CHICAGO — More than 300,000 public school students prepared to return to school as Chicago leaders on Thursday announced an end to an acrimonious teachers’ strike that lasted 11 days, the longest here in decades, and turned life upside down for families across the nation’s third-largest school district.
In the end, the clash between the teachers and Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, appeared to have brought mixed results. The city agreed to spend millions of dollars on reducing class sizes; promised to pay for hundreds more social workers, nurses and librarians; and approved a 16 percent salary increase over the coming five years. But not all union members were satisfied; a vote to approve a tentative deal was noticeably split, and some teachers wanted to press on to seek steeper reductions in class sizes, more teacher preparation time and aid for special education. New York tTimes.
Chicago Teachers Union members voted Wednesday to approve a tentative five-year contract in a tight vote, but they say they will remain on strike until the mayor agrees to make up the days lost due to the strike.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot plans to hold a press conference at 9:45 p.m. to respond, but from the beginning she has said she didn’t want to make up the missed days.
Under the tentative agreement, the teachers union got the school district to agree in contract language that over five years it will add a nurse and a social worker in every school. They also got the school district to promise to hire a host of other staff, including lots of special education case managers and homeless coordinators.
It also won $35 million to reduce overcrowded classrooms.
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