Some Classes May Open Despite Chicago Strike

A teachers’ strike in the nation’s third-largest school district hit a record 22nd day Tuesday as school board officials considered reopening some classrooms using parents, principals and non-striking teachers.

Neither side was optimistic about a quick end to the walkout, which has idled about 430,000 students and 28,000 teachers and other employees represented by the Chicago Teachers Union.

The strike is the district’s ninth since 1969, and on Tuesday the walkout passed the length of the 1983 strike. The current strike has forced the cancellation of 15 days of classes.

“I don’t think anybody cares so much about that (the record) as they do about the likelihood of makeup days eating into vacation days,” board spokesman Ken Masson said. “There will be enough days to make up that you can probably figure spring vacation is gone, that the kids will be in class through the last week of June and that they’re even beginning to look at Christmas.”

One teacher who has crossed picket lines since the walkout began expressed doubt Tuesday that the board could reopen schools without her striking counterparts.

“It’s just the board throwing up dust, the same kind of posturing the union did with their first round of demands,” said Pat Duffy, a seventh-grade social studies teacher who has spent her days reviewing educational filmstrips at the school system’s central office.

Outside the central office, about 50 teachers picketed.

“The strike has gone on too long for us to go back without something reasonable,” said Horace Bell, a high school electronics teacher.

Board member Patricia O’Hern suggested the contingency plan several hours before talks recessed early Tuesday with the board offering a 1% raise. Teachers are seeking an 8.5% pay increase in the first year of a two-year contract, followed by 5% in the second year.

O’Hern said classes might begin sometime later this week for special-education students and high school seniors, who must soon apply for college admission.

Masson said the board was considering O’Hern’s proposal.

“We’d need 24 to 48 hours to get a school open,” he said. “We’d need to get in the building and find someone to get the heating and lights up and running. The engineers are part of the strike too.”

Elsewhere, teachers continued to walk picket lines in West Iron County, Mich.; Youngstown, Ohio; Little Rock, Ark.; Elizabeth, N. J., and the Pennsylvania districts of Conemaugh in Somerset County and Mid Valley in Lackawana County.