Chicago teachers strike for first time in 25 years

As only a trickle of students arrived at some schools, April Logan said she wouldn't leave her daughter, Ashanti, with an adult she didn't know. Ashanti started school just a week earlier.

"I don't understand this. My baby just got into school," Logan said Monday at the Benjamin Mays Academy, an elementary school, before turning around and taking her daughter home.

Some students blamed the district for interrupting their education.

"They're not hurting the teachers. They're hurting us," said Ta'Shara Edwards, a student at Robeson High School on the city's South Side. She said her mother made her come to class to do homework so she "wouldn't suck up her light bill."

But there was anger toward teachers as well.

"I think it's crazy. Why are they even going on strike?" asked Ebony Irvin, another student at Robeson.

Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come under a barrage of criticism in some parts of the country, and the Chicago dispute will be closely monitored to see who emerges with the upper hand.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for Obama's re-election campaign.

The school board was offering a fair and responsible contract that would meet most of the union's demands after "extraordinarily difficult" talks, board President David Vitale said. Emanuel said the district offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Among the issues of concern, Lewis said, was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relies too heavily on students' standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years. City officials disagreed and said the union has not explained how it reached that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers improve.

The strike is the latest flashpoint in a public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.

When he took office last year, Emanuel inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.

Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, then attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

The district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining continued on the other issues.

Associated Press Writer Tammy Webber contributed to this report.