A strike of Chicago teachers that has
closed the nation's third-largest school district will drag into Wednesday
after unionized teachers and negotiators for Mayor Rahm Emanuel failed to reach
an agreement in the biggest labor dispute in the United States in a year.
Negotiations
adjourned late on Tuesday with both sides saying they had made progress but had
not secured a deal to get 29,000 teachers and support staff back in inner-city
schools.
Speaking
earlier on Tuesday at a school where children affected by the strike were being
supervised, Emanuel repeated that the two issues in dispute were how to
evaluate teachers and more authority for school principals.
Chicago
Teachers Union leader Karen Lewis, who has clashed with Emanuel, differed on
the state of the talks. She said only six of nearly 50 union contract
provisions had been agreed.
"There's
not been as much movement as we would hope," Lewis said of the talks on
Tuesday.
Earlier,
Lewis was greeted with applause and shouts of "Thank You Karen," when
she appeared at a rally of thousands of teachers in downtown Chicago. For the
second day, teachers wearing red T-shirts marched and chanted "Hey, hey,
ho, ho, Rahm Emanuel's got to go."
Emanuel,
who resigned as President Barack Obama's White House chief of staff to run for
Chicago mayor in 2011, has shown no sign of backing down in the confrontation.
The
mayor's chief negotiator, David Vitale, criticized the teachers as the talks
recessed on Tuesday. "This is not the behavior of a group of people who
are serious about helping our children," Vitale said.
Other
Chicago unions closed ranks behind Lewis and the teachers. Randi Weingarten,
the national president of the union representing Chicago teachers, appeared at
a press conference flanked by local union representatives from nurses,
janitors, transit workers and police officers to pledge support.
The
union representing janitors said that if the strike is not settled within 48
hours, some janitors would stop crossing picket lines to clean schools where
children are supervised.
A poll
taken on Monday showed 47 percent of Chicago registered voters supported the
union while 39 percent oppose the strike and 14 percent did not know. The poll
by McKeon and Associates of 500 Chicago registered voters, has a margin of
error of 3.8 percent, and was reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.
PATIENCE
TESTED
With
no sign of an early end to the strike, the patience of parents was tested as
they juggled child care and work.
Many
parents stayed home from work with their children on the first day of a strike
affecting some 350,000 children.
Chicago
school officials said only about 18,000 students took part in a half day of
supervision on Monday at 144 public schools, where kids received breakfast and
lunch.
One
complaint from parents was that the centers closed at 12:30 p.m. On Tuesday,
the school district announced that they would be staying open until 2:30 p.m.
in future.
At New
Landmark Missionary Baptist Church in the violence-ridden East Garfield Park
neighborhood, 26 children showed up on Tuesday compared with 14 on the first
day of the strike.
Some
parents decided to bring children to the church rather than schools, where
striking teachers were picketing, said Ticina Cutler, 32, who has three sons in
Chicago Public Schools. "I don't want to cross any picket lines," she
said.
The
strike has forced the cancellation of all public school-related extracurricular
activities such as sports and the arts. It has not affected about 52,000
students at publicly funded, non-union charter schools attending classes as
usual.
NATIONAL
IMPLICATIONS
The
face-off in Obama's home city is the biggest private or public sector labor
dispute since 45,000 Verizon Communications workers went on strike last year.
The
stakes are high for both supporters and foes of a national movement for radical
reform of urban schools.
The
most contentious issue is teacher evaluations, which Emanuel insists should be
tied to performance of students, and which is at the heart of the national
debate on school reform.
Emanuel
is proposing that Chicago teachers be evaluated based on a system that would
rate teachers in several categories. Administrators would observe them in the
classroom. Students would be asked about teacher strengths and weaknesses. And,
most controversially, many teachers would be assessed based on their students'
performance on standardized tests.
The
union fiercely opposes the proposed evaluation system, arguing that many
Chicago students perform poorly on standardized tests because they come to
school hungry and live in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods.
"We
are miles apart because this is a very serious ideological difference
here," Lewis said.
Chicago
Public Schools are offering teachers an average 16 percent pay rise over four
years and sweetened benefits such as paid maternity leave and picking up most
of the costs of pensions, which critics say already gives the union too much.
For
the second day, Obama was silent on the Chicago strike which pits his ally
Emanuel against organized labor, a key supporter of the president.
Obama's
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, issued a
statement on Tuesday that avoided taking sides in the dispute even though his
own education plan includes some of the reforms sought by Emanuel.
Republicans
have sought to exploit the divisions within the Democratic coalition by
publicly supporting Emanuel.
While
Chicago and Obama's home state of Illinois are expected to vote for him in
November, a prolonged strike could make it harder for Obama to motivate unions
to get out the vote in key Midwest swing states such as Iowa, Wisconsin and
Ohio.
Bob
Peterson, president of the Milwaukee teachers union in Wisconsin, said some of
his members were wearing red in solidarity with the Chicago union. Most
teachers support Obama for many reasons, not just his education policy,
Peterson said.
But
some independent-minded union members might be affected in Milwaukee, he said,
where a big Obama vote is crucial to the president winning the state on
November 6.
"If
the strike isn't settled, it could (hurt) the Obama campaign and my hope is
that the mayor of Chicago gets it together and finds a way to settle the strike,"
Peterson said.