On Day 2 of their strike, Denver teachers will try to hash out a deal

After 15 months of negotiations went nowhere, thousands of educators marched in the freezing cold Monday -- the city's first teachers' strike in 25 years. After a brief "cooling-off" period, the union said, both sides are headed back to the negotiating table Tuesday.

The big sticking point: Denver teachers want higher, stable base salaries -- not the unpredictable bonuses their school district uses each year to compensate for low base pay.

"Our teacher retention has gotten completely out of hand," special education teacher John Haycraft said. "We cannot keep teachers from year to year to year."

More than 2,600 teachers missed school on the first day of the strike, Denver Public Schools spokeswoman Anna Alejo said. That's about 56% of teachers from the district-run schools.

To make up for the loss, about 1,400 central office staff members and 400 substitute teachers are trying to fill in for the missing teachers.

Haycraft said he doesn't mind causing some trouble for the school district.

"I think they need to show us they've made some serious hard choices and major, major cuts," he said. "In a sense, make life a little bit difficult for them -- the same way that it is for us."

But this strike also has big financial consequences. For each day of the strike, Alejo said, "we estimate it could cost more than $400,000."

That cost includes paying substitute teachers, providing strike curriculum and materials, and lost tuition from the district's preschools, which are closed during the strike.

Denver Public Schools said it's made several offers to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. But the union has rejected all of those offers.

What each side has put up

Denver Public Schools says it has offered:

• $23 million in new funds next year for teachers' base salaries. (That would increase the average teacher's salary from about $55,000 to $61,000.)

• A total investment of $55 million over the next three years.

• An increased starting salary of $45,800 for new teachers.

• Another $2 million investment in base pay for teachers and specialized staff members that would "come from additional, painful cuts to our central departments, which we estimate to be an elimination of about 150 positions in the central office."

• The elimination of performance bonuses for central office senior staff. "We would invest those funds directly in our highest-needs schools, with a proposed increase in incentive pay for teaching in our schools with the highest poverty rates," the school district said. "Our offer increases that incentive from $2,500 to $3,000."

But the union said it is waiting for "a fair, competitive and transparent salary schedule that prioritizes base salary over complicated, unreliable bonuses."

These are the salaries DCTA is asking for

When will this strike end?

No one knows. But "we're hoping for a quick solution to this whole thing," the union's lead negotiator Rob Gould said. "Our teachers want to be in the classrooms with their kids."

The strike is the latest in a long line of teachers' protests that spread across the country last year and keep gaining momentum in 2019.

In some states, teachers got what they want. Other times, they didn't. And in some states where teachers won in their protests, some accuse lawmakers of retaliating with new bills.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova said the district is ready for negotiations Tuesday and wants this strike to be history as soon as possible.

"It's a problem for our kids not to have their teachers in class," she said. "So I want to get this done now."

CNN's Holly Yan wrote and reported from Atlanta, and Sara Weisfeldt reported from Denver.

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