Teachers at 4 more Chicago charter schools join strike threat
Teachers at four Chicago International Charter School locations voted on Friday to authorize a possible strike, joining the Acero charter school teachers who voted in favor of a strike threat on Tuesday.
Of those who voted, 96 cast ballots to authorize a strike, according to the Chicago Teachers Union. The teachers voting work at CICS’ ChicagoQuest, Northtown, Wrightwood and Ralph Ellison campuses.
The CICS teachers have not announced a strike date, nor have the Acero teachers who are threatening to hit the picket line at 15 schools. If the strikes happen at all 19 schools, more than 700 teachers would walk off the job, affecting more than 8,000 students.
Like the Acero teachers, CICS teachers say they’re fighting for pay raises, smaller class sizes, improved special education resources and better wages for paraprofessionals. The union has slammed the charter operator for “bloated, wasteful management fees and salaries” that they say take up one in every three dollars in funding received by CICS.
The starting salary for a CICS teacher is about $44,000, about $8,000 less than starting Chicago Public Schools teachers make. Civitas Education Partners, the management firm in charge of hiring and contract negotiations for CICS, says it agrees “our teachers should make more money” and that they’ve proposed a 4.4 percent salary increase.
Their contract expired in August. Both sides were back at the bargaining table Thursday, according to Civitas.
Teachers have never gone on strike at any charter school in the United States.