back in the classroom where they belong,"
Emanuel said Sunday night, not long after the union announced it was
going on strike. "I would like all the parties to do right by our
children. ... Our kids belong in the classroom. The negotiators belong
at the negotiating table and finish their job."
The
two sides were not far apart on compensation but were on other issues,
including health benefits -- teachers want to keep what they have now --
and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students'
standardized test scores, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis
said.
"This is a difficult decision and one we
hoped we could have avoided," she said. "We must do things differently
in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they
so rightfully deserve."
"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong. "
More than 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to hit the picket lines at 6:30 a.m. Monday.
Both
Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. The walkout comes at a
time when unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come
under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely
monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.
The
timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief
of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders
and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a
larger role in fundraising for President Obama's re-election campaign.
As
the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how
much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will
go while they're at work.
"They're going to
lose learning time," said Beatriz Fierro, whose daughter is in the fifth
grade on the city's Southwest Side. "And if the whole afternoon they're
going to be free, it's bad. Of course you're worried."
School
board President David Vitale first announced Sunday night that talks
had broken off, despite the school board offering what he called a fair
and responsible contract that would cover four years and meet most of
the union's demands. He said the talks with the union had been
"extraordinarily difficult."
Emanuel said the district had offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.
Lewis said she would not prioritize the issues, saying that they all were important to teachers.
That
included concern over a new evaluation that she said would be based too
heavily on students' standardized test scores, which she said would be
unfair to teachers because it could not adequately account for outside
factors that affect student performance, including poverty, violence and
homelessness.
She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years.
City
officials said they did not believe that was true but said the union
would not tell them how they came to that conclusion. Emanuel said the
evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and
administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard
said the evaluation was mandated by state law but "was not developed to
be a hammer," but to help teachers get better.
The strike is the latest flashpoint in a very public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.
When
he took office last year, Emanuel inherited a school district facing a
$700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration
rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to
reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for
lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union
refused.
Emanuel, who promised a longer school
day during his campaign, then attempted to go around the union by
asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90
minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the
union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.
The
district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school
day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off
rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised
hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining
continued on the other issues.
Associated Press