Dive Brief:

• A day of teacher protests in Chicago culminated Friday in a rally held in the plaza in front of the Thompson Center, the city's state government building, with around 5,000 participants.
• Due to the one-day walkout, an estimated 300,000 students could not attend class.
• The heart of the protests is an ongoing contract dispute between the teachers' union and the district, who can't agree on pay, pension and staffing levels. 

Dive Insight:

Though this day of protest was scheduled in advance and didn't come as a surprise to the district, it's unclear what its legal ramifications might be. District officials have stated that they won't discipline school employees who participated, but at the same time, the district has already filed a charge against the teachers' union with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

Previously, Chicago Public Schools axed 62 jobs, including 17 teaching positions, after a flurry of rumors circulated that the amount of potential job losses might be in the hundreds. Current union contracts expire June 30, and according to Illinois law, the union was supposed to wait until the end of May before striking. But, the union says, ongoing pension battles modified that timeframe. It's unclear what will happen yet, but the bare-knuckle fight will likely continue.