A two-day teachers strike at Urban Prep Academies has ended after officials at the charter high school network and the Chicago Teachers Union clinched a deal early Wednesday.
The tentative agreement spells out additional supports for special education students, a high priority of the CTU, and would allow the educators at Urban Prep’s Bronzeville, Englewood and West campuses to reopen the contract for renegotiation shortly after the next school year — a “safety measure” the union said was necessary due to what they described as “troubling financial practices” at the organization.
Regarding the union’s criticism of Urban Prep’s management, a charter school official said: “We’re confident everything we’ve been doing is aboveboard.”
The new tentative contract at the predominantly Black all-boys schools also includes class size limits, updates to teacher evaluations and a provisional period for newly hired educators to improve retention, CTU said.
In addition, the contract ensures teachers will receive extra paid leave, back pay for three years in which they did not receive raises, and salary increases that more closely align with the earnings of educators at CPS-managed schools, the union said.
“We’re not here without the voices of parents and teachers advocating for students,” Latoyia Kimbrough, CTU’s in-house counsel said in a Wednesday statement. “Parents and teachers speaking out doesn’t mean they don’t believe in the mission of Urban Prep. Parents and teachers are speaking out because they are the owners of the Urban Prep mission. This legacy is theirs, and they fought — we all fought — to make Urban Prep better.”
Troy Boyd, the charter schools’ chief operating officer, on Tuesday expressed disappointment that CTU would call a strike just days before the end of a tough school year, and said administrators planned to supervise students in the classroom as they take their final exams over the next two weeks.
Urban Prep, which opened a campus in Englewood in 2006, and claims an unbroken streak of every graduate being accepted to a four-year college, enrolls mostly Black young men at three public charter high schools in “high-need communities” in Chicago.
Boyd said Wednesday that the after reaching the three-year contract agreement, all teachers have returned to the classroom at the high school’s three campuses.
“We have been especially appreciative of our teachers during this past year when we faced tremendous challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, gun-violence — three Urban Prep students were shot, one fatally — and community unrest,” Boyd said. “Yet, Urban Prep has been able to provide hybrid (both in-person and remote) instruction the entire year, gain charter renewal for our Englewood Campus, achieve a Level 1 rating for our Bronzeville Campus, develop a unique partnership with Roosevelt University for our West Campus, provide meals to our neediest families and maintain full-employment for all our employees,” Boyd said.
He added: “And, perhaps most importantly, we have continued our uninterrupted 12 year tradition of 100% college admission for Urban Prep graduates.”
Neither side has provided details on what the tentative contract provides in pay and benefits.
kcullotta@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @kcullotta
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