The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board voted unanimously to recommend that a temporary injunction be issued to stop Chicago Public Schools from expanding the number of schools with a longer school day, but it will not try to get the schools that have already implemented the extended schedule to revert back to a standard schedule.
The board will have to ask Attorney General Lisa Madigan for approval to pursue the case. Should Madigan agree, the board can then ask a judge to issue an injunction against CPS, whose lawyers argued that taking away the longer day at the 13 schools that have already adopted it would harm those schools’ 4,000 students.
The specifics of the injunction—whether it would halt the pilot’s expansion, end the program at the pilot schools, or some other scenario—are not yet clear.
CTU said that it offered to settle the dispute with CPS by halting the program, but allowing the current 13 pilot schools to continue the longer day.
More to come.
Meanwhile, read our most recent story on the union’s longer-day dispute with the district, which sparked the union’s charge of unfair labor practices.