(Reuters) – Chicago teachers stayed away from public schools for a third day on Wednesday in a strike over Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s demand for tough teacher evaluations that U.S. education reform advocates see as crucial to fixing urban schools.
With some 350,000 children from kindergarten to high school age out of school, the patience of their parents began to fray as hopes were dashed for a quick resolution to the biggest U.S. labor strike in a year.
Fiery union president Karen Lewis, who has called Emanuel a “liar and a bully,” said the two sides had agreed on only six of nearly 50 provisions of a new teacher contract.
An exasperated Chicago School Board President David Vitale said that he would not be back to the negotiating table on Wednesday until the union made a comprehensive proposal to resolve the strike.
Lewis led the walk out on Monday of more than 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation’s third-largest school district, saying that the union would not agree to school reforms it considers misguided.
The dispute jolted the United States, where a weakened labor movement seldom stages strikes and even less frequently wins them. Organized labor has lost several fights in the last year including Wisconsin stripping public sector unions of most of their bargaining power, Indiana making union dues voluntary and two California cities voting to pare pensions for unionized workers.
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