CHICAGO — Eight hundred teachers’ union delegates are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to end a public schools strike, now in its seventh day, that has left 350,000 students without classes and the city calling the walkout a public danger.
Though a tentative settlement was reached between the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools negotiators, it is anyone’s call whether the deal will be accepted Tuesday afternoon by union delegates who chose not to do so when they were first presented with the plan on Sunday night.
In interviews, delegates’ views on the proposal seemed to range widely and gave few hints whether Karen Lewis, the union’s president, had gathered a consensus behind the deal, which she had earlier deemed good if imperfect.
Some said they wanted to get back to school right away, while others said they needed more time to study provisions of the contract. Some said they simply did not like what they saw on issues like pay, evaluations and a wellness program.
“It wasn’t ready,” said James Dongas, a delegate at Lane Tech College Prep high school, who described the tentative deal as premature. “It wasn’t cooked.”
As promised, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration on Monday sought a preliminary injunction to end the strike, maintaining that state law “expressly prohibits” teachers from striking over noneconomic issues, including layoffs and teacher evaluations. A judge was expected to hear the case on Wednesday morning if schools had not reopened.
