CHICAGO — More than 350,000 public school students spent a fifth day out of class Friday as bargaining to end the city's teachers strike dragged on ahead of a meeting of union delegates whose approval is required to seal any deal.

Rank-and-file teachers returned to the streets for morning rallies to press the union's demands, which include a plan for laid-off instructors to get first dibs on job openings and for a teacher-evaluation system that does not rely heavily on student test scores.

Contract talks pushed on for more than 15 hours Thursday with little word of progress until negotiators called it quits early Friday. School Board President David Vitale said the two sides had worked past the evaluations issue — though he didn't elaborate — and had begun crunching numbers on financial matters.