Even by comparison with other underperforming, Big Labor-dominated government K-12 school districts, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system is doing a miserable job of educating children and preparing them to be responsible adults.
Many if not most of CPS’s middle- and high-school students are illiterate or barely literate. According to the Nation’s Report Card, just 21% of Chicago eighth graders are “proficient” readers.
The failure of CPS to furnish even a basic education for most kids does not, unfortunately, appear to trouble in the least the top officials of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU/AFT/AFL-CIO), who under Illinois law effectively co-manage government schools with local elected officials.
In a March 5 speech, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates made no bones to local, state, and federal taxpayers about Big Labor’s bottom line for the next four-year CPS union contract, which is scheduled to commence at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year. It’s all about more money and power for the CTU brass.
The union hierarchy’s demands, declared Ms. Davis Gates, “will cost $50 billion and three cents. And so what? That’s audacity. That’s Chicago.”
At the time, Ms. Davis Gates offered no details about why a huge increase in spending, nearly equal to what the entire state of Illinois takes in per year in tax revenue, is called for when Chicago teacher salaries are already among the highest for any urban district in the U.S., while schools are still abysmal.
But a few days later, a 142-page leaked document emerged spelling out hundreds of radical CTU contract demands. They include sharply increased union payrolls in CPS schools despite a 27% drop in enrollment over the past two decades, additional time off for K-12 employees, and union “captive audience” meetings with new employees.
National Right to Work Committee Vice President John Kalb commented:
“The fact is, the effectiveness of CPS schools could be dramatically improved, at little if any net additional cost to taxpayers, by simple reforms such as empowering local officials to weed out ineffective and/or abusive teachers and reward good ones.
“But CTU bigwigs are insisting Chicago go in the opposite direction by making it even more difficult to dismiss lousy teachers and mandating across-the-board pay hikes of at least 9% a year for all union-‘represented’ K-12 employees, regardless of the individual employee’s effort or achievement.
“And since current Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson [D] is a former CTU lobbyist who raked in $5.6 million in cash alone from the CTU and its affiliates during his successful 2023 campaign, CTU bosses can be expected to get much of what they are demanding.”
Mr. Kalb continued: “Incredibly, in 2023 many media apologists for monopolistic unionism hailed the election of Mr. Johnson, engineered by the political machine of the viciously anti-schoolkid, anti-taxpayer CTU brass, as a ‘landmark victory’ for ‘progressivism.’
“But ordinary citizens across the U.S. who have recently been hearing and reading with consternation about CTU bosses’ ongoing $50 billion shakedown know that Chicago and Illinois are failing miserably at school governance.
“The question Americans must ask themselves is how the legendary ‘City of the Big Shoulders’ has fallen so low it can now be pushed around by the likes of Stacy Davis Gates.
“A key factor in the downfall of Chicago and Illinois is the special-interest state law, adopted in 1983, that hands government union bosses monopoly bargaining power over how K-12 public educators are compensated and managed.
“In Illinois, abusive government unionism is now deeply entrenched, and rolling it back will be extraordinarily difficult. In states such as Virginia, where it is not yet pervasive, concerned parents and taxpayers still have hope to avoid Chicago’s fate. However, time is of the essence.”
This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.
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Big Labor’s #1 goal is the elimination of Right to Work protections for employees. To please their union-boss puppet masters, Mr. Brown and Mr. Casey both cosponsored the so-called ‘PRO’ Act, which would effectively override state Right to Work laws and impose forced union dues and fees nationwide.
Separately, Dartmouth and MIT graduate students charge UE affiliates with demanding union dues from them in violation of SCOTUS precedent
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