Teachers' Strike Tests Chicago Mayor on the Issues She Ran On - The New York Times - 0 views
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Lori Lightfoot swept into office as Chicago’s mayor this year promising to end inequities that have long divided the city. She would invest in struggling neighborhoods, she pledged, and put badly needed librarians, nurses and social workers in schools. Six months later, the mayor has found herself in a thorny spot: facing off against tens of thousands of striking teachers who are demanding action on some of the very issues she promised to solve.
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The teachers’ strike, which has canceled two days of classes for more than 300,000 public school students, is the most significant test so far of Ms. Lightfoot’s leadership. Standard strike issues, like pay, have certainly come up, but they have been eclipsed by the Chicago Teachers Union’s calls for more counselors for students, some of whom live amid daily violence; affordable housing for students in a city where home prices have forced residents to move away; and smaller class sizes than the ones some teachers said had swelled well over 30.
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A radio ad from the union said Ms. Lightfoot’s “campaign promises don’t mean a thing unless she tells Chicago Public Schools to make good on them.”
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“Our South Side communities, our West Side communities are littered with broken promises, unkept commitments,” Stacy Davis Gates, the vice president of the teachers’ union, said this week, alluding to Ms. Lightfoot. “This contract has to represent something different for the city of Chicago — it has got to represent something different. And she ran to do that. Period.”
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Chicago, a city of 2.7 million people, faces a strained municipal budget with a looming deficit, a serious pension crisis and a school system that has struggled with its finances (though in recent months they have stabilized somewhat, largely because of increased state aid).
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In negotiations, the city has offered teachers a 16 percent raise over five years, while union leaders called for increases of 15 percent over a shorter three-year term.
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Lightfoot dismissed suggestions that she was turning her back on her campaign pledges related to equity. Like union leaders, she said, she wanted more nurses in schools, more counselors, more social workers. But she questioned whether the city’s affordable housing policy should be set as part of one union’s contract negotiations, rather than in a broader conversation across the city.
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“I’m seeing just a stubbornness: I think that she is mistaking intransigence for strength,” said Maressa Spinak, a special-education teacher
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Even in a heavily Democratic city where support for labor unions is strong, Ms. Lightfoot faced conflicting messages on how to proceed. The editorial boards of Chicago’s two main newspapers, The Tribune and The Sun-Times, focused on the city’s bleak fiscal outlook and urged her to stand tough against some of the union’s demands.But for many moved by Ms. Lightfoot’s campaign promises about neighborhood investment and equity in schools, the lack of a deal was discouraging, confusing and highly inconvenient.
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“We have two Chicagos: There’s a Chicago of workers and longtime residents,” said Ms. de Jesus Alejandre, who did not vote for Ms. Lightfoot. “And then there’s a Chicago that’s getting much more love and attention from politicians, for the rich and the elites who don’t use our public resources.”The dispute with the teachers was, in some ways, a microcosm of the broader challenge facing Ms. Lightfoot: how to lead a city with limited cash and entrenched financial problems, while trying to create equity in a place that has struggled with segregation and disinvestment for decades.
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“But the fact that the mayor is talking about it, that the teachers’ union is banging the drum about it, probably means that we’re in a better place,” he said. “We’re having the conversation.”