UPDATE – October 19: Shortly before pickets were set up Wednesday morning, the United Educators of UNO (UEU) announced at 3 AM they had come to an agreement with Chicago's UNO Charter School Network (UCSN) management, averting the nation's first charter school teacher strike.
The teachers issued a statement lining out agreement specifics. In order to stop the strike and commence with school Wednesday, the USCN management agreed to continue to provide a 7% pension pickup for current union employees. New hires will receive a 7% pay increase for FY18 to base salary with zero pension pickup by the employer, similar to terms the CTU recently agreed to with Chicago's public school system. The system will shorten its school year to 183 days.
The parties also agreed to a joint committee to make recommendations as to economic conditions based on funding shortfalls for the publicly funded school network — an important point for the union, which, they say, has "struggled to receive clear and comprehensive financial information from management."
CHICAGO – October 18 – The first-ever strike among charter school teachers could erupt as soon as Wednesday if Chicago's UNO Charter School Network (UCSN) management and members of United Educators of UNO (UEU) are unable to reach an agreement by midnight Tuesday night.
"Workers don’t want to strike — but will if they must to protect caps on classroom size, avoid cuts in pay and benefits and ensure protections for quality of education in classrooms," the UEU said in a press release.
The UEU members are unhappy that the UNO management has "consistently cried poor" while pushing proposals that would cut income and benefits for teachers and support staff.
The UNO Network isn't budgeting fairly, UEU says. One reason that cite is that management pays the school CEO $250,000 per year — the same as the CEO of CPS, who oversees a school system with fifty times more students.
"UNCS spends more than $1.3 million on salaries for its top eight executives," UEU said in a statement.
They also spend more than $30,000 a month on prime downtown real estate for UNCS' central offices near Chicago’s financial corridor, miles away from the network’s schools and their overwhelmingly low-income students.
"That’s as much or more in rent for those plush downtown offices as UCSN pays in rent for 11 of its 15 campuses," UEU said.
UNO's teachers have proposed restructuring their salary schedule that they say will save over $500,000 per year, but UNO is calling for a 3% pay cut in the form of higher pension contributions.
The UCSN management has a different take on the demands and what they are offering.
They say UCSN has proposed a compensation package that ensures that no UEU member suffers a salary reduction due to the new salary scale or additional individual pension contribution. In addition, UCSN has proposed maintaining a salary that is competitive with CPS for all UEU members.
UEU has rejected UCSN’s proposal for its members to contribute more to their own retirement and also proposed that non-instructional staff receive four percent yearly salary increases.
As to the terms of the contract agreement, UCSN says they have agreed to UEU’s proposal to enter in a two-year agreement but have proposed language that would allow for the parties to reconvene before the end of the contract should school funding be reduced further.
"This key language would allow both parties to reenter negotiations when there is more clarity relating to funding from Chicago Public School (CPS)," a note to parents posted on their website says. "UEU continues to reject UCSN’s proposal to re-open the contract under any circumstances."
And the information being circulated about management costs aren't accurate, either, UCSN says.
"UCSN began self-managing its network of sixteen schools approximately one year ago. As indicated in the following chart, UCSN currently provides the same administrative and office support to our schools previously provided by UNO, but at a significantly lower cost," the post says.
"UNO billed UCSN approximately $7.8 million for administrative and management services for the last year of its contract. However, this year, UCSN’s budget for those same services is $5.5 million. On average, UNO’s management fees equaled 9% of all UCSN revenues but now that UCSN is self-managed, the approximate costs for these services is less than 6% of all UCSN revenues."
In order to avert a strike, an agreement must be reached by midnight Tuesday night. In the case of a strike, none of the UNO Charter Schools will be opened and all extra-curricular activities will be cancelled until further notice.
The UNO Charter School Network was founded on the need to bolster public education in Chicago as a way to effect positive change in predominantly Hispanic communities. UCSN’s first school, UCSN Octavio Paz Elementary, was founded in 1998. UCSN is a 501(c)(3).
