.CPS has wanted to give the mediator more time to work on issues during good faith negotiations, saying the fact-finding should begin in February. That would push the strike to May at the earliest.
“We have the highest respect for our teachers’ work and while we understand their frustrations, a strike that threatens to set back our students’ progress is simply not the answer to our challenges,” CPS CEO Forrest Claypool said in a statement.
“As we’ve said from the beginning, revenue must be part of the solution — especially in a state that ranks last in the country for its share of education funding. Nowhere is this underfunding more stark than at CPS, where our students receive only 15 percent of the state’s education funding, despite making up 20 percent of the state’s enrollment.”
CPS also said the union’s demands from the district in a financial crisis totaled $1.5 billion, including more than $900 million in hiring of school librarians, nurses, social workers and more teachers to reduce class sizes.
Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Council floor leader and former longtime chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee, said the 88 percent strike vote surprises no one at City Hall.
“It’s the only mechanism they have to move the ball forward. You could make it a 95 percent bar and they’d meet it,” O’Connor said.
Although the saber-rattling is going on in Chicago, O’Connor said the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to “keep the schools open and continue to make payroll” lies in Springfield. Instead of being at each other’s throats, the union and the mayor should be “singing in harmony,” he said.
“That should be the story. It shouldn’t be that they voted to take a strike. That’s the first step that they have to take. Everybody understands that,” O’Connor said.
“If the teachers union thinks taking this vote and sitting up here in Chicago is going to be enough, I don’t think that’s the case,” he said. “They need to join hands with the Board of Ed and the administration and go down and try and convince the Legislature and the governor that this is the appropriate way to keep the schools open.”
Emanuel has offered to raise property taxes by an additional $170 million for the schools, but only if teachers accept the equivalent of a 7 percent pay cut and the state reimburses CPS for “normal” pension costs.
That would require the City Council to cast a second vote — in addition to the $588 million property tax increase for police and fire pensions and school construction approved in late October — this time to reinstate the old, dedicated property tax levy for teacher pensions.
On Monday, O’Connor was asked whether he is prepared to walk that political plank again.
“We’re not prepared to do anything until we see what money they’re prepared to put into the pot,” O’Connor said.
“If the only thing that comes out of Springfield is they’re willing to allow us to tax our way out of this problem, I don’t think that’s a solution.”
Article Appeared @http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/1178864/teachers-union-announce-results-strike-vote-monday