Justin's Political Corner

CHICAGO (AP) — The city’s nearly weeklong teachers strike appeared headed toward a resolution Friday after negotiators emerged from marathon talks to say they had achieved a “framework” that could end the walkout in time for students to return to class Monday.

Chicago School Board David Vitale said the “heavy lifting” was over. He declined to say where each side compromised and stressed that union delegates still must vote to formally end the strike.

Vitale said the agreement gives children the time they need in the classroom and teachers the respect they deserve.

Robert Bloch, an attorney for the Chicago Teachers Union, said union leaders expected to complete the contract language in time to present a final package to 700 union delegates sometime Sunday.

The walkout, the first by Chicago teachers in 25 years, canceled five days of school for more than 350,000 public school students who had just returned from summer vacation.

As the bargaining dragged on, teachers returned to the streets for rallies to press the union’s demands, which include a plan for laid-off instructors to get first dibs on job openings and for a teacher-evaluation system that does not rely heavily on student test scores.

On Thursday, contract talks pushed on for more than 15 hours. Vitale said early Friday that the two sides had worked beyond the evaluations issue and had begun crunching numbers on financial matters.

Union President Karen Lewis said negotiators had many “productive” conversations, but she declined to describe the talks in detail.

“It was a long day,” Lewis said. “There were some creative ideas passed around, but we still do not have an agreement.”

The union scheduled a Friday afternoon meeting of the delegates who would be required to approve any contract settlement with a majority vote.

The strike by more than 25,000 teachers in the nation’s third-largest school district has idled many children and teenagers, leaving some unsupervised in gang-dominated neighborhoods. It also has been a potent display of union power at a time when organized labor has lost ground around the nation.

The union is trying to win assurances that laid-off but qualified teachers get dibs on jobs anywhere in the district. But Illinois law gives individual principals in Chicago the right to hire the teachers they want, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel argues it’s unfair to hold principals accountable for their schools’ performance if they can’t pick their own teams.

The district has offered a compromise. If schools close, teachers would have the first right to jobs matching their qualifications at schools that absorb the children from the closed school. The proposal also includes provisions for teachers who aren’t hired, including severance.

The walkout is the first Chicago teachers strike in 25 years. A 1987 walkout lasted 19 days.

h/t: Yahoo! News