CHICAGO _ Thursday marked the sixth day without classes for 300,000 Chicago Public Schools students as the Chicago Teachers Union reported no agreement on its top priorities.
After talks ended Wednesday evening, the teachers union said tentative agreements had been reached on about 80 individual issues but not on its top priorities. The Chicago Board of Education has offered teachers a 16% raise over five years, while the union has asked for 15% in a three-year contract instead. The reports of progress came after a day of marches that shut down traffic in the Loop and a rally outside the Thompson Center.
No large-scale demonstrations were planned for Thursday as teachers headed back to morning picket lines. After a downtown rally early Thursday afternoon contrasting tax subsidies for developers with Mayor Lori Lightfoot's assertion the school system no more money available than what's been offered, the union planned to put on nonviolent civil disobedience training for its members, a tactic CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said was sometimes necessary "to have a voice in this country."
Union President Jesse Sharkey provided an update to reporters at a picket line outside Simeon Career Academy High School beginning about 7:20 a.m. Thursday.
"I think the public not only massively supports the strike ... but I think, more importantly, the public supports the demands."
Sharkey likened hammering out a deal to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, and said it's impossible to do so when Lightfoot has put some of the pieces in her pocket.
With the continued strike, he said teachers "who don't want to be on strike" aren't able to help students fill out college applications. Some sports teams that had qualified for state playoffs have been unable to participate, and Sharkey said, "From the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry for those things."
But he said a sense of remorse is not a reason to "take the inadequate offer" from Lightfoot "and pretend it's adequate."
At Thursday's morning briefing, teachers from Simeon also shared their experience with class sizes there. Gabrielle Green, a second-year educator, said in her first year, two of her music appreciation classes had more than 55 students each.
"This is an outrage," Green said.
"I felt terrible at the end of the day" because students sat on the floor, lining the walls because there weren't enough chairs to accommodate them.
As the sun rose Thursday morning, teachers at Hamilton Elementary School in Lakeview began to gather for the sixth day of the strike.
Ian Ransdell, a physical education teacher at Hamilton, said they got a later start than past days.
"It's really long, but it sounds like negotiations are moving forward," he said.
Hamilton relies on parent fundraising to close gaps in funding, but Ransdell said other schools are not so lucky and that the strike is happening in part because of a show of support for them.
"It's 'cause it's what's right," he said.
Adam Loredo, a middle school English teacher, arrived at Hamilton a few minutes later. He serves as a school delegate, district strike organizer and a member of the bargaining team. As a third-generation CPS educator, Loredo said he understands the need for quality education across the city.
"Investing in our children is not a bailout, it's an investment in the future," he said. "Right now the ball is in the mayor's court."
He added that teachers are used to working in conditions far worse than Thursday morning's chilly weather.
"Teachers are good at teaching lessons and understanding lessons," Loredo said. "The lesson the city has taught us is that we have to take to the streets."
He said he missed his students and that being away from them has been "painful," but he has run into some of the them on the picket line.
"Naturally the first thing I ask is how their independent reading is going and what they've been doing in their spare time," he said.
Teachers, parents and a few dogs and children marched up and down Armitage Avenue in front of Lincoln Park High School on Thursday morning. A few stopped to make signs and decorate a large banner at a table labeled "pop-up art club," against the school's black wrought iron fence.
"There's a lot of uncertainty, but you just keep showing up," said Philip Kendall, a music teacher at Lincoln Park High School, as he reached the end of the block with his boyfriend, who is not a CPS teacher. Kendall was a CPS teacher during the 2012 strike but said that he feels more strongly about the communal issues this time around. Though class sizes don't affect his choir classes _ the more students who are in choir the better _ teaching beginner-level students instruments can be extremely challenging in a packed classroom.
"I really believe in what we're doing," he said.
