Chicago's 350,000 public school kids will
return to classes Wednesday following agreement by striking teachers to
end their walkout after seven days.
Teacher
union delegates voted in a private meeting Tuesday to suspend the strike
after considering details of a tentative contract presented over the
weekend. The contract still awaits approval from the full 25,000-member
union, but teachers will return to work immediately, union President
Karen Lewis said.
She said the union's more than 700 delegates voted 98% to 2% to return to work.
The
move heads off a confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former chief
of staff to President Obama who on Monday tried to force an end to the
strike in the nation's third largest school district. Emanuel called the
agreement "an honest compromise."
The walkout had halted classes for students just after they had wrapped up summer vacation and started their academic year.
The
strike focused attention on teacher complaints about evaluations and
job security, echoing a larger national debate over public education, as
well as pay.
Delegates leaving the meeting in their South Side union hall sang "solidarity forever."
"I'm
very excited. I miss my students. I'm relieved because I think this
contract was better than what they offered," said America Olmedo, who
teaches fourth- and fifth-grade bilingual classes. "They tried to take
everything away."
The strike drew attention to
the national debate over the future of public education, including
expanded use of charter schools and other elements of a reform movement
opposed by teachers unions.
"This strike
really shows the two opposing visions for education reform, says Kevin
Kumashiro, an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
The legacy left by this strike will be the role of teacher unions in
the debate, he says.
"Normally, you think of
unions going on strike over economic issues," such as salary and
benefits, he says. But in this case, he says, the union went on strike
over issues including using student achievement and test scores to
evaluate teacher performance, a principal's right to select teachers and
how much control a school district has to fire teachers in a failing
school.
Teachers oppose using test scores to
evaluate teacher performance and allow districts to get rid of a
school's staff if the school underperforms.
Rick
Hess, director of education at the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, says the district has been pushing for changes that will pay
teachers based on performance.
USA Today