It’s back to school in Chicago

Students return to class at Roswell B. Mason Elementary School on the South Side after a Chicago Teachers Union strike closed schools for 11 days, Friday morning, Nov. 1, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Chicago Public School students returned to their classes Friday morning after a teachers strike closed schools for 11 days.

Attendance was sparse in some classrooms. Nine second-graders showed up in Muna Rankin’s room at Mason Elementary; she usually has 30 students.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot greeted students at Mason in the Lawndale neighborhood but didn’t take questions from the media.

“I’m glad you’re back in school,” Lightfoot said, asking kids what they wore for Halloween. “I’m sure you missed your teacher, and I’m sure she missed you.”

The Chicago Teachers Union suspended its strike Thursday after reaching a tentative contract agreement with Lightfoot and CPS.

“Teachers needed to do what they had to do to get what they deserved,” said parent Raymond Williams, dropping off his 6-year-old son, Tanion, at Mason Elementary on Friday.

Mesha Tilly, who was dropping off her third-grader, said she was left “completely frustrated” by the strike, saying she felt as though CTU bullied the mayor.

“They did a lot of attacking of her,” Tilly said. “They made everything her fault — and it wasn’t. She’s a new mayor. She’s trying to get everything in order. They weren’t giving her a fair chance.”

Tilly said she kept her daughter at home during the strike, depending on her 16-year-old to babysit when she went to work.

Asked if the strike left her with any hard feelings, Lightfoot said: “Certainly not on my part. I’m a kid who grew up in a union household. Strikes are part of the realities of organized labor.”

The mayor was also asked if, in retrospect, she gave the union too much too early in the negotiations.

“I’ve done hundreds of negotiations over the course of my legal career, and I just felt like it was really important for us to put our money where our mouth was to demonstrate to the teachers and staff that we valued them, that we cared about them,” Lightfoot said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot visits a third grade class at Roswell B. Mason Elementary School on the South Side on the first day back to class after a Chicago Teachers Union strike closed schools for 11 days, Friday morning, Nov. 1, 2019.

Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey opens the door of Richard Yates Elementary School for CTU and Service Employees International Union members on the first day back to school after a teachers strike that lasted more than two weeks, Friday morning, Nov. 1, 2019.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey took a victory lap Friday morning at Yates Elementary on the North Side where he was greeted by teachers and other school workers with handshakes and hugs before escorting the group into the school.

“A strike doesn’t just change the contract, it also changes the people who participate in the strike,” Sharkey told reporters before entering the school.

“We feel a little bit of what it means to have our voice count in a society that often ignores our voices. Workers in this country are often invisible,” he said. “We achieved a lot. Did we achieve everything? No.”

Sharkey refused to comment about the face-to-face negotiations with Mayor Lori Lightfoot that sealed the deal or whether hard feelings lingered.

“In negotiations, there’s always give and take and in this case there were a lot of things that we wanted in writing and the district said they weren’t going to do it. Well, they did it. ... And what we had to give was a five-year contract.”

A week’s pay was also a sacrifice teachers gave up, he said.

“Striking is hard. It’s physically hard. And there’s also a lot of anxiety about your pay check,” he said.

“If anything comes out of this by way of lessons, I think it’s the lessons that we ourselves draw about our own importance and our own power when we stand together and we lift up our voice and we have some confidence.

“So don’t expect us to be quiet or go away. Expect us to have more of a sense of what we can accomplish and keep fighting for justice in our schools and our city.”

Juan Graziani

Chermiese Lane

Juan Graziani, who was carrying his 3-year-old son into Yates, defended the teachers.

“Some people call the teachers selfish, but I don’t think that because we don’t know what the teachers go through,” he said. “They stay with our kids six, seven, eight hours a day and when they go home they’re still working. You never stop being a teacher.”

Graziani, 35, of Humboldt Park, has three children in three different public schools. His 3-year-old is a special education student at Yates. “So I get it. I support them. Because these schools, they need more resources.”

Chermiese Lane, 28, of Old Town, said she is on the side of the teachers because she wants the class size for her 5-year-old daughter — a Yates kindergartner — to come down.

“My daughter is in a classroom of 32 5-year-olds with a teacher and classroom assistant who are kind of elderly. They don’t have no control,” she said. “With that many kids, you know somebody’s not learning. It’s just too much.”