CHICAGO _ The Chicago Teachers Union reached a tentative contract agreement with the school board minutes before a midnight strike deadline Monday, meaning schools will be in session Tuesday morning.
The two sides narrowly averted what would have been the second strike of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's tenure after almost 12 hours of talks Monday. Negotiations to replace a contract that expired in June 2015 had stretched for well over a year.
Earlier Monday evening CTU President Karen Lewis said that while "we have no tentative agreement in hand yet," the latest offer from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration "does look significantly better" than previous proposals.
Janice Jackson, chief education officer for Chicago Public Schools, said that "we do believe that we are close and we are hopeful that we will reach an agreement very soon."
She said at a 10 p.m. news conference that the union had received the offer less than two hours earlier and was going over it "line by line."
The late-night dramatics follow well over a year of negotiations to replace a contract reached after a seven-day strike in 2012. A key union demand has been more money for schools, particularly from special taxing districts, and indications were Emanuel's administration was coming through on that front.
A source said the mayor was prepared to offer more money from those tax increment financing districts to sweeten the pot, but it was unclear how much money he would direct to schools.
Lewis acknowledged the latest city offer "addressed a lot of things we brought back and countered to the board before" but said she didn't know where the additional financing came from.
The union has pointed to the surplus TIF funds as a source of money that could be used to protect jobs and ensure teachers get raises they believe they deserve as CPS asked them to contribute more toward their retirements.
As talks continued into the night, Emanuel aides made preparations for the mayor to give his 2017 city budget address Tuesday, although the mayor retained the option of shifting gears and postponing it.
At the opening of a grocery store Monday in Bronzeville, Emanuel talked about the "shared goal" of making sure school doesn't get disrupted for CPS students, with a deal that's fair to teachers and Chicago taxpayers. "That's our goal, and my No. 1 priority is to keep kids in school safe," he said.
Many CTU members spent Monday afternoon picking up strike materials outside a Near West Side union hall and being told to show up for picket lines outside schools at 6 a.m. Tuesday unless they heard otherwise. Volunteers and CTU staff members distributed shirts, picket signs and bundles of twine under a large banner reading "CTU Strike Headquarters."
Hundreds of teachers stopped in throughout the afternoon to pick up supplies for a possible strike, said Julieta Riesco, a teacher at Drummond Montessori School in Bucktown. Norine Gutekanst, a CTU staff member, said union members are hoping for a resolution but preparing for a strike.
"We're absolutely willing to go on strike if there's no resolution, if we don't get a good agreement," Gutekanst said. "We're going to do what we have to do. We all know that what we really want is to have strong schools in every neighborhood and that's what this is all about."
