Teachers in the nation’s third-largest school district are on strike, indefinitely canceling classes for more than a quarter of a million students.
About 25,000 Chicago teachers and support staff didn’t show up for work Thursday after contract negotiations with city officials took a turn for the worse.
Both sides still seem far from making a deal. Teachers want more than a pay raise — they want bold, transformative investment in the Chicago public education system. They also want more affordable housing in the city for students and teachers. That’s something no teachers union has demanded in recent contract negotiations.
“We mean business,” Stacey Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, told reporters on Thursday. “It cannot be about politics and personalities. It’s got to be about shifting and transforming the infrastructure of inequity.”
Chicago public schools serve a high percentage of poor students, and the district has long struggled with low graduation rates. Though high school graduation rates have improved in recent years, its schools are still highly segregated. And compared to surrounding school districts and elsewhere in Illinois, Chicago schools have fewer high school teachers with advanced degrees, larger class sizes, and less state investment per pupil.
City officials say the teachers’ demands are too extreme and too expensive for the school district’s $7.7 billion budget. And they would rather deal with some of the city’s most pressing issues outside of the bargaining process with teachers. They’ve agreed to give teachers a 16 percent pay raise over five years and increase staff at school. Their offer doesn’t go nearly as far as the teachers want it to.
“We have tried to provide the best deal that’s fiscally responsible, fair to teachers, and fair to taxpayers,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a press conference Wednesday, calling it the best offer in the teachers union’s history.
Teachers have all the leverage right now. More Chicagoans support the teachers’ strike (49 percent) than disapprove of it (38 percent). And recent teachers’ strikes in major cities like Los Angeles have shown that educators can use their collective bargaining power to secure smaller class sizes, more nurses, more counselors, and a host of other social services for students.
These broad demands are part of a growing movement, led by teachers and labor unions, focused more on social justice issues affecting their communities than simply pay. It’s known as “bargaining for the common good.”
That’s why teachers are insisting on affordable housing, too.
Chicago teachers are flexing their muscle
Lori Lightfoot made national headlines in May when she became the city’s first black, female mayor. Within months, she had to start negotiating with the teachers union, as their last contract was about to expire.
Lightfoot had promised during her campaign to boost investment in neighborhood schools; she pledged to add hundreds of social workers, special education case managers, and nurses at schools within the next five years, according to the education news site Chalkbeat.
But teachers are frustrated that she won’t put it in writing — in their contract. That way, the union could guarantee that the hired staff will have professional credentials and that the work would be done internally, not contracted out.
It all comes down to money and who gets to control how it’s spent.
Illinois’ finances are doing much better than they were in 2012 when the teachers last went on strike. The state’s budget was in the red back then; it was a full-blown financial crisis by 2016. While the city still owes creditors millions of dollars, more state money is flowing to Chicago public schools, which serve a majority of high-poverty neighborhoods. Lightfoot said she would use that money to offer teachers a generous 16 percent pay raise over five years.
But the teachers union also wants more staff and smaller class sizes written into the contract. That will cost more, but the city seems to have the extra money.
Chicago saw a surge in tax revenue last year and teachers want part of the $181 million surplus to go toward hiring more teachers and nurses, and to more social services. That’s why they’re demanding an investment in affordable housing — an unusual request from teachers during bargaining talks.
Housing is a crucial issue in Chicago, where black residents have been hurt by historic segregation, disinvestment in their communities, and a growing affordable-housing crisis.
Lightfoot says she wants to address affordable housing in Chicago but she doesn’t want that to be part of a contract with teachers.
“Affordable housing is a critical issue that affects residents across Chicago, and everyone’s voices need to be heard during this process,” Mayor Lightfoot said in a statement earlier this month. “As such, the [teachers union] collective bargaining agreement is not the appropriate place for the City to legislate its affordable housing policy.”
But teachers are feeling confident that they can get what they want, and they have reason to.
A wave of teachers strikes has proven successful
Frustration over stagnant teacher wages, crumbling infrastructure, and deep budget cuts to education fueled a wave of teacher protests in conservative states in 2018. Educators went on strike in Arizona, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, forcing state lawmakers to raise teacher pay and spend more on schools.
But progressive states weren’t immune to the unrest, even though they tend to pay teachers higher salaries.
When tens of thousands of teachers went on strike in Los Angeles in January, it was a sign that the movement had expanded beyond the red states where it began and could lead more progressive cities and states to reexamine their investment in public education, too. As part of the deal to end the strike, LA teachers were able to negotiate smaller class sizes and the district agreed to hire more nurses, guidance counselors, librarians, and support staff.
That inspired Chicago teachers to fight for similar gains — and even more.
The strike has already won the public support of several presidential candidates. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julián Castro have all expressed their solidarity with striking teachers in Chicago
The walkout has no doubt disrupted the lives of Chicago’s 300,000-plus students. Parents had to find backup childcare or stay home from work. Yet polling shows that parents with children who attend the city’s public schools are more supportive of the strike than other residents are.
Some even joined teachers on the picket line.