UPDATE: District 300 Contract Negotiations Continue Days After Strike Vote

As of Thursday, District 300's teacher's union, the board of education and the mediator were working to find the next time to schedule a meeting for its ongoing contract negotiations, according to the CUSD300 Facebook page. 

The negotiations continue days after District 300's teacher's union, LEAD 300, voted Sunday to authorize a strike with 97 percent of the union voting in favor of the strike, according to the Northwest Herald. 

The vote gives the union's negotiating team the ability to strike if they deem it necessary. The next step would be for an impasse to be declared and from there, it would take at least 28 days before a strike occurred, according to a District 300 press release. 

Both the union and the school district continues to work toward reaching an agreement, and a bargaining session was held on Tuesday.

"...we are hopeful that we will continue to make progress toward resolution," according to a Wednesday post on the CUSD300 Facebook page. 

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If an impasse is declared, the union must notify the Board of Education and then file a motion with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. The union and the school board then has seven days to submit their final offer to the labor relations board. 

Following that, the labor relations board has seven days to review and post the proposals to its website. The teacher's union must wait at least 14 days after the final offer has been posted before beginning a strike. 

The strike authorization vote was held at Dundee-Crown High School on Sunday. 

District 300 union leaders decided late Thursday to hold the strike authorization vote after several of the union's 1,300 teachers said they were not happy with ongoing contract negotiations as well as a statement made by school board member Anne Miller, LEAD 300 President Kolleen Hanetho told the Northwest Herald in an earlier article. .  

LEAD 300 has requested, among other proposals, substantially smaller class sizes. The Northwest Herald also reports teacher's are asking for better compensation for instructing classes with 33 to 37 students, according to the Northwest Herald. 

District 300, Miller said in the statement, is continuing to weather difficult financial times.

"State funding is at best unpredictable. And we have a huge pension cost on the horizon," Miller said. "We need to look at long-term fixes that do not create long term debt."

The school board is also concerned with class sizes, Miller said, but needs to look at coming to a "fair and equitable agreement" that does more than get the district "through the next two years."

"We would like to avoid cuts in staff and programs," Miller said. "We would like to keep all of our schools open."

Here is the full statement from Miller. 

District 46 teachers went on strike Friday. After bargaining from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., a tentative agreement was reached between the district and union.

The terms of the agreement are expected to be released by the Prairie Grove Teachers Union, but the negotiating team wanted to present them first to the PGTA members. 

School is expected to resume Monday for District 46 schools. 

Check back to Algonquin-Lake in the Hills Patch for updates on the strike. Sign up for our free e-mail and breaking news alerts for updates here and follow us on Facebook.