Chicago Teachers Have an Ally As Mayor—Now They’re Fighting for a Historic Contract

The teachers union laments that many Chicago schools do not have librarians, gym class, extracurricular programs, world language instruction or other offerings that are taken for granted in wealthier and whiter districts. A 2022 analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times showed that 400 of Chicago’s more than 500 public schools have no librarian.

“We’re up against a status quo in the city that has made it okay to have schools that don’t have physical education, that don’t have art teachers, that don’t have music teachers,” Davis Gates tells In These Times. ​“The neoliberal way of doing public education is a failure. What we’re pushing for now is something that looks culturally relevant, emphasizes the whole student from restorative justice education to having sports and fine arts to making sure young people have an opportunity to participate in student government, newspaper, choir.”

The union’s 700-plus contract proposals seek to add such programs along with building renovations, clean energy investments and supports for unhoused students and migrants learning English. The union argues that short-term borrowing should be considered to avoid cuts, and has demanded that the system have a CEO in place willing to collaborate with CTU to raise revenue and advocate more aggressively for funding from the state and federal government.

“He only understands austerity,” Davis Gates says of Martinez, who was appointed by previous Mayor Lori Lightfoot. ​“What you see is a struggle between what was and what will be. Pedro came of age at a time when Arne Duncan was ​‘turning schools around,’ where he would fire every worker in the building from the faculty to administration to the janitor to the lunchroom. It’s a struggle against what was once good enough versus the transformative power of a fully-resourced, fully-staffed school community.”

CPS notes that since 2019, the district has added nearly 7,000 staff members including 2,500 teachers and has achieved record graduation rates. Martinez was appointed CEO in 2021.

During current negotiations, according to a fact sheet from the district, CPS has agreed to 4-5% raises each year over the next four years, expanded healthcare coverage, 200 additional counselors, $10 million for more athletic offerings, and reduced elementary school sizes, among other improvements. The district says it has also agreed to make sure each school has three positions for ​“elective/​ holistic” teachers, including for art, library, music or foreign language. 

Outside of more traditional bargaining issues, CTU is organizing to win common good demands to expand the limits of what can be won not just for Chicago teachers, but for students and working-class residents across the city. How that fight resolves will test the strength of the union and the progressive political movement that’s grown its power in recent years.

Budget crunch

In September, federal pandemic relief funds for schools ended nationwide, contributing to Chicago’s dire budget situation. Critics of Martinez say he should have better prepared for the loss of federal dollars, including by working harder to ensure funding from the state by lobbying lawmakers and Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Springfield.

“We have a proposal that calls on the district to work with us for progressive revenue,” says CTU’S Potter. ​“You’d think there would be an email to parents to call their legislators, commissioning a bus to go to [the capitol] Springfield, asking other superintendents to join him [seeking funding], because federal funding of historic proportions has just sunsetted.”

CPS spokespeople tell In These Times that the district has had a representative present during every week of the legislative session advocating for more funding, saying in a statement: ​“CEO Martinez has supported investments in staffing and across all schools, advocating for keeping schools open and investing in education through an equitable funding formula that provides foundational resources to all schools and adds significant additional resources to schools that have been historically under resourced and remain furthest from opportunity. CEO [Martinez] and his team have pushed for and increased school funding for the past three years and will continue to advocate for more resources at the City, State and Federal level and with the philanthropic community.”

CPS also notes that in the last three years, the district has securedmore than $778 million in outside funding including grants, philanthropic donations and reimbursements.

The union has released several proposals for raising revenue, including using the funds that are collected through Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. These funds come from property tax payments meant to invest in ​“blighted” neighborhoods, but which often instead are earmarked for wealthy areas and politically connected developers. CTU has called for ending the TIF program and directing the collected funds to schools. In recent weeks, Martinez has also called for tapping additional TIF dollars, while leaving the TIF program intact. In April, Martinez identified $462 million in TIF funds he requested for the district. Surplus TIF funds are already being used for the schools, including $226 million in surplus TIF funds last year and $159 million the city has promised to help pay school staff represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Filling the CPS budget gap with TIF funds could mean canceling development projects, and no city council members agreed to cancel projects to help fund the schools, WTTW reported. Mayor Johnson, meanwhile, has not supported ending TIFs entirely or sending all of the funds to schools, and the city typically relies on surplus TIF funds to fill holes in other parts of the budget and promote economic development.

The union has also proposed payments to the school district from non-profit institutions like universities and hospitals since they don’t pay taxes. In 2021, Yale University agreed to such a plan to fund Connecticut schools after pressure from unions.

While the union says it is not a proponent of high-interest borrowing, a $300 million loan Mayor Johnson has proposed may be necessary to avoid major cuts in the coming school year, CTU leaders said.

In 2016, the district saddled itself with debt by selling $725 million worth of high-interest bonds in order to raise funds quickly to avoid a state takeover of the system threatened by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner. ​“Our schools are still impacted by these bad deals, paying $200 million annually for loans taken out during this moment of crisis,” writes Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center for Race and the Economy. That bond sale was sparked in part by financial damage from interest rate swaps that the district carried out between 2003 and 2007, when Martinez was Chief Financial Officer of CPS. The interest rate swaps resulted in $234 million in fees, as noted in CPS’s 2016-2017 budget. (CPS did not respond to requests for comment from Martinez himself).

“When people say, ​‘The sky is falling, there’s no way we can allow the district to borrow,’ —what are you talking about, they borrow all the time,” says Potter. ​“It’s not great, but these are tough conditions and we have to be clear-eyed that our options are limited and what’s not on the table is robbing our children of a quality education.”

For the common good

The CTU’s contract proposals — all developed by rank-and-file union members— include ideas that stretch outside the school boundaries. For one, the union is calling for 15,000 units of affordable ​“social housing,” echoing past contract demands, to help provide shelter and support for the district’s 20,000 homeless students.

“I have students living doubled and tripled up, or in a shelter,” says Diane Castro, 39, a CPS preschool teacher at Federico Garcia Lorca Elementary School who has worked in the system since 2007. ​“How can I expect a student to focus in class when they’re exhausted and don’t have access to healthy meals?”

The union notes social housing could include the transformation of vacant school buildings, and be built through union apprenticeship trade programs that could employ CPS graduates and use green technology.

“From 18 years old, you’ll know how to build a house, and also know how to work with contractors to put people in those homes built in their communities,” says Kevin Moore, 45, a social studies teacher at George Washington High School on the South Side and member of the housing bargaining subcommittee, who visited Vienna in April to research green social housing.

For the first time, the union has established a climate justice bargaining subcommittee, with a list of contract proposals related to climate and environmental conditions inside schools as well as provisions to help mitigate climate change and cut fossil fuel emissions. The union is demanding solar panels and electric heat pumps on at least 50 schools, noting that the district has failed to tap available federal and state funds for clean energy.

CTU members are also demanding an all-electric school bus fleet, which is already underway thanks to the union’s leadership on a successful federal grant application for 50 buses. Similarly, the union is demanding stipends for teachers to serve as ​“climate champions” at each of the district’s more than 500 schools, and a climate justice week of programming.

The district says it plans to enact CTU’s proposal to create community hubs at schools providing safety during extreme heat and cold, as laid out in a district fact sheet about climate plans.

The union says the district has also agreed to their proposals around reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, which promise to ensure students are offered needed healthcare access if federal or state laws change and jeopardize such care.

The union’s proposals also address the influx of almost 50,000 new residents over the past two years mostly from Venezuela and other Global South countries, with demands for dual language programs especially in South and West side schools that have included few Spanish speakers in previous years. The district currently has a freeze on new dual language programs; the union is demanding that the freeze be lifted. The district has agreed to reduce the staff-to-bilingual learner ratio, which currently allows only one bilingual teacher for up to 599 students.

“We’re bargaining on behalf of all stakeholders,” says Moore. ​“Our students, our educators, families, community members who don’t even have children yet. Bargaining for the common good is about us bringing communities together, making them stronger, so people can stay in the communities they want to live in.”

Dave Stieber, a social studies and poetry teacher at Kenwood Academy High School on the South Side, has been teaching for 18 years, including at a South Side high school, Team Englewood, that was among the nearly 50 schools closed by then-Mayor Emanuel in 2013 and 2014. Stieber also served on Johnson’s mayoral transition team. He described the contract proposal as ​“literally a love letter to our students, our community.”

“We want housing for [students], schools without asbestos in them, water fountains you can drink from without having lead, smaller classes, social workers,” he says. ​“We also know this will retain teachers and make communities stronger. What’s going to change our students’ lives for the better is going to benefit the city.”

Bargaining for the common good has become an increasingly popular and effective tactic for unions nationwide, helping to gain public support while placing workplace struggles in a larger context. Some examples of ​“common good” demands are University of California AFSCME workers demanding that the university system divest from private prisons, Oregon State Employees demanding in-state university tuition for undocumented immigrants, and SEIU Local 26 in Minneapolis demanding US Bank allow remittances sent to Somalia, as cited in a study by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Georgetown University and Rutgers University.

Teachers unions have often led the way on common good bargaining. The Action Center on Race and Economy notes Oklahoma teachers’ demands for higher taxes on fossil fuels, Saint Paul teachers working to address the school to prison pipeline, and New Jersey educators uplifting racial justice. Davis Gates cites the United Teachers Los Angeles, which won ​“climate justice and mitigation” provisions in its current contract, framing them as a racial justice issue since heat waves disproportionately impact Black and brown students.

“No fewer than 20 teacher strikes in the past 10 years have injected hope and momentum into the labor movement’s landscape, and virtually all of them have adopted a social justice framework,” noted Potter in his reflection on the 2012 strike’s anniversary. 

CTU is asking for its next contract to expire on May 1, 2028, joining the United Auto Workers and other major unions that are seeking to line up contract negotiations across sectors, facilitating the concept of a potential nationwide strike.

“That will help us come together with other forces that can win things out of reach until now,” says Potter. ​“Like national healthcare, debt forgiveness, reparations and redistributing the military budget for schools and social services.”

Building on history

CTU was widely seen as the victor of the seven-day 2012 strike, which held political significance coming just before a presidential election where Emanuel and Duncan served as proxies for Democratic President Barack Obama during his re-election campaign.

“In 2012 we were fighting to stay alive,” says Davis Gates, who was then the union’s political director, after serving for seven years as a CPS teacher. ​“Rahm Emanuel came to town and marginalized our bargaining rights even more than they were already marginalized. Emanuel came to town and wanted to bargain with our members directly,” rather than through typical union structures. ​“We were really truly fighting, revitalizing our union with an organizing plan that was second to none, reaffirming ourselves as the experts, pushing back against this notion that teachers are to blame. We redefined the debate with respect to what is acceptable in public education.”

During the strike, Emanuel and his allies portrayed the teachers as greedy and willing to put families at risk.

“When someone says that teachers don’t care about our students, our schools, our communities, it’s so profound,” says Stieber. ​“The amount of hours we put in, we get there early, stay late, do clubs, do activities, grade, put our students in front of our own children. When a lesson doesn’t go well, I’m thinking, ​‘how can that go better,’ or ​‘what’s wrong with so-and-so that they put their head down today?’ It’s beautiful, but it’s also really hurtful when someone acts like we don’t care.”

The 2012 strike helped teachers successfully block proposals for tying pay increases to test scores while also achieving class size limits, increasing pay and protecting benefits, among other wins. Perhaps more significantly, the massive public support for the teachers showed that Chicago residents understood teachers’ commitment and the importance of public education.

“Talk about transformational,” says Castro. ​“I still get goosebumps thinking about it. We went all out for our students, we wanted the city to see how much we love and care for our students, and the status quo was not enough.”

In 2016, with Emanuel still in the mayor’s office and then-Gov. Rauner promoting school privatization at the state level, the union went on strike for one day. They ultimately won gains including the creation of 20 ​“sustainable community schools,” that receive $500,000 in extra funding per year to serve as community resource hubs, working in partnership with community organizations. In August as a result of contract negotiations, CPS committed to expanding the sustainable community schools program to 45 more schools. CTU’s recent report, ​“Every School, Every Student, Every Community,” calls for expanding the sustainable community schools program citywide, starting with 75 total schools and 125 more in the pipeline.

Steinmetz College Prep on the city’s Northwest side exhibits how a sustainable community school provides crucial wraparound programming for students, their families and the community as a whole. The additional funding and partnership with the community organization Northwest Center has helped the school develop nearly 30 afterschool programs and extracurricular clubs, including E-sports, 3D printing, DJing, photography and robotics.

Tech coordinator and CTU member Angel Gonzalez launched some of the school’s earliest clubs after he started at Steinmetz 12 years ago, hoping to provide the type of programming he never got as a CPS student. Using his own personal equipment, he started gaming, photography and DJ clubs.

“By myself, I was running three programs at once, and I was getting burnt out,” says Gonzalez. ​“Then we got the grant, and that opened the door to actually investing in a lot of these programs, actually being able to grow the programs, because now we’ve got more cameras, we’ve got more DJ equipment, we were able to get more teachers on board, we’re able to get outside contractors to come in and teach the kids.”

In 2019, Lori Lightfoot won the mayor’s office on a progressive platform, beating the CTU’s preferred candidate, former teacher and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, in a run-off election. That fall, the union went on strike for 11 days, winning gains including nurses and social workers in every school, a moratorium on new charter schools and the promise that ​“sanctuary schools” would protect undocumented students.

With Johnson as mayor, ​“we’re not debating anymore” about priorities, says Davis Gates. ​“The mayor of Chicago believes children deserve a fully-funded, fully-resourced public education and he’s willing to work with us to get that implemented. He’s someone willing to use his influence, his bully pulpit and his power to fight for Black children, Latine children, immigrant children.”

With negotiations ongoing, the union and its supporters hope to win a contract that can serve as a model for other districts across the country, and one that fulfills the promise of having a world-class public education system in the country’s third-largest city.

“But bureaucracy is stubborn,” Davis Gates continues. ​“What we’re up against now is bringing change to a district that has always failed to resource and support its students. It’s going to take time, patience and impatience to do it.”