The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) stands up to fascism
For the first time in 15 years the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) last week reached a tentative agreement with Chicago Public Schools after a year of negotiations. If CTU’s 30 000 members ratify it, they will see pay raises between 4 and 7.5 percent for the first year of the agreement and more over life of the contract.
This is great, but what is truly significant is that the union is taking a stand against fascism of the Trump/Musk administration. As Trump busily cuts school funding, the CTU negotiated improvements for Chicago students like expansion of services for special education along with bilingual and unhoused students. The deal contains enforceable class-size caps. Chicago Public Schools has agreed to commit $10 million to ensure that lower income students have the money they need for uniforms equipment and transportation so they can take part in sports like more affluent suburban neighbours. It will also create a group of art and music teachers to fill holes in elementary school arts programmes. Like Toronto, local schools can fundraise to supplement their children’s school life but, also like Toronto, disparity in fundraising makes a big difference in what that looks like from school to school. The agreement also adds 90 new librarian positions in schools and doubles the number of teachers to work with students who need English language support.
Even more important are the CTU and Chicago Public Schools protections against Donald Trump’s anti-government wrecking crew. As Henry Giroux wrote previously in School, the Oligarch-in-Chief ordered schools to stop teaching what his administration deems to be “radical, anti-American ideologies” like historical truth and critical thinking. He redirected funds towards private schools and voucher programmes under the guise of increasing school choice. He perversely used antisemitism as an excuse to round up and deport Palestinian supporters like Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student, Rumeysa Ozturk, both detained out of state in Louisiana.
Trump had barely warmed his seat in the White House when he signed executive orders decreeing that anything to do with Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) would be banished from his domain. Just last Thursday, he ordered state education leaders to certify that their schools are not using DEI programs- or lose federal funding Transgender protections fell as he issued another executive order acknowledging the existence of just two sexes – fixed at birth. To ensure that there is no body to oversee equitable principles in public education across the country, he has ordered the closure of the Department of Education.
CTU president, Stacy Davis Gates told Democracy Now the “contract provides a force field of protection for both our LGBTQIA+ students and our members. It provides academic freedom to ensure that history teachers like me are able to teach about the power of Reconstruction in this country, led by enslaved Africans in the first profound general strike that this country experienced.” The deal includes provisions to ensure teachers can discuss culturally responsive teaching and LGBTQ2S+ issues in a time when censorship dominates public discourse.
This “force field” is crucial under current authoritarian conditions. As soon as he was inaugurated, Trump rescinded a Biden administration policy protecting places like churches, hospitals and schools from enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). With this protection out of the way, ICE immediately descended upon cities like Chicago looking for potential deportees. National Education Association’s Stacy Hickox told educators attending a webinar last week, that kids are afraid to go to school: “They’re afraid to come because they might get abducted there. They’re afraid that they might come home and their parents will have been abducted.”1 What can you do to bring some measure of stability to schools?
Stacy Davis Gates said there is already language in the current contract with Chicago Public Schools regarding sanctuary for families living in fear of arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
46-7.3. The BOARD and UNION jointly declare that the buildings and grounds of CPS Schools are sanctuary spaces for all students, parents, administrators, bargaining unit members, and community members at the school for school-related business and jointly commit to defend the right to a free and safe learning environment to the extent permitted by law.
This includes refusal to admit ICE agents to schools without a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge, something affirmed in the contract. As Davis Gates said: “The collective bargaining agreement is a very powerful tool to use, especially in this moment, to ensure that people are protected, to ensure that their ability to enjoy the public good has some guardrails on it.”
Negotiating and striking for the benefit of school communities is nothing new for the Chicago Teachers Union. In 2019, Chicago teachers were on the picket lines pushing demands that included putting nurses and social workers in every school. The CTU made “common good demands” for affordable housing, winning an agreement to hire staff to support the more than 17 000 unhoused student in Chicago Public Schools.
So, congratulations to the CTU as well as the children, families and communities to whom it relates so closely. It has long fought for its members and the people they serve. It has a social-political perspective that enables it challenge power, particularly now when power is out of control. This is what a grass-roots and truly progressive union looks like.
- Stacy Hickox, National Education Association, Webinar hosted by rethinking schools, April 3, 2025