Education Week - October 9, 2019 - 5

20,000 Chicago Teachers Plan to Go on Strike
Fight with the
district is about
more than pay
By Madeline Will
For the third time in less than a
decade, more than 20,000 Chicago
educators plan to go on strike if they
do not reach a deal with the nation's
third-largest school district.
Chicago Teachers Union members
are set to stop work on Oct. 17 to demand a salary increase, smaller class
sizes, and more school nurses, librarians, and social workers. Bargaining
will continue until then, but the two
sides remain far apart on several key
issues.
On Oct. 2, CTU delegates unanimously set the deadline to strike if a
contract agreement is not reached,
a week after 94 percent of teachers,
nurses, librarians, and other staff
members in the CTU's bargaining
unit authorized a strike.
"We prefer to reach a contract settlement without a strike," said CTU
President Jesse Sharkey in a press
conference after the delegates' vote.
"But I want no one in the city of Chicago to doubt our resolve. We need to
improve the conditions in our schools.
We need to achieve a fair contract for
dignity and respect for people who do
this work."

We know if it's not
in the contract and
it's not something
we can enforce,
it's not going to
happen."
KATIE OSGOOD
Chicago special education teacher

Chicago teachers staged a one-day
walkout in 2016, but their last strike
was in 2012. That work stoppage
lasted for a week, and most schools
were closed. (The district kept 147
schools open as a contingency plan
for parents who couldn't find other
alternatives.)
This time around, all school buildings would remain open during a
strike to make sure students have access to warm meals and a safe place
to spend the day, said Chicago Mayor
Lori Lightfoot and schools CEO Janice Jackson in a joint statement.
However, the unions that represent
support staff members, including bus
aides and classroom assistants, and
parks workers across the city, who
oversee many programs for children,
could also strike on Oct. 17. During

past strikes, the Chicago parks have
offered alternative programming for
students.
A triple strike could make it even
more challenging for district and
city leaders to ensure the safety of
more than 360,000 students, most of
whom are low-income.
Even so, district officials say they
remain optimistic that a deal can be
reached to avert a strike. In their statement, Lightfoot and Jackson said the
district "will continue bargaining at
an aggressive pace to reach a deal
that is fair to our teachers and staff,
supports the record-setting progress
we've made, and promotes the best
interests of Chicago families, so that
we do not have to open our school
buildings without the educators and
staff members who are so crucial to
our district's success."
It's been a contentious bargaining
process between the school system
and the teachers' union, onlookers
say-even though, in theory, the two
sides agree on several of the issues at
stake. But finding common ground
has been stymied by a state law that
says Chicago Public Schools does not
have to bargain over class sizes and
staffing levels. The union legally cannot strike over some of the issues it
says are the most critical.
"They agree with things like schools
are not staffed appropriately, that we
don't have the necessary tools to do
our job," said Katie Osgood, an elementary special education teacher
who is on the CTU's bargaining team.
"They'll say all these things to our
face and then refuse to put any of
these things in a contract that can actually be enforced."
Lightfoot has said she has put
aside money in the city's budget to
hire more social workers and school
nurses. But teachers are wary of trusting the new mayor, Osgood said, especially after their tumultuous history
with her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, who once canceled a previously
negotiated pay raise for teachers.
"We've seen this before," Osgood
said. "We know if it's not in the contract and it's not something we can
enforce, it's not going to happen."
The union is asking for a three-year
contract with 5 percent pay raises
every year, salary increases based on
experience for teachers' aides, language that guarantees the hiring of
more nurses, librarians, and social
workers, and hard caps on class sizes.
The school system is instead offering a five-year contract with a 16 percent total pay raise. Lightfoot and district leadership have also developed
a budgetary plan to put a full-time
nurse in every school by 2024, and
hire more social workers and special
education case managers.
However, the district wants to
maintain flexibility with its dollars. A
district informational webpage on the
bargaining process says that adding
staffing requirements to the collective bargaining agreement "would require principals to dedicate large portions of their budgets to hiring staff as

mandated by the contract, not by the
needs and desires of the local community or school."
"[The union and the district] seem
to be really at a point of disagreement,
and yet if you were just sort of looking
at the commitments that people were
speaking to, ... given that there is more
money in the system, one would think
that there's still room to do some good
bargaining, there's still room to find
an agreement that could satisfy both
parties," said Robert Bruno, a labor
professor at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. "But the truth
is, when it comes down to principles,
if you're fighting over principles, ...
these fights are hard to resolve with
just a little more money. They often
lead to breakage."

Issues Beyond Salary
The Windy City's school finances
are better than they were during the
2012 strike, due in part to Illinois' new
school funding formula and a property tax hike approved a few years
ago. School board officials approved
a record $7.7 billion budget this year.
Even so, the district still has a junk status credit rating.
Lightfoot and Jackson have called
the district's offer to CTU "historic,"
saying that in five years, the average
teacher will make nearly $100,000.

Also under the district's latest proposal, paraprofessionals and schoolrelated personnel would receive an
average raise of about 8 percent this
school year.
But union members say the starting
salary for teachers' assistants would
still be "poverty wages"-and they're
also concerned with issues beyond
pay. Student learning conditions have
been the driving force behind many
of the successful strikes and labor actions that have taken place across the
country over the last 18 months.
In Los Angeles, for example, teachers successfully went on strike earlier this year for more support staff,
smaller class sizes, and promises
to try to cap the number of charter
schools in the city. Increasing teacher
pay was a demand-but it wasn't the
focal point of the strike, and teachers
returned to their classrooms without
having scored a complete victory on
that front.
Now, in Chicago, the looming strike
is about teachers "signaling to the
state of Illinois, 'Even when there's
more money to pay us, our concerns
are more about the investments
you're making in the schools and in
the classrooms. ... Even when there's
more money on the table, we're still
going to strike, because you need
to believe us when we say class size
is essential; librarians are essential;

social workers are essential,' " Bruno
said. "You can't get an agreement by
throwing more dollars at the actual
workforce."
Indeed, teachers say they have
witnessed their colleagues leave in
droves, and slowing the exodus will
require more than just a pay raise.
"In most people's minds, pay is not
the No. 1 thing that is driving people
out of this district," Osgood said. "It's
because of these horrid working conditions, overwhelming workloads,
disrespect, a lack of autonomy-and
these are things that can be fixed."
For instance, she said, there's a
nurse in her school only one day a
week. If students get sick the other
four days, teachers have to put them
in a corner of the classroom, where
they might nap, or even vomit, until
their parents can pick them up, since
there is nobody else to watch them,
Osgood said.
If a student has a more serious
medical issue, like asthma, diabetes,
or food allergies, Osgood said the
school's safety plan is to call 911 and
wait for an ambulance.
"We're not trained medical professionals," she said.
The district, meanwhile, said that
type of scenario is not standard practice, and that it provides school nurses
based on the needs of students with
504 plans.

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Education Week - October 9, 2019

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