Chicago mayor announces 11-day teacher strike has ended, classes to resume Friday

Chicago teachers and City Hall reached a labor deal to end a bruising strike that kept kids out of school for 11 days, officials announced on Thursday.

Teachers and students will be back in school on Friday. Both the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) announced a deal had been struck.

“We have reached an agreement with the mayor and CPS to make up five days of student instruction,” according to a statement by the CTU. “Students and educators will return to classes tomorrow.”

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted that “CPS classes will resume tomorrow.”

“This has been a long journey,” Lightfoot said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of harm that has been done to our young people.”

Five of the missed 11 days will be made up, according to City Hall.

Class size was a sticking point in the prolonged labor talks and the city has committed $35 million annually to reduce student-teacher ratio in K-12 classrooms, the union said.

Chicago’s 360,000 public school students comprise the nation’s third largest school system, trailing only New York and Los Angeles.

CTU represents more than 25,000 teachers and support staff. Separately, 7,500 members of the Service Employees International Union Local 73 were also out on strike, but had reached a deal on Wednesday.

“We feel like we achieved a lot of things,” CTU President Jessee Sharkey told reporters. “There are some things we didn’t achieve, but it’s not a day for photo opps and victory laps.”

Lightfoot invited Sharkey to make a joint announcement, but the union president declined in a sign of the lingering bad blood.

“Frankly, our members are still out there on picket lines,” Sharkey said.

“They don’t need to see me smiling with the mayor when in fact what they need to see is we have a tentative agreement, we have a return to work agreement.”

source: nbcnews.com