Teachers strike is on — and Lightfoot’s political honeymoon is over

On the first day of a teachers strike that could define her tenure, Mayor Lori Lightfoot entered a Lawndale community center through a back door to avoid chanting strikers and sought refuge in a classroom.

As some of the young children fidgeted or yawned while others listened intently, the mayor read aloud a book she loved to read to her own daughter: “A Bad Case of the Stripes.”

“So the moral of the story is, be true to yourself. Do what you want. Don’t worry about whether or not people like you,” the mayor told the kids.

Lightfoot can only hope that the moral of David Shannon’s story about a girl who loves lima beans, but never eats them because of peer pressure applies to the crisis she now confronts.

A Chicago Teachers Union that was among her election rival Toni Preckwinkle’s strongest supporters and campaign donors has followed through on its threat of a strike that has seemed pre-ordained since the day Lightfoot swept all the city’s 50 wards.

Lightfoot said she “can’t speculate” on whether Preckwinkle would have faced a similar fate.

But she all but acknowledged the CTU was bound and determined to hit the picket lines on her watch.

“We could have had this deal at the end of August,” she said. “If you really want to avoid a strike, you … ramp up the bargaining days. You stay at it night and day. You talk about the main issues. You actually give counter-proposals and not just reject what’s on the table. There’s a real back-and-forth.”

Instead, “we saw a little bit of that in the waning days before the strike started. But it certainly wasn’t there early on,” Lightfoot added.

“There’s a sense of urgency, certainly on our part. … But, it takes two to tango.”

That “sense of urgency” was not evident on Day One of the strike.

Sources said the two sides met for a few hours and broke for a CTU rally. The mayor’s frustrated forces were also told CTU President Jesse Sharkey had a dinner to attend and union officials had a conference this weekend.

Lightfoot was asked if it was a tactical mistake to sweeten her pay raise offer — to 16 percent over five years — so early in the negotiations.

“We’re not moving any further on money because we can’t. … CPS is just on the other side of a pretty significant crisis. And we don’t have unlimited resources,” she said.

A City Hall source familiar with the negotiations questioned what the union stands to gain from a strike given Lightfoot’s steely resolve.

“She’s not moving on money or the longer day. What else can she do — agree to codify the verbal promises she’s made on staffing? All they stand to gain is a piece of paper without any new concessions,” the source said.

Still, for Lightfoot, the timing of the strike couldn’t be worse.

On Wednesday, she will spell out what taxes she plans to raise and services she plans to cut to erase an $838 million shortfall.

Her ability to avoid raising the property taxes that more than doubled under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel depends on how her ambitious agenda fares in the Illinois General Assembly’s fall veto session.

Lightfoot’s heavy-lift requests for a graduated real estate transfer tax and a casino gambling fix — either through city-state ownership of a Chicago casino or a revised tax structure —appear to face long odds.

That’s particularly true after a blindsided Gov. J.B. Pritzker had to read about in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“It’s like the third or fourth time,” that’s happened, one insider said.

Early on, Lightfoot floated a plan to have the state take over the city’s $30 billion pension liability; Pritzker predictably shot it down.

The governor has since forged ahead with a consolidation plan for suburban police and fire pension funds, but not Chicago.

On Thursday, Lightfoot was asked whether she agrees her political honeymoon is over.

“I have personally gotten a lot of support from random people that I don’t know … via email. I’m getting text messages. … I’m hearing a lot from teachers and support staff that they understand that we respect them, that we put a good deal on the table, and that we should get a deal done. So I feel very good about where we are,” she said.

“Of course, no one wants a strike. I’d be foolish to say it’s fine. We need to get this deal done.”

The longer the strike, the more working parents will be inconvenienced. The more their children will suffer. And the more political blame will be directed at Lightfoot. The buck stops at her door.

“I don’t see it that way and I don’t look at it that way,” she said.

“This isn’t about politics for me.”