Chicago Teachers Union Ratifies New Contract

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates during the Chicago Teachers Union Faith-Based Breakfast. Photo provided by Chicago Teachers Union.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates during the Chicago Teachers Union Faith-Based Breakfast. Photo provided by Chicago Teachers Union.

Chicago Teachers Union Ratifies New Contract

By Tia Carol Jones

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) approved their new contract with a 97% approval and turnout of 87%. 

The vote took place Thursday April 10th and Friday April 11th. The contract includes a provision for smaller classroom sizes. In kindergarten classes, there will be 23 students, with a teacher and a teacher’s assistant. 

There will also be more special education case managers to support the diverse learning population, 12 weeks of paid parental leave and an expansion of the number of sustainable community schools, which will increase to almost 100 sustainable community schools across the city. There will be nurses and social workers serving schools at every school every day that school is in session.

Stacy Davis Gates, President of the Chicago Teachers Union, said since previous president Karen Lewis in 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union has worked very hard to create space for the contract to pick up on the gaps that students have been experiencing. She acknowledged that some people have been frustrated with CTU because they have lots of proposals. She said that with this contract, it was the first time since 1994 that CTU had been able to bargain a contract beyond wages and benefits.

Davis Gates said that closing schools and turning around schools, which led to teachers being let go, was the norm in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She said what precipitated CTU’s ability to bring common good issues to the table was that in 2012, Lewis led the union to the first strike in 25 years. 

The result of that is that in 2019, CTU was able to bargain for things like more support for students who are houseless and get people to staff that space, enabling those families to take advantage of all of the services the district has to offer. In this contract, the support has been extended beyond the school district to include other city services.

“So now, the school district, the city of Chicago and other city agencies have to engage in this process of helping us figure out how to house our children,” she said. She added that there are about 20,000 children in the district that are Black children.

Davis Gates said that she thinks it is necessary that every agency in the city address the houseless situation in the city giving the destruction of public housing and the lack of affordable housing in the city. She said it is necessary to address these issues in order to have a stable school district. She cited that at Nicholson Elementary School in Englewood, one in four students is houseless, which has an impact, because the stability of a home is an anchor to stability in the classroom.

Davis Gates said that as an educator when students are having a hard time, it is necessary to try and assist, advocate and ameliorate those barriers, which is something CTU has been doing for quite some time. She said the contract was negotiated with 65 rank and file members participating in the process, the people who need the contract to work for them. 

It included elementary and high school teachers, physical education teachers, special education teachers, school clerks and teacher’s assistants, as well as social workers and counselors participating in the bargaining process, sitting across the table from the Chicago Public Schools representatives. 

Davis Gates said another provision of the contract is the protection of the ability to teach the full dimension of American history, the full dimension of Black history and the full dimension of world history, as well as making sure there is culturally relevant curriculum.

“We want to make sure that when he {President Donald Trump] comes to pick on Chicago and the state of Illinois that there is a counterbalance, that they don’t just have to look at Donald Trump and cower, but they can look at our contract and know they we are going to fight to make sure that our young people have the access and the opportunity to a full education,” she said.


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