“Here’s the punchline: We have to tax the rich,” Davis Gates said at an Oct. 29 in Springfield, Illinois. “It is not because we just think that they’re not doing enough, it’s because we do our fair share and then some, and we need a little more help. It’s fair.”

The state’s education funding formula was with an infusion of money designed to ensure districts reach at least 90% of adequate funding levels by 2027. A recent found that while this change improved some school budgets, districts won’t reach full funding until at least 2038, “leaving an entire generation of students without access to an adequately funded education.”

“We need our Illinois lawmakers to deliver — they have already promised us those funds but they have not delivered,” said Cyndi Oberle-Dahm, the statewide union’s executive vice president. “Over one-third of Illinois school districts are funded at 76% or less. The only way we are going to fix this is to have a new revenue structure.”

The Illinois Federation of Teachers — which has 103,000 members and more than 200 chapters including the Chicago Teachers Union — in a statement that the lack of adequate resources has caused districts to struggle with meeting legal requirements for special education, keeping class sizes manageable and recruiting and retaining staff.

While there are no policy proposals for taxing the wealthy on the table in Illinois, the union argues that the state could pursue something like Massachusetts’ to help fund schools. The law requires an additional 4% levy paid by anyone earning more than $1 million annually. Massachusetts accrued almost $3 billion from the tax this past fiscal year.

Davis Gates, who was previously vice president of the statewide union, replaced Dan Montgomery in October after his resignation. School funding has been a main focus for her in Chicago. The district currently receives and has experienced tumultuous budget deficits, including a in state dollars. 

In November, the Chicago Teachers Union to pass Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed budget, which earmarked $552 million for Chicago Public Schools from the city’s unused tax increment financing revenue.

Davis Gates and other union leaders said in a that Chicago’s budget is “what we need our Governor and Illinois General Assembly to mirror at the state level.”

“Chicago can only do so much while Illinois’ tax system is upside down,” the union said. “We need our state government to fight Trump cuts with ending tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and to protect Illinois with the promised but undelivered resources to our schools, transit and public institutions.”

In late August, Philadelphia Public Schools and its teachers union narrowly avoided a strike with an agreement that included 3% annual raises. But weeks later, the district had to seek permission to borrow up to $1.5 billion to help cover the cost of the contract and other expenses.

Districts in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Baltimore County had to renegotiate teacher contracts this summer after budget shortfalls left them without enough funding for promised raises. And Chicago Public Schools approved raises in a four-year union contract in April while staring down a $734 million deficit, before closing the gap as the school year began.  

Debt has grown steadily for U.S. public schools, from $415 billion in 2013 to more than $586 billion in 2023, according to the latest available. Philadelphia and Chicago were among the nation’s reporting debts exceeding revenues in 2023.

In March, the Philadelphia district adopted a $4.6 billion budget that reflects a slated to reach $466 million in 2027 and $774 million in 2030. Its three-year contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents 14,000 educators, counselors and paraprofessionals, depended on from the state. But more than two months after the deadline for passing a budget, state lawmakers are at an , delaying funding to pay for the contract and other operating expenses. Michael Herbstman, Philadelphia’s chief financial officer, said the $1.5 billion in borrowing will help the cash flow problem.

“The one caveat on that is this does cost us a significant amount,” he said. “The state budget impasse is adding about $15 million to what we will incur in interest costs to borrow — that’s where it hits our budget.”

Experts say declining enrollment, coupled with the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds, have taken a toll on school budgets across the nation. The Philadelphia school district lost from the 2014-15 school year to 2024-25.

Chicago Public Schools is in the same boat. The third-largest school district had more than in 2000. This year’s reported sits at 316,224. The was delayed this year by efforts to close the $734 million deficit, which included a $175 million payment the city expects for a pension fund reimbursement. For months, district officials and school board members debated whether to address the gap by paying the city or taking out a short-term loan.

During that time, the district considered delaying raises included in a $1.5 billion Chicago Teachers Union contract that was approved in April —  until union President Stacy Davis Gates threatened legal action.

“Contracts are not optional documents,” Davis Gates in a letter to the school board. “They are covenants that provide security to the district’s employees, promises to the district’s students and labor peace for the city as a whole.”

Chicago Public Schools approved a $10.25 billion budget in August that included a and other refinancing to close the budget gap. The district decided against a short-term loan and will move forward with the only if it receives extra revenue.

The district told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ that it balanced the budget to ensure it could “fully meet its obligations related to wages, staffing and programming, as outlined in its labor agreements.”

In Baltimore County, the school district had to go back to the bargaining table with its teachers union this summer after it ran out of money for raises. 

In 2023, the district had approved annual pay boosts for 9,000 members of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County , according to reporting from . Educators received a 3% raise the first year, but when federal COVID relief funds decreased and the the district’s request for more money, officials rescinded the 5% bump that had been scheduled for July 1.

In May, teachers rallied before and after school, demanding “promises made should be promises kept.” The district offered a 1.5% raise but the union rejected it, leading to an impasse before the two parties in July on 3.05%. Part of the increase took effect in September, while the rest will start in January.

“We know the impact of high-quality educators on student success,” the union said in a June 6 . “When we fight for what we’ve been promised, we do so to keep our veteran educators, to keep our early and mid-career educators, and to continue to compete for new educators to come here.”

In Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools from its board of supervisors in January to cover raises that were promised in a union contract, but it received less than half of the amount.

The Fairfax Education Unions’ collective bargaining agreement approved in January was its first in nearly 50 years. It included a for its 27,500 members starting July 1. The county budget shortfall prompted the district to for this school year. Future pay increases will be subject to local government funding.

“The board of supervisors’ refusal to address existing issues and triangulating political interests enables persistent underfunding of [Fairfax County],” the union said in a . “[The board] ignored our input and decided teachers, bus drivers, custodians and educational staff deserve remarkably lower compensation than all other public employees.”

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers declined to comment for this story. Unions in Chicago, Fairfax County and Baltimore County did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates voted to approve a tentative contract Wednesday, the first time the union has negotiated an agreement without a strike vote in more than 15 years.

The deal will be sent for ratification next week to 30,000 union educators. If the rank-and-file members approve the contract, final vote from the Chicago Board of Education will still be needed.

In-person paper ballot voting will take place April 10 and 11, with results expected to be announced April 14.

“This document gives our educators, our paraprofessionals, our clinicians, an opportunity to be co-producers of a better school day in Chicago, a better staff day in Chicago,” Union President Stacy Davis Gates said at a press conference Tuesday. “That is for the impact of our students.”

The grants teachers a 4% retroactive raise for the current school year and4% to 5% salary increases for each of the next three years. Other provisions smaller class sizes for all grade levels, hundreds of more positions like librarians and social workers, increased teacher preparation time and raises for veteran educators.

Elementary school teachers would get 70 minutes of daily preparation time, up from an hour. Veteran teachers with more than 14 years of experience , adding up to a $30 million price tag.

If the agreement is approved, Chicago teachers will be , with an average $110,000 salary by the end of the contract. The base pay for new teachers would start at $64,470 for the 2024-25 school year and increase to $72,520 by 2027-28.

The deal is less expensive than the union’s original list of demands, such as minimum 9% annual raises, but the current version will cost up to $1.5 billion over the life of the four-year contract. While the district has said it can cover the first year, questions remain about how it will afford payments in future years amid a half-billion-dollar budget deficit.

Last year, district CEO Pedro Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson clashed over how to pay for the upcoming agreement as federal COVID aid was about to expire. The conflict led to the October resignation of the entire school board, which had been appointed by Johnson, and the firing of Martinez in December.

Davis Gates said Tuesday that district leaders confirmed they can afford the contract. She said the city council and the mayor’s office believe that should go to the district to help fund the deal.

“We think that we have a good coalition of partners that will help us win the necessary funding. This has really been an interesting negotiation where we don’t have people screaming that they cannot pay for it,” Davis Gates said.

When asked how the district plans to pay for the deal, Johnson told , “We’ll do it. Just like I came in and I had a half-billion-dollar deficit in my first budget, had a $1 billion deficit in the second budget. We rectified that. We are leading in this moment.”

Teachers and parents at Tuesday’s press conference pointed to contract changes beyond the pay hike as major wins. 

The agreement would double the number of libraries, librarians and bilingual support staff in the district. It would create 215 more special education case manager positions and increase the number of social workers and nurses.

Emmy Ayala, a Chicago Public Schools parent, said her child’s elementary school has a library but no librarian. 

“Because of the agreement, this will allow more children to develop a love for reading, a love for learning, and [there will be] a third space in their communities to learn and engage and be safe again,” she said.

Union officials said academic freedom, including teaching Black history, would also be protected for the first time. 

“This tentative agreement makes sure that not only do we provide an education to students that is culturally relevant, but that we also embrace their language, their culture, their identities and everything about them,” said Diane Castro, a preschool teacher and bargaining team member. “We will not reduce them.”

The proximate cause of the political fracas is a in Chicago Public Schools’ annual budget, driven primarily by the drying up of federal pandemic relief dollars. But funding challenges in the Windy City are downstream of a concerning reality: Chicago is increasingly beholden to the wishes of its teachers union. This is especially the case under the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson, who spent a decade as an organizer for the CTU and ascended to the mayoralty with its backing. At the helm of the city, Johnson has been willing to bend over backward to put his union sympathies into policy. A since-retired reporter Chicago Magazine editor Edward McClelland that CTU President Stacy Davis Gates “made Brandon Johnson.” Now, “Stacy Davis Gates owns Brandon Johnson.” 

Former U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) a similar sentiment: “We have a new political machine [in Chicago], and it’s called the CTU, and its vassal is Mayor Johnson.”

The previous board’s resignations marked the apex of the tensions that have been simmering between it and Johnson ever since the board a controversial $9.9 billion budget in July. In addition, the board has sided with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez in opposing a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan to pay for the expensive raises sought by the CTU, which is negotiating a new contract with the board. After Johnson’s hardball move, there’s little question that the union’s negotiators are breathing a sigh of relief. In the memorable words of Chicago Magazine’s McClelland, following the board’s resignations, “Mayor CTU will appoint a set of lackeys, brownnosers, and apple polishers who will carry out the Chicago Teachers Union’s program” — fire Martinez, take out the loan, and use the money to hand out for teachers.

Indeed, it’s clear that Johnson’s recent school board moves align well with the CTU’s positions. The union, which is toward Martinez, wants him gone. But the school board, which was almost entirely hand-picked by Johnson himself, refused to play along because it recognized the irresponsibility of taking on a risky loan.

It’s worth dwelling a bit on the financial situation of CPS. It can be boiled down to two words: not good. The school board a $9.9 billion budget in July that money for the contract that the board is currently negotiating with the CTU, which typically $100 million to $120 million annually to the district’s operating costs, nor a non-teaching-staff pension payment that will cost the district $175 million. 

These two expenses culminated in the roughly $300 million gap mentioned above. Mayor Johnson has pushed the school board and Martinez to take out a loan to close this gap, but because CPS bonds are “junk” rated, the interest payments on the loan would likely be exorbitant. Indeed, CPS is already $9.3 billion in debt, and principal and interest payments on outstanding debt — the debt that exists before this potential new loan would take effect — will $817 million this year alone. When Johnson first floated the idea of taking out a loan in July, an internal CPS memo by Chalkbeat called it a “fictional or phantom revenue source.”

An apparent lack of adequate state funding may also be at play here. In 2017, Illinois changed its to better fund historically under-resourced districts. Under the reformed funding formula, CPS 79% of its required funding this year the district’s recent increase in English language learners and a decrease in local revenue, both of which increased the required funding per the state’s formula. 

Lurking in the background of this shortfall is the between Johnson and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, providing fertile ground for the conspiracy-minded to suspect that the governor is holding back funding from Chicago’s schools out of personal pettiness. But the reality is more prosaic: in Illinois are even worse off than Chicago, including the 49 of them that are funded below 70%of what the state formula says they need. This suggests that Chicago is not being squashed by gubernatorial caprices. In the words of one person close to CPS, “I think that the union thought, once Brandon [Johnson] got elected, that they’d be able to walk into Springfield and get whatever they wanted. . . . But there’s no money, especially after ESSER funds have expired.”

Still, Chicago spends a lot of money each year on education. Per-student operating expenses in FY 22 $24,132, roughly double the . Moreover, as Chad Aldeman wrote last month, CPS has added thousands of personnel at the same time that enrollment in the district has been declining. “Budgeting decisions like these would be anathema in any other industry,” argues Aldeman, “where leaders normally try to match up the number of employees with customer demand.” But “Chicago Public Schools is doing the opposite.” 

Indeed, Aldeman notes that the district “chose to invest 92% of its one-time relief funds in full-time school employees,” a decision that greatly benefited the CTU’s members — and, by extension, CTU’s coffers.

But “Mayor CTU” refuses to countenance worries about the CPS’s dire financial straits. In the press conference during which Johnson announced the board’s new appointees — which local news outlets have described as “” and “” — he compared those raising concerns about fiscal responsibility to slaveholders. “They said it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people,” Johnson argued. “And now you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”

One can hardly blame the CTU for its insistence that its members receive generous raises, financial considerations be damned. The first concern of a union, after all, is simple: to act in the best interests of its members. But Brandon Johnson deserves less sympathy. In a time of unprecedented financial chaos for the school district, Mayor Johnson is acting in the interests not of Chicago as a whole but of the CTU. This is not to suggest that Johnson is a stooge of the union. Johnson strikes this observer as a full-throated advocate for the cause on which he rose to power, which is why the CTU funded him so generously in the first place; the arrow of causality does not point in the opposite direction.

Still, Johnson should know better than to jeopardize the financial health of the city’s school system in order to push forward the interests of just one of his many constituencies. In contrast, Chicago voters delivered a strong anti-union verdict in last week’s elections, as just four of the 10 school-board candidates elected were backed by the CTU. 

Perhaps this is a sign that Chicagoans have recognized the peril of being beholden to the union.

showed that candidates backed by the powerful Chicago Teachers Union won four seats, one of them unopposed. Meanwhile, pro-school choice candidates backed by wealthy donors won three seats, with three seats won by independent candidates.

The independents include a rapper who beat three opponents on the city’s South Side. said he ran to ensure that every school gets a registered nurse, a librarian, counselors, tutors, support staff and quality arts instruction.

The 10 new board members will join 11 others who will be appointed in coming weeks by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer.

“There’s a lot going on here,” said Hugo Jacobo of , a nonprofit that supports independent school board candidates.

Groups that advocate for charter schools spent about $3 million on the race, The Chicago Sun-Times , with the union spending about $1.6 million on its endorsed candidates through its own political action committees and at least eight other PACs. Other estimates show the union spending more than on the races.

The union’s preferred candidate came up empty in District 3, one of Chicago’s most politically progressive areas. A reform-oriented candidate, , beat union-endorsed candidate by 12 percentage points, despite a reported $300,000 in donations. The union painted a more positive picture Tuesday night, with President Stacy Davis Gates , “Billionaires spent a lot of money to get three out of 21,” referring to the larger board that will eventually be seated. “I keep telling you, it’s cumulative. It keeps getting bigger and it keeps growing. And we want more people for this group project.”

Tuesday’s results push Chicago Public Schools, the fourth-largest school system in the United States, into a new phase, with observers saying a fully elected board could improve schools and make them more responsive to parents and taxpayers. 

But whether the shift will curb the system’s recent chaos is another matter. 

Last month, the entire seven-member board resigned after Mayor Brandon Johnson threatened to oust schools CEO Pedro Martinez. Johnson had appointed six of the seven members . 

He brought in a new board, but a week later the newly appointed president, the Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, after news reports revealed he’d written antisemitic and sexist posts on social media and posted that he agreed with a theory that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were an “inside job.”

Tuesday’s split result, while offering what will likely be a variety of perspectives on finances, management and curriculum, is bound to be just the beginning of a new, and perhaps even more tumultuous era — for one thing, all 21 seats, including the 10 from Tuesday, will be on the ballot in 2026.

“This first cycle was really a warm-up for 2026, when all 21 seats are up for election and the stakes are real,” said Peter Cunningham, a former head of communications for the district and founder of the nonprofit .

Cunningham, who also served as a spokesman for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, said Tuesday’s election “became a referendum on Mayor Johnson and the teacher’s union because of the chaos at the board over the last few months. They did not get a clear mandate to pursue their more controversial policy proposals, but they will likely do it anyway because this is their last chance to control the board.”

The range of ideologies among fully elected board members could fuel further drama, said Meredith Paige, a mother of two high schoolers and leader of , an advocacy group.

“The chaos is going to continue,” she said.

From appointed to elected board  

For nearly 30 years, Chicago’s mayors have enjoyed the right to appoint and dismiss board members, with the city standing for decades as one of just a handful with mayoral control — New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Detroit are among others where mayors still wield considerable power over school policy. 

Until now, Chicago Public Schools was also the school district in Illinois that didn’t have an elected board. But the state legislature in 2021 ordered the city to transition to a fully elected, 21-seat board. 

It may take a while for the changes to sink in with voters, said Paige, who canvassed in neighborhoods last week and met “a lot of people who had no idea that there was a school board election.” Others believed Chicago already had an elected school board. “So that’s been a problem the whole time,” she said. “Even now, parents don’t understand how this is going to work.”

Among the first business items the hybrid board will face in coming months: whether to terminate the contract of Martinez, the schools CEO, who has served since 2021. They must also decide whether to approve Johnson’s push to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to defray short-term expenses, including a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching employees.

The district faces a projected deficit of $505 million next fall, due partly to rising healthcare costs and the expiration of federal ESSER pandemic funds. Johnson’s predecessor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, also shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in pension costs from City Hall, which had historically underwritten them, to the district.

And the city is also hemorrhaging students: enrollment has dropped by 20%, or more than 80,000 students, since 2010.

In July, Martinez and the school board proposed a $9.9 billion budget that aimed to close the deficit through staff cuts and freezes affecting nearly 250 jobs. The board authorized the budget as written, but relations between the mayor and the district soured. 

Johnson has proposed taking out a $300 million loan to fund teacher pay increases and pension contributions, and he in October for comparing his critics to confederates who opposed freeing slaves “because it would be too expensive.”

Even if both sides agree on a new source of spending, the district and the union are also engaged in a contentious negotiation over the terms of the next teacher contract. One estimate said paying out an expected series of teacher raises and taking on more pension debt from the city could increase its deficit to nearly $1 billion. 

Despite Johnson’s bid to fire Martinez, the CEO remains popular, said Jacobo of Chicago Democrats for Education. “He’s the only one really concerned about the financial situation of our city and our school district system, so people want someone responsible like him to stay.”

Paige, the parent advocate, agreed. “The mayor and CTU want to fire the CEO, who has brought a lot of stability to the district. So there’s a lot of frustration over that.”

She said the bitter, two-week in 2019 is also having lingering effects: “There’s still a lot of toxicity in the system over that — and just a general” she hesitated, “‘frustration’ is the nicest word I can think of right now — that the mayor seems so disconnected from reality of the financials that he wants to put the district in peril to pay the teacher’s contract.”

The state legislature has given Chicago until 2027 to transition to a fully elected board, and despite the challenges, Jacobo said the change will be welcome.

“I’m very glad that there will be a number of these new school board elected members who honestly are just not beholden to anyone but the parents, the voters in their district,” he said. “And when they talk, when they speak, it’ll be with a perspective of what is best for their community. I think it’s one step forward, but a lot of work to go.” 

The entire seven-member Chicago Board of Education will resign in the coming weeks after months of tension between Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

The resignations pave the way for Johnson to appoint new board members who could then carry out his wishes, including potentially firing Martinez. Johnson’s office said late Friday he will announce new appointments on Monday at 10:30 a.m.

Word of the resignations comes more than a week after the school board took no action to remove Martinez and about a month before the city’s first school board elections, which will create for the first time a hybrid board of 10 elected members and 11 appointed by the mayor. In three decades of mayoral control, no Chicago mayor has replaced all of their hand-picked members so quickly. Johnson last July.

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The upheaval is also happening amid with Johnson’s former employer the Chicago Teachers Union.

In a joint statement Friday, Johnson and the current appointed school board announced all current members would “transition from service” later this month.

“None of the members leaving the current Board planned to continue onto the hybrid Board, and none are running for election. With the unprecedented increase in Board membership, transitioning new members now will allow them time to orient and gain critical experience prior to welcoming additional elected and appointed members in 2025,” the statement read.

Johnson said this week that he never discusses personnel issues in public. But he , “I was elected to fight for the people of the city and whoever is in the way, get out of it.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Jen Johnson, deputy mayor for education, youth, and human services, said the mayor’s office “did not ask for resignations.”

“We knew that none of these board members were running [for election] or going to stay, and so we collaborated to ensure that there was a shepherding, a passing of the torch, as we approach this new board,” Johnson said, adding that all seven board members signed on to the statement the mayor’s office sent to the press.

Earlier this month, the mayor asked Martinez to step down — which he Nonetheless, Martinez and the has declined so far to fire him.

Board members have declined to comment publicly on Martinez’s clash with Brandon Johnson, but the board has in recent months backed Martinez in a couple of decisions that defied the mayor’s wishes. That includes adopting this year’s budget, as well as declining Johnson’s request for CPS to take out a short-term loan to cover some upcoming costs.

The board members stepping down are Board President Jianan Shi, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, who was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Mary Fahey Hughes, Tanya Woods, Mariela Estrada, Michelle Morales, and Rudy Lozano Jr.

Shi and Todd-Breland declined to comment further Friday. The other members have not returned emails or calls asking for comment on the resignation rumors this week.

The resignations will pave the way for Johnson to appoint new people to fill the vacancies on the board, who could then vote to approve a short-term loan and fire Martinez. The next school board meeting is Oct. 16, one of few remaining scheduled meetings before the is sworn in on Jan. 15, 2025.

“The board certainly will have the same authority, to evaluate the CEO against the objectives, and they will, you know, have to certainly tackle the incompleteness of the budget,” Deputy Mayor Johnson said.

Johnson did not directly answer when asked if it is the mayor’s hope that the new board will fire Martinez and approve a loan.

The mayor “will work with this new board just as he did with the current board to ensure we are protecting investments in our schools and that we are not cutting and using the truly chaotic solutions of past administrations, which harmed students in communities for generations,” she said.

In a statement, CPS CEO Martinez commended the board members “for their steadfast dedication to ensuring greater equity in our system, emphasizing our collective responsibility to improve the quality of education for those who are furthest from opportunity.”

If the mayor’s intention is to install a new board in order to fire Martinez, it would “be a group that has never evaluated [Martinez], has never worked with him,” according to a source familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak with the press. “They don’t know any of his work, they haven’t been part of any of these conversations.”

That source also noted that new board members typically have an orientation, which could be difficult to wedge in before the board’s first meeting.

In order to conduct business, the school board must have a quorum, which define as “a majority of the full membership of the Board of Education then serving.”

Deputy Mayor Johnson declined to specify the exact date of departure for each current board member, calling the latter a “personal decision” for each person.

A CPS central office staffer, who was not authorized to speak with the press, said the board “doesn’t want to undermine the mayor publicly” and feels board members were pressured to leave for not adhering to the mayor’s wishes. Another source familiar with the situation, also not authorized to speak with the media, questioned the official explanation.

“The mayor’s office will try to spin this as a transition,” the source said. “There is no credible explanation for why seven people would all leave a month or two ahead of time to facilitate a transition.”

The mood in the CPS central office was “like a funeral home” Friday as news of the resignations broke, according to the central office staffer, who said many people were sad to see the board departures.

“You could tell they really care about what’s going on at the district,” the staffer said, adding that they have worked with multiple CPS boards. “They have a sense of responsibility that I think I haven’t seen in the past.”

Multiple board members had been in serious discussions to resign as of at least Sunday, three sources told Chalkbeat.

As rumors of resignations floated earlier this week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said before new members are elected. Friday morning, former Chicago school board member and once interim-CPS CEO Jesse Ruiz thanking current board members and urging them to “stay the course.”

“Despite all the pressures I know you all are under, I truly hope you continue to provide the steady leadership, governance and oversight that is critical for our public institutions to operate in the best interest of ALL its stakeholders,” Ruiz , the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The school board shakeup likely won’t have an immediate effect on schools, students, and educators, said Jeffery Henig, professor emeritus of politics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, who has studied mayoral control of school boards.

The resignations “will create a potential embarrassment” for the mayor, but also give Johnson a chance to “step in strongly” and make swift decisions that he thinks are necessary, Henig said.

The turmoil could, however, create long-term problems for the new board, which may be tasked with replacing Martinez, hiring a permanent replacement, or addressing the issue of borrowing to cover costs, he said.

“This dramatic gesture by the current board could set into motion enough turmoil and public positioning and open vying for leadership in one faction [of the school board] versus another, that it would make it harder for the new board to set an even course at the beginning,” Henig said.

Some candidates running for school board in the November election began issuing statements.

Kate Doyle, a candidate in District 2, said she was “disappointed to see leaders step away” at a critical time and that if elected, she would “work to ensure that decisions are made transparently and with the long-term success of our students in mind.”

Tensions between Martinez, Johnson building for months

In its year-plus tenure, the Johnson-appointed Board of Education has pursued and approved policies that line up ideologically with the mayor. That includes making a commitment to moving away from , and

Martinez and his administration worked in tandem with the board to develop and implement those changes. But the school board has had some with his performance, WBEZ . According to documents related to his annual evaluation, board members felt blindsided or unprepared in certain circumstances. Still, CPS told WBEZ that the board and Martinez “have worked collaboratively throughout our tenure to have open dialogue, fostering a respectful and professional relationship.”

“It’s true that the board has been frustrated with Pedro along the way,” said the source familiar with the situation. “But I do think that, in my knowledge of the situation, there has been this relentless pressure to fire Pedro for cause and do it quickly, and the board is not comfortable doing that.”

According to Martinez’s contract, the board would need to provide six months notice before firing him without cause. If the board fired him for just cause, such as criminal activity, he would have to leave immediately. Martinez could sue the district if he believes he was wrongfully terminated.

At the heart of the tension between Johnson, his school board, and Martinez is the district’s budget, which faced a half-billion-dollar deficit before CPS made cuts to close it. That deficit existed largely because that the district used to beef up staffing and invest in new programs, such as tutoring, expired this week.

The district’s $9.9 billion did not set aside dollars for the new teachers contract, which it is currently negotiating. It is not unusual for the school district to amend its budget once a contract deal has been reached. WBEZ recently reported that the district has outlined several options, of furloughs and layoffs.

Johnson which included the same amount of funding for schools but resulted in other cuts, including of support staff who CPS said will be reassigned or paid for the rest of the year.

The district also did not include a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching staff that . Johnson opposed that cost shift before he became mayor, but has now asked CPS to continue paying it as he works to close .

Johnson was expected to deliver his city budget proposal in a speech to City Council on Oct. 16, but earlier this week the mayor’s office announced Johnson would deliver his budget on Oct. 30, a week after the school board is scheduled to meet.

Over the summer, Johnson asked CPS to take out to help pay for the cost of the pension payment and the added expenses of contracts for the teachers and principals unions. Martinez and the board refused, in fear that taking on such a loan would saddle the district with high-interest rates and deepen its looming deficit for years to come.

The board’s departure so close to the election will likely turn up heat on school board candidates, said Henig, the Columbia professor who has studied mayoral control.

“If the candidates haven’t been forced to address this, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure on them to address this,” Henig said.

Union negotiations turn up heat on Martinez

The conflict is compounded by between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union, where Johnson worked as an organizer before his foray into politics. The union’s wide-ranging proposal package asks for 9% raises, more staffing, and more support for students, but the district has said its financial challenges remain – and less than 10% of the CTU proposals could create .

The union further turned up the heat on school district officials after saying it obtained a list of potential co-locations between 140 schools. The district, Martinez, and the Board of Education have said they have no plans to close schools. In letters to staff and families earlier this month, Martinez said the list was created as part of its analysis for the five-year strategic plan, and that it led district leaders and the board to affirm that they did not want to close schools.

The union’s House of Delegates recently passed a vote of no-confidence in Martinez.

Under state law, no school closures can happen in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025. After the union’s claims over the past couple of weeks, the now-outgoing board passed a resolution Thursday, which Martinez prompted, that calls for .

This was originally published by . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .Ìę

At a press conference for former teacher and union organizer Brandon Johnson, activists from multiple cities gathered to denounce the record of his rival, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas. But their jeers — focused on his aggressive posture toward transforming districts, including by closing schools — were loudly met by Vallas’s own backers, who defended his decades-long career as an educational improvement czar. The cacophony of chants and counter-claims seemed to end in confusion.

Both the spectacle and the larger campaign, which will be decided in an April 4 runoff vote, capture competing visions both for urban education and the Democratic Party, which presides over America’s biggest and most troubled school systems. A onetime celebrity of the education reform movement, promoting school choice and tough accountability measures in struggling districts, while the more progressive Johnson during the Chicago Teachers Union’s rise to national prominence. 

But for all the contrast between the two, the discussion around schools seems oddly flat. The reason is simple: Within a few years, the office of the mayor will have little authority to act in the K–12 arena.

By 2027, governance of Chicago Public Schools will revert to (elections for half of its seats will be held next November), bringing an end to more than three decades of mayoral control over the district. That period saw massive improvement in school performance throughout the 2000s, followed by costly battles over teacher contracts and the fate of underperforming schools. More recently, scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that in math after spending much of the pandemic in remote instruction. 

As educators attempt to repair that damage in classrooms, the next mayor will have to contend with structural challenges that may not yield to either union-powered or reform-friendly solutions. Principal among these is a long-term slide in enrollment that has seen as the third-largest district in the country. The number of charter students , albeit more slowly, as African American families in disproportionate numbers. 

Less than a week before a winner is decided, the race appears to be the closest mayoral contest Chicago has seen in decades. Vallas and Johnson finished first and second, respectively, in a February primary (defeating, among others, unpopular incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot), but collectively received just over half of all votes cast. Vallas has in subsequent polling and collected the endorsement of local supporters like Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Johnson, meanwhile, has swept the support of progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Beth Swanson, CEO of the venture philanthropy fund and former deputy chief of staff to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, called the next four years a remarkable “political moment in time for public education.”

“These are complex waters that the city leadership haven’t navigated before,” Swanson said.

The rise and fall of Chicago reform

When longtime Mayor Richard Daley sought and received broader authority over Chicago Public Schools in 1995, less than a decade after Education Secretary Bill Bennett , he tapped Vallas to spearhead that nudged and won national praise. A longtime budget specialist in both Chicago and Springfield, the new CEO spent billions to renovate facilities, open new afterschool and magnet programs and offer significant salary increases for teachers.

He also established an accountability regime that prefigured much of what would become national law in No Child Left Behind. Ending the phenomenon he derided as “social promotion,” that third-, sixth-, and eighth-graders who didn’t meet benchmark scores on standardized tests would have to attend summer school or even repeat a grade. That move earned a commendation from , which Vallas’s mayoral campaign has since recycled into an election ad. 

It is an how much credit Vallas deserves for the progress CPS made after he left in 2001, but the district’s momentum was startling and well-documented. carried over into the tenure of his successor as CEO, Duncan, who transformed Chicago’s K–12 landscape by in less than a decade. And the markers of success continued to accumulate, with Duncan riding a wave of acclaim to an appointment as U.S. secretary of education.

Elaine Allensworth, director of the , said that “huge improvements in high school graduation rates, in college-going rates, in the rigor of coursework, [and] in the quality of instruction” belied commonly held narratives of dysfunction.

“People look at Chicago in terms of what makes the papers, and a lot of the time, they think it’s
struggling,” Allensworth said. “But what people don’t realize is that it’s actually a school system that made incredible progress over the last 15 years.”

Chicago’s reputation as a reformer’s playground hit its apex in 2017, when research from Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon indicated that CPS students made the most academic progress , experiencing six years of growth in the five calendar years between 2009 and 2014. By that point, however, the city was being run by Emanuel, and the public had begun to reject nostrums of disruptive innovation.

As in other cities where reform ran out of steam in the 2010s, the shuttering of failing schools helped ignite a backlash. Citing chronically poor performance and under-enrollment, Emanuel’s administration targeted nearly 50 buildings for closure before the 2013–14 school year, low-income and minority students on the city’s South and West sides. Both parents and educators expressed outrage, and a later study found that the chaos of the process hurt student achievement.

The gradual souring on charter schools, testing, and high-stakes accountability found its reflection in the itinerant career of Paul Vallas, who left Chicago for subsequent stints as a superintendent in and , and . In most of his stops, Vallas’s energetic management style yielded major changes and higher test scores; but he also tended to with local politicians and sometimes left in his wake.

Representatives for both campaigns ignored interview requests. But Thomas Bowen, a Chicago-based political consultant who recently advised Mayor Lightfoot’s reelection campaign, said that elements of Vallas’s technocratic history could prove a liability.

“The policy direction on this has pretty clearly moved away from the education reform model of the ’90s and 2000s,” he said. “So if you’re someone like Paul Vallas, who has a policy history as an education reformer, the smart thing to do is to not really run much on that.” 

Union goes ‘big time’

Bowen, who previously helped both Emanuel and Lightfoot claim the mayoralty, compared the attitudes of the electorate with the action of a rubber band. Overstretched by the likes of Vallas, Duncan and Emanuel for so many years, it eventually snapped in the other direction. 

Waiting there were the more than 20,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union, who had watched in frustration as CPS’s leadership embraced ambitious changes. In 2012, and tweaks to teacher tenure policies, the union went on its first strike in 25 years; nine days after that, they declared victory.

At least one poll showed that the strike among Chicagoans, who sympathized with the CTU’s complaints about poor working conditions and outdated school buildings. More importantly, to the national labor movement — on its heels for most of the the NCLB era — that they could take on reform administrations and win. Today, the 2012 Chicago strike is , including the 2018 #RedforEd wave.

Closer to home, CTU helped build a network of labor and advocacy groups , which it co-founded with other unions. Brandon Johnson, then serving as CTU’s deputy political director, said in with the socialist journal Jacobin that the necessity of such independent political organizations lay in the fact that elected Democrats were “not responding to the needs of the community.”

“They work with other progressive organizations in Chicago, some of which they are charter members and funders of,” Bowen said. “That progressive coalition is very successful not just at the city level, but also at the state level.”

But the prize of the mayoralty eluded them, even as CTU-endorsed challengers pushed Emanuel and Lightfoot to runoff elections in 2015 and 2019. Instead, successive clashes over contracts and school funding led to in 2016 and at the beginning of the 2019–20 school year. 

The COVID era brought mixed signals about the union’s potency. Chicago students spent over a year in virtual or hybrid learning, only returning to full-time, in-person instruction . But within a few months, the district over union members’ demands for another period of remote instruction at the height of the Omicron wave. After enduring a public scolding from city officials, the employees five days later, having failed to secure their top safety priorities. 

If that spat didn’t achieve its intended result, however, the CTU could take solace in a string of legislative successes at the state capital, where Democratic lawmakers have spent the last half-decade delivering on the union’s top priorities. In 2019, newly elected Gov. J.B. Pritzker the Illinois Charter Commission, which previously acted as an authorizer of last resort if local school boards rejected new charter school applications. The governor also over matters like class size and the length of the school year, which had been disallowed in the 1990s with the move to mayoral control. 

As Chicago Public Schools charts its way forward from COVID, the city’s policy environment is significantly more antagonistic to the reform movement than it was a decade ago. The district’s school ratings system, which was suspended during the pandemic, with a less “punitive” metric, and beginning next year, grade promotion — the hallmark of Vallas’s tenure as CEO — rather than test scores.

Peter Cunningham, a longtime Democratic staffer who worked alongside Vallas in Chicago and served as assistant secretary of education in the Obama administration, remarked that CTU had completed the long metamorphosis from a player that “didn’t quite know how to compete in the political sphere” into one that was comfortable winning and wielding power.

“They’ve graduated into the big-time,” Cunningham said. “Over the last 10 years, they’ve achieved enormous power in Chicago and in Springfield. And here they are, on the cusp of competing for the top job in the city.”

Mayoral control experiment ends

Of the slew of union wins in the last half-decade, likely none was more significant than the state assembly’s 2021 creation of . The 21-member board, established , will begin as a hybrid entity before switching to a fully elected body by 2027. 

However those campaigns develop — school board races in other major districts, such as Los Angeles, have sometimes grown into spending wars waged between reformers and union allies — CTU will undoubtedly cheer the end of Chicago’s mayoral control experiment. But if Johnson finally breaks through as teachers’ champion in City Hall, he will ironically take office just as power begins to drain from that building.

Aside from the initial elections for board seats, the key event during the mayor’s first term will be the negotiation of a new union contract when the existing one expires in 2024.

While Vallas generally presided over labor peace in his time as a district leader, Cunningham said, the CTU would inevitably take a more adversarial posture toward him than one of their own. The specter of another strike, echoing those launched in the early years of Emanuel’s and Lightfoot’s mayoralties, already hangs over the city’s politics.

“They’re not just going to go away quietly,” Cunningham noted. “If they lose, I fully expect that they’ll come back even harder to maintain their position.”

Another action item is the diminishing size of the districts. One provision of the school board law on all school closures until 2025, when the first elected members take office. At that time, Mayor Johnson or Vallas will be sorely tempted to sunset buildings operating drastically below capacity. Between the city’s shifting demographic patterns, declining fertility, and COVID flight, CPS enrollment in the past 20 years; that figure is easily the equivalent of 200-plus schools. 

The loss of those children has the amount of new funding the city receives from Springfield this year. Even more concerning, the arrival of an independent school board will sever CPS’s finances from the city’s. In anticipation of that decoupling, the Lightfoot administration in pension costs to the district’s books, effectively saddling them with an unfunded mandate. 

Without a new source of local or state revenue, the new costs could explode the district deficit. Pension payments alone will eventually “take any new revenues we have — state or local,” in a recent school board meeting. 

All those administrative challenges are layered atop a student population profoundly scarred by the experience of COVID and remote instruction. Compared with Illinois as a whole, which mostly saw modest drops in achievement during the pandemic, to levels last seen during the 2000s. Social and behavioral problems persist as well: Last school year, 45 percent of CPS students (and about half of its poor students) . 

Meredith Paige, the mother of two CPS students and a leader of the advocacy group CPS Family Dyslexia Collaborative, agreed that the demands of stabilizing and improving the system would likely overwhelm the educational designs of Lightfoot’s successor. But between the influence remaining in the office and the ideological separation between Johnson and Vallas, she added, the election’s two potential results would carry vastly different implications for education in Chicago.

“Either outcome dramatically changes education policy in Chicago because they have such different views,” she said. “Schools are going to change regardless, either toward the CTU view of the world or the Vallas view of the world.”

The leadership of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City engineered a major shift in retiree health insurance by voting to move its members from traditional Medicare into Medicare Advantage, a parallel system in which private insurers provide coverage.

The Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group representing the city’s 102 public-sector unions, approved the change for all retirees in a weighted vote, with UFT’s concurrence crucial to the result. . Opponents have vowed to go to court to block the move.

The city’s unions were bound by a 2018 agreement to find health insurance savings, and so drastic action was required. Some retirees oppose the change because they believe Medicare Advantage is a form of privatization. Others simply feel traditional Medicare provides superior coverage. However, it seems unlikely that the teachers union will effectively go to war with its own retired members without hope of some substantive gain from the city.

This gain will probably not come in the form of large salary increases. The teachers’ contract expired in September, but wage expectations are limited by New York City’s system of pattern bargaining, meaning that one union’s contract establishes a pattern the rest must follow. This year, District Council 37 approved a five-year contract with a total of 15.25% in raises. This means UFT will be hard-pressed to achieve much more than 3% per year.

So in what way will the teachers union improve its lot? UFT President Michael Mulgrew is playing things close to the vest but that increased funding for teacher recruiting and retention will be a major focus of negotiations. This would make sense under the circumstances. If you can’t get much higher pay for your members, you might as well try to get more members.

Whether this will mollify angry retirees is an open question, but despite organized internal opposition, Mulgrew’s slate has a stranglehold on power within the union, and that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

On the other coast, United Teachers Los Angeles emerged from a period of relative inactivity to help organize . Both UTLA and SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support employees, are in the midst of contract negotiations.

SEIU is demanding a 30% raise across the board, while UTLA is calling for 20% over two years. the two unions are planning a joint three-day strike later this month.

The teachers union has , which includes class size reduction across all grades and school types, more staff of all types and a freeze on school closures (despite collapsing student enrollment), elimination or dramatic reduction of standardized tests not required by the state or federal governments, systematic inclusion of social-emotional learning in all curricula and stronger limits on and regulations of charter schools.

The union’s demands come in the context of the district holding more than $3 billion in unrestricted surplus funds. However, that money is short-lived, as federal support will end in 2024. The union has a solution for that: It wants the district to “publicly call for and take action to support federal COVID relief monies becoming permanent as of 2024.”

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho dealt with a union in his previous position in Miami, but he has never faced anything like this. Will he take a hard line or assuage the union with imaginary money from the federal government?

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a proxy war over the mayor’s office is underway between the city teachers union and progressives on the one hand, and business interests and mainstream Democrats on the other.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and teachers union organizer Brandon Johnson took to the debate stage last week in their mayoral runoff. , Johnson accused Vallas of “wanting to raise property taxes, enacting policies in the 1990s that caused lasting harm to the city and school district’s financial position, and working with Republicans to damage the pension system. Johnson also said Vallas doesn’t want to teach Black history and claimed he does not support women’s abortion rights.”

Vallas, who is ahead in the polls, opted not to respond in kind, saying he left a surplus during his time leading the district and supported reproductive choice, though he was personally opposed to abortion.

Johnson also downplayed his ties to the teachers union. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the city of Chicago, and once I’m mayor of the city of Chicago, I will no longer be a member of the Chicago Teachers Union,” he said.

Johnson relies highly on union support, having secured the endorsements of SEIU Healthcare and AFSCME Council 31. But Vallas has labor allies as well, with the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police and the plumbers union.

Putting one of its own in the mayor’s chair would be a coup for the Chicago Teachers Union, and perhaps a turning point for its fortunes. A Vallas victory would extend the reign of teachers union adversaries that began with Mayor Richard Daley in 1989.

These three teachers unions are using three different methods to achieve their aims: inside influence in New York City; strikes and rallies in Los Angeles; and electoral politics in Chicago. Which, if any, will succeed remains to be seen, but the results will determine the direction of public education in those cities for the immediate future.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

But the Chicago Teachers Union walked away from its four-day “work stoppage” without much of what it was hoping to achieve, including district-wide triggers for closing schools and a mandatory student testing program that required parents to opt-out. One official lamented that workers gave up four days’ wages in exchange for concessions like increasing the supply of masks to schools.

“We sacrificed pay for face masks,” Stacy Davis Gates, political and legislative director for the union, told reporters.

The plan, which won’t be released until the union’s full membership votes this week, also includes efforts to reduce staff shortages by adding pay incentives to increase the substitute pool when teachers are out, and stipends for employees who help register families for testing and vaccination appointments. Staff members will also be trained to conduct contact tracing.

“We understand that our relationship to our families is a critical part of engaging in this testing program,” added Jennifer Johnson, CTU’s chief of staff. The goal, she said, is to sign up 100 percent of families by Feb. 1.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who faces reelection next year, also promised to consider the perspectives of parents should there be another management-labor breakdown. “We will never, never not have you at the table,” she said. While some parents expressed deep concerns over safety in keeping their children home after the holiday break, others argued that remote learning was detrimental for their children and wanted to see better cooperation between the mayor and the union. Some also agreed with the city that making decisions about closures on a school-by-school basis makes more sense at this point in the pandemic because vaccinations are available and Omicron is less likely to cause serious illness.

But observers said the conflict didn’t leave either side in a good place.

“No one wins in this scenario. Parents and students lost with five days of disruption to their schooling routine,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, adding that the district and teachers union “further solidified” a relationship in which they “only operate in crisis versus collaboration.”

The agreement, he said, will likely make schools “marginally safer,” but strikes and threats of strikes every time the district and the union negotiate are bound to wear on parents and educators.

The conflict also drew attention to the low vaccination rate among Chicago students. Less than a third of the district’s 340,000 students are fully vaccinated and rates at schools across the district.Ìę

As cases spiked in December, “We began to have an increasable sense of foreboding,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said during the union’s press conference.Ìę

While almost two thirds of the union’s delegates approved the agreement, Sharkey suggested the rank and file members might not be satisfied.

“We don’t try to sell people on the benefits of the agreement that are not there,” he said. “Our members are grown ups, and we understand sometimes you don’t have a guarantee in advance.”

Staff members will return to schools in Chicago Tuesday and classes will resume for all students Wednesday under an agreement between the city and the teachers union announced Monday night.ÌęÌę

The Chicago Teachers Union’s delegates voted 63 to 37 to approve the agreement, which still has to go to the full membership for a vote. It’s not “a perfect agreement,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said in a press conference. “We felt like we were asking for reasonable things.”

Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said in a separate press conference that 16 percent of the staff turned up at schools Monday and three schools were able to provide full instruction. He said one lesson from the work stoppage is the importance of listening to parents.

“Families have to be at the table,” he said. “Families have to have a voice especially as we move forward.”

If Chicago schools had been open Friday, Claiborne Wade’s children would have been there.

A father of four and a parent liaison at DePriest Elementary, Wade serves on the school’s safety committee and feels the staff is doing all it can to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks. Even so, he and his wife faced the same predicament as the rest of the district’s families last week, forced to work from home while their children continue to miss out on learning.

“We’re the fortunate ones, but the parents I serve at DePriest have to go to work,” he said. “There is no bringing work home, and child care is expensive.”

What the Chicago Public Schools calls an illegal strike and the Chicago Teachers Union labels a mere “work action” entered its fourth day Monday, leaving families wondering how long their children would be left without instruction. On Saturday, the union made its latest offer, refusing to back down from its insistence that learning stay remote until the 18th, but offering to have staff members at schools on Monday to distribute internet devices and register students for COVID-19 testing. The district promptly turned that down, saying that the district is “firm that both staff and students should return for in-person teaching and learning as soon as possible.”

Addressing reporters Saturday, union president Jesse Sharkey said his team was “suggesting a way out of the impasse” and accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot of “bullying.” 

Omicron has made an already tense relationship between Lightfoot and the union even worse. A over pay, class sizes and staffing demands lasted more than two weeks. By posting the numbers of teachers who reported to schools last week, the city has also drawn attention to division within the union. 

On Sunday, a Twitter account posted from Adriana Cervantes, a union field representative at Hubbard High School, who warned that the union had not yet determined “what action will be taken against those who are not participating in the work action.”

The letter warned members not to go into the building Monday.

“If you continue to allow the mayor to divide our membership, soon we won’t have a union to fight for anything,” she wrote.

While some parents have become used to quickly rearranging work schedules and caregiving duties after almost two years of last-minute closures, the standoff is adding to resentment some families already feel toward the mayor and union leaders.

“There’s going to have to be some repairing after this,” said Maureen Hehir, who has three children in the district and teaches special education in neighboring Community Consolidated School District 59. “We’re going to lose people, and it’s so unfortunate.”

Vanessa Chavez, who has a sixth- and seventh-grader in the district, said parents who supported the union during the last strike now feel betrayed.

“I almost feel like we’re caught in the middle of a custody war,” she said, adding that those who advocate for their children’s needs feel they’re being branded as “anti-teacher.” 

And Dr. Beth Van Opstal, a parent and physician who treats COVID-19 patients at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, said all she hears are extremes.

“Sometimes, I think it’s like all daisies and roses when you hear from the mayor and CPS,” she said, worlds away from the perspective of the union, which she described as relatively unchanged from a year ago before more than 90 percent of teachers were vaccinated. “I don’t know a single pediatrician [who is as] in favor of remote learning as CTU.”

Chavez and Van Opstal were among a small group of parents who met over Zoom Sunday night with Dr. Allison Arwady, who leads the Chicago Department of Public Health and participated in press conferences last week with Lightfoot and district CEO Pedro Martinez. Natasha Dunn, another parent on the call, said she wants to make sure the district’s COVID data is “palatable for parents in the community.”

Arwady presented data on outbreaks across the city in both schools and child care centers and reiterated the city’s position that schools are not driving the increase in cases. An outbreak, she said, is usually limited to two or three students. While their classmates or other close contacts are also quarantined, less than 5 percent end up testing positive, she said.

She noted the importance of keeping community institutions like schools open. 

“We don’t close hospitals because one wing is understaffed,” she said.

Testing opt-out debate 

Parents also asked Arwady about COVID testing protocols, a major area of disagreement in the negotiations. The union wants a screening program in which all schools test 10 percent of students and staff every week, unless parents opt out, as well as a supply of rapid tests to send home if students are showing symptoms. The district said it would work with the union to increase testing options, but that it’s important to get “explicit parental consent for any medical test.”

Lightfoot, meanwhile, on Saturday that the city would buy 350,000 rapid tests from the state, after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker offered help. 

Cristina Hernandez, whose 4-year-old son Nolen is in pre-K at Darwin Elementary School, doesn’t think the union’s demands are unreasonable. With a child too young to be vaccinated, she thinks testing should be mandatory. 

Her family tested over the holidays and her son’s results were positive. 

“If we wouldn’t have gotten tested, we would have sent him to school,”  Hernandez said. “He didn’t have any symptoms. He’s just had this cough off and on since October.”

She admits, however, that she’s not sure how Nolen would respond to virtual learning. He took a remote music class when he was 3, “and it was just the worst,” Hernandez said. “But it’s not like CTU is saying we’re going to go remote for the rest of the year.”

Pamela Caskey said her two children treated last week “like extra vacation time.” If the district does switch to remote learning, she’s hoping they’ll consider reopening classrooms for students with special needs. Her fourth grader has autism and ADHD and normally has a one-on-one aide in the classroom. During virtual learning, the “aides are on there with the teacher, but they are not able to provide a student individual attention.”

She said she supports “teachers’ rights” and that remote learning makes sense “if they are constantly having to send classes into quarantine.” At her fourth-grader’s school, Hanson Park Elementary, 53 students are currently quarantined, while 21 students are out at Goethe Elementary, the school her second-grader attends. At both schools, the rates are lower than they were in the fall.

The union argues the district’s data is not up to date and points to showing that schools account for almost 43 percent of potential exposure. When parents asked Arwady about that, she noted parents of school-age children are more likely to answer calls from contact tracers than an adult who might have been exposed at a store or restaurant.

Going forward, Caskey said she’d like more comprehensive data on a school-by-school basis. The district’s website includes numbers of positive cases and students in quarantine, but she’d also like to see student vaccination, and even hospitalization rates. 

“I don’t know if we’re at the point where we can adjust how we handle when people are getting sick,” she said. “But if everybody keeps getting it, hopefully it will be mild enough to treat it like a cold.”

‘A product of the pandemic’ 

As a teacher in District 59, northwest of Chicago, Hehir sees a sharp contrast between the issues on the table for Chicago and the way her district handles positive cases. District 59 doesn’t flip entire classrooms to remote learning if there are positive cases. 

“All of our buildings are open,” Hehir said.

CTU wants triggers for district-wide remote instruction as well as guidelines for closing individual schools based on staff and student COVID-related absences. The city rejected the district-wide approach, but said the triggers for school closures require more negotiation.

Hehir added that in her district there has been a scramble to keep classes covered when teachers are out sick, but she thinks reducing quarantines to five days will help. Last week, she and her husband took turns staying home with their children. On Monday, the grandparents were taking over. 

She’s most concerned about her first-grader Emmet, a “product of the pandemic,” who gives her a hard time about going to school and tells her he has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing in class. 

“My kids are still mad at me because I did print things out for them to work on,” she said.

Dunn, following the conversation with Arwady, noted that remote learning and work stoppages have been a “catastrophic failure” for Black students, contributing to an increase in crime and mental health problems. She pointed to news reports of children accused of . And according to the , 44 percent of young children have experienced an increase in mental health or behavior problems during the pandemic.

Whether leaning more toward reopening schools as soon as possible or pausing in-person learning, Chicago parents said they want more representation at the city level. 

“We should have a Chicago parents union,” said Wade, the parent liaison. “We should be as strong as the mayor’s office and as strong as the Chicago Teachers Union.”

Watch a full replay from the hearing:Ìę

Lightfoot compared the situation to the movie “Groundhog Day,” insisting “there is no basis in the data, the science, or common sense for us to shut an entire system down when we can surgically do this at a school level.”

Martinez emphasized the district’s empowerment of school principals: “There is no evidence [that schools aren’t safe]. Now, what is real is cases are rising and we have said, the best solution is to do it at the school level. Our principles are empowered, our teachers are empowered, they have safety committees, we have invested in the filtration systems
”

CTU spokesman Chris Geovanis said that while some schools implement all COVID mitigation strategies, not all do.

Geovanis said the union doesn’t hold Martinez responsible for the lack of agreement and instead faults Lightfoot, who has control over the school district. “It says nothing about Pedro. He’s not the boss,” ​â¶Ä‹Geovanis said, accusing the mayor of wanting to appease parents in wealthier parts of the city, saying she’s siding with “the business class who relies on CPS for free child care.”

Shortly after the press conference CTU voted to halt in-person instruction, and classes were immediately canceled on Wednesday as a result. Read Linda Jacobson’s full report on the reactions to the Tuesday evening vote.

Chicago Public Schools will keep schools closed for most students Friday as negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union continue. After initially inviting students back, the district updated that announcement, telling parents not to bring their children to school unless their principal gives the OK. 

“A small number of schools MAY be able to offer in-person activities for students if enough staff are reporting to work,” the announcement said.

While nearly 4,700 teachers, substitutes and other staff members turned up for work on Thursday —up from 3,985 Wednesday — that’s still just a fraction of the district’s workforce of over 33,500 employees. 

Meanwhile, the union, which voted to work remotely until the 18th, advised members to continue trying to log in to their district accounts — even though the district has locked them out — and to document any . Union members also gathered at a high school and began distributing flyers about COVID-19 testing to homes in the neighborhood.

The district on Thursday released data showing a in cases among students and staff members following the holidays, but Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday night that the city still wants to take a “surgical” approach to closing schools.Ìę

Both the district and the union have accused each other of unfair labor practices. The union’s argues that the district has changed health and safety practices without an agreement with the union, while the district’s complaint said the union’s action amounts to an “illegal work stoppage” and violates the collective bargaining agreement.

Back in school for just two days, Chicago officials canceled classes Wednesday after almost three-fourths of teachers union members voted in favor of returning to remote learning. 

The union said the break from in-person school would last two weeks, unless positive COVID-19 cases declined or an agreement was reached over safety precautions.

“We believe that our city’s classrooms are where our students should be,” said the union’s statement. “Regrettably, the mayor and her [Chicago Public Schools] leadership have put the safety and vibrancy of our students and their educators in jeopardy.”

But the district called the vote a work stoppage and said teachers would lose pay if they don’t show up on Wednesday. Parents were told to expect an update on how their children would continue learning by the end of the day.

“To be clear, what CTU is seeking cannot be counted as an instructional day under state law and guidance,” the district said in a statement.

As districts nationally try to contain further outbreaks due to the Omicron variant, and parents once again scramble to adjust to abrupt shifts to remote learning, the standoff between the district and the union is a major test for CEO Pedro Martinez, who took over leadership of the district in late September. On Tuesday, he to the union and the community, calling for a plan triggering school closures that better “represents the times that we’re in” and reflects that vaccines are now available for staff and students. He argues that cases increase when students are out of school and that closing schools would only increase community spread. said during a Tuesday night press conference that returning to remote learning would “harm hundreds of thousands of Chicago families.” 

Lightfoot compared the situation to the movie “Groundhog Day.” “There is no basis in the data, the science, or common sense for us to shut an entire system down when we can surgically do this at a school level,” she said.

On Tuesday, the district presented the union with a “school-by-school” approach to closures linked to levels of COVID-related absenteeism among teachers and students. The proposal included distributing 200,000 KN95 masks for staff, reinstating temperature checks and providing on-site testing at all schools.

The union turned that down. 

The union is relying on February 2021 that calls for a 14-day pause on in-person learning when rates are increasing for seven days in a row or reach other thresholds.

As of Monday, the district had a 10 percent . The week after Christmas, almost 36,000 tests were completed, with 18 percent of staff and students testing positive.

CTU spokesman Chris Geovanis said there’s also “movement” toward asking for negative tests from students and requiring them to test unless parents opt out. 

“They’re just testing the same kids over and over again,” she said, “We want them to do the testing that is actually designed to [identify] COVID and keep people safe.”

She added that while some schools implement all COVID mitigation strategies, not all do. Geovanis said the union doesn’t hold Martinez responsible for the lack of agreement and instead faults Lightfoot, who has control over the school district.

“It says nothing about Pedro. He’s not the boss,” ​â¶Ä‹Geovanis said, accusing the mayor of wanting to appease parents in wealthier parts of the city. “She doesn’t want to piss off the business class who relies on CPS for free child care.”

She added that the union recognizes that parents have “real child care issues” and that teachers would return to school if they could “safely work in person.”

The union is planning a Wednesday afternoon “car caravan” to draw attention to its demands.

‘Flip of a switch’

Some parents seemed unsurprised by the latest development. 

“I’m not afraid. It is what it is,” said Yolanda Williams, whose daughter Kaylynn Walker is in ninth grade at Michelle Clark Magnet High School. “She’s good with her computer stuff. I just have to really make sure she gets up.”

But Kristin Pollock, the chief of development and external affairs at Kids First Chicago, said she thinks only about half of the district’s students will likely make a smooth transition back to virtual instruction.

“While Chicago families have more experience with remote learning and are better equipped with internet, equipment and know-how, compared to 2020-2021, most schools are not ready to pivot at the flip of a switch back to remote learning,” she said. 

The advocacy group informally polled parents in its network over the weekend. Over half did not want to return to school considering current COVID rates, Pollock said. But in a at the Chicago Sun-Times, Karonda Locust, a parent in the network, said kids would suffer from a retreat from in-school learning

“For me, the worst thing we can do is go back to remote learning, even for a short amount of time, given the harm it has caused our children and in many cases, entire families,” she wrote.

The Los Angeles Unified Board of EducationÌęÌęto delay its vaccine mandate for students 12 and up until next fall. The district was facing the possibility of transferring 34,000 unvaccinated students into an already understaffed remote learning program called City of Angels.Ìę

Leaders of the district’s administrators union were concerned about the potential loss of staff if schools lost more students.

Los Angeles Unified students 12 and over may have until next fall to comply with the district’s vaccine mandate — roughly nine months after the original Jan. 10 deadline, officials announced Friday.

The first large school system in the nation to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for students, the district is facing roughly 34,000 students who will not be fully vaccinated by the original deadline as well as concerns from parents and administrators over the surge in enrollment in the district’s remote learning program.

The plan would push thousands more unvaccinated students into an independent study program, which is already struggling to meet at a time when the district, like many others, has major . Under the contract with the union, teachers only provide remote instruction when students are in quarantine. But teachers still have flexibility in how much they interact with students learning at home.

Board members will discuss delaying the deadline at their meeting on Tuesday, when they also plan to ratify the contract of Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho to lead the district’s schools.

Pushing back the deadline will “hopefully lessen the stress on administrators in terms of the possible number of students they may lose,” said Nery Paiz, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. 

When the nation’s second-largest school district announced its mandate three months ago, jumping out in front of vaccine requirement, some predicted it would spark a ripple effect in other districts across the country.  

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowering the age for booster shots to 16, the Biden administration and state leaders continue to strongly encourage families to get their children vaccinated. are now considering whether to add COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations needed for school, and many parents and educators say more mandates are inevitable. But at the local level, officials are still up against vaccine resistance — and sometimes refusal — among parents.

On Friday morning, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Los Angeles Unified should “fine tune” its policy to keep students in the classroom. Unvaccinated students in are facing a similar deadline.

Parent advocates suggest the Los Angeles district might have moved too quickly without a back-up plan.

“We hope the district anticipated a level of vaccine hesitancy and has drafted plans to protect every child’s right to receive a high-quality education,” Katie Braude, CEO of Los Angeles parent advocacy group Speak UP, said in a statement. She added that the organization is concerned about the virtual program’s “ability to expand this quickly to meet the needs of 34,000 more students and the domino effect of teacher displacement on kids remaining in the classroom.”

October from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that vaccination rates among 12- to 17-year-olds have slowed down, with half of parents saying their child is vaccinated or will be soon. The survey was conducted before the vaccine for 5- to 11-year olds became available , but at the time, less than a third planned to jump at the chance and another third said they would wait to see how it was working. The remaining parents said they definitely would not be getting their children vaccinated.

‘Outside the scope’

Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said the district “applauds” the more than 85 percent of students who are in compliance with the mandate. “This is a major milestone, and there’s still more time to get vaccinated,” she said in . 

The L.A. board’s decision could set up a confrontation with the district’s powerful teachers union. United Teachers Los Angeles “made the demand [for the mandate] at the bargaining table,” according to its statement in support. 

But the district didn’t meet their demand. The contract ratified in early October only requires the district to “make every effort” to test unvaccinated students and staff weekly for COVID-19. According to the district’s statement only unvaccinated students would have to continue weekly testing after January.

Student vaccine mandates are “outside the scope of bargaining negotiations and teachers unions know this,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. But with 500 Los Angeles Unified for not complying with the employee vaccine mandate, UTLA would likely want the district to “hold firm” on its deadline for students, he said.

A union spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said unions have had to perform a delicate balancing act to satisfy their large and diverse memberships.

When it comes to adults, “the unions have had to appease both the pro- and anti-vaccine membership, which I think has led the national unions to come out with somewhat tepid endorsements of vaccine mandates,” she said. “For students, however, I think unions can be more firmly pro-vaccine mandate because the policy doesn’t require anything of members who oppose getting vaccines themselves.”

Some opponents of student vaccine mandates have launched legal challenges, that shots for younger students still don’t have full U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for ages 16 and up received full authorization in August. 

But on Wednesday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said he is leaning toward denying from parent groups to halt the district’s mandate. And in against San Diego Unified, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last week allowed the requirement to stand. The plaintiffs are asking for religious exemptions. 

Let Them Choose, an initiative of anti-mask mandate group Let Them Breathe, has also filed against San Diego. A hearing is set Dec. 20 in San Diego Superior Court. And the organization plans to file a lawsuit against a Los Angeles that issued its own vaccine mandate, said Sharon McKeeman, the organization’s founder. 

“No family should be coerced into making personal medical decisions, and no student should feel enticed or pressured into getting vaccinated without parental consent,” she said. “The district has created a huge logistical and legal issue for itself by unnecessarily trampling on students’ rights.”

‘Relentless family engagement’

Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, said he didn’t think the challenges Los Angeles is facing would discourage other superintendents in the network from “pursuing every possible avenue to full community vaccination.”

“Whether districts require the vaccine or not, high vaccination rates will depend on a relentless family engagement effort along with simplicity of access to the shot,” he said.

Alma Farias of Los Angeles, who has custody of her niece Cindy, an 11th grader, said she is among those who had initial reservations about the vaccine. But her concerns were outweighed by the prospect of Cindy getting sick after returning to in-person learning last spring.

She said she can sympathize with parents who are holding out. 

“There are a lot of things probably going through their minds right now,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Parents are still processing all the information that is out there, and they’re still processing everything that is going on with this pandemic.” 

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is among those who would like to see vaccine mandates for students and said he’s talked to the Chicago Teachers Union about it. But he said he’s not quite ready to issue a mandate for students because Chicago health officials advise waiting. 

Once the FDA grants full approval of the vaccine for younger students, that will “help our medical professionals feel more comfortable,” he said.

But he also thinks the federal government should take the lead on student vaccination mandates. Leaving it up to states, he said, means variants like Omicron are likely to spread, as long as families travel to places where a smaller percentage of the population is vaccinated.

The district has been under pressure from its teachers union  to implement “ across our schools” and to meet vaccination targets for students. But Martinez said access to the vaccine is not the problem: Regional clinics across the city offer the vaccine and 23 schools have on-site vaccination centers. 

“We’ve never had a day where we didn’t have enough supply,” he said.

According to city data, two thirds of children 5 and up are vaccinated, but among 5- to 11-year-olds, less than 10 percent of Black children and about 12 percent of Latino children are vaccinated. 

“Parents are either hesitant or there’s no urgency,” he said. “We still have to figure out what information our parents need.”

But despite their resignations, the Chicago Public Schools continued to withdraw dues from their paychecks on the union’s behalf. The union argues the deduction was legal because the educators signed a contract in 2017 agreeing to the dues.

Troesch and Nkemdi sued, and now are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take their case. Troesch v. Chicago Teachers Union asks whether signing a membership contract sufficiently authorizes unions to continue collecting the money. The plaintiffs argue that states are denying employees’ rights with so-called “escape periods” — windows of time, ranging from 10 to 30 days, in which employees can opt out.

If employees miss that window — which National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney William Messenger described as a “mandatory subscription service” — unions continue to collect the dues.

“Employees subject to these restrictions are effectively prohibited from exercising their First Amendment right to stop paying for union speech for 335–55 days each year, if not longer,” the plaintiffs argue in their petition to the court.

The Supreme Court won’t decide until October whether to hear the Troesch case, but if it does, the outcome would have an impact on 4.7 million members of public-sector unions in 17 states that have escape periods, Messenger said.

The case is the latest to argue that states and unions are skirting the court’s 2018 decision in . In a major blow to unions, the court ruled in that case that collecting union, or “agency,” fees from “nonconsenting” public-sector employees is unconstitutional because the money subsidizes unions’ political and policy positions. The justices said unions can’t just presume that employees have waived those rights. Some predicted the Janus decision would seriously cripple the unions’ political power, but their over school reopenings shows that hasn’t been the case.

Making it ‘harder to resign’ 

Referring to the escape periods, the Troesch petition says, “The Court should not allow the fundamental speech rights it recognized in Janus to be hamstrung in this way.” But so far, the lower courts haven’t agreed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Troesch, as well as the 3rd, 9th and 10th circuits, have upheld the restrictions. Messenger is also asking the court to hear , in which two teachers from New Jersey’s Ocean Township School District are challenging that state’s 10-day escape period. The 3rd Circuit ruled against those teachers in January.

An escape period is considered a “maintenance of membership” strategy, explained Michael Hartney, a political science professor at Boston College.

“The union has an incentive to try to make it harder to resign,” he said. “If people were dropping out like flies every year, they wouldn’t be able to budget.”

But he added that striking down these union security provisions is less important to right-to-work advocates than overturning a giving unions exclusive bargaining rights. In other words, even employees who don’t join unions in states with collective bargaining laws still can’t negotiate their own salary and benefits, Hartney said.

Unions argue that they negotiate on behalf of all teachers and other school staff, regardless of membership

Attorneys general weigh in

Republican attorneys general in 16 states filed with the court in late July, urging the justices to hear the Troesch case.

“Across the country, public-sector unions have resisted Janus’s instructions and devised new ways to compel state employees to subsidize union speech,” they wrote. “When constitutional rights are at stake, this Court requires ‘clear and compelling’ evidence of waiver precisely to protect individuals from unwittingly relinquishing their fundamental freedoms.”

Union leaders argue the precedent is in their favor.

“The union feels that this lawsuit was correctly dismissed by the federal trial and appellate courts, and believes those rulings will stand,” said Ronnie Reese, a spokesman for the Chicago Teachers Union. The union and the district have until Sept. 27 to argue why the court shouldn’t hear the case. Defendants in the New Jersey case have the same deadline.

The plaintiffs in both states argue that even though they signed union contracts before the Janus decision, the court’s ruling in that case made the dues deductions unconstitutional.

But in the 3rd Circuit ruling, Judge Patty Shwartz wrote, “That is the risk inherent in all contracts; they limit the parties’ ability to take advantage of what may happen over the period in which the contract is in effect.”

Hartney said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Janus opinion, might want to hear the case because he has “voiced skepticism that union security provisions outweigh First Amendment violations.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts is known for preferring incremental changes in constitutional law and might not want to take up the issue because the Janus decision was “such a shot across the bow.”