Union Win: Denver Teachers Reach Agreement with City

Denver teachers and school district officials reached an agreement early Thursday after an all-night bargaining session to end a strike that has disrupted classes for 92,000 students this week, the union said.

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Although the agreement must be ratified by a majority of its members to go into effect, teachers may return to classes as early as Thursday, the union said in a prepared statement issued before the start of the school day.

"This agreement is a win, plain and simple: for our students; for our educators; and for our communities," Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Henry Roman, an elementary school teacher, said in a statement.

The marathon negotiating session, which began Wednesday morning, ended with a deal that overhauls a pay system that both sides had criticized as unpredictable, the union said, and linked to a high turnover rate.

The union claimed the unpredictability of teacher pay, and the annual fluctuation made it difficult to continue teaching, and, despite the district allegedly having empathy for the teachers, ultimately failed to live up to their promise of averting a strike with a "transparent, competitive proposal," the association said in a statement.

The walkout, the first teachers' strike in Colorado's largest city since 1994, began Monday after negotiations broke down Saturday.

In the U.S., inquality numbers have hit an all-time high, while wages have not kept up with inflation, leading to a record number of strikes in 2018 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 2019 appearing to continue the trend.