As the fourth day without classes began Tuesday at Chicago public schools, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was expected to appear with striking teachers hours after Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey accused the city administration of “vindictive actions.”

In an email sent after midnight, presumably after leaving the bargaining table, Sharkey said "our bargaining team was beginning to see glimmers of progress on issues that matter to our members. (Monday) that progress stopped dead.

“It was clear from the mayor’s letter to the press demanding members go back to work without a contract and from the sudden atmosphere of stonewalling from the CPS team, that (Mayor Lori Lightfoot) had pulled the plug on negotiations,” Sharkey continued.

“The mayor’s team said that there was no more money in the budget to address the many outstanding demands that are necessary to deliver justice for our school communities,” he said.

The strike has sent about 25,000 teachers and 7,000 support staff to picket lines and kept about 300,000 students out of class and extracurricular activities, although school buildings staffed by principals and nonstriking staff have been open for child care and meals.

The work stoppage means classes are canceled again Tuesday for CPS students. Sharkey said that while he and union vice president Stacy Davis Gates, as well as lawyers, will be in talks Tuesday, a 40-member contingent of the union’s bargaining team is heading back to the picket lines.

In comments in front of Passages Charter School on Bryn Mawr Avenue in Edgewater, about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday, Sharkey explained the union’s 40-member bargaining team, comprised of “rank-and-file” educators, would not sit in on Tuesday’s session, but that talks will go on as planned.

The mayor has publically criticized the 40-person team as being “no good, too slow,” Sharkey asserted. Upon hearing that she doesn’t plan to move forward at this point, those 40 union members are to be sent back into the community to join the picket lines. He claimed that the mayor on Monday essentially said, “We’re not making any more movement, this is it, the barrel is dry,” he said.

“When she has an offer to make, we’ll bring them back,” he told reporters at a news conference.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is expected to give her own news conference at 8:45 a.m.

Watch live: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot expected to speak about 8:45 a.m.

Earlier Monday, in a letter to Sharkey, the mayor and CPS CEO Janice Jackson asked that the union “stay at the bargaining table and accelerate the pace, but end the strike and encourage your members to come back to work. Our students and families should not continue to bear this burden.”

“The CPS team will continue to negotiate in good faith and with the same sense of urgency, and we can close out the remaining issues with our students back in class," the letter, obtained by the Tribune, continued.

Hours later, a union member responded by saying “that’s not going to happen,” adding that real progress has only come about since the walkout began last Thursday.

Sharkey’s email early Tuesday complained that "these vindictive actions have served to halt the real progress that the negotiating teams were making toward resolution of the contract.”

In their letter asking for the strike to end, Lightfoot and Jackson also referenced opportunities student-athletes are missing out on during the strike, citing soccer and tennis teams missing out on tournament play and the Simeon Career Academy football team being ineligible for playoffs if the strike isn’t resolved by Tuesday. They also pointed to seniors’ concerns about college applications and noted that a college fair planned at Whitney Young Magnet High School this weekend had to be canceled.

“We put commitments in writing on Thursday and Friday through counteroffers to lower primary grade class sizes in high-poverty schools, and to provide every school with at least one nurse and one social worker within five years,” they wrote. “What we’ve offered on both core issues addresses concerns for the highest-need schools first — an approach grounded in equity. And what we’ve offered is something CPS can both afford, and achieve. That is no small feat.”

Sharkey, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said what the administration has put into writing is not good enough.

“A written proposal and an adequate written proposal are two different things,” he said, adding that while Lightfoot’s proposal would provide class-size relief for about 15% of classrooms, none of those classrooms are in city high schools, for example. He also said it did not include an adequate enforcement provision regarding class sizes or staffing.

Lightfoot and Jackson suggested that the strike could drag on “several days” even after a tentative deal is reached because the union will still have to approve it. Often, though, unions will return to work once a tentative deal is struck.

“Yesterday negotiations took a turn for the worse. We thought we had started to see where we were going to land … (but then) the board followed what the mayor was saying in public: ‘We’re out of money, there’s no more places for us to go,’” Sharkey said. “It was extremely disappointing.”

kdouglas@chicagotribune.com

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