No School Friday For Waukegan School District Where Teachers Are Striking
(CBS) – Labor negotiations resumed Thursday night following an angry exchange of accusations in the six-day-old strike by teachers in Waukegan District 60 schools, but classes were canceled for Friday.
A union spokesman confirmed that the federally mediated talks resumed at 7 p.m.
The Board of Education fired the first salvo, issuing a press release in which it said the board and the union remain far apart on several key issues, including pay, the use of substitute teachers, an extended school day and whether the union local president should be a paid school board employee or a union employee.
"The board hopes the union will begin to compromise and show some flexibility and interest in those open proposals," the board said in its statement.
Waukegan Teachers Council President Kathy Schwarz issued an angry response in which she said the district submitted its latest proposal to the union, and then issued the press release before it could formulate a counter-offer.
Schwarz called the board's release "disingenuous and shocking" and said it halted what had been a day of progress at the table.
"This is like handing a student a copy of Moby Dick at lunch and expecting her to turn in a book report by the afternoon bell," she said. "We would never do anything like that to our students."
Schwarz demanded a full retraction and apology and called the board's releases a "campaign of misinformation."
The school district announced Thursday evening that there would be no classes Friday.