An impasse was declared last month in contract negotiations between the teachers’ union and Plainfield Community Consolidated School District #202, and teachers voted over the weekend to authorize their union leaders to call for a strike, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Plainfield South’s Clifton Garrett, US Army All-American Bowl selection in football, 2013 (US Army / Flickr CC)
No strike date has been set, and the District 202 school board was said to be discussing the latest proposals during a special public meeting this evening.
- Latest best offer from the teachers
- Latest best offer from the school district
If teachers in the district go on strike, about 28,000 students would be affected at four high schools and 26 other schools. It’s the fifth-largest school district in the state and serves students from Plainfield, Bolingbrook, Crest Hill, Joliet, Lockport, Naperville, Romeoville, and unincorporated Will and Kendall counties.
The best offers were posted to the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board website yesterday. That means a strike is still a few days away, at least, and the district announced on its website that talks, which began in November, would be continuing tomorrow morning, after tonight’s special board meeting.
Illinois law requires time to elapse between the posting and a strike:
[E]ducational employees in a school district … shall not engage in a strike except under the following conditions: … at least 10 days have elapsed after a notice of intent to strike has been given by the exclusive bargaining representative to the educational employer, the regional superintendent and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board;
This article was corrected on Oct. 20: Because of an editing error, the student population in the district was reported as 1,800. It is closer to 28,000. Voxitatis regrets the error.
