Chica­go teach­ers and staff returned to the class­rooms Fri­day after more than two weeks on strike. Their walk­out last­ed longer than the city’s land­mark 2012 strike, as well as those in Los Ange­les and Oak­land ear­li­er this year.

The Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU) strike also last­ed long enough for the season’s first snow­storm to blan­ket thou­sands of teach­ers and staff who sur­round­ed City Hall Thurs­day morn­ing to demand May­or Lori Light­foot agree to restore missed instruc­tion­al days as a final con­di­tion of their return­ing to work. After a few hours, the union and the may­or arrived at a com­pro­mise of five make-up days — a move Light­foot had resist­ed until the eleventh hour, despite the fact that it’s a stan­dard con­clu­sion to teacher strikes.

Over the course of an often-bit­ter bat­tle, CTU and its sis­ter union, SEIU 73, over­came a series of such ulti­ma­tums from the recent­ly elect­ed may­or. Before the strike, Light­foot had refused to write issues such as staffing increas­es or class size caps into a con­tract at all. Fol­low­ing a bud­get address last week, Light­foot vowed that there was no more mon­ey left for a ​“bailout” of the school dis­trict. But a ten­ta­tive agree­ment approved by CTU del­e­gates Wednes­day night requires the school dis­trict to put a nurse and social work­er in every school with­in five years and allo­cates $35 mil­lion more annu­al­ly to reduce over­crowd­ed class­rooms. Both unions also won pay bumps for sup­port staff who have made pover­ty wages.

Yet these sub­stan­tial gains still fell short of what many mem­bers had hoped to achieve, giv­en that they were fight­ing for basic invest­ments already enjoyed by most sub­ur­ban school dis­tricts — invest­ments that Light­foot her­self had cam­paigned on this spring.

“It took our mem­bers 10 days to bring these promis­es home,” CTU Vice Pres­i­dent Sta­cy Davis Gates told reporters after an agree­ment was reached over instruc­tion­al days. ​“But I want to tell my mem­bers: They have changed Chicago.”

Mem­bers of SEIU 73 rat­i­fied their con­tract this week, and CTU mem­bers will now have 10 days to do so. But the impact of the two-week walk­out is like­ly to extend far beyond the con­tracts themselves.

Dur­ing dai­ly ral­lies that drew tens of thou­sands of teach­ers, staff and sup­port­ers, the unions repeat­ed­ly made the argu­ment that there was plen­ty of wealth in the city to invest in schools and pub­lic ser­vices — it was just con­cen­trat­ed in the wrong hands. They also touched on what’s often a third-rail for pub­lic-sec­tor unions, crit­i­ciz­ing the resources lav­ished on police at their expense. The strike’s momen­tum will car­ry over most imme­di­ate­ly into a bud­get bat­tle with Light­foot, with the teach­ers’ union part­ner­ing with a larg­er coali­tion fight­ing to tax cor­po­ra­tions and lux­u­ry real-estate at a high­er rate in order to fund afford­able hous­ing, pub­lic men­tal health clin­ics and oth­er services.

The teach­ers union also shone a light on an opaque financ­ing tool known as Tax Incre­ment Financ­ing, or TIF, that’s intend­ed to fun­nel addi­tion­al prop­er­ty tax dol­lars to ​“blight­ed” areas, but that crit­ics say is akin to a ​“cor­po­rate slush fund.” On Tues­day, nine CTU mem­bers were arrest­ed at the head­quar­ters of Ster­ling Bay to protest the city’s deci­sion to award the Wall-Street backed devel­op­er more than $1 bil­lion of TIF sub­si­dies ear­li­er this year.

“That day in and of itself was huge because we were able to call out the city’s hypocrisy,” says Rox­ana González, an 8th-grade teacher at Dr. Jorge Pri­eto Math and Sci­ence Acad­e­my who was among those arrest­ed. ​“The fight to fund what our com­mu­ni­ties need is a much longer one than our con­tract fight, and teach­ers across the city are going to con­tin­ue to be a part of it.”

The two-week walk­out will also like­ly have rever­ber­a­tions for teach­ers and oth­er union mem­bers out­side of Chica­go. The CTU’s 2012 strike helped inspire a nation­al net­work called ​“Bar­gain­ing for the Com­mon Good” that has brought togeth­er unions seek­ing to expand the scope of con­tract bar­gain­ing beyond pay and benefits.

“In many ways this was both the tough­est and most vision­ary strike fought yet on the prin­ci­pals of Bar­gain­ing for the Com­mon Good,” says Joseph McCartin, the direc­tor of the Kalmanovitz Ini­tia­tive for Labor and the Work­ing Poor at George­town University.

“The union engaged in some effec­tive pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion about the struc­tur­al issues of school under­fund­ing that it can fol­low up on in the future. Although it was a dif­fi­cult fight, the CTU has come away with gains that will make the schools bet­ter and encour­age teach­ers else­where to fight for sim­i­lar things.”

One of CTU’s bold­est ​“com­mon good” demands was for afford­able hous­ing — a move that cap­tured nation­al head­lines and became a cen­ter­piece of the mayor’s nar­ra­tive that the union was stalling nego­ti­a­tions through an over­ly polit­i­cal agenda.

While the union didn’t win on hous­ing assis­tance for new teach­ers or gain the school district’s sup­port for rent con­trol, one of CTU’s ear­li­est and clear­est vic­to­ries was an agree­ment to hire staff specif­i­cal­ly to sup­port the more than 17,000 home­less stu­dents in Chica­go Pub­lic Schools — an approach that could be a mod­el for oth­er school districts.

Oth­er key wins on social jus­tice issues include new guar­an­tees for bilin­gual edu­ca­tion, includ­ing more ded­i­cat­ed teach­ers for Eng­lish lan­guage learn­ers, and a dec­la­ra­tion that Chica­go schools are sanc­tu­ary spaces.

These are vital issues in a school dis­trict where near­ly half of stu­dents are Lat­inx and near­ly one-fifth are Eng­lish lan­guage learn­ers, says González, who also helped push for these changes as a mem­ber of the CTU’s Lat­inx cau­cus. She has pre­vi­ous­ly faced a lack of resources and the poten­tial for dis­ci­pline when she tried to aid a for­mer stu­dent who reached out to her for help with a pend­ing depor­ta­tion case. As part of the new agree­ment on sanc­tu­ary schools, the school dis­trict will cre­ate a train­ing pro­gram for staff on how to respond to ICE pres­ence in schools and assist immi­grant stu­dents. It will also allo­cate up to $200,000 annu­al­ly to help employ­ees nav­i­gate immi­gra­tion issues.

The vic­to­ries are less clear-cut when it comes to the key issue of sup­port staffing. The dis­trict will begin hir­ing more nurs­es and social work­ers in the high­est-need schools this year, but it will take five years before they’re guar­an­teed for every school. And while the CTU has high­light­ed that nine out of 10 major­i­ty-black schools in Chica­go do not have a librar­i­an, the agree­ment cre­ates a joint union-school dis­trict com­mit­tee on ​“staffing equi­ty” that will pro­vide a path — but not a guar­an­tee — for high-need schools to hire addi­tion­al librar­i­ans, coun­selors or restora­tive jus­tice coordinators.

Some teach­ers say they were pre­pared to con­tin­ue strik­ing until more progress was made on staffing, small­er caps on class sizes and regain­ing teacher prep time elim­i­nat­ed under pre­vi­ous May­or Rahm Emanuel. But fac­ing an intran­si­gent may­or, wors­en­ing weath­er and a Novem­ber 1 dead­line for the sus­pen­sion of their employ­er health insur­ance, CTU del­e­gates ulti­mate­ly vot­ed on Wednes­day night to approve the ten­ta­tive agree­ment by a mar­gin of 60%.

Class size remains a par­tic­u­lar con­cern for instruc­tors like Jeni Crone, an art teacher at Lind­bloom Math and Sci­ence Acad­e­my. While CTU won for the first time an avenue to enforce hard caps on class sizes, the rec­om­mend­ed lim­its them­selves remain the same: Up to 31 in high school class­es, depend­ing on the sub­ject, which can reach 38 stu­dents before an auto­mat­ic rem­e­dy is triggered.

Crone pre­vi­ous­ly taught at Kelvyn Park High School, but lost her job there in 2017 amidst a round of bud­get cuts that led to the loss of 11 posi­tions at the school. She says she repeat­ed­ly saw high class-size caps used as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to merge two small­er class­es into one larg­er one. Before her posi­tion was cut, her three art class­es were com­bined into two, with 34 and 35 stu­dents, respectively.

“It’s one of the eas­i­est ways for CPS to save mon­ey,” she says. ​“But we should be nor­mal­iz­ing small­er class sizes.”

Still, Crone says she is ​“cau­tious­ly opti­mistic” about the contract’s wins, and is deter­mined above all to make sure that union mem­bers remain unit­ed with stu­dents and par­ents to con­tin­ue demand­ing more.

“I am not total­ly con­tent, but the way I see it, it’s OK for us not to be con­tent,” Crone says. ​“That means I still want bet­ter for my stu­dents, and we should always want bet­ter for them.”