CHICAGO \u2014 Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago\u2019s first schools strike in 25 years, after union leaders announced that months-long negotiations had failed to resolve a contract dispute with school district officials by a midnight deadline.<\/p>\n
The walkout in the nation\u2019s third-largest school district posed a tricky challenge for the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel<\/strong>, who said he would push to end the strike quickly as officials figure out how to keep nearly 400,000 children safe and occupied.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a strike I wanted,\u201d Emanuel<\/strong> said Sunday night, not long after the union announced the action. \u201cIt was a strike of choice \u2026 it\u2019s unnecessary, it\u2019s avoidable and it\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Some 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to join the picket. Among teachers protesting Monday morning outside Benjamin Banneker Elementary School on Chicago\u2019s South Side, eighth-grade teacher Michael Williams<\/strong> said he wanted a quick contract resolution.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hoped that it wouldn\u2019t happen. We all want to get back to teaching,\u201d Williams<\/strong> said, adding that wages and classroom conditions need to be improved.<\/p>\n Officials said some 140 schools would be open between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CHICAGO \u2014 Thousands of teachers walked off the job Monday in Chicago\u2019s first schools strike in 25 years, after union leaders announced that months-long negotiations had failed to resolve a contract dispute with school district officials by a midnight deadline. The walkout in the nation\u2019s third-largest school district posed a tricky challenge for the city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}