CHICAGO: Chicago students marked a week off classes yesterday as hopes of an imminent end to a strike of public school teachers proved optimistic and tedious negotiations over the details of education reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel dragged on.

Led by a fiery former high school chemistry teacher, Karen Lewis, 29,000 teachers and support staff walked out on Sunday in the first Chicago Teachers Union strike since 1987.

The confrontation, the largest strike in the United States in a year, has galvanized the US labor movement and exposed a rift within the Democratic party over reform of urban schools. After negotiating long into the night, Lewis and Chicago School Board President David Vitale emerged early yesterday morning to say no deal had yet been reached.

“We had another good day of working ... I think that we made some pretty good progress,” Vitale said yesterday. Lewis called a meeting of the union’s House of Delegates, a bigger consultative body, for yesterday afternoon to discuss the status of the talks. That group has the authority to end the strike but a lawyer for the union, Robert Bloch, said that was unlikely unless there was a finalized contract.

Parents of 350,000 kindergarten, elementary and high school students were forced to find alternative child care, kept their children at home or took them to nearly 150 centers around Chicago set up by the city to provide breakfast, lunch and supervision. It was not clear if school would resume on Monday. Vitale said he was optimistic classes would resume but Lewis was more guarded, saying she was not sure.

Kenwood Academy high school senior Sandy Danard, 17, who marched on Thursday to support teachers, said she risked missing the application deadlines for some colleges because she could not get a paper transcript from her school.

n FROM: Reuters