Two days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel urged schools to break with the Chicago Teachers Union and lengthen the school day, a fourth city elementary school voted to do just that. Teachers at Benjamin E. Mays Elementary Academy in Englewood this morning voted 81 percent in favor of extending the school day 90 minutes.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard raised the stakes Tuesday in their effort to add 90 minutes to Chicago's school day by offering financial incentives to all elementary schools that adopt the plan even as negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union have stalled.
Tension was high in Chicago all summer. The teachers union had quarreled with school district leaders over pay raises, the length of the school year and other details in an expiring contract.
The year was 1987, and over the next 19 days — the longest teachers strike in the city's history — the two sides would bicker while Chicago's schoolchildren remained home. The situation may remind some of the current standoff between the Chicago Teachers Union and the city school district
The Chicago Public Schools board today is voting on salaries for top administrators, including CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, and many of the salaries are significantly higher than those of predecessors in the Daley/Huberman regime.
This is going to become yet another friction point in the district's rapidly worsening relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union. Read more...
Chicago Public Schools teachers are planning to fight back against the district's decision to renege on four percent raises called for under the current labor contract.
The Board of Education voted yesterday to claw back the raises, citing a $720 million budget deficit. Read more...
