Chicago teacher reps to meet on contract

Chicago teachers walked picket lines for the seventh day Tuesday as parents delivered more than 1,000 postcards to calling for an end to their strike. The postcards were handed to security guards at the Chicago Board of Education by about 50 parents after schools Chief Executive Officer Jean-Claude Brizard did not to come downstairs to accept them, WBBM-TV, Chicago, reported. The parents' postcard messages were delivered hours before Chicago Teachers Union delegates were to decide whether to end the walkout in the nation's third largest public school district or keep teachers on picket lines. "I'm hoping the delegates come to their senses and know that our kids need us," CPS social worker Mary Silva told the Chicago Tribune outside school headquarters. The CTU House of Delegates -- 800 representatives from schools around the city -- was to meet at 3 p.m., two days after deciding not to accept a deal struck by negotiators. The delegates' refusal to accept the deal Sunday prompted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Board of Education to go to court in an effort to force teachers to return to the classrooms. Cook County Judge Peter Flynn refused to respond immediately, setting a hearing for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday on the city's request for a temporary restraining order against the union, and on the union's response. The hearing would be irrelevant if the delegates vote Tuesday to return to the classrooms, ending Chicago's first teachers strike since 1987. School district attorneys filed hundreds of pages of court papers Monday in a lawsuit alleging the union's 26,000 members had no legal basis to declare the strike. The union called the lawsuit a "vindictive act." "This attempt to thwart our democratic process is consistent with Mayor Emanuel's bullying behavior toward public school education," a union statement said. "If this was an illegal strike, the Chicago Public Schools would have sought injunctive relief on Day One."