By Eric Carter
Education Reporter

CHICAGO - Children attending Chicago Public Schools returned to school on Wednesday after teachers ended a seven-day strike that made the city a flashpoint in the debate over union rights.

Austin Howard, a 17-year-old student on the North Side, shared his feelings. "While I am happy to be back in school, I am even happier that my teachers maybe will be treated better."

Union delegates voted Tuesday night to suspend the walkout after discussing a proposed contract settlement with those in charge of the nation's third-largest school district. They said the contract wasn't perfect, but that it included enough concessions on proposed new teacher evaluations, recall rights for laid-off teachers and classroom conditions to return to work pending a vote by its more than 26,000 teachers and support staffers in coming weeks.

It was also a relief to parents. The strike stranded roughly 350,000 students and left many parents scrambling to arrange alternative care for their children even though the district kept more than 140 schools open for several hours a day for meals and activities.

Some parents expressed hope Wednesday that the tentative contract agreement would benefit students in a district grappling with high dropout rates and poor performance.

"They'll hopefully win from the strike," said Isabela Sanchez, referring to her children as she walked them to a South Side elementary school.

Her son, 8-year-old Jose, said he was excited for another reason: "Learning about planets."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who filed a lawsuit this week to try to force teachers back to work – called the settlement "an honest compromise."

Union leaders pointed to concessions by the city on how closely teacher evaluations will be tied to student test scores and to better opportunities for teachers to retain their jobs if schools are closed by budget cuts.

"We said that we couldn't solve all the problems of the world with one contract, and it was time to end the strike," said Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis.

But the evaluations and job security measures stirred the most intense debate. The union said the evaluation system 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 to give laid-off teachers first dibs on open jobs anywhere in the district. The district said that could prevent principals from hiring the teachers they thought most appropriate for the position. The tentative settlement proposed giving laid-off teachers first shot at schools that absorbed their former students and filling half of district openings from a pool of laid-off teachers.

Marion Sticks, a school psychologist, said she is interested in learning how the students she counsels fared over the summer.

"I have so many questions for them," she said. "I'm glad to be back for all kinds of reasons."

By Eric Carter
Education Reporter

CHICAGO -  25,000 teachers in the nation's third-largest district have responded to Mayor Emanuel's demand that teacher evaluations be tied to student performance by walking off the job for the first time in 25 years.

Chicago's teachers have drawn the hardest line in recent memory against using student test scores to rate teacher performance. "It has been a very tough issue across the country," said Rob Weil, a director at the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's two largest teachers' unions. "Teachers in many places believe that they see administrations and state legislatures creating language and policies that's nothing more than a mousetrap."

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is excited to implement the new evaluations, and that is one of the main points of contention in a challenging negotiation between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, which president Karen Lewis has called "a fight for the very soul of public education."

The strike, which has left approximately 370,000 students out of class as the city and the union also fight over pay and job security, entered its fourth day Thursday. After late night talks Wednesday, both sides expressed optimism that students would be back in class as soon as Friday.

The push to judge teachers in part by their student's work stems from the reform efforts of the Obama administration, which has used its $4 billion Race to the Top competition and waivers to the federal No Child Left Behind law to encourage states to change how teachers are assessed.

Teachers unions argue that doing so ignores too many things that can affect a student's performance, such as poverty, a child's family environment, the ability to speak English, or even a school's lack of air conditioning. As Carmen Delgado, a science teacher in Chicago, stated, "You are going to judge us on the results of the tests where there could be some external circumstances that are beyond my control? Are we as teachers responsible for our child's home culture as well?"

Illinois lawmakers voted in 2010 to require that all public schools use student achievement as a component of teacher evaluations by the 2016-17 school year. In Chicago, Emanuel is attempting to stick to his promise made during his inauguration speech by demanding the Chicago Teachers Union agree to make the change years ahead of that schedule.

"As some have noted, including (his wife) Amy, I am not a patient man," Emanuel said after he was sworn in as mayor a year ago. "When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor."

The issue of teacher evaluations has only been on the table in Chicago for a few months, and Emanuel acknowledged this week that his swift push for change could be a factor in why his relationship with the union has been so contentious. In other big cities, a more patient approach has led to success in finding agreement with reluctant teachers.

The deal reached Wednesday in Boston will allow administrators to rely more heavily on student achievement in crafting teacher evaluations and remove from the classroom those receiving poor evaluations within 30 days. That contract came after 400 hours of contract negotiations that spanned more than 50 separate sessions over two years.

"Change is hard and is often hard-fought. But we should make special note that through all the tough negotiations, neither side let their frustrations spill onto the students of the Boston Public Schools," said Mayor Thomas Menino. "I tell you, this is a contract that's great for our students, works for our teachers and it's fair to our taxpayers."

As of Thursday morning, negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Emanuel were said to be developing.

By Eric Carter
Education Reporter

CHICAGO - Parents and caregivers who scrambled Monday to figure out what to do with more than 350,000 idle children must do it all again Tuesday – and perhaps longer – after the teachers union and district failed to reach a settlement to end the first strike in the city's schools in a quarter century. On Monday, only about 16,000 students showed up at schools and other venues where authorities organized activities and provided meals for those in need. That means the vast majority of parents had to make alternative arrangements or leave their children unsupervised through the day.

Chicago School Board President David Vitale said he thought an agreement could be reached on Tuesday. But Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis sounded less optimistic, saying the district has not changed its offers on the two most contentious issues, performance evaluations and recall rights for laid-off teachers.

The walkout – less than a week after most schools opened for fall – has created a tense political distraction for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In a year when labor unions have been losing ground nationwide, the implications were sure to extend far beyond Chicago, particularly for districts engaged in similar debates.

"This is a long-term battle that everyone's going to watch," said Eric Hanuskek, a senior fellow in education at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. "Other teachers unions in the United States are wondering if they should follow suit."

The union had vowed to strike Monday if there was no agreement on a new contract, even though the district offered a 16 percent raise over four years and the two sides had essentially agreed on a longer school day.

Parents and caregivers said they were upset that the two sides can't seem to agree. About 11,000 students showed up Monday at the 144 schools kept open by the district to offer breakfast, lunch and activities; another 5,000 attended activities at other sites, including churches, park district buildings and libraries.

Michelle Li walked her 5-year-old daughter, Amber, to Mays Elementary but turned back once she realized she didn't know which adults would be watching her child. She said that the kindergartner just started school last week.

"I don't understand this, my little girl just started kindergarten," she said.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he took officers off desk duty and deployed them to deal with any protests as well as the scores of students who might be roaming the streets, but police said there were no incidents on Monday.

Martha Malloy, whose husband dropped off their two elementary-age children and a granddaughter at Mays Elementary – where some picketers yelled "don't go in!" – said she doesn't blame the teachers and thinks Emanuel should give them what they want "because he's not in the classroom with those kids."

"They need to be at school and learning," Malloy said. "I don't want my children or others to get off track."

Teacher Kimberly Crawford said she is most concerned about issues such as class size and the lack of air conditioning.

"It's not just about the raise," she said. "I've worked without a raise for two years."

So teachers walked the picket lines at the schools in the morning, then thousands of educators and their supporters took over several downtown streets during the Monday evening rush. Police secured several blocks around district headquarters as the crowds marched and chanted.

The strike quickly became part of the presidential campaign. Republican candidate Mitt Romney said teachers were turning their backs on students and that Obama was siding with the striking teachers in his hometown. Obama's top spokesman said the president has not taken sides and is urging both the union and district to settle the dispute quickly.

Emanuel, who recently agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for Obama's re-election, dismissed Romney's comments as "lip service."

But one labor expert said a major strike unfolding in the shadow of the November election could only hurt a president who desperately needs the votes of workers, including teachers, in battleground states.

"I can't imagine this is good for the president and something he can afford to have go on for more than a week," said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For two decades, contract agreements have slowly eroded teachers' voices, Bruno said. "But this signals to other collective bargaining units that the erosion of teachers' rights isn't inevitable. They (the union members) are telling them, `You don't have to roll over.'"

Emanuel, who has engaged in a public and often controversial battle with the union, is not personally negotiating, but he's monitoring the talks through aides.

Not long after his election, the mayor's office rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. Then he asked the union to reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes, a request the union turned down.

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.

The district and union agreed in July on a deal to implement the longer school day, crafting 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 dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining stalled on the other issues.

By Eric Carter
Education Reporter

CHICAGO - Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago's first schools strike in 25 years after union leaders announced that months-long negotiations had failed to resolve a contract dispute with school district officials by a midnight deadline.

The walkout in the country's third-largest school district posed a tricky challenge for the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he would push to end the strike quickly as officials figure out how to keep nearly 400,000 students safe, off the streets, and occupied.

"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said Sunday night, not long after the union announced the action. "It was a strike of choice...it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong."

Some 28,000 teachers and support staff were expected to join the picket. Among teachers protesting Monday morning outside Charles Darwin Elementary School on Chicago's North Side, seventh-grade teacher Emma  Jackson said she wanted a quick contract resolution.

"I don't like the idea of a strike, but we are overworked and underpaid...we need to resolve this quickly" Jackson said, adding that wages and classroom conditions need to be improved.

Contract negotiations between Chicago Public School officials and union leaders that stretched through the weekend were expected to resume Monday.

Officials said some 130 schools would be open between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.

City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised – especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence – might be at risk, but vowed to protect the students' safety.

"We will make sure our kids are safe, we will see our way through these issues and our kids will be back in the classroom where they belong," said Emanuel, President Barack Obama's former chief of staff.

The school district asked community organizations to provide extra programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities.

Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers' protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.

Union leaders and district officials were not far apart in their negotiations on compensation, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. But other issues – including potential changes to health benefits and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores – remained unresolved, she said.

"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," Lewis said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Before the strike, some parents said they would not drop their children at strange schools where they didn't know the other students or supervising adults. On Monday, as only a few students arrived at some schools, Esther Sanchez said she wouldn't leave her daughter with an adult she didn't know. Her daughter, Esperanza, started school just a week earlier.

"I don't understand why Emanuel is being so stubborn: give the teachers what they want so my baby can go back to school," Sanchez said at Rudy Lozano Elementary in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood before turning around and taking her daughter home.

Some students expressed anger, blaming the school district for interrupting their education.

"They're not hurting the teachers, they're hurting us," said Moniqua Jones , a 17-year-old student at Jones College Prep High School. She said her mother made her come to class to do homework so she "wouldn't suck up her light bill."

But there was anger toward teachers, as well.

"I think it's crazy. Why are they even going on strike?" asked Mike Thompson, a 16-year-old student at Jones.

Emanuel and the union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have recently come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

"They're going to lose learning time," said Margarita Simmons, whose son  is in the sixth grade on the city's Northwest Side. "And if the whole afternoon they're going to be free, it's bad. My boy has to learn and I have to go to work."

The school board was offering a fair and responsible contract that would most of the union's demands after "extraordinarily difficult" talks, board president David Vitale said. Emanuel said the district offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said among the issues of concern was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relied too heavily on students' standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years. City officials disagreed and said the union has not explained how it reached that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers improve.

When he took office last year, Emanuel 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 reopen 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, then tried 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.

The district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours.