U-46 teachers union won't strike this weekend, officials say

Another marathon bargaining session Thursday, this time with a federal mediator, failed to produce a contract for Elgin Area School District U-46 teachers.

Union officials now say teachers will take a strike vote if bargaining teams can't reach a deal during Tuesday's final federal mediation session.

"We have two scenarios in front of us now," said Tim Davis, president of the Elgin Teachers Association.

If a settlement is reached Tuesday, the union will present the details of the tentative contract agreement at a Dec. 16 meeting. Union members can vote on the agreement Dec. 18, the union's bargaining team outlined in an e-mail.

If no settlement is reached Tuesday, the union's board of directors and representative assembly will vote on recommending to its general membership whether to authorize a strike.

State law requires that education officials meet with a mediator and give 10 days' notice before striking. Union leaders filed a 10-day intent to strike notice Nov. 28.

Though the union could legally vote to strike this weekend, "the earliest a vote to strike would take place is Dec. 14," Davis said.

U-46 officials stated in a Friday release that "we believe that we have reached an agreement in principal on modifications to the enrollment system." Class sizes and case loads are still the sticking points of settlement terms.

Teacher salaries could be affected by fixing those issues, Davis said.

The 2,400 members of the state's second-largest teachers union have been working under the terms of an expired contract since the beginning of the school year.

The deal that members opposed, by a vote of 1,183 to 1,125, called for average raises of 6.1 percent in the first year of the contract and between 4.4 percent and 5.7 percent, determined by the rate of inflation, in the second and third years of the contract.

The deal would have provided two teacher aides at each high school and one aide at each middle school to relieve excessive class sizes, a proposal that teachers called insufficient.

"The options we're discussing are designed to provide immediate short-term and long-term solutions," Davis said. "We have an inherent interest in making sure that U-46 is an economically viable employer, so the stuff that isn't on the table isn't crazy."

District attorney Pat Broncato said U-46 remains "cautiously optimistic" about an agreement. "If an agreement is not reached, the board also has contingency plans in place to ensure that all constituents are aware of how the district will respond in the event of a strike," he said.

At a U-46 Citizens Advisory Committee meeting Thursday night, school board member Karen Carney, who attended the mediation session, expressed that some progress was being made between the two sides.

"There weren't any bodies flying today," she said.