As strike looms, CTU still pushing affordable housing instead of focusing on key contract issues, Lightfoot says

Mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed frustration Tuesday evening that minimal progress has been made at the bargaining table with the Chicago Teachers Union, and that the union has spent too much time on issues the mayor doesn’t believe should be addressed in the teachers’ contract.

Lightfoot’s office released a statement after the 49th bargaining session between the two sides and again complained that the CTU hasn’t responded to her latest offer with a solid counter-offer. Instead, the mayor said the union used Tuesday’s bargaining session to discuss concerns about the lack of affordable housing in the city — an issue the union has been pushing for months.

Lightfoot said in her statement that the teachers contract wasn’t “the appropriate place” for the city to legislate affordable housing policies.

“We are a week away from our deadline to resolve this contract and avoid a strike. We need CTU to come to the table with written proposals on the core issues we need to address in order to resolve the contract. Once this contract is resolved, our Department of Housing will continue to work closely with stakeholders — including unions like the CTU — to ensure everyone in all of our communities has access to a safe, affordable, accessible place to live,” the mayor’s statement read.

Though the CTU’s exact public housing proposal hasn’t been made public, it centers around ensuring there is affordable housing for teachers and students’ families. There were 16,451 homeless Chicago Public Schools students during the 2018-19 school year.

CTU spokeswoman Chris Geovanis said late Tuesday that housing costs need to be addressed to help students and lower-paid support staff who she said don’t make enough to live in the city, even though they are required to.

It’s “sad that [the mayor] continues to distort our proposals and try to force a wage agreement that would still leave the children of teaching assistants and school clerks eligible for free and reduced lunch under federal poverty guidelines,” Geovanis said.

The two sides will bargain every day this week except Wednesday in observance of a Jewish holiday. Negotiators will also meet Saturday.

Still, there doesn’t appear to be a resolution in sight with just more than a week left before the union’s Oct. 17 strike deadline.

Contributing: Carly Behm