The financial crisis at the root of the Chicago Teachers Union's planned one-day walkout Friday is different from past troubles for the school district in an especially alarming way: No one seems to be riding to the rescue this time.
With neither Gov. Bruce Rauner nor state lawmakers acting to bail out the nation's third-largest school system, teachers are taking to the streets for a day to pressure a deadlocked Springfield to help shore up Chicago Public Schools' precarious finances.
The union's repeated threats to strike over pay and pension issues in recent weeks have evolved into a labor-led fight against Rauner's anti-union agenda, and a call for new revenue amid a state budget impasse that has jeopardized social service programs and public universities.
"I guess the important thing to say is we're just very conscious of the fact that we're part of a broader movement that needs to figure out how to fund social services — and we're trying to ask people to see April 1 in that broader context," CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said Wednesday.
Other labor unions and community organizations are pledging support to the CTU and the walkout — and fast-food workers fighting for a $15 minimum wage say they will walk off the job for a day.
Much of the focus of Friday's marches and school picketing still will be on CTU's unsettled contract and the deteriorating finances of CPS. But, as CTU President Karen Lewis recently told the Tribune, the union can't have a contract without money to pay for it.
"What this is, is a cry for help," Gery Chico, a former CPS board president and former chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education, said of Friday's walkout.
Chico remembers when lawmakers, union leaders, school administrators and others would gather in a room and negotiate a deal to ward off CPS' financial mess. "There was a will," Chico said.
That kind of political will has yet to emerge this time. CPS tried to push lawmakers to fill a $480 million budget hole this school year but came back empty-handed. Since then, the district has borrowed another $725 million, pushing its debt load to nearly $7 billion.
For the second year in a row, the state has placed CPS under "financial watch" for spending more than it takes in, draining reserves and heavily borrowing. Plus, the district is struggling to maintain sufficient cash to operate on a day-to-day basis, forcing it to borrow against future property tax collections to help make ends meet.
Chicago is not alone in struggling financially — almost 60 percent of districts are deficit-spending — but only 32 of about 850 districts fell into the worse "watch" category.
District officials say the fundamental problem has been that CPS has long been unfairly treated in the way the state divvies funds for public education and pays for teacher pensions.
There is growing consensus between the teachers' union and the district that Chicago's schools need more revenue not only to survive but to achieve a contract deal that would avert an open-ended strike later this year.
"We understand there needs to be revenue for the schools and not revenue that comes in the middle of next year," Sharkey said. "That's not going to help us get school doors open, or prevent a takeover or prevent layoffs when school's starting next year. We think April is going to be a critical time for debating revenue in Springfield."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday said he stands with teachers in their push for a solution from Springfield, but not on their decision to walk off the job.
"I understand and appreciate the teachers have a challenge with Springfield," Emanuel told reporters. "Get in line. There's a lot of people (who) have a challenge with what's happening in Springfield. But do not take it out on our students.
"You have a political call to action," Emanuel said. "It is the correct political call. But the call to action does not, would not and should not lead you to walking out of the classroom."
After 25 years of relative labor peace, CTU members went on strike for seven days in September 2012 before agreeing to a contract that expired June 30. Since then, there has been churn in CPS' administrative ranks, nearly 50 school closings, a guilty plea from former district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a federal corruption case, and continuing resistance from teachers to standardized testing.
"Conditions have only gotten worse since the 2012 strike and options for a mutually agreeable (contract) settlement are even less," said Terry Mazany, who was briefly the district's interim chief before Emanuel tapped Jean-Claude Brizard for the post.
"This walkout is about respect and teachers wanting to be heard," Mazany said. "Right now there are massive forces of change affecting schools and teachers are feeling that their voices are not being heard. A walkout appears to be the only way to get attention."
About 330,000 students will lose a class day because of the walkout, even as CPS has worked to add more days to the academic calendar so kids can be in school.
CTU and the district have been negotiating a contract for more than a year. Teachers are fighting to preserve a traditional salary schedule that provides cost-of-living increases, a "step" raise for adding a year of experience and a "lane" raise for a getting a master's degree and additional graduate credits.
Teachers also want to keep a perk — popular in suburban districts — that allows school districts to pay much, if not all, of union members' pension plan contributions. CPS wants to phase out that perk to save money. CTU considers that to be a steep pay cut.
CPS in January presented the union with a four-year contract offer that CTU leaders deemed serious enough to bring to a larger bargaining unit.
That offer, according to the district, contained a broad array of provisions beyond pay raises. CPS committed to hold off on certain school closings until at least 2018, and agreed to limit the city's number of privately operated charter schools and their enrollment. The proposal also included changes to how teachers are observed and evaluated.
Union leaders praised parts of the deal, but the bargaining team rejected the offer.
"There were a lot of things that were great," Lewis said after the union team rejected the city's offer. "I'm not going to tell you they weren't. However, the things that will affect the classrooms the most — especially around the budget — were the ones that were concerning to people."
For its part, the union wants to ensure class size limits would be enforced and that CPS agrees to ask state lawmakers to restore a tax levy that helps pay for teacher pensions.
"With Democrats increasing their majority from the March 15 elections, we can push through some revenue bills in the state legislature, many of which will emerge in April," CTU told members March 26. "Now is the time to strike, literally and figuratively."
But solutions have been elusive in Springfield, where there's been a long-running debate on the funding formula that distributes state money to schools. That formula takes into account a district's low-income population, but gaps remain in how much districts spend statewide, with wealthier districts able to spend more on schoolchildren.
CPS faces the challenges of high student poverty and dismal test scores — though its selective-enrollment schools have posted some of the highest test scores in Illinois — and the district believes it needs more money to help its low-income population.
The district says its students represent nearly 20 percent of Illinois' public school population and therefore CPS should get at least 20 percent of state education funds. CPS says that would generate almost $500 million in additional annual revenue.
Rauner and Republican leaders in the General Assembly have called for laws that would permit CPS to declare bankruptcy and allow a state takeover of the district, a proposal opposed by Democratic leaders who control the House and Senate.
Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy at the conservative Illinois Policy Institute, thinks the district should declare bankruptcy if Rauner gets his way on a law allowing that.
"Taxpayers have already put in more than enough to pay for everything CPS needs and for (teacher) pensions," Dabrowski said. "At this point, we don't need tax hikes or a bailout. We need fiscal constraints."
CPS "has been grossly mismanaged, and it would be unfair for taxpayers to clean up the mess," he said.
Backing calls from CPS leaders for a revamped state education funding formula is Ginger Ostro, the former chief financial officer of CPS who recently took over as head of the Advance Illinois think tank.
"Illinois has the most inequitable education funding system in the nation, where poorer districts spend as little as $6,000 per student while wealthier districts spend up to $30,000 per student," Ostro said in a statement.
CPS spends $15,120 per pupil, based on the most recent school finance data statewide. That compares with the state average of $12,521.
In addition, CPS has long argued against how the teacher pensions are covered in the city. The Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois, for suburban and downstate educators, gets most of its contributions through income and sales taxes and other taxes and fees generated by residents throughout Illinois. CPS teacher pensions are largely covered by Chicago taxpayers, who also help pay for Teachers' Retirement System pensions.
The district's rapidly increasing obligations to the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund represent one of its biggest liabilities, putting enormous stress on the school system's budget as it makes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of annual pension payments.
Lawmakers for years allowed CPS to skip paying full contributions to its teacher pension system — "pension holidays" that allowed the struggling district to use the money to pay other expenses. Now the holidays are over, and the teachers' pension fund is short of what's needed to cover future benefits.
In August, Rauner floated proposals involving a new school funding formula and more than $400 million in financial relief for CPS, but those were tied to union-weakening measures that were unacceptable to top Democrats.
Lawmakers have discussed these issues but "at the moment, we're not at a consensus on anything," said Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. "Whether the actions on Friday speed up some actions, it is impossible to predict."
That said, "I don't think people want to see the school system shut down," Brown said. " I think there's a recognition it is a serious problem and the desire to avoid some major disruption of school days for Chicago."
In the other chamber, state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, has been pushing for changes in the school funding formula as well as pension relief for CPS, spokesman John Patterson said. But the state House has not acted on those proposals.
"These are not things that happen overnight," Patterson said.
Tribune reporters John Byrne and Jennifer Smith Richards contributed.
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