Chicago Teachers Union Is In Contract Negotiations With CPS
Chicago Teachers Union Is In Contract Negotiations With CPS
By Tia Carol Jones
The Chicago Teachers Union is currently in negotiations with Chicago Public Schools for their contract, which ends at the end of June.
The Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said the Chicago Teachers Union believes in rank-and-file leadership. Every member of the union, which is 30,000, has an opportunity to submit contract proposals. Those proposals have gone through a process where members vote on every proposal to ensure that those proposals reflect the needs of every component of the union’s membership.
“We believe that the people who are closest to the impact of policy deserve to have an opportunity to create and form the policy that we push at the bargaining table,” Davis Gates said.
Some of the points for the contract include special education, dual language programs, sports programs, fine arts programs and career technology education programs.
The Chicago Teachers Union bargains for its classrooms in terms of the school community and bargains for the wider community because the schools are in the wider community. It practices common good bargaining. The union believes that public education is a common good.
“The vast majority of Chicagoans will go to a public school and if you want to do right by Chicago, you want to think about how you do that with respect to the school district,” Davis Gates said.
In 2019, Chicago Teachers Union took up housing. Davis Gates said that 20,000 of the district’s students are unhoused and 80% of those students are Black. She said it was a reflection of the destruction of public housing and the replacement housing that did not follow after that destruction and the lack of affordable housing in the city.
She said lack of stability doesn’t give a school a classroom full of students who are on time and ready to learn, it results in a classroom of students who need more. The union was able to get added staffing to support students who were experiencing being unhoused. This year, in the contract, the CTU wants the CHA lists to open and to give CPS students and their families priority.
“That both stabilizes the enrollment at the district and it also stabilizes a household,” Davis Gates said.
Davis Gates said that CTU believes every school should have a fine arts program with band, orchestra, choir and art. She said those things round out the educational experience for students. The contract proposals also include the recruitment of more Black teachers.
“We can’t continue to leave opportunities on the ground. We know when children have Black teachers, those Black teachers have a significant impact on their achievement,” Davis Gates said.
As a teacher, Davis Gates has had students come back and tell her the type of expectation and instruction she offered them was important including the cultural element that was there. Those students believed they could achieve big things because they saw their teachers as a manifestation of the work.
Davis Gates and the Chicago Teachers Union went to Springfield to get more resources. It means more funding for wraparound support – social workers, counselors and librarians – in the schools. CTU is also asking the district to create sustainable community schools. She gave the example of James Beidler Elementary School on the city’s West Side. It was slated for closure, the school community organized and fought to keep the school open. Beidler is a sustainable community school, which means it receives more resources and it is done with Blocks Together, a community organization that provides support for the students and families.
“You get this well-rounded experience that draws in the community, invites the parents in and also gives them some agency how their children are educated, what types of support are located in the school, because they get more resources … as a result, Beidler has been climbing in every category of achievement,” Davis Gates said.
