CHICAGO—As if the months-long fight over a new contract for the Chicago Public Schools unionized teachers and staff wasn’t tough enough, now it is complicated by having to deal with Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s cuts. The union opens its fightback on November 21.
That’s because Trump’s schemes to slash federal school funding, kill the U.S. Education Department, ban teaching about racial history in U.S. schools, end school lunches, eliminate diversity programs, and even mandate cops in schools—among others–will impact local schools from coast to coast.
And Chicago, with schools whose 323,000 students are overwhelmingly people of color, and a district in a deep blue city in a blue state headed by a Black Mayor, Brandon Johnson, who was a public school teacher and union shop steward, may be a top victim of Trump-GOP hate of all those factors.
So the Chicago Teachers Union/AFT Local 1, which was a trailblazer for other teachers unions—in both AFT and the National Education Association—under its late and lauded President Karen Lewis, apparently will take the lead again, this time tangling with Donald Trump.
The Trump threat and more will get hashed out in public when Local 1 brings the battle out into the open in an after-school rally opposite City Hall at 4:30 pm on November 21.
Until now, the battle over a new contract to replace the one covering 30,000-plus teachers and staffers at the nation’s fourth-largest public school district has been a tangled mess. The old contract expired at the end of June.
That mess features media stories, fitful negotiations, unsuccessful lobbying to get more state money, a campaign to oust school system CEO Pedro Martinez, the mass resignation of the entire appointed school board, and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointment of a new temporary school board.
Throw in concurrent battles over both the school budget and how to close a spending gap in Chicago’s city budget and you have a potent witches’ brew three weeks after Halloween.
Tried to solve problems
The local tried to solve much of the problem with its own contract proposals, unveiled in April. They’ve gone nowhere in the ensuing hullabaloo.
But Trump’s election and his drastic schemes to cut and change the federal role in education have thrown a new monkey wrench into the picture. Speakers at the rally, including CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, will tackle that too.
“On Nov. 21, we rally not only for a contract but for the soul of public education itself. Trump’s Project 2025 seeks to strip resources from our schools, but CTU won’t back down,” the union tweeted.
Project 2025 is Trump’s platform, crafted for him by the radical right anti-union and anti-minority Heritage Foundation.
“Join the sea of red downtown to show CPS, Chicago, and the nation that we’re here to defend our students’ right to a safe, fully funded, public education. #Protect our schools, bring joy back to our classrooms, and create a better school day for all students.
“Our proposals would create a better school day for every student in CPS, reversing the structural inequities that have left our Black and Brown schools struggling even to provide the basics. We want to bring joy back to our classrooms and create a better school day for all students,” the local said when it unveiled its contract proposals at the end of April.
But there’s been little progress since, and then Project 2025 threw a monkey wrench into the works, CTU Communications Director H. Kapp-Klote wrote on the union’s website on November 17, while outlining paths of resistance.
“The incoming Trump administration plans to decimate public education, from the federal level down to local school districts and neighborhood schools, in every way they can. This is not hyperbole or panic. His allies and advisors published their goals and strategies in Project 2025,” Kapp-Klote wrote.
“Trump continues to champion these policies now that the election is over.”
Teachers’ unions, including AFT, the Chicago local’s parent union, were a constant Trump target during the Republican’s prior White House term. They fought tooth and nail against his nomination of GOP big giver and public school teacher hater Elizabeth “Betsy” DeVos, to be Education Secretary.
Once DeVos took office, after then-Trump Vice President Mike Pence broke a 50-50 Senate tie to confirm her, she proceeded to slash education funding, deny legally mandated forgiveness of federal student loans to graduates who became teachers, cut student aid and diverted federal funds to private schools and vouchers.
DeVos even threw the union for Education Department workers out of its small offices in the agency headquarters. AFT had to take DeVos to court at least once to win teachers—and the department’s workers—their rights.
Difficult times ahead
“There are difficult times ahead for our city and country. But one thing remains true: when we fight, we win,” says CTU President Gates. “That was true during our contract fights in 2012, 2016, 2019, and it is just as true today. We’re ready, and it starts with landing a contract that strengthens and protects us as educators and as integral members of our school communities. Join your CTU siblings as we take to the streets, make our voices impossible to ignore, and show the world Chicago educators are ready to fight to protect our students and to win schools Chicago’s children deserve.”
Key contract points include:
- Protecting academic freedom “to ensure members are protected from politicized attacks on curriculum and materials. Members must have the right to select curriculum” while involving parent advisors. And members need “stronger protection from punishment or retaliation for teaching course content, including teaching comprehensive and truthful history.”
- Expanding teacher mentoring and training, especially to retain “Black educators, whose numbers have fallen by half over the past 20 years” and mandated “supports for newer and struggling educators.”
- More and stronger protections for members including union activists, teachers, and staffers who turn the union to file grievances, whistleblowers “and those who experience discrimination, harassment, or threats of any kind.”
- “Protection of LGBTQIA+ members, students, and families by safeguarding personal information, protecting them from discrimination and harassment, and providing additional resources and support.” Trump’s agenda would again permit discrimination and harassment, by removing federal bans.
- More money and support for immigrant students and families, including more school-level staffers “and access to mental health services, academic supports, and transportation.” Immigrants, including undocumented people, are a growing share of Chicago’s population and its school population.
- “Lower social worker- and counselor-to-student ratios, clearly defined roles, and additional specific mental health supports for our most vulnerable student populations.” Trump’s right-wing agenda calls such support “woke indoctrination.
- More and larger “restorative justice” programs, which began five years ago. The programs emphasize “positive behavior interventions over punitive, harmful, often discriminatory practices of the past–“spare the rod, spoil the child” of earlier eras. Those “practices “allowed disproportionate harm against Black students and suspensions as early as preschool.”
- A library in every school and at least one certified librarian in each library.
- Better staff-to-student ratios in special ed, lighter workloads for those teachers, clearer roles, and better learning and working conditions.
- “Expanded and protected access to women’s health care needs, including birth control, fertility treatments, and abortion care. Proposals also address maternal health, parental leave, and expanded protections from discrimination based on gender.”
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