Education Week - October 23, 2019 - 8

Chicago Teachers on the Picket Lines Once Again
By Madeline Will
About 25,000 Chicago educators
took to the picket lines last week, waving signs with slogans like, "On strike
for my students" and "Stop the cuts."
Teachers were on strike as of press
time in the nation's third-largest
school system, fighting for salary increases, enforceable caps on class
sizes, and a written commitment
for more nurses, social workers, and
librarians. They were also demanding investments in affordable housing, which some say falls outside the
scope of collective bargaining. Teachers were joined by 7,500 support staff,
like bus aides and special education
assistants, who also went on strike
Oct. 17, in a separate contract dispute.
"We want to be in our schools, but

sometimes you have to take a hard
step in order to get what's right," said
Chicago Teachers Union President
Jesse Sharkey in a press conference
announcing the strike was indeed
taking place.
District officials said schools will
remain open for the duration of the
strike so the 300,000 students affected-many of whom are from lowincome families-have a safe place to
go and access to meals. Even so, all instruction will be canceled. On the first
day of the strike, just 7,500 students
came to school, according to district
reports.
Chicago teachers staged a one-day
walkout in 2016, but the last time they
went on a strike was in 2012. That
strike lasted a week. It remains to be
seen how long teachers will stand on

the picket lines this time-but as of
press time, the two sides seemed far
apart on several key issues.
"We want to make this a short
strike," Sharkey said, but "we've got
a ways to go."

A 'Historic' Offer?
The day before teachers took to the
picket lines, district leaders maintained the school system cannot afford all the union's demands.
"At every turn, we bent over backwards to meet the union's needs,"
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who
oversees bargaining for the district,
told reporters, expressing her frustration that the union is not "satisfied"
with what she calls a "historic offer."
CTU is asking for a 15 percent

PRINT AD (2/5 3 COL)

teacher raise over three years and
for paraprofessionals, who are represented by the union, to receive a significant raise as well. The union has
demanded a nurse in every school
and for the district to hire more social
workers, counselors, and librarians.
CTU also wants enforceable class-size
limitations but has said it would be
open to phasing in lower class sizes,
starting with the neediest schools.
In return, the district has offered a
16 percent raise for teachers over five
years and an average raise of about
8 percent for paraprofessionals this
school year. The district has agreed to
put $9 million toward reducing class
sizes. Lightfoot and district leadership
also pledged to put a full-time nurse
in every school by 2024 and add 200
more social workers over five years.
They recently promised an additional
$400,000 a year to recruit, hire, and
develop nurses, social workers, and
special education case managers.
District leaders say they agree with
many of the union's demands. But
bargaining has been complicated by a
state law that says the Chicago district
does not have to bargain over class
sizes and staffing levels-the issues
that the union contends are the most
critical. Teachers have demanded that
the district put its promises in writing,
but the district has wanted to maintain flexibility with its spending.

Fighting for Students

Roadmaps to Achievement Through
ESSA's K-12 Spending Reviews
Learn how detailed reviews
of K-12 spending, staffing, and
priorities required for states' lowestperforming schools can help the
stage for improvement under the
Every Student Succeeds Act.

Wednesday, October 30, 2019
4-5 PM ET
edweek.org/go/webinar/
ESSAspending

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 23, 2019 | www.edweek.org

GUESTS
* ARY AMERIKANER, vice president
for P-12 policy, practice, and
research, Education Trust
* JONATHAN TRAVERS, partner,
Education Resource Strategies
MODERATOR
* DAAREL BURNETTE II,
staff writer, Education Week
Sponsored by

Days before the strike, however,
Lightfoot switched gears and said she
would be willing to put some commitments on class sizes and staffing
directly into the contract. The union
said it received a written proposal
on class size from the district on the
strike's first day, but it didn't go far
enough.
"That would be a game-changer in
the relationship between the parties,"
said Robert Bruno, a labor professor
at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. However, he said, a
lot has yet to be figured out: "What
would be a level of staffing that the
mayor would be willing to put in the
contract? What can the city afford?"
Also, "What language exactly
would be used so these provisions
could be enforced under the law?"
Bruno continued. "That's not easy
to do, particularly in a short window,
and unfortunately, this breakthrough
came late."
On the first day of the strike, educators clad in red marched through the
streets of Chicago, chanting, cheering, and ringing bells.
"What we're trying to do with this
contract right now is to right a lot of
historical wrongs," said Kenzo Shibata, a high school civics teacher
who's on the CTU's executive board
and bargaining team.
The union is also asking for the city
to invest in affordable housing for
educators and students. More than
16,000 students in the district experienced homelessness last school year.
"If a student doesn't feel safe, they
can't learn," Shibata said.

Lightfoot has said affordable housing falls outside the scope of what
should be included in collective bargaining, but the district's latest offer
included some supports for students
in temporary living situations.
This strike is about changing policies that hurt the city's "most vulnerable students," said Dustin Voss,
a social-science teacher at Christian
Fenger Academy High School on
Chicago's South Side. The school is in
a neighborhood plagued by gun violence, he said-several students have
been killed in recent years.
"We try to spend on social workers and security and deans to keep
our students safe," he said. "But that
might mean less teachers."
Because of budgetary tradeoffs,
for instance, Voss said students
take Spanish classes online, without
a teacher. There is no art teacher.
There's only one science teacher for
about 300 students. And some teachers in the school have class sizes of 38
students, he said.
The Chicago Teachers Union has
been fighting over these issues-
which go beyond the bread-and-butter concerns of most labor contracts-
for years, and teachers are hopeful
that this strike could be their chance
to score some significant victories.
"[Lightfoot] keeps saying it's the
best offer they've ever gotten, and the
teachers are offended by it," Bruno
said. "Their argument is, 'You're telling us to just take the money and not
worry about anything else, and that
would be a betrayal of our professional ethics; it would be a betrayal to
our students and to the parents.'"
Across the country, in both red
states and blue cities, teachers have
walked out of their classrooms en
masse more than a dozen times over
the last two years to demand better
pay and more money for schools. The
public largely got behind teachers, in
part because they put student-learning conditions in the spotlight.
In fact, the Chicago teacher strike
in 2012 "paved the way in showing
[a major strike] could be done and
in a way that would keep public support and also have substantial wins"
for the union, said Katharine Strunk,
a professor of education policy at
Michigan State University.
Then, teachers won salary increases
and new teaching and counseling positions, and they also prevented the
city from implementing a controversial merit-pay system.
A Chicago Sun-Times/ABC7 poll
that was conducted about a week before the current strike began found
that nearly half of voters surveyed
supported a work stoppage. District
parents were more likely to support
the strike, the poll found.
Still, there's always a risk that public
support will wane the longer the strike
continues, Strunk said.
"No question, strikes can be very
hard for parents and kids," she said.
"It's the working-class parents who
can't miss work: What do they do
when their kindergartner is home
from school for a week?"

http://edweek.org/go/webinar/ESSAspending http://edweek.org/go/webinar/ESSAspending http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - October 23, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 23, 2019