Chicago teachers union to continue strike
CHICAGO (AP) - The Chicago teachers union decided Sunday to continue its weeklong strike, extending an acrimonious standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over teacher evaluations and job security provisions central to the debate over the future of public education across the United States.
Union delegates declined to formally vote on a proposed contract settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation's third largest school district. Schools will remain closed Monday.
Union president Karen Lewis said teachers want the opportunity to continue to discuss the offer that is on the table.
"Our members are not happy," Lewis said. "They want to know if there is anything more they can get."
She added: "They feel rushed."
She said the union's delegates will meet again Tuesday, and the soonest classes are likely to resume is Wednesday.
The walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years, had instantly canceled classes for 350,000 students who just returned from summer vacation and forced tens of thousands of parents to find alternatives for idle children, including many whose neighborhoods have been wracked by gang violence in recent months.
The walkout was the first for a major American city in at least six years. And it drew national attention because it posed a high-profile test for teachers unions, which have seen their political influence threatened by a growing reform movement. Unions have pushed back against efforts to expand charter schools, bring in private companies to help with failing schools and link teacher evaluations to student test scores.
The strike carried political implications, too, raising the risk of a protracted labor battle in President Barack Obama's hometown at the height of the fall campaign, with a prominent Democratic mayor and Obama's former chief of staff squarely in the middle. Emanuel's forceful demands for reform had angered the teachers last year as the cash-strapped city began bargaining with a number of unions.
The teachers walked out Sept. 10 after months of tense contract talks that for a time appeared to be headed toward a peaceful resolution.
Emanuel and the union agreed in July on a deal to implement a longer school day with a plan to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract would be settled before the start of fall classes, but bargaining stalled on other issues.
Emanuel decried the teachers' decision to leave classrooms, calling the walkout unnecessary and a "strike of choice."
Almost from the beginning, the two sides couldn't even agree on whether they were close to a deal. Emanuel said an agreement was within easy reach and could be sealed with school in session. The union insisted that dozens of issues remained unresolved.
Chicago's long history as a union stronghold seemed to work to the teachers' advantage. As they walked the picket lines, they were joined by many of the very people who were most inconvenienced by the work stoppage: parents who had to scramble to find babysitters or a supervised place for children to pass the time.
To win friends, the union representing 25,500 teachers engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents repeatedly about problems with schools and the barriers that have made it more difficult to serve their kids. They described classrooms that are stifling hot without air conditioning, important books that are unavailable and supplies as basic as toilet paper that are sometimes in short supply.
The strike upended a district in which the vast majority of students are poor and minority. It also raised the concerns of parents who worried not just about their kids' education but their safety. Chicago's gang violence has spiked this year, with scores of shootings reported throughout a long, bloody summer and bystanders sometimes caught in the crossfire.
The district staffed more than 140 schools with non-union workers and central office employees so students who are dependent on school-provided meals would have a place to eat breakfast and lunch. But most parents refused to leave their children at unfamiliar schools where they would be thrown together with kids and supervising adults they may never have met.
When the two sides met at the bargaining table, money was only part of the problem. With an average salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation. After weeks of talks, the district proposed a 16 percent raise over four years, including bumps for experience and education - and far beyond what most American employers have offered in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
But the evaluations and job security measures stirred the most intense debate.
The union said the evaluation system was unfair because it relied too heavily on test scores and did not take into account outside factors that affect student performance such as poverty, violence and homelessness.
The union also pushed for a policy to give laid-off teachers first dibs on open jobs anywhere in the district. The district said that would prevent principals from hiring the teachers they thought best qualified and most appropriate for the position. The tentative settlement proposed giving laid-off teachers first shot at schools that absorbed their former students.
Emanuel did not personally negotiate but monitored the talks through aides.
The strike was just the latest and highest-stakes chapter in a long and often contentious battle between him and the union.
When he took office last year, the former White House chief of staff inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to re-open its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.
Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.
Union delegates declined to formally vote on a proposed contract settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation's third largest school district. Schools will remain closed Monday.
Union president Karen Lewis said teachers want the opportunity to continue to discuss the offer that is on the table.
"Our members are not happy," Lewis said. "They want to know if there is anything more they can get."
She added: "They feel rushed."
She said the union's delegates will meet again Tuesday, and the soonest classes are likely to resume is Wednesday.
The walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years, had instantly canceled classes for 350,000 students who just returned from summer vacation and forced tens of thousands of parents to find alternatives for idle children, including many whose neighborhoods have been wracked by gang violence in recent months.
The walkout was the first for a major American city in at least six years. And it drew national attention because it posed a high-profile test for teachers unions, which have seen their political influence threatened by a growing reform movement. Unions have pushed back against efforts to expand charter schools, bring in private companies to help with failing schools and link teacher evaluations to student test scores.
The strike carried political implications, too, raising the risk of a protracted labor battle in President Barack Obama's hometown at the height of the fall campaign, with a prominent Democratic mayor and Obama's former chief of staff squarely in the middle. Emanuel's forceful demands for reform had angered the teachers last year as the cash-strapped city began bargaining with a number of unions.
The teachers walked out Sept. 10 after months of tense contract talks that for a time appeared to be headed toward a peaceful resolution.
Emanuel and the union agreed in July on a deal to implement a longer school day with a plan to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract would be settled before the start of fall classes, but bargaining stalled on other issues.
Emanuel decried the teachers' decision to leave classrooms, calling the walkout unnecessary and a "strike of choice."
Almost from the beginning, the two sides couldn't even agree on whether they were close to a deal. Emanuel said an agreement was within easy reach and could be sealed with school in session. The union insisted that dozens of issues remained unresolved.
Chicago's long history as a union stronghold seemed to work to the teachers' advantage. As they walked the picket lines, they were joined by many of the very people who were most inconvenienced by the work stoppage: parents who had to scramble to find babysitters or a supervised place for children to pass the time.
To win friends, the union representing 25,500 teachers engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents repeatedly about problems with schools and the barriers that have made it more difficult to serve their kids. They described classrooms that are stifling hot without air conditioning, important books that are unavailable and supplies as basic as toilet paper that are sometimes in short supply.
The strike upended a district in which the vast majority of students are poor and minority. It also raised the concerns of parents who worried not just about their kids' education but their safety. Chicago's gang violence has spiked this year, with scores of shootings reported throughout a long, bloody summer and bystanders sometimes caught in the crossfire.
The district staffed more than 140 schools with non-union workers and central office employees so students who are dependent on school-provided meals would have a place to eat breakfast and lunch. But most parents refused to leave their children at unfamiliar schools where they would be thrown together with kids and supervising adults they may never have met.
When the two sides met at the bargaining table, money was only part of the problem. With an average salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation. After weeks of talks, the district proposed a 16 percent raise over four years, including bumps for experience and education - and far beyond what most American employers have offered in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
But the evaluations and job security measures stirred the most intense debate.
The union said the evaluation system was unfair because it relied too heavily on test scores and did not take into account outside factors that affect student performance such as poverty, violence and homelessness.
The union also pushed for a policy to give laid-off teachers first dibs on open jobs anywhere in the district. The district said that would prevent principals from hiring the teachers they thought best qualified and most appropriate for the position. The tentative settlement proposed giving laid-off teachers first shot at schools that absorbed their former students.
Emanuel did not personally negotiate but monitored the talks through aides.
The strike was just the latest and highest-stakes chapter in a long and often contentious battle between him and the union.
When he took office last year, the former White House chief of staff inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to re-open its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.
Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.
On President's Day, replace the U.S. President with the current Union President like Jimmy Hoffa Jr
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Have a pay homage to the Union day once every month by telling a story of you learned later there was "more to get"
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Change half the history books to teaching Union history
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Fire them all, end collective bargaining and union dues witholding then rehire new teachers on a totally merit basis. Dramatically expand charter schools, vouchers, and financial support for parents to home school. It will be a painful year but sooner or later these parasites have to be stopped before the budget totally upside-down.
@LockesChild I don't like charter schools. I would really hate to see Walmart History books. Who says what goes in them? As it is, my kids have a walk-a-thon each year and they get a free tshirt for participating. On the tshirt are the logos of all the local companies that help "sponser" the school. They turn my kids' chest into a billboard for businesses! Could you imagine what that would look like if we were to charter public schools?
 @kockatoo Learn more about charter schools before you accuse them of being an advertising vehicle. And to consider the generous donations by private organizations as a billboard is truly mean-spirited and thoughtless. Unsurprising.
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As for Walmart history books-I would prefer them to the progressive anti-America junk well-loved by the education industry. But Walmart is based on success while the education industry is based on failure so it wouldn't be much of a surprise that Walmart would do a better job than some blinkered education bureaucrat.
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 @LockesChild Ah, the illusion of the meritocracy. If it doesn't work anywhere else why would it work in education? ...that's one reason I am a freelancer to avoid as much as possible the BS inherent in most corporate entities.
 @albion So since a perfect meritocracy is an impossible ideal you would allow these timeservers to continue to protect incompetent teachers while dramatically increasing pay and benefits?
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yeah, go try to sell that one somewhere.
 @albion "While the progressive vision isn't perfect it is at least grounded in reality."
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Now there is a humorous statement to end the debate. Thanks for the laugh.
 @LockesChild Thanks for the summary of conservative rhetoric, but I'll stick to looking at things empirically. While the progressive vision isn't perfect it is at least grounded in reality.
 @albion Yes, it is a collective problem. Collectively our society  has allowed our children to be used a human shields for the benefit of a monopolistic union that is in an incestuous relationship with a political party for mutual gain. Decades of failure show that the only way out from this collective failure is to address the fundamental approach to government-provided education.
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And if the education unions are an example of progressive policies--epic fail. At least for the children. For Democrats, union leaders, ideologues, and failed teachers the policies are a godsend.
 @LockesChild  @albion Why must you scapegoat teachers. If you were to study this issue more deeply you would see that education's plight is a collective failure that all of us are in part responsible for.
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it is a failing conservative rhetoric that suggests that progressive policies are failing.
 @albion I wouldn't punish everyone. Just those who are breaking the law by striking against the public. It is their decision to refuse to work so the consequences legitimately accrue to them.
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As for breaking the union, the education unions and their failed progressive rhetoric (combined with their successful electioneering and protection racket tactics) have been a primary reason for the failure of our k-12 government education system. And whenever a proposal is floated to correct this horrendously expensive exercise in child neglect the unions react like vampires to light.
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Educators can still have unions. But collecting the dues must be the responsibility of the union, not the government. And the corrupt notion of collective bargaining must end. With those two changes complete, school districts can begin to rebuild an education system that is failing to prepare millions of students for skills, trades, and professions.
 @LockesChild  @albion "Second place is a set of steak knives. Third place is you're fired."
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Now THAT will light a fire under ya'.
 @LockesChild I think that punishing all teachers for the difficulty of removing a few less competent teachers is without merit. You seem to be suggesting that a large proportion of teachers are not hard working dedicated professionals who work long hours for much less than they should be paid in a saner world. Where is your evidence? My wife is a teacher and I know many of the teachers in our school district personally, and they do not fit your personal belief system.
Latest from Chicago; Rahm is gonna file a lawsuit. Then, he's gonna give the Union a verbal tongue lashing that is likely not family friendly.
 @Sid Vishess Does the tongue lashing accompany the standard pouring of high priced liquor provided by the public? If so, then conventions are being observed according to the law as typically practiced before they all drive home drunk.
"Our members are not happy," Lewis said. "They want to know if there is anything more they can get."
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Yeah, you can get the PATCO treatment.
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I bet a school run by Chicago parent volunteers and a lesson plan from the internet would not be much worse. Â My apologies to the capable teachers.
 @Sid Vishess I wouldn't mind seeing some of the money thrown away on government schools to be routed to home-schooling. If someone had two children they were home-schooling the money sucked up by the WEA, Democrat party dues, work rules, administrative (non-teaching) staff and idiot propaganda (like year after year Black History Month) could be used more productively.
 @Sid Vishess "I bet a school run by Chicago parent volunteers and a lesson plan from the internet would not be much worse."
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Sid, that does exist already in many locales across the country. We see it here on Vashon where my wife teaches, and it is called home schooling in a group context. It can work really well some of the time at least, but still comes down to each parent unit being a fully committed and competent teacher and really knowing each subject. This is a full time job for one of the parents (or sometimes a mix of both parents). You cannot just point your child in the direction of the internet and hope for success. Part of the success of the group model (when it does work) is that most parents cannot be experts in all subject areas. And the internet being what it is, you have to be really discerning about pulling lesson plans from the internet. There are better sources... large conventions every year where you can choose form hundred of different learning style / lesson plans.
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Or course as you might imagine the largest source of such lesson plans are Christian oriented which are quite often not very rigorous because the most important thing for many conservative Christian home schoolers is not academics but making sure they don't lose sight of Jesus throughout their education... these kids are often seriously stunted when it comes time to look at college assuming they ever come out of the woods.
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Anyway, any of us can home school in most states (Washington state is especially permissive in this regard). But most of us cannot afford the time.
 @albion Thank you for your informative reply. I wonder if there are any unbiased studies of academic achievement of Religious Home Schooled versus Home School versus Public School?
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My point was that parents would have far more skin in the game than these teachers.
 @Sid Vishess Sid, the HSLDA as I recall is a fundamentalist Christian home schooling non-profit. I'd like to see the study and how it quantifies academic achievement since most conservative fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers (but not all) are completely off the grid and reject mainstream measures of academic success completely. At the very least I don't know how they would calibrate their measurements to those of the public schools. They have worked in Washington state to undermine public-private partnership programs in the public schools which try to help home schooling families quantify how they are doing via assessment and testing without interfering with their personal educational values and goals. Using these programs makes getting into college much easier for homeschoolers since they also help such students build academic portfolios that can be evaluated by college admissions folks.
 @Sid Vishess Don't know about the studies. But from what I can see the most successful home schoolers are way more well-rounded and well-adjusted socially than their counterparts in regular schools both public and private. They can appear much more savvy and mature for their age. On the other hand, you have at least as many who end up under-achievers. It really depends upon the ability and commitment of the child, parents, and surrounding communities. Unfortunately, most parents don't seem to have the time and energy to put in the hours necessary to teach much less properly prepare for teaching.
 @albion I found a study by an organization that favors home schooling. Now, THEIR study (naturally) indicates a higher level of academic achievement by home schoolers. Is the "Home School Legal Defense Association" credible?Â
I know it is fashionable to blame the teachers for everything these days, but there are a lot of other much more screwed up things about our educational system than just a few bad apples in the ranks of teachers themselves.
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This whole discussion is often over-simplified, education is so much more than basic academics. My wife is an educator, but she also has be part therapist, academic counselor, and motivational speaker. It would be nice if there was money to fund such additional services that help improve our kid's future, but there isn't so teachers are asked to do everything. They are some of the hardest working folks on the planet. It would be nice for more parents to take some responsibility for their children's education. It would be nice if the government legislated educational policy based on talking to teachers rather than to PhD's who have never stepped foot in the classroom.
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The primary reason for teacher's unions at the moment is to protect teachers from parents who can't imagine why their little darlings should deserve anything other than an A in every subject, and therefore the teacher who gave their child a B or worse grade needs to be fired. And of course there is the whole issue of discipline in the classroom, or the lack thereof, because the same little darling can't possibly be anything other than an angel... it's obviously someone else who is to blame.
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And for the record, truly incompetent teachers can be fired, it just takes longer.
 @albion None of my kids' real teachers are anything to do with this at all. They are on honor rolls of efficiency reports, same as my kids. My point is simple accountability. We are publicly crushing the same skillsets that are being cried out for worldwide and at home. That's my problem in a nutshell, because it's MY KIDS that aren't gonna get the job security or benefits of anything. Screw shortsighted adults who can't see it. Non accountable for their own damn actions at all as soon as that union protection kicks in. And in the schoolrooms it's MY KIDS that are accountable far more than most of their average teachers.  Honor Roll kids all over the nation are seeing with their own eyes that no one truly wants them. They only represent the energetic over the lazy like I did in the workplace. Now slow that project down some more, Journeymen, you don't get to goldbrick if you actually do your damn job.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! And my point in a nutshell is that accountability needs to apply to everyone not just teachers. Teachers are the scapegoat at the moment when it's also just as much a problem of wrong legislative priorities, inadequate funding, lack of parental accountability, spoiled children, and incompetent administrators.
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And on the subject of honor rolls... I can't tell you how many "honor roll" students I know that have become very average workers and citizens because of the emphasis on grades rather than meaningful content and learning how to problem solve and think. So, I hope your kids have picked up some real world experience you say you have shown them from the workplace.
 @albion And that's really it, too. We don't see any real wisdom painted on farmers barns and pharmacy walls anymore. Cliches are now cliche, and must not be uttered to the non accountable. Reader's Digest is now an anachronism. The Farmer's Almanac is still laughed at, even with their weather and crop prediction accuracies over more than a century. And kids aren't allowed to talk any of these things in public.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! "No degree of personal accountability result comes to me through strict virtue. Ever. We attain accountability placebo at every level through corruption. Always."
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I don't understand this statement.
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But I would suggest from my own experience that virtue and personal accountability starts out as rules and roles we learn (or sometimes don't learn) from our parents and other significant role models in our community. But eventually we can come to virtue and personal accountability in a more personal way as we become more aware of the deep psychic role of desire, aversion, fear, and apathy in our daily life in relation to objects and others.
 @albion In the year of your fathers business being sucked under I was probably a barefoot kid in shorts of 13 being escorted home to my house with no food with a stern warning to mom from CPS about kids working at changing tires to earn school supplies and food. No degree of personal accountability result comes to me through strict virtue. Ever. We attain accountability placebo at every level through corruption. Always.
 @FreeCoffeeNow! You know the deeper level is we have to stop blaming groups for the failings of individuals. I was raised Republican and saw my father lose his business due to a union strike during the height of the 70's oil embargo. But with time I've also come to see that he wasn't really all that good of a businessman either so it wasn't totally the union's fault. So, while time, experience, perspective, and maturity have made me into a moderate liberal I don't believe that unions are a force for "good" nor do I see that business is a force for "evil" as the liberal/conservative caricature sometimes tries to suggest. Rather, I see that they balance each other out and keep the worst excesses of the other from taking over. Same for conservative versus liberal causes/politicians generally (though some conservative thinking seems to me to be pretty extreme compared to the Eisenhower Republicanism of my youth).
 @albion We try with them. They like volunteering in the parks and doing fundraising and stuff. If they knock on your door they'll be planning on emptying your wallet pretty efficiently.  I'm truly worried about how they've seen me dealing with these issues like unions though. Working for anyone else will be their enemy in life now. The only union workers that break into a higher level tend toward a higher level of corruption more than an advantageous employee management overall. They've heard me come in gimping at night and early morning having had to do union workers' jobs for extended shifts. They see me and mom teaching them when their teacher is replaced twelve times in the same year for cancer. They also see those bright young teachers that can't work at their school fulltime because of it. While I've had no problem in the Chitown region in dealing with union punks with baseball bats trying to get me to stop building or repairing something, it sure ain't because my kids haven't seen and heard that I've had to do that. I've had to do it here in logging, machining in metal or wood, construction and every other job around. Yet I'm supposed to be accountable, and so are my kids? Why?
Teaching, what should be a profession made up of those seeking to genuinely serve society by bringing a contemporary skill set and set of understandings to the table to work with young people to give them a good foundation is too often the realm of the absurdities of academic culture, combined with unions that allow nothing to change and progress, combined with providing an untouchable, tenured refuge for odd balls and under performers. Needs to be overhauled and you had better believe performance reviews need to advance past the Middle Ages.Â
@Citizen#3457899654 You do recognize that a "Union" is a group of workers and in this case, US workers don't you. Nothing menacing or secret, just people excersizing their right to association, their right to representation, their right to assemble as protected under the law.
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Do you also regard employer associations (Another type of "Union") that form to attempt to control wages terms and conditions in an industry as "allowing nothing to change or progress"?
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If you were making real estate transactions worth in excess of your entire life's income would you seek representation on the matter? If you were engaged in that transaction with me and I advised you not to use representation, what would your response be?
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Unions are people, why dont you leave them alone for a while as business has had their way with the people in this country far to long and the results of that are everywhere now.
We got the War on Religion. We got the War on Women. We got the War on Minorities.
Now we have the War on Workers.
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What a pile. Unions, particularly PEU's, are formed with good intentions and for good reasons and I have no problem with them up to a certain point.  However like their cousins BIG BUSINESS and BIG GOVERNMENT, they can become greedy, abusive, and drunk on power. These teachers need to get back to the task at hand and if Rahm Emanuel doesn't pull his jewels out of whatever Mason jar they are stored in and tell them to get back to work by the end week or he'll PATCO their worthless behinds, then he deserves to lose his job too.Â
As for leaving unions alone because they are "just people" don't count on it.  They need to be watch-dogged and slapped down like any other organization when they get out of hand. Unions may begin by representing the worker but they can become downright destructive over time so spare us the Workers of the World Unite speech, you're just preaching to the choir.Â
 @StreetPizza He is just trying to be a voice of reason in the midst of conservative scapegoating.
 @T_BONE_WALKER Why leave them alone, TBone? When is MY damn union break for all the union worker's actual damn jobs I've had to do when they won't?   Teachers included. The individuals aren't the problem, but mob representation through a plastic shell union is. They provide the fallacy of the union in America. Leaving them alone for a while to continue goldbricking, gerrymandering, and crushing kids? C'mon. Without unions taking the head to head battle against Articles of Incorporation is a joke, because neither the union nor the piece of paper is held accountable for anything substantive at all.
@FreeCoffeeNow! If you have an employee guilty of insubordination, (Not working as directed), thats a capital offense that gets you fired with no union recourse. Its the same as stealing time, no union recourse. So, if you are covering bargaining unit work as a non union employee, I'd say you work for a very mismanaged company. Dont attempt to blame the employer's inaction on the worker.
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You forgot to mention how you feel about employer associations (union for businesses). I am sure you overlooked that part of my post. Â Â
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"C'mon. Without unions taking the head to head battle against Articles of Incorporation is a joke, because neither the union nor the piece of paper is held accountable for anything substantive at all."
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What exactly are you talking about in this paragraph?
As much as I see the real warning by these public employees that are in fact trying to do their individual jobs to some degree, telling us that Chitown is turning into a compressed detonation of failure on society. But I don't get what unions are allowed to be, of any sort. These ancient type teachers are well known to be out of touch, but they are given precedence over young bright minds in your town or mine. Same with every union trade, at every level. Citizens over citizens is becoming hard to manage as a society, especially with total governmental, and supposedly separate judicial being in total gridlock until told to move by others. The death of the dollar already happened, and our public citizen filled unions are paid in debt now for the most massive part, and most members personally carry large debt loads acerbating the problem. This is a journeyman of some type, huh? Union teacher, my butt. Teach Americans, my butt. Independence and accountability are the same thing. Same as any other supposedly higher concept you can name. The idea of whether union should have existed has come full now. Crush kids.
I got all the great ideas at first about unions when I heard of them as a kid too. Now these employees, public employees, prevent hire of other public employees prospects on waiting lists. Somehow these people are supposed to know something about these people other than they are trained in modern critical skillsets. But whether in your town or mine, it is they who have the jobs, and that's it. Public Employees are allowed this over citizens.Â
President Romney and the next Congress should pass the "No Bailouts For Local Government Act of 2013."
 @Sid Vishess They both appear very flawed facsimiles to me. Either or is bs.