DEAL … NO DEAL
CTU delegates accept tentative agreement but say strike won’t end until Lightfoot agrees to make up — and pay teachers for — 10 missed days
The Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body voted Wednesday to accept a tentative agreement with Chicago Public Schools, but the city’s longest teachers strike since 1987 will continue after Mayor Lori Lightfoot refused to accept the union’s demand that the district make up all 10 school days missed during the walkout.
The tentative contract agreement passed in an unusually split vote, with 362 delegates in favor to 242 against at a contentious meeting with heated debate that eventually put the months-long battle on the verge of a resolution.
But the caveat that the mayor agree to make up lost time and pay appeared to leave the two sides distinctly far apart with, yet again, no clear end in sight.
At a late news conference, Lightfoot said union leaders, during a three-hour meeting at City Hall Tuesday, raised six issues that they said needed to be addressed for them to end the strike. Compensation for missed days was not among them.
“CTU leadership has chosen to throw a curveball into the process rather than say yes to victory for the members and our students,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot said she addressed the six issues and called the deal the most “generous” contract in history.
“CPS has given the CTU a historic deal by any measure,” she said.
But it was too late to add to the agreement, she said.
“At this late hour we are not adding any new issues,” she said. “I’m not compensating them for days they were out on strike . . . . I’m not going to negotiate.”
Asked about the missed days of instruction, Lightfoot admitted: “Harm’s been done to our children. The fact that our children will not be in school tomorrow is on them.”
Though union officials said teachers were willing to walk back into school the next day if the mayor called Wednesday evening to say she would agree to make up the lost time, CPS announced soon after that school was canceled Thursday, the 11th day of missed classes since the walkout Oct. 17.
Addressing reporters after the vote at the CTU’s Near West Side headquarters, union President Jesse Sharkey said that teachers were adamant that they wanted to make up lost days.
“We’re not walking away from two weeks of school,” Sharkey said. “This has always been a thing. It’s labor law. Strikes end with a return to work agreement.”
Instead, Sharkey said, “what happened is this is a mayor who has felt personally affronted and challenged by the fact that teachers have been on picket lines.”
‘Tremendous gain’
Despite the decision to carry on with the strike, Sharkey said “it’s a contract we can believe in.”
CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said the tentative agreement was filled with historic achievements, including $35 million to address class sizes.
“We’ve never had class size enforcement in the history of the contract,” Davis Gates said.
But that wasn’t so clear to nearly half the delegates in the room and thousands of members across the city who told the union leaders that they were willing to hold out for a better deal on myriad issues, including class size, teacher preparation time and special education.
Several delegates — and even bargaining team members — voiced their displeasure publicly and on social media that the deal didn’t achieve more.
Davis Gates, however, said the deal on the table was still a big step forward for working conditions, and she said the agreement on the most contentious issue, class size, was a “tremendous gain.”
“We’ve been on strike for 10 days. You don’t go from zero to 100 in a moment. Our members are tired. They’re sleep deprived. We’re anxious,” Davis Gates said.
All 25,000 union members still must vote to ratify the deal.
Though they were split on the deal, union members appeared unified on the demand that lost time be made up.
The days would mostly have to be added to the end of the school year for the teachers to get all their lost pay back. There are, however, a select number of days during the year when students don’t attend school and teachers don’t get paid. Those could be changed to attendance days to make up some lost time and pay.
The last day of school on the CPS calendar is June 16. If all the missed days were added to the end of the year, school could continue until June 30.
Contract terms
The deal approved by the governing board had a five-year term, the length the city had offered from the start of talks. The union had wanted a three-year deal.
It includes 16% raises over the life of the deal and virtually no increase in health care costs.
The teachers had pushed hard for additional preparation time for elementary school teachers, but it
appeared the only new prep time in the contract was for kindergarten teachers.
The union received a guarantee that there will be a full-time dedicated nurse and social worker in every school by July 2023 with staffing ramping up from now until then.
On class size, a new joint council will be created to address overcrowding. The council will get weekly updated data and will have $35 million per year to address situations on a case-by-case basis.
Overcrowded classrooms will only get relief, however, when they hit certain hard caps. Those limits are: 32 students in a K-3 class, 35 kids in grades 4-8 and 32 students in core high school classes. The district’s guidelines for normal-sized classes — ones it says it “shall aspire to stay within” — are 32 for K-3, 31 for grades 4-8 and 25 for core high school classes.
So remedies for overcrowding will only kick in when there are 4 or 7 students above what a normal class should have, according to the agreement.