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Chicago teachers strike for first time in 25 years
As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children’s education might suffer.
Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago’s first schools strike in 25 years, after union leaders announced that months-long negotiations had failed to resolve a contract dispute with school district officials by a midnight deadline.
The walkout in the nation’s third-largest school district posed a tricky challenge for the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he would push to end the strike quickly as officials figure out how to keep nearly 400,000 children safe and occupied.
“This is not a strike I wanted,” Emanuel said Sunday night, not long after the union announced the action. “It was a strike of choice … it’s unnecessary, it’s avoidable and it’s wrong.”
Some 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to join the picket. Among teachers protesting Monday morning outside Benjamin Banneker Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side, eighth-grade teacher Michael Williams said he wanted a quick contract resolution.
“We hoped that it wouldn’t happen. We all want to get back to teaching,” Williams said, adding that wages and classroom conditions need to be improved.
Contract negotiations between Chicago Public School officials and union leaders that stretched through the weekend were expected to resume Monday.
Officials said some 140 schools would be open between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.
City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised — especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence — might be at risk, but vowed to protect the students’ safety.
“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,” said Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff.
The school 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.
Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers’ protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.
Union leaders and district officials were not far apart in their negotiations on compensation, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. But other issues — including potential changes to health benefits and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students’ standardized test scores — remained unresolved, she said.
“This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided,” Lewis said. “We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve.”
Before the strike, some parents said they would not drop their children at strange schools where they didn’t know the other students or supervising adults. On Monday, as only a trickle of students arrived at some schools, April Logan said she wouldn’t leave her daughter with an adult she didn’t know. Her daughter, Ashanti, started school just a week earlier.
“I don’t understand this, my baby just got into school,” Logan said at Benjamin Mays Academy on the city’s South Side before turning around and taking her daughter home.
2 Responses to Chicago teachers strike for first time in 25 years
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ivydoris
September 13, 2012 at 2:34 pm
I am concerned that any educator would walk off the job. I am an educator myself in Texas and have not had a raise in over 2 years. We do not have the option of striking in Texas as we do not have organized teacher’s unions. I just don’t think this is in the best interest of the teachers or the students. How do you expect your students to respect you if and when you return to the classroom? How do expect them to not feel as though you have abandonded them? You have failed them when they need you the most. Most of our students in the education system today depend upon the teachers and schools to not only provide them with meals but to also provide them with loving support and for many school is the only place they receive any validation as a person. I just do not understand this decision.
dmcwhinn
September 14, 2012 at 6:49 pm
I understand that it’s not a good thing to walk off any job, but there are times when you need to. It sounds to me like it is time for those teachers to walk off the job they are being asked to do about 21% more work for only 2% raise. Does that sound like a good deal to anybody. Could you see a carmaker or a tradesman accept this type of an idea?
This guy ran on the promise that he would add this time to the day, I think he should have talked to the teachers and the union about this before hand. He shot his mouth off and now he’s having to eat his words. He dug the hole that he finds himself in, it’s not the teacher’s that caused the situation. He says that this is a strike that he didn’t want, he had all summer to get it resolved. What happened over the summer. The teacher’s are always made out to be the bad guys. I don’t know about you, but I had some great teachers and they helped me be the man I am today.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance and see what it will cost you.