CHICAGO — Talks between striking teachers and public schools officials extended into the early morning hours here on Friday as the union and the leadership of the city’s schools sought to reach a tentative deal by Friday afternoon so that 350,000 students could to return to school on Monday.þþFriday was the fifth day of the strike, and a continued optimisitc tone from the teachers’ union and Chicago Public Schools officials during the past day or so has been a major shift from a contentious past.þþEarlier in the week, Chicago Public Schools officials had deemed talks close to resolution while union officials declared the sides “miles apart.” As recently as Wednesday evening, the sides had sparred publicly over whether formal talks were really taking place at all.þþAny deal would require a vote by the union’s roughly 700-member House of Delegates, which could come as early as Friday afternoon, possibly permitting hundreds of schools across the city to reopen on Monday, one week after the city’s first strike in a quarter-century began.þþ“I’m praying, praying, praying,” Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, told reporters outside a hotel on Thursday where talks are taking place, when asked whether schools would reopen by then. “I’m on my knees for that. Please, yes, I’m hoping for Monday.”þþStill, even as talks were seen as progressing over compromises on how a teacher evaluation plan might be put in place and on health care premiums for teachers with families, thousands of teachers and supporters — many dressed in red rain ponchos — marched and chanted through main thoroughfares downtown, stopping at one point at a Hyatt hotel in protest of Penny Pritzker, a member of the Chicago Board of Education whose family founded the hotel chain.þþGiven four days of picketing outside largely empty schools, months of negotiations and a roller coaster of sharp and sometimes shifting talk from those involved in the negotiations, few here seemed quick to predict what will really come next.þþIt was unclear precisely what had turned the mood of talks inside a Michigan Avenue hotel from sour on Wednesday afternoon to hopeful by Thursday morning, but schools officials said they presented a new offer that included several changes in areas the union had been concerned about.þþAmong the proposed changes, according to schools officials: teachers’ raises would average 16 percent over four years at a cost of $320 million, as had already been offered, but would be distributed differently; health insurance rates would not rise for teachers with families, as had been planned, if the union agreed to take part in a wellness program; and an appeals process would be created for teacher evaluations, which have been a significant area of disagreement.þþSince last November, this city’s 26,000 public school teachers have been negotiating over the terms of the four-year contract, but the battle has played out more broadly, over the direction and philosophy of the school system, even as it struggled to solve gaping budget deficits.þþMayor Rahm Emanuel has called for a longer school day, more control for principals in picking teachers, thorough evaluations for teachers, and expansion of the city’s charter schools. The teachers have said they felt under siege, and pitted against a larger national education trend that they say fails to consider Chicago’s realities, like the fact that 87 percent of public school students here come from low-income homes.þþIn many ways, teachers here have said they see their fight here as a larger one, taking place not only over education but also over the role of labor at a time when states like Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have fought battles with Republican leaders over collective bargaining rights and the power of unions. In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union announced on Thursday that it would hold a “Wisconsin-style” rally over the weekend, and that it expected wide attendance by supporters from other states.þþ“The teachers’ union here saw this as a local struggle within a larger national battle of what a lot of teachers call the privatization of schools,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois. “They didn’t see this as just localized. The issues that are being pushed here are being pushed in many urban and suburban school districts.”þþAround the city, families said they were hopeful that the strike was nearly over. Many had expressed tolerance for the circumstances and the child care juggling act they found themselves in, in some cases, only a week into a new academic year, but patience seemed likely to run thin in the coming weeks. In 1987, the last time teachers here went on strike, an agreement took 19 days.þþA relatively quick end to the fight here would also quiet an awkward issue for President Obama in his hometown in the heart of a presidential campaign season. Mr. Obama’s aides said he had not chosen a side in the strike, which pitted his former chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel, against a crucial bloc of his political support, the unions.
Source: NY Times
