CHICAGO – About 32,000 Chicago Public Schools teachers and aides went on strike Thursday after negotiators failed to agree on a contract with the nation’s third-largest school district.

The first major walkout by Chicago teachers since 2012 came after months of talks over pay and benefits, class size and teacher preparation time.

About a dozen teachers gathered outside Chalmers Elementary on the city’s West Side before 6:30 a.m. CDT. 

Most wore hats and scarves for the 44-degree morning. Some held signs saying “speed limit 30, not a class size for young children” and “dumbledore wouldn’t let this happen.” 

They drank coffee and shared Chicago Teachers Union sweatshirts, cheering at buses and cars that honked as they drove by.

School closed: What to know about the Chicago teachers strike

Maggie Sermont, 32, CTU school delegate and middle school special ed teacher, has taught for seven years at Chalmers, which serves mainly low-income students.

“This is a difficult neighborhood to work in,” she said. “We have a lot of churn and burn and teachers going out the door. No one is working at Chalmers Elementary school for the pay. We really want to help the kids, and we need wraparound services, clinicians, specials teachers.”

A daycare center across the street allowed teachers to use their bathroom during the strike.

After rejecting the Chicago Teachers Union’s demands, which led to the strike call, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced classes for about 400,000 students would be canceled.

She said the strike could be settled “today” if the CTU would negotiate with a seriousness and “sense of urgency.”

Lightfoot said the city had offered a 16% raise for its 25,000 teachers and would increase the pay of the average support staff worker by 38% over the life of the contract. Lightfoot said management has made more than 80 changes to the proposal and “bent over backward” to meet the union’s requests.

Lightfoot dropped into a YMCA Center in Logan Square to check in on children participating in the Y’s “Schools Day Out” program. More than 340 kids were attending the program, which included a full day of curriculum and athletics, at various Y locations across the city.

Dian Palmer, president of SEIU Local 73, visited picket lines at several schools across the city.

“I’m always hopeful of the city coming around,” Palmer told USA TODAY. “I’m surprised they allowed a strike to happen when they can so easily settle this and get a reasonable contract.

“We’re not looking to harm anybody,” she said. “We’re looking to lift our members out of poverty.”

Chicago educators charge that the district has shortchanged schools after years of budget cuts and they want any new promises in writing. The district says its offer of a 16% raise over five years is comprehensive and “historic.”

Per orders from CPS, buildings remained open on a normal bell schedule for children to attend – staffed by administrators and other non-union employees. Meals were to be served, but there would be no classes.

Among the striking educators were 7,500 school support staff, joining teachers on the picket lines in their own strike for a new contract.

About 2,500 Chicago Park District workers initially planned to join the walkout with teachers and school staff workers, but their bargaining unit on Wednesday announced they had reached an agreement with City Hall.

For teachers, the long-anticipated work stoppage drew attention to what labor leaders say is a failure to reach a fair contract with the city that defines and funds more support staff in the form of nurses, librarians, counselors and school psychologists.

Union leaders say they also want enforceable limits on class sizes, which have swelled to the high 30s and mid-40s in some schools.

Lightfoot said the union’s total requests would add an additional $2.5 billion to the CPS annual budget, which she called “completely irresponsible.”

The mayor proposed a $7.7 billion district budget in August, up about $117 million from the 2019 budget.

Chicago’s children are ‘deserving’ of educational equity

Union leaders have contested the salary figures in the contract proposal, saying the average teacher salary would be closer to $85,000, not $100,000. They say that other critical demands have not been inserted into the contract language, such as a commitment to put a nurse in every school. They also want the contract to address other issues that affect the city’s students, such as affordable housing.

“I’m striking because class size does matter,” said Victoria Winslow, 29, a fifth-year first-grade teacher at Chalmers. “Our support staff deserves a livable wage, and we only have a nurse one day a week – are we supposed to stop teaching and become nurses?”

At Rudy Lozano Elementary School, located between the rapidly gentrifying Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods, teachers demonstrating outside before 7 a.m. Thursday held signs and cheered when passing cars honked their horns. The school serves about 400 students, 75% of whom are Latino.

Middle-school reading teacher Melissa Strum said many low-income parents who have been pushed out of the neighborhood because of rising rent costs still send their children to the school.

She said her school gets fewer resources than schools located in the same neighborhood just blocks away but surrounded by single-family homes and multi-million dollar condos.

“We have a social worker only three days a week, and her caseload is about 80 to 100 students,” Strum said as the sun rose over Lozano. “We only have a nurse two days a week. We should have one every day.”

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Xian Franzinger Barrett, a special education teacher at Telpochcalli Elementary School in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, said teachers in Chicago believe their children deserve the same equitable support in schools that children get in suburban Chicago. 

He said that is especially true since CPS is receiving more state money this year because of a 2017 change in the state’s education funding formula.

“We don’t understand the response that this is not financially feasible,” he said. “We see the money there, and we think our children are as deserving of it as anyone else’s children. That’s why you see such a passionate confrontation here.”

Where will Chicago’s children be during the strike?

While CPS students can come to their normal school or any other age-appropriate building during the strike, many community sites and nonprofits were offering child care Thursday.

Unlike a school building, most of those community options involve a fee.

Activities range from a day camp at Shedd Aquarium for about $100 per day to a “Schools Day Out” program at YMCA sites located near public schools, which costs $35 to about $60 per day.

Man-Yee Lee, spokeswoman for the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, said the centers offer the same program to families of kids ages 5 to 12 when the public schools are off for other reasons, such as federal and state holidays.

“But there is an element of emergency and surprise to this one because we’ve only known for a couple of weeks that this was actually going to happen,” she said.

Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.