Stacy Davis Gates: Lots of ire for Chicago schools, state leaders, corporations, banks
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates had words for state lawmakers, the governor, corporations and financial institutions at a public bargaining session over a new union contract. She said union demands are not a money discussion, but rather about culture.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates boosted her “$50 billion… and three cents” contract demands during a public bargaining session between her union and Chicago Public Schools, claiming the contract was not about money, but rather an investment in a new culture.
“The rich people, the corporations that created our school district did so for workers to maintain a lower class. The people that they didn’t have to pay much. People who could take orders,” Davis Gates said during the session Aug. 13. “And so when you only create a system for ‘good enough for me to have an employee,’ that becomes the tradition and the culture.”
She also addressed the demand for another $1.1 billion from the state, which was quickly rejected by state leaders and prompted this from Gov. J.B. Pritzker: “I don’t think that that’s the job of Springfield, to rescue the school districts that might have been irresponsible with the one-time money they received,” he said, referring to federal pandemic funds being used for ongoing CPS costs rather than being treated as temporary assistance. “Poor fiscal management on the part of a local government is not necessarily the responsibility of Springfield.”
Davis Gates was not pleased.
“‘Good enough’ is pejorative. ‘Bailout’ is offensive. ‘Investment and ‘hope,’ that is the business of this contract,” she said. “So, I look forward to a discussion about the predatory nature of how the financial institutions have not just treated the families in this neighborhood, but the schools in this neighborhood as well.”
CPS is working to close a $500 million deficit. After analyzing what it would cost to agree to just 52 of CTU’s over 700 demands, the district projected that deficit would be driven up to nearly $4 billion – half of the district’s operating budget – by fiscal year 2029.
CTU Vice President Jackson Potter objected to the district’s projections being shown.
“I just want to point out that when you show the graph of what our contract proposals would cost, and it shows what the deficit is, the [red] versus blue, it sends the message that you can’t meet any of our recommendations,” Potter said.
CTU has pushed for the district to borrow to pay for contract costs. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hinted at a $300 million payday loan. CPS objected to that idea. It is already facing significant debt, with a $194 million payment this year just on six high-interest loans taken out during the state budget stalemate.
CPS debt is why Davis Gates and her union allies want financial institutions sued.
The budget and contract battle now has Johnson, who is CTU’s former lobbyist and whose run for office was largely funded by CTU, trying to oust CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. Martinez refused Johnson’s pushes to take out the payday loan or to take on city payments for district pensions, so Johnson and CTU are closing in on a deal to remove him from the $360,000 job.
Illinois Policy Institute projections of CTU demands that could be calculated exceeded $10 billion, with salaries alone adding $2.5 billion and taking the average teacher to $144,620 in the 2027-2028 school year from the current $93,182. CTU is making many social, housing and climate justice demands that are hard to quantify and have little to do with teacher compensation or academic achievement.
Since 2012, CPS spending has increased by 97%, but student proficiency in reading has declined by 63% and by 78% in math for grades 3-8. With the costs of the demands that could be calculated – which represents only a fraction of CTU’s latest demands – annual spending is set to triple compared to 2012 levels.
Today, only 26% of third- through eighth-graders are proficient in reading. Less than 18% are proficient in math.
Those numbers don’t sound like a system that is good enough for any purpose. Maybe Davis Gates and CTU leaders need a moment of reflection to think about why a system costing nearly double yields declining results, and who really deserves the blame.