Chicago teachers strike expected to end by weekend

Meeting behind closed doors into the evening, leaders on both sides of this city’s teacher strike voiced optimism on Thursday that a deal could soon be reached, bringing an end to a walkout that has halted classes for 350,000 students in the nation’s third-largest school system.The upbeat tone marked a major shift from contentious days past, when Chicago Public Schools officials had deemed talks close to resolution while union officials declared the sides “miles apart.” As recently as Wednesday evening, the sides had sparred publicly over whether formal talks were really taking place at all.Any deal would require a vote by the union’s roughly 700-member House of Delegates, which could come as early as Friday afternoon, possibly permitting hundreds of schools across the city to reopen on Monday, one week after the city’s first strike in a quarter-century began.Given four days of picketing outside largely empty schools, months of negotiations and a roller coaster of sharp and sometimes shifting talk from those involved in the negotiations, few here seemed quick to predict what will really come next.Since last November, this city’s 26,000 public school teachers have been negotiating over the terms of the four-year contract, but the battle has played out more broadly, over the direction and philosophy of the school system, even as it struggled to solve gaping budget deficits.Mayor Rahm Emanuel has called for a longer school day, more control for principals in picking teachers, thorough evaluations for teachers, and expansion of the city’s charter schools. The teachers have said they felt under siege, and pitted against a larger national education trend that they say fails to consider Chicago’s realities, like the fact that 87 percent of public school students here come from low-income homes.A relatively quick end to the fight here would also quiet an awkward issue for President Obama in his hometown in the heart of a presidential campaign season. Mr. Obama’s aides said he had not chosen a side in the strike, which pitted his former chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel, against a crucial bloc of his political support, the unions.