The teachet walkout in the nation’s third-largest school district leaves officials scrambling to figure out how to keep nearly 400,000 children safe and occupied.
Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago’s first schools strike in 25 years, after union leaders announced negotiations had failed to resolve a contract dispute with school district officials by a midnight deadline.
The walkout posed a tricky challenge for the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he would push to end the strike quickly.
City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised — especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence — might be at risk, but vowed to protect the students’ safety.
“We will make sure our kids are safe, we will see our way through these issues and our kids will be back in the classroom where they belong,” Emanuel said.
The school district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities.
Police Chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers’ protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.
Emanuel and the union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have recently come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.
The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for Obama’s re-election campaign.
Source: AP
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