Chicago public school students will stay out of class for a fifth day on Friday, after the teachers union and the nation's third-largest school district negotiated long into the night on reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel without reaching a deal.
The strike by 29,000 public school teachers and support staff, affecting 350,000 kindergarten, elementary and high school students, is the biggest private or public labor dispute in the United States in a year.
Both the Chicago school district and officials of the Chicago Teachers Union had sounded optimistic on Thursday that a deal could be reached.
But when they emerged early on Friday morning after hours of negotiations union President Karen Lewis said she did not know if schools would be open by Monday.
"We had some good conversations," Lewis said. But she declined to quantify how close the two sides were to a deal. "I'm just really tired," she said.
Lewis said the House of Delegates, a wider consultative group within the union, would meet at 2 p.m. local time Friday (3 p.m. EDT) for an update on the talks.
The union was not expected to halt the strike until agreement is reached on all the issues.
"Typically, unions don't until the whole contract is done," said teachers union attorney Robert Bloch.
Lewis, who called Emanuel a "bully" and "liar" before leading teachers on their first strike in 25 years, said there was progress on the two most vexing issues. They are using student test scores to evaluate teachers and giving more authority to local principals to hire teachers.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/14/us-usa-chicago-schools-idUSBRE8870DL20120914
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