The governing body of the Chicago Teachers Union voted Thursday to ask the membership to take a strike vote on Sept. 4 unless an ”acceptable contract” is reached with the Board of Education before then.
The full union membership must vote its approval before a strike of the city`s public schools is authorized.
Union representatives will return to the bargaining table Monday and will continue neogtiations with the school board until the union`s contract expires Aug. 31, said union President Jacqueline Vaughn.
”If the board does not come back to the table with an acceptable contract, we will strike,” Vaughn said during a news conference after the vote. She described negotiations as ”very slow.”
The union`s House of Delegates voted 504-2 to authorize a strike vote during a meeting at the Bismarck Hotel. The action was taken after a meeting of the union`s executive board.
Vaughn said issues to be resolved include improved working conditions, smaller class sizes and pay raises.
”We are trying to doing what the public wants us to do and provide quality education,” Vaughn said.
The union also is demanding that the board rescind a planned three-day reduction in the school year, which would effectively reduce teacher salaries by 2 percent, Vaughn said. The union is seeking a multiyear contract that would include salary increases of at least 3 percent, she said.
The school board voted to shorten the school year as part of its effort to save $60 million after Gov. James Thompson announced cuts in state aid to education.
Vaughn said the House of Delegates vote was not intended to force a special session of the Illinois General Assembly to come up with more funds for education.
Earlier Thursday, Thompson said he could do little to provide more money for Chicago schools.
”Let`s make it clear that I don`t say this just because I`m standing in suburban Cook County,” Thompson said during a news conference near Park Ridge to announce that he had requested federal disaster status for portions of Cook and Du Page Counties. The state, he said, has ”a responsibility to the whole state and all its school systems, not just Chicago.”
Thompson said he asked the legislature for additional money for schools and ”they said no.” He added that the state is responsible for the education of all its students, but that in this case, an ”equal responsibility rests on the shoulders of the City of Chicago.”
”What I`ve said we would do, if we have the cash, is to advance the September school-aid payment into August,” giving Chicago a $50 million boost, Thompson said.
For this to happen, the state needs $150 million because it can`t advance Chicago money without doing the same for every school district in the state, he said.
