Education
As Chicago Teachers Step Up Push for New Contract, CPS Leaders Again Call Its Demands Unaffordable
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez are pictured in file photos. (WTTW News)
As the Chicago Teachers Union steps up its push for a new contract by rallying downtown and demanding that Mayor Brandon Johnson get directly involved in negotiations, Chicago Public Schools leaders again warned the district cannot afford its demands.
In a letter to Johnson, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the nearly 20,000 members of her union have been working without a contract for five months because CEO Pedro Martinez “slow-walked negotiations” even though CPS’ newly adopted strategic plan aligns with the mayor’s education policy.
“We are now at a critical juncture that requires your intervention to ensure that the Board of Education enshrines the commitments to transform public education that the people of the city of Chicago elected you to carry out,” Davis Gates wrote to Johnson, publicly turning up the pressure on one of CTU’s most prominent and powerful allies. Johnson is a former CTU organizer.
The need for a new contract is especially acute in the wake of the election of former President Donald Trump to a second term, Davis Gates wrote. Trump has promised to eliminate the Department of Education, scale back protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and conduct the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history of undocumented immigrants.
“The incoming administration in Washington has declared its intent to take swift action on these and other measures likely to create fear, instability and harm in our school communities,” Davis Gates wrote in advance of a rally planned to protest Trump’s reelection. “Settlement of this contract provides the strongest protections the school district can put in place to guard Chicago’s students from harm and strengthen our public education system.”
More than two months ago, Martinez said he refused Johnson’s request to resign after the two disagreed over how to foot the bill for new contracts for CTU and the union that represents principals and employee pensions.
Martinez has hung on to his job despite the mayor’s decision to replace all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education, who have the power to terminate the district’s CEO. Earlier this month, Chicago voters elected 10 new board members to oversee the district, who will take office in January along with 10 board members and a board president appointed by Johnson.
CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s second highest ranking leader, told reporters Thursday that the two sides remain “significantly” far apart at a time when CPS is facing a projected budget deficit of $509 million in 2026, without factoring in the cost of new agreements with the unions representing teachers and principals.
Martinez did not participate in the virtual news conference.
Bridget Early, deputy mayor for labor relations, said it was “disingenuous” for CPS leaders to say there had been no progress in the negotiations. Early said it was “frustrating” that CPS leaders held a news conference and overstated the cost of CTU’s contract proposals.
“This is not a good faith effort to get this deal done,” said Early, who added that the mayor’s office has been deeply involved in the effort to negotiate a new contract for CTU members. “This only serves to sow discord.”
CPS officials say they have not received any new staffing or salary proposals in writing. They have also not received any agreements in writing, officials said.
The four-year contract CPS officials have offered CTU members include 4% raises for the current school year, designed to cover the increase in the cost of living. In the remaining three years of the agreement, raises would be tied to the consumer price index, while teachers would remain eligible for raises tied to their seniority and whether they hold a graduate degree.
Those raises would cost the district $120 million during the agreement’s first year, and the district has agreed to spend an additional $20 million to hire additional staff members, CPS officials said.
However, CPS officials said Thursday they have not identified how to pay for that offer, even after Johnson sent a pool of funds designed to fight blight across the city to CPS.
The budget approved by the CPS board for 2025 counted on at least $160 million in surplus funds from the city’s tax-increment financing districts. That includes $62 million to cover the cost of the recently ratified SEIU Local 73 contract and $97 million for district operations.
The surplus declared by the mayor will give CPS an additional $151 million, enough to cover most of $175 million payment it is required to make into one of its employee pension funds.
But it will not be enough to cover the cost of new contracts with the Chicago Teachers Union and the union that represents principals.
Johnson has called for CPS to cover that shortfall with a loan while appealing to state officials for more money. But Martinez called that plan “exorbitant” and fiscally irresponsible, leading to the deep breach between the two men and a stalemate over the district’s finances.
CPS’ evaluation of CTU's proposal would cost the district $2.2 billion during the first year of the four-year contract, CPS officials said.
By comparison, the deal with the city’s largest police union negotiated by Johnson in 2023 included 5% raises for officers in 2024 and 2025. In 2026 and 2027, officers’ raises would be tied to inflation, with officers getting raises of at least 3% and no more than 5%, according to the agreement.
CTU’s proposals call for members to get raises of 9% to cover the increase in the cost of living as well as bigger raises for senior teachers, CPS officials said. That would cost $405 million during the agreement’s first year, according to CPS estimates.
CTU leaders submitted a revised proposal that called for 6% annual raises to keep pace with the cost of living, Early said.
Davis Gates told the mayor CTU’s contract proposals are designed to allow Chicago children to “attend a fully-staffed, fully-resourced neighborhood school that provides them with the same education, enrichment, and extracurricular opportunities as if they lived in a suburb 10 miles to the North, South, or West of the city” while ensuring CPS can “develop, attract, recruit and retain a diverse workforce of educators, reflective of the district’s school communities, who are provided the resources necessary to sustain a career in service to Chicago’s students.”
CPS officials said CTU’s contract proposals call for the district to hire 13,900 additional staff members, for a cost of $1.4 billion during the first year of the agreement, and $5.5 billion during the four-year contract.
The latest proposal from CTU includes a reduction in the number of new positions it would create, Early said.
CPS’ decision to overstate the cost of the current CTU contract proposal “decimated” the good will that union negotiators belived had been generated by the new proposal, Early said.
Those new positions would keep class sizes small, allow more schools to offer art, music and physical education classes while ensuring all schools have fully staffed libraries, according to union officials. The union’s proposals also include more preparation time for elementary school teachers and assistance for unhoused students and those who recently arrived in Chicago from the southern border.
Note: This story was updated to clarify the amount CPS says the first year of the contract proposed by CTU would cost.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | [email protected] | (773) 569-1863
