Chicago teachers strike enters third day

In the view of some here, the toxic relationship between Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whom Ms.Lewis has called a “bully” and a “liar,” has helped push the city’s teacher contract talks to the point of a crisis, forcing 350,000 students out of their classrooms in the nation’s third-largest school system not long after the new academic year began.In stubbornness, defiance and moxie, Ms. Lewis and Mr. Emanuel are, some here say, equals in what now looks like a toe-to-toe fight.“The only way to beat a bully,” Ms. Lewis said to a sea of teachers at a rally down the block from Mr. Emanuel’s office days before the strike was called, “is to stand up to a bully”Schools officials said that more than 100 schools being staffed by nonunion workers as alternative care for children would expand their hours as of Thursday. A union representing 1,500 janitors in the schools gave notice that beginning Friday some may join the teachers’ protests and no longer cross picket lines to go to work.And at a buoyant rally downtown of teachers and union supporters, including Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Ms. Lewis described as “lunacy” suggestions that the two sides might be close enough to resolve things immediately. Of 49 articles in the contract, she said, the union had so far signed off on just 6.Elsewhere, the federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who was once the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, issued a statement calling for a settlement. But like President Obama, he chose no particular side in the fight between labor and Mr. Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s former White House chief of staff.“I’m confident that both sides have the best interests of the students at heart,” Mr. Duncan said, “and that they can collaborate at the bargaining table — as teachers and school districts have done all over the country — to reach a solution that puts kids first.”Around the city, the standoff between Mr. Emanuel and Ms. Lewis has become a point of conversation, with some suggesting that the sheer size of the personalities involved had exacerbated the substantive divide over issues like teacher evaluations, the rehiring of laid-off teachers to new jobs and pay. There was wide disagreement about which of the two was more at fault, but unanimity in the notion that neither was likely to back down.“Personality has definitely come into play,” said Dick Simpson, a political scientist and former Chicago alderman.Ms. Lewis, 59, a former chemistry teacher who attended Chicago public schools and is a daughter of teachers, was elected union president in 2010. She is now being lauded by teachers as a fearless defender of a profession under siege.“If anyone is going to stand up to Rahm Emanuel, she’s the right person,” said Cynthia Cazares, a union member from Fairfield Elementary Academy on the South Side, whose protest sign read: “There’s the right way and then there’s the Rahm way.”Lately, Mr. Emanuel has said little about Ms. Lewis publicly. He has not personally attended any of the schools negotiations and has instead sent an aide.