CHICAGO About 25,000 Chicago Pubic school teachers went on strike Thursday after negotiators failed to agree on a contract with the nation’s third-largest school district.

About a dozen teachers gathered outside Chalmers elementary on the city’s West side before 6: 30 A.M. CT. Most wore hats and scarves for the 44-degree morning.

Teachers held signs reading “speed limit 30, not class size for young children” and “dumbledore won’t let this happen.” Teachers drank coffee and shared Chicago teachers Union sweatshirts, and they cheered as buses and cars honked as they passed.

Maggie Sermont, 32, a CTU school delegate and high school special ed teacher, has taught for seven years at Chalmers, which serves mostly low-income students.

“This is a difficult area to work in,” she said. “We have a lot of churn and burn and teachers going out the door.”

Sermont added: “No one is working at Chalmers Elementary school for the pay. We really want to help the kids, and we need wrap around services, clinicians, special teachers.”

Chicago public school teachers picket early on October 17, 2019 at Lane Tech high school.

(Photo by Colin Boyle, Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

A kindergarten across the street allowed teachers to use the toilet during the strike.

As bargaining broke down on Wednesday, mayor Laurie Lightfoot said classes for some 400,000 students would be canceled after Chicago Teacher unions rejected demands.

She said the city had offered a 16% raise for teachers and would increase the pay of the average support staff worker by 38% over the life of the contract. requests of the Union.

The mayor dropped by the YMCA center in Logan square to check on children participating in the school’s Ys Day Out program. More than 340 children attended the program, which included a full day of curriculum and athletics, at various Y locations throughout the city.

Chicago educators say the district has shortchanged schools after years of budget cuts, and they want any new promises in writing. The district says its proposal to raise 16% over five years is comprehensive and historic.

Depending on orders from the CPS, the buildings remained open on the usual bell schedule for children to attend staffed by administrators and other non-Union workers. Meals were to be served but without teachers with classes cancelled.

Teacher Jesse McAdoo, center, addresses reporters while surrounded by fellow teachers after a meeting of the Chicago Teachers Union House of delegates on Wednesday night.

(Photo: John J. Kim, AP)

Another 7,500 school support staff are also expected to go missing, joining teachers pushing pickets in their own strike over the new contract.

About 2,500 Chicago Park district workers originally planned to join the walkout with teachers and school staff workers, but their talks on Wednesday announced they had reached an agreement with city hall.

For teachers, the long-awaited work stoppage has drawn attention to what Union leaders say is a failure to strike a fair contract with the city, which identifies and funds more support staff in the form of nurses, librarians, counselors and school psychologists.

Union leaders say they also want out-of-school restrictions on class sizes, which have increased to the high 30s and mid 40s in some schools.

CPS-CTU NEGOTIATIONS: Mayor Lightfoot and CPS CEO Dr. Jackson holding brief media availability at CPS/CTU negotiations. https://t.co/3D9X8cdTnp

Mayor Laurie Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) October 16, 2019

Lightfoot said the Union’s overall requests would add an additional $ 2.5 billion to the CPS’s annual budget, which she called “completely irresponsible.”

Since Friday, we have discussed a framework that sets mandatory targets for class sizes in high-poverty schools and the staffing level of staff support in the contract, ” she said at a news conference on Wednesday. “The Union said these were its two most important issues. They wanted us to put it in writing, and that’s exactly what we did.

The mayor proposed in August a district budget of $ 7.7 billion, about $ 117 million more than the 2019 budget.

Chicago children “deserve” educational equality

Union leaders disputed the wage figures in the contract proposal, saying the average teacher salary would be closer to $ 85,000 rather than $ 100,000. They say other critical requirements were not included in the contract language, such as a commitment to put a nurse in each school. They also want the contract to address other issues that affect the city’s students, such as affordable housing.

CTU and SEIU members March in downtown Chicago on October 14, 2019.

(Photo: Grace Hauk)

“It’s amazing because class size matters,” says Victoria Winslow, 29, a fifth-year first-class teacher in Chalmers. “Our support staff deserve an acceptable wage and we only have a nurse one day a week should we stop teaching and become nurses?”

At Rudy Lozano elementary school, located between the rapidly gentrifying Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods, teachers picketing outside before 7 a.m. Thursday held signs and cheered as passing cars honked horns. The school serves about 400 students, 75% of whom are Hispanic.

High school reading teacher Melissa strum said many low-income parents who have been pushed out of the district because of rising rent costs are still sending their children to school.

She said her school receives fewer resources than schools located in the same neighborhood a few blocks away but surrounded by single-family homes and multimillion-dollar villas.

We have a social worker only three days a week and her case load is about 80 to 100 students, strum said as the sun rose over Lozano. We only have a nurse two days a week. We should have one every day.

Inside the classroom: We followed America’s 15 teachers on a day of disappointments, pressures and hard-earned victories

Hsien Franzinger Barrett, a special education teacher at Telpochcalli elementary school in Chicago’s little village neighborhood, said teachers in Chicago believe their children deserve the same fair support in schools that children receive in suburban Chicago.

He said this is especially true as CPS receives more public money this year due to a 2017 change in the state’s education funding formula.

“We do not understand the answer to the fact that it is unrealistic from a financial point of view,” he said. “We see money there and think that our children are as worthy of it as someone’s children. That’s why you see such passionate opposition here.”

Where will Chicago’s children be during the strike?

While CPS students can attend their regular school or any other age-appropriate building during the strike, many community sites and nonprofits offered childcare Thursday.

Unlike visiting a school building, most of these community options involve a fee.

Activities range from a day camp at the Shedd aquarium for about $ 100 a day to a “Schools Day Out” program at YMCA sites located near public schools that costs between $ 35 and about $ 60 a day.

“But there’s an element of emergency and surprise in this because we’ve only known for weeks that this is actually going to happen,” she said.

Last slide SlideNext

Education coverage in the United States TODAY is made possible in part thanks to a grant provided by the bill

Read or share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/10/17/chicago-teachers-union-strike-new-contract/4000656002/