Chicago mayor to seek court order to end teachers strike

Associated Press

CHICAGO

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.

Emanuel said he would seek a court order to end the strike, which he said is illegal under state law.

Union delegates declined to vote formally on a proposed contract settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation’s third-largest school district. Schools will remain closed today.

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.

“We felt more comfortable being able to take back what’s on the table and let our constituents look at it and digest it. We can have a much better decision come Tuesday,” said Dean Refakes, a physical- education teacher at Gompers Elementary School and a delegate.

Emanuel said the issues teachers are striking over are “deemed by state law to be non-strikable.”

“This was a strike of choice and is now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children,” he said in a written statement.

The walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years, instantly had 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.