Responding to a fact-finder’s report received by the district Tuesday night, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said he’s even more certain there’s no need for a teachers strike following the report, saying, “What are our teachers going to strike about?”
As part of the collective bargaining process, the district and the Chicago Teachers Union presented extensive briefs to third-party law arbitrator Martin Malin last month to make recommendations on remaining contract proposals the two groups have yet to agree upon. Reviewing arguments presented by both parties, Malin released the fact-finding report to CPS and CTU filled with recommendations, which has now been made public following the union’s rejection of the report.
As the union has rejected the fact-finder’s report, citing Malin’s lack of recommendations for other remaining contract sticking points, such as teacher evaluations, prep time and class size, it opens the door for a strike as soon as March following the 30-day cooling-off period after the report, if the two sides don’t agree.
Martinez, however, said he’s even more certain following the report that there’s no need for a strike.
“There is nothing to justify a strike,” Martinez said. “In this process, my team has come to the table every day in good faith. They’ve listened to our staff even when we couldn’t agree on the proposals. We explained either why or we gave a counterproposal that was addressing the actual issue. That is why I just don’t see it.”
Chief Labor Relations Officer Miguel Perretta said Thursday that the district “didn’t have the opportunity to either accept or reject.”
“One of the things is that CTU rejected the proposal without really kind of engaging in conversations with us as to whether these recommendations would be reasonable to land, ultimately, a deal, so we were not given that chance,” Perretta said.
While the union announced yesterday that the arbitrator’s report “exploded” the district’s claim that it cannot afford to put more financial resources into schools, Martinez said the report confirmed what the district has been saying all along.
Citing the fact-finder’s recommendation regarding a raise for teachers, Malin said in his report that the union’s proposal for a 5% raise in the first two years of the contract “exceeds the amount of cash available to cover it,” so he therefore recommended CPS’ proposal for a 4% raise in the first two years of the contract, and 4 to 5% in years 3 and 4.
The district has also stated that this is the largest teacher raise CPS has offered to the union to date, with previous raises ranging from 2% to 3.5% since 2011 and no raises during the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years.
“(Our teachers) deserve generous compensation increases and we believe that we’ve met that bar,” CPS Chief of Talent Ben Felton said. “But as the fact-finding report clearly says, what’s on the table right now is the most the district can afford without compromising student programming and putting the jobs of the existing staff that we have in peril, we can’t do that to our staff.”
The district and the union have also come to a crossroads concerning staffing. While the union is proposing adding over a thousand additional staffing positions, the district has maintained that it is unable to afford it, asserting that CPS does “not have a way to pay for 1,000 additional positions even if they’re ramped in,” Felton said.
While the fact-finder agreed with the district regarding some proposals on staffing, such as the hiring of technology coordinators, case managers, fine arts teachers and counselors, the fact-finder recommended the union’s proposal for 90 additional librarians as well as eight additional early childhood family engagement coordinators over the four years of the contract.
The fact-finder recommended the district maintain the existing school staffing model that allocates positions based on student needs, highlighting the need for the district to have “flexibility to deal with contingencies such as significant funding shortfalls.”
While the fact-finder didn’t issue recommendations for all the issues presented to him, remanding several to CPS and CTU for further negotiations, Perretta said this report highlights how close both parties are at bargaining. Perretta said the district will take time to thoroughly review the recommendations and analyze their financial impact, and that the district remains committed to bargaining in good faith.
“The fact-finder’s report brings us closer to resolving key issues, and we are focused on using this momentum to reach a fair and responsible tentative agreement that supports our educators, students and our schools,” Perretta said.
Returning to the bargaining table Thursday, both the union and the district have said that they plan to continue negotiations, with hopes the report will “provide an opportunity for both parties to come closer to reaching an ultimate tentative agreement,” Perretta said.