Waukegan Teachers Approve Contract
CHICAGO (CBS) -- After a month-long strike by teachers in Waukegan, teachers approved a new contract that should allow classes to resume next week.
The vote was announced around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, with 86 percent of voting teachers approving the contract.
The teachers will return to work on Friday, with students coming back on Monday, which comes as a relief to parents.
"I'm excited for my kids to go back to school because I had been giving them homework. And going to the library giving them books. And they kept saying Mom, we're not in school," said Waukegan mom Antionette Coleman.
WBBM Newsradio's Bob Roberts reports negotiators for Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 and the Waukegan Teachers' Council met for nearly 14 hours Wednesday before coming to an agreement.
For 10 of those hours, Illinois State Board of Education Chairman Gery Chico shuttled ideas back and forth, speaking with both negotiating teams and school board members.
District 60 chief negotiator Tony Ficarelli said the two sides now have to put the bitterness behind them.
"It's a happy day, finally, for the city of Waukegan, the students, parents, teachers; and they're going to have to come together to heal, and I think they will be very successful in that endeavor," he said.
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Teachers got details of the contract at an 11 a.m. meeting Thursday at Waukegan High School-Brookside auditorium.
The approximately 1,200 teachers in the district voted Thursday afternoon on whether to ratify or reject the deal.
They did get one of their demands, which was a three-year contract, rather than a two-year deal. Salary increases and better healthcare benefits were also sticking points in negotiations with the district.
Ficarelli said the tentative deal is fair to the teachers, and won't break the bank for District 60. Waukegan Teachers' Council President Kathy Schwarz said it's a good compromise. Both sides credited Chico for injecting new ideas into the talks, after the governor ordered Quinn to intervene on Wednesday.
"I'd say that he helped the process along. I don't think it would have been this quickly, had he not been involved," Schwarz said.
Chico intervened Wednesday, a day after a contentious school board meeting was called to an abrupt halt when it descended into a shouting match and a board member screamed at the audience to "sit down [and] shut up."
Board member Victoria Torres later apologized for her outburst.
If teachers ratify the contract on Thursday, they will return to work on Friday to prepare schools to reopen, and students will go back to class on Monday. By then, the district's 17,000 students will have missed 20 days of class due to the strike.
"Thank God they get a chance to go back to school," parent Tennille Walker said. "It took too long; too long. But I'm glad they got a chance to get what they needed."
Sixth grader Kashawn Walker also said he was happy the strike is almost over.
"I'm ready to go back," he said.
Makeup days will be announced at a later date. Classes most likely will have to go through June to make up for the missed time.
