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Chicago teachers striking over evaluation system, recall pool

by Brian J. Kurtz

It is Thursday, day four of the Chicago Teachers Union’s strike against the Chicago public school system. All over the city, many of the 30,000 union-represented teachers and counselors are wearing red T-shirts and rallying with picket signs, banners, and noisemakers in front of city schools and government offices. The public statements from both sides often have a cutting edge to them and suggest a bitter, drawn-out battle is at hand. Behind closed doors, negotiators for the city and the union try to hammer out a new contract to replace the one that expired on June 30. Meanwhile, 350,000 students can only guess when their 2012-2013 school year will begin.

How did we get here? What is keeping the parties from reaching an agreement? Is the Chicago teachers’ strike purely a local matter, or is it part of a larger dispute over the role of public-sector unions?

Today’s subjects are . . .
While it’s difficult to know exactly what goes on behind closed doors, money doesn’t appear to be the primary sticking point in these negotiations. The union’s public statements suggest instead that its biggest concerns are two noneconomic provisions in the city’s contract proposal. The first sticking point is a proposed teacher evaluation system: REACH Students (“Recognizing Educators Advancing CHicago’s Students”). The second is the city’s resistance to automatically recalling laid-off teachers for available job openings within the public school system. To further complicate matters, the union also is looking over its shoulder at the imminent possibility of more school closings, which fuels its concerns over the steady increase in charter schools that are nonunion.

The REACH Students system is a method of teacher evaluation that focuses on three components–teacher practice, student feedback, and test scores. Similar evaluation systems have been implemented in other U.S. cities, and the overall results appear to be positive. The city intends to weight the system heavily toward teacher practice in the initial years of REACH implementation and then ultimately reach a system that is 50% teacher practice, 40% test scores, and 10% student feedback. The teachers union claims that REACH places too much emphasis on test scores that don’t accurately reflect teacher performance, particularly in schools located in some of Chicago’s less-advantaged neighborhoods. The union is proposing a lower percentage reliance on test scores and a process to appeal the evaluation.

The job security issue may be a particularly difficult one to resolve. When the city closes a school or lays off teachers, the union wants the affected teachers to go into a pool and wants the city to guarantee that it will recall them to fill job openings elsewhere within the Chicago public school system. The city, however, takes teacher performance into account in its layoffs. Therefore, it is proposing that displaced teachers can apply for openings, but it wants to reserve the right to hire whomever it deems is the best candidate to fill positions.

Field trip
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker must be experiencing déjà vu watching the teachers union and its allies pillory Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Walker, you will recall, came to office in part on a promise to curtail the power of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions. He spearheaded a law that stripped most state public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Ultimately, Walker and the law survived a volley of legal and political attacks, and Walker appears to have emerged relatively unscathed.

Many interpret the Wisconsin experience as evidence that public-sector unions no longer hold sway the way they used to, even within Democratic politics. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a longtime friend and ally of President Barack Obama, issued a largely neutral statement this week urging both sides to reach an agreement for the sake of the students. The Chicago Tribune published an editorial urging Mayor Emanuel not to “cave” to the union’s demands. Chicago public school teachers make an average salary of more than $70,000 and receive a public employee pension. At the same time, the quality of public school education is under heavy scrutiny. The teachers’ plight, and the gripes of other public-sector employees, may not be resonating with taxpayers at the moment.

Incomplete assignment
Labor negotiations are unpredictable, particularly in the public sector, where politics can play a significant role. After only four days on strike, teachers aren’t yet feeling the pain of those missed paychecks. The union is energized, a rally is scheduled for this Saturday, and the weather is simply lovely here in September. So the strike and the pickets are likely to continue for at least the remainder of this week.

At some point, however, politicians, taxpayers, and parents are going to start worrying that students aren’t in class. Teachers are going to have bills to pay. And, oh, by the way, this dispute is playing out in one of the nation’s largest cities, which also happens to be the hometown of the current President–in an election year. Looks like the parties have some homework to do.

Brian J. Kurtz is a partner with Ford Harrison LLP in Chicago and an editor of Illinois Employment Law Letter.

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