Against Trump, For the Common Good: What Chicago Teachers Won in Their Latest Contract

The CTU contract helps rebuild schools in the wake of what the union describes as austerity measures under past years of school reformers. Among other things, the new contract provides 4% to 5% raises each year, increases funding for extracurricular programs, gives elementary teachers more prep time, and adds 300 school counselors, 400 teaching assistants, 215 case managers, 30 bilingual support staff, 68 technology coordinators, 90 new librarians and 24 fine arts teachers, while also setting lower class size limits. 

The agreement marks the first time in more than a decade that CTU reached a contract without a strike. 

“You cannot make a distinction between the neoliberal and rightwing class…the cuts, closures, privatization (under Emanuel) is exactly the blueprint of DOGE and Elon Musk,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates tells In These Times. The results of these attacks, she says, are that, ​“Black people lose, our special education students lose, immigrant students lose, students who need bilingual services lose. The only way forward is where the American people are given investment and opportunity. You cannot do that [by] foreclosing on the public good to give to rich people.”

Academic freedom and responsibility

In late February, the Trump administration created a portal—backed by the far-right group Moms for Liberty — where anyone can report teachers who are promoting ​“DEI.” The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity programs are also empowering local school districts that are seeking to eliminate what they describe as critical race theory or DEI efforts in their classrooms.

For example, in March an Idaho sixth-grade teacher received international support after she was ordered to remove posters promoting inclusivity and which read ​“everyone is welcome here.”

The CTU contract ensures teachers have the right to choose material to supplement school curriculum, and notes that such protected material includes lessons on Black history, disability rights, LGBTQ+ contributions, Latin American studies, Native American history and antiracist curriculum.

“The Project 2025 handbook says they want to create curriculum that is only centered around the experience of wealthy white male landowners; we know our history is more complex,” says Davis Gates, referring to the Heritage Foundation’s ultra-conservative playbook embraced by Trump administration leaders. ​“We’re giving our educators the opportunity to know that we have their back” in the face of federal attacks on curriculum.

Illinois law requires teaching about the contributions of LGBTQ+ people, and the city’s ordinance around reparations for torture carried out under former police commander Jon Burge requires teaching about this dark history in 8^th and 10^th grades. The CTU contract upholds these requirements and goes much further, including a mandate that curriculum be culturally responsive and meet the needs of students with disabilities and English language learners.

The contract also prevents the lowering of a teacher’s evaluation scores because of their curriculum choices, and for the first time it creates a process to address complaints from parents or others who may challenge curriculum.

“It’s not just about teacher autonomy — we HAVE to teach Black history, we have to teach about torture reparations and Jon Burge, we have to teach about genocide old and new, about LGBTQIA contributions,” says CTU vice president Jackson Potter.

Dr. Quintella Bounds, a special education case manager and former special education teacher in Chicago, says it’s crucial to teach about civil rights law, like the federal CROWN Act which protects the right to wear culturally significant hairstyles.

“We have that freedom, but students don’t know that’s something that was fought for,” she says. ​“Non-educators don’t understand the importance of teaching such history.”

The over-25,000-member CTU’s own trajectory is a lesson in racial justice organizing.

As Davis Gates explains, the latest contract symbolizes the power of Black women leaders in Chicago, and was won by a union whose members are disproportionately women of color. Jackie Vaughn became the union’s first Black president and led it from 1984 to 1994.

In 2010, the progressive Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE) was voted into union leadership. In 2012, union president Karen Lewis squared off with Mayor Emanuel and led the union to a victorious strike in 2012. She later launched a promising mayoral campaign against Emanuel’s re-election, withdrawing after a brain cancer diagnosis. Davis Gates became union president in 2022, after helping lead the union in another successful strike in 2019 when she was vice president.

Davis Gates says that as the third Black woman president of the union, she is fighting for the rights of the Black and Brown teachers and students whose very right to learn about their own communities’ history is under attack.

Diane Castro is a bilingual education preschool teacher at Federico Garcia Lorca Elementary School on the city’s North Side. Her mother was a bilingual education teacher in Chicago Public Schools and Castro attended CPS, as do her children.

“The idea of academic freedom and culturally responsive teaching were always concepts meaningful to our union,” says Castro, who is on the CTU bargaining committee. ​“We teach Black and Brown children. I’m Latina, my children are Latina. Growing up, I didn’t have very many educators that looked like me, I didn’t have much curriculum that spoke about my culture. Now we have a contract in place that not only extolls the importance of culturally appropriate curriculum, we can teach Black history, Asian Pacific Islander history, gender studies” without fear of reprisal. ​“Our students are seen, they’re heard, they’re represented in the agreement.”

Protecting immigrant learners and families

Trump has declared English the official language of the United States, and fired nearly every U.S. Department of Education staffer responsible for making sure schools are supporting English language learners, Chalkbeat reported in March.

The CTU contract, by contrast, bolsters support for English language learners. It mandates that the district add three new world languages programs and three new bilingual programs each year, prioritizing schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods that have an influx of newcomers from other countries. The contract also calls for African language instruction in Chicago schools, for the first time.

The district will create pathways to help ​“late-arriving” newcomers in their teens achieve GEDs and high school graduation, the contract says. And it will improve coordination and integration of bilingual classes into larger school systems, and make sure administrators are prepared to serve new bilingual students. ​“No more scrambling with programming or being clueless about our incoming students!” says a CTU fact sheet about the contract.

The contract increases the number of English language program teachers, who oversee bilingual programs, and it creates a new pool of 30 centrally-funded bilingual teachers assistants who will be assigned to schools with the most need. 

The contract also affirms ​“sanctuary” language that the union won in its 2019 contract, as union leaders describe it.

The 2019 provisions ensured that school officials would not ask students or families about immigration status, would not share information with federal agents, and would not allow immigration agents into schools unless they have a signed criminal warrant from a federal judge. The 2019 contract allocates up to $200,000 per year to plan for dealing with immigration enforcement, and protects school employees who are undocumented or otherwise navigating an immigration process, including with paid days off for immigration appointments.

On Trump’s inauguration day, he overturned a federal designation of schools as ​“sensitive areas” protected from immigration enforcement. But the union’s contract helps ensure Chicago schools are still sanctuaries for immigrants, union leaders say.

Castro says this helps her feel better able to support the young newcomers to the country in her classroom.

“There’s no bigger heartbreak than to hear students tell you at 3-and 4-years-old about the reasons why they are seeking asylum,” she says, traumas that are now exacerbated by Trump’s attacks on asylum-seekers and threats of deportation. ​“To know they live in constant fear and anxiety. I had a three-year-old student who just learned to write his name, and then he scribbled over it. He said, ​‘My mom told me I have to hide.’ You are not prepared for those words from a 3-year-old.”

She says the contract helps her feel that she can protect her students, to make them feel ​“you’re safe with me.”

Public education and the common good

Bounds ​“fell in love with education” over 20 years ago while volunteering at her son’s Chicago public school. She left her ​“corporate America” job as an insurance underwriter and became a special education case manager, serving students like her son, who has special needs.

She currently has 189 students in her caseload at two separate South Side schools which she must shuttle between, because both schools are slightly under the threshold for having a full-time case manager. That makes it nearly impossible to develop relationships with parents; meanwhile the shortage of other staff such as speech pathologists and nurses has also made her job harder.

Under the new contract, Bounds will be able to work at just one school, devoting more time to her students.

“I have been sick every month because of stress and not getting my proper rest,” she says. When she saw the reduced caseloads in the tentative contract agreement, ​“that brought tears to my eyes. Now I can really do what I need to do for our students.”

The contract also helps ensure speech pathologists will be more available, including to attend special education IED plan meetings with case managers like Bounds.

As Trump and Republican leaders and activists nationwide have been fixated on eliminating rights for transgender students, the CTU contract enshrines rights and protections for LGBTQ+ students and employees — including in the restrooms that have become a frontline of anti-trans attacks. The contract mandates that all single-occupancy bathrooms be labeled as gender neutral, and that menstrual products be available in all bathrooms.

The contract also mandates support staff available specifically for gender-nonconforming and transgender students, and has anti-bullying policies specific to LGBTQ+ identities. It mandates that school officials use employees’ preferred names, and encourages staff to use students’ affirmed names and pronouns, while being careful to protect students’ privacy when communicating with their parents. 

On another front, the contract increases the number of ​“sustainable community schools” from 20 to 70. These schools have extra funding — currently $10 million per year for all schools — to partner with community organizations in order to provide wraparound services, extracurricular activities, job training, restorative justice, community events and more for the entire community. One of the current sustainable community schools is Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts. It was closed in 2015 under Emanuel, but thanks to community and union activism including a hunger strike, it was reopened and now boasts teaching artists in residence, a high graduation rate, a championship basketball team and other assets, Davis Gates notes.

The sustainable community schools are one example of how the union aims to not only support teachers and students but improve life for families beyond the school grounds. This common good approach also includes a focus on affordable housing. 

“For the first time we have a commitment and requirement to have meetings with the city and the schools and sister agencies in a joint task force to identify housing supports for students and families in temporary living situations,” says Potter. ​“That means school staff for the first time ever will be able to share information about housing vouchers, affordable units and rent subsidies to these families directly.”

This marks a major step forward for winning housing provisions, but still falls short of the union’s initial proposal to create 15,000 units of affordable ​“social housing.” In the end, many of CTU’s bold common good demands were not fully included, but did set the stage for the final agreement.

Davis Gates says the contract still lacks ​“so much more that we need,” but it is ​“an inflection point” that shows the power of a union working with the community for the common good over many years. 

Even with the contract signed, that work will continue. A union leadership election will take place in May, where CORE leaders face opponents raising concerns about spending and alleged lack of transparency. The union is a lead organizer of a massive march and actions planned for May Day and throughout that week, ​“to stop the billionaire agenda.” Even as teachers educate in the schools, Davis Gates has promised to educate the public on the risks to democracy posed by Trump’s administration. 

Other unions celebrated the CTU’s contract win. The teachers have been partnering with the Chicago firefighters’ union in their four-year-long contract battle with the city. After CTU membership ratified the contract, the UAW tweeted congratulations and Chicago Federation of Labor president Bob Reiter called the union’s contract victory ​“incredible.” The Illinois Policy Institute, a virulent critic of the union, noted last spring that CTU has become a national model in bargaining for the common good. 

Davis Gates emphasizes the strategy the union pursued of working together with allies to ​“resist, challenge and advance.”

“Labor unto itself, singularly, is not as powerful as it is in coalition with community groups, with families, with regular people, with young people,” she says. Working with allies for the common good, the CTU has ​“done all three things,” she continues. ​“We’ve resisted. We’ve challenged. And we’ve advanced.”