9 p.m. update: The CTU house of delegates has broken for the night, and the news is mixed: Delegates didn't say yes or no because they didn't vote on Lightfoot's offer. After discussions tomorrow, the delegates will meet again and perhaps vote.

The union released a statement from CTU President Emerita Karen Lewis, in which she urged Lightfoot to "keep your promises, and we can get this done."

"For far too long, the students, families and educators of Chicago have been denied the high-quality neighborhood schools they deserve," Lewis added, concluding with one of her trademark lines: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and never will."

Earlier:

The Chicago teachers strike will continue on indefinitely.

Despite three hours of face-to-face bargaining in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s City Hall office today, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union do not have an agreement on a new contract, though they are somewhat closer.

At an evening news conference, Lightfoot urged the union’s house of delegates, which meets later tonight, to approve a contract she said is “the best ever” for the union. The city’s latest offer includes several last-minute sweeteners, including a pay bump for long-term teachers who no longer receive experience raises and extra money to reduce overcrowded classrooms and boost incentives for athletic coaches. You can read details of the city's latest proposal below this story.

But there was no sign the house of delegates, which never has approved a contract rejected by its leaders, would heed Lightfoot’s call. Indeed, in a statement, CTU communications chief Chris Geovanis made it clear that will not change tonight.

“Chicago Public Schools is toying with parents, students and the entire city by sowing misinformation about the status of negotiations,” a CTU statement said, adding that delegates could not approve the deal tonight even if they wanted to.

“In fact, the more than 700 elected leaders of the union are meeting to review the current status of bargaining—what’s been landed and what continues to remain unsettled at the table—and to discuss next steps to push Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the CPS bargaining team to reach a just settlement of this strike,” it continued, categorizing the day’s developments as “another example of the mayor’s pattern of ultimatums, misinformation and spin to undercut our effort to bargain a fair contract.”

According to Lightfoot and the term sheet made available to reporters, CPS at the last minute put another $10 million on the table to cut class sizes, beyond the $25 million it already had offered. Also new is $5 million in extra pay for long-term teachers during the five-year contract. And the school district says it offered to ensure that every school would have at least one social worker and one nurse by the 2023-24 school year. Overall, the proposed contract would cost taxpayers half a billion dollars, the mayor said.

But money no longer is really the issue, Lightfoot asserted. What is at issue are union demands for “political items,” specifically a promise that she will back CTU’s bill to begin electing members of the Chicago Board of Education, and that certain discretionary bargaining subjects under state law be made mandatory.

CTU also wants to convert some instructional time into a teacher preparation period, and that’s not acceptable, Lightfoot said.

The union’s full response is yet to come, but it has disputed Lightfoot’s math and suggested she is not acting quickly enough to increase staff and cut class sizes. CTU suggested Lightfoot impose an employment head tax or use more tax-increment financing funds for schools if it needs more money.

In a midafternoon tweet, CTU Vice President Stacey Davis Gates put it rather bluntly: Lightfoot “knows our demands,” she said.

One group that's particularly interested in ending the strike, the City Council's Latino caucus, released a statement generally siding with the union: "CTU has compromised on many issues while maintaining the integrity of their core educational demands to improve our public schools by lowering class size and increasing support staff," it said. "We believe that classes can resume tomorrow if CPS agrees to the compromise proposals put forward by CTU."

The toll from the long strike is beginning to mount. CPS football teams are about to be ineligible to participate in state playoffs. And if the strike does not end by Halloween night, CPS workers will lose their health insurance and instead have to make their own COBRA payments.