Chicago Teachers Vote on Pay Raise Pact as Strike Looms

City teachers and school officials reached a tentative contract agreement Sunday aimed at averting a midnight strike that would have affected 409,000 students in the nation’s third-largest school district.

The pact, which had to be approved Sunday by the district’s 26,000 teachers, called for a 3% teacher pay raise in February and a 7% raise in 1993, Supt. Ted Kimbrough said.

Teachers had said they would not show up for work today unless the school district guaranteed them at least part of the 7% raise in a three-year contract negotiated last year.

The agreement came in around-the-clock negotiations mediated by Mayor Richard M. Daley. The teachers’ contract had been extended several times during the talks.

“This will begin a process that will, hopefully, keep the schools open,” said Jacqueline Vaughn, president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

The board of education said that state and federal budget cuts made that impossible, but the teachers said cuts could be made elsewhere in the $2.3-billion schools budget.

The proposed teacher raises would cost the district $18 million next year.