CTU Makes "Last, Best and Final" Offer

Two big pieces of news emerged from yesterday's board agenda review meeting: the union's push to finalize a contract before March 20, and new language from the school district about what a budget amendment to pay for that and other labor agreements will look like. Also, in a surprise move, the launch of three board committees was put on hold, which could mean the board is revising the committee structure to include a Black Student Achievement Committee, as required by state law. [During public participation, Corinna Demma, a senior organizer with Educators for Excellence, asked the board why the law has not been followed and urged them to put creation of the committee on the March 20 agenda.]

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates presented board members with stacks of petitions requesting their support to resolve the outstanding issues. They boil down to five key demands:

• Enforceable class size limits, especially in grades 4-8
• Increased compensation for veteran teachers
• Changes to teacher evaluation to eliminate bias against teachers in high-poverty schools, and a three-year evaluation cycle for high-performing teachers
• Increased staffing: clinicians, teacher assistants, librarians, counselors, etc.
• Increased prep time for elementary school teachers

Of these, the toughest issues to resolve appear to be teacher evaluation and elementary school prep time.

After the meeting ended, Chicago Public Schools posted an update to the budget language on its website. The new language says the school district is proposing a budget amendment with an increase of $139 million, which reflects the amount of TIF surplus remaining after paying other obligations, including the recently settled contract with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The interactive budget has also been updated to reflect the additional revenue.

The budget amendment will also propose expenditures to pay for the new teacher contract, the new principal contract, and reimbursement to the City of Chicago for their payment to the Municipal Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund (MEABF). The contracts are still in negotiations. Mayor Brandon Johnson is pressuring CPS to pay $175 million to reimburse the MEABF payment. The website update says that CPS will allot the $139 million to these expenses, plus "additional TIF surplus" which must be approved by the mayor. The language also suggests "other entities" could take out debt on the district's behalf. Current-year spending cuts are also on the table.

During the board meeting itself, discussion of the pension issue was very limited. During public participation, only Mariel Laureano from the Chicago Public Education Fund spoke on the topic. "This board is being asked to approve a $175 million pension obligation that CPS is not legally obligated to pay," she said. As a CPS principal during the high-debt years of 2014-17, she saw the consequences of borrowing firsthand: "staff cuts, loss of student supports, and frustrated parents." She urged the board to "vote no to this unnecessary pension reimbursement."

But some board members foresee political consequences should they refuse to make the payment. Later, during a discussion of an enclosed pedway linking Kenwood Academy and Canter Middle that is being built with TIF money from Hyde Park's Fourth Ward, board member Norma Rios-Sierra noted, "This really highlights our need to maintain a good relationship with City Council and with the city. ... I think it also highlights our need to maintain our obligation with the city so that we can continue to provide these partnerships for our schools."

Upcoming Public Hearings and Advocacy

Public hearings on the budget amendment will be held Thursday, March 13 and Friday, March 14, 10:30 a.m. to noon, at the Chicago Board of Education offices. Advance registration will open on Tuesday, March 11 at 10:30 a.m. Each hearing will be open to 30 speakers. Expect to see CTU members, allied parents, and parents associated with Kids First Chicago in attendance.

Kids First Chicago held a webinar last night explaining the history of the MEABF and Mayor Lori Lightfoot's 2020 shift to having CPS make the pension payment. By law, the city is responsible for funding the pension. However, about 60% of staff covered by the pension fund work for or are retired from CPS, not the city. These workers are district employees who aren't teachers. Kids First noted that though CPS employees and retirees outnumber city workers and retirees in the pension fund, they only account for about one-third of the pension fund's costs.

In 2020, Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed CPS to take on the pension payment as part of an effort to untangle school district and city finances before a fully-elected board takes office. But CPS began making those payments while relatively flush with cash from federal pandemic relief money, which expired in September 2024. The district's financial outlook doesn't indicate it has the capacity to keep paying in, Kids First leaders assert.

Kids First suggested several longer-term alternatives to solve the problem, from TIF reform to creating a dedicated city revenue stream for MEABF to changing state law so the state picks up the CPS non-teacher pension costs. About 100 people attended the webinar, and 63 of them responded when polled on their opinion whether CPS should make the $175 million payment. About three-fourths of those respondents said no.

CTU to Knock Doors in Opponents' Districts

In an email to members that went out yesterday morning, CTU included a signup sheet for canvass volunteers to "hold Board of Education members accountable to the promises they made on the campaign trail." The union will be canvassing in elected board member districts 1 (Custer), 3 (Rivas), 4 (Rosenfeld) and 9 (Boyle). The canvassing will likely allow members to talk with parents and community members about the budget amendment. But there could be more involved in why these districts, such as...

Acero Clapback? Yesterday's public participation also featured parents and teachers reacting to last week's decision to keep five campuses open, but let two close in June. Last week, Custer, Rosenfeld, and Boyle voted no on keeping Cisneros among the Acero campuses CPS would support next year and eventually absorb. All three will see union members knocking doors in their districts this weekend. Rivas eventually voted yes on last week's resolution, but was a target of opposition mailers from CTU during election season.

Tiffany Negron, a special education case manager who spent the first five years of her teaching career at Acero on the Paz campus, took her displeasure directly to the board member who represents her. “I realize not all of you voted last week to keep our school families whole," she said. Addressing Jennifer Custer, she added “You may not have found it necessary to keep our families together since our schools are not in your district and you’re generally unaffected by this decision. However, I and many other Acero staff members do live in your district. I did vote for you. I won’t make that same mistake again." 

Remembering Julie Woestehoff. I'm sad to report that Julie, the longtime executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), and a legendary parent advocate for improving Chicago schools, died on February 25. Julie was a founding Local School Council chair and connected with PURE through LSC training. She went on to lead PURE for more than two decades, becoming a champion of parent and LSC rights and a passionate opponent of standardized testing. Her obituary will tell you more of her story.