Last week ended with the Chicago Public Schools and Mayor Rahm Emanuel farther apart than ever with the Chicago Teacher’s Union as to how best implement a longer school day.

Teachers at four elementary schools – STEM Magnet, Genevieve Melody, Skinner North Classical, and Benjamin Mays – voted to extend their school day from less than five hours to more than seven. Also, the City Council passed a non-binding resolution that CPS should add 90 minutes to the school day. And at the end of the week a fifth school – William H Brown Elementary – voted for a longer day. 

But the CTU filed an unfair labor practice complaint on September 8 before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board arguing that CPS has both intimated teachers and broken their end of the collective bargaining agreement by negotiating with individual school staffs. “The whole CBA is up for grabs,” Robert Bloch, general counsel of the CTU, wrote in the complaint.  The Illinois Federation of Teachers released a statement of support Monday saying that the Chicago Public Schools, “Must stop trying to undermine the collective bargaining agreement.”

The escalating confrontation is somewhat contrived. CPS and CTU each acknowledge a district-wide longer school day will happen, probably in the next twelve months. 

Emanuel and CPS, though, have decided that a longer school day – a backburner issue throughout the Richard Daley administration – must be addressed now. Emanuel told aldermen at the City Council meeting Thursday to, “burn the phone lines, the resolution is only the beginning of what I am going to ask of each of you.” 

But the collective bargaining agreement between CPS and CTU expires in June 2012. Also, in the summer of 2012, a major education reform law goes into effect that will let CPS unilaterally lengthen the school day so long as they negotiate with CTU over more pay for the extra hours. CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin has said that, “A longer school day is inevitable but how will it be funded and how will it be planned?”

Yet instead of focusing on a favorable deal for next year, CPS tried to cut a deal for 2011-12 by proposing a two percent raise for elementary school teachers in exchange for a longer day. CTU flatly rejected the proposal, as President Karen Lewis said her members, “were being asked to work 29 percent longer for only a two percent pay increase.”

So CPS then instead tried to persuade individual schools to take the two percent raise deal – with the added incentive of $150,000 for each school that jumps on board. 

CTU alleges CPS used shady persuasion tactics in getting the first four elementary schools to agree with the plan. 

At Melody, the complaint contends, Principal Nancy-Septa Hanks told teachers their school would be less likely to close if they voted for the longer day.

Meanwhile, at STEM – a new magnet school – Principal Maria McManus allegedly told teachers that a yes vote would make their school, “The Mayor’s pet school.” McManus also told teachers to save voicemail messages they received from union representatives. At Skinner, Principal Ethan James Netterstrom instructed his office to turn away any school visitors representing CTU. 

Bloch writes that CPS headquarters ordered these actions. Further, he adds, negotiating with individual schools instead of the full teacher’s union violates the collective bargaining agreement.

CPS did not return calls regarding the complaint. And neither CPS nor CTU responded to queries as to whether specific schools have voted against the longer day.

The City Council is mostly sympathetic to Emanuel and CPS’s plans for an immediate longer day, though alderman like Scott Waguespack (32nd), Sandi Jackson (7th), and Nicholas Sposato (36th) expressed concern about CPS’s tactics. “They are picking off schools one by one,” Sposato says.

Chicago does have the shortest school day among major urban school districts, according to the Boston-based National Center on Time & Learning, which compiles research on school day and school year length. 

Local elected officials have just occasionally mentioned the issue in the past and it was often coupled together with concerns about lengthening the school year or eliminating vacation days.

“There has never been an attempt to lengthen the school day by this amount,” says Lorraine Forte, editor-in-chief at the education research magazine Catalyst Chicago. “Daley talked about it, but he tried to get the unions to lengthen it by fifteen minutes.”

Also, it’s not clear if a longer school day will, in fact, improve student achievement. A study this April by the National Center on Time & Learning cited several state and city governments, including Chicago, pushing for a longer school day. “However,” the study noted, “They do [so] with a shortage of information of which to base their decisions.”