Education
CTU Delivers 5 ‘Must Haves,’ Ramping Up Pressure to Finalize New Teachers Contract
Video: Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates appears on “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” on March 5, 2025. (Produced by Abena Bediako)
After nearly a year of bargaining, Chicago Teachers Union officials believe a contract agreement is close and submitted on Wednesday a list of their five “absolute must haves” to push a new contract over the goal line.
CTU leaders met outside Chicago Public Schools’ Loop headquarters ahead of Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting where they expressed hope that a new contract could be finalized soon if district leaders agree to their final demands.
“We’re close, that’s what our CEO says,” union president Stacy Davis Gates said. “So if we’re close, we want our CEO to say yes.”
The union on Wednesday said it has been petitioning its members in recent days and has learned they have significant support for five final items to be settled at the negotiating table.
Those issues are: fair pay for educators; an improved elementary school day that includes additional prep time; enforceable class sizes; revisions to what the union feels are “racially discriminatory practices” in the district’s teacher evaluation system; and an increase in the number of librarians, counselors, nurses, clinicians and teacher assistants.
“That intensity is in Edison Park, it’s in Beverly, it’s in Englewood, it’s in Logan Square, it’s in Pilsen, it’s in Midway — it’s all over this city,” Davis Gates said. “Our members, the people that they serve, those families, want all of those things.”
Union members spoke to the board at its agenda review committee meeting Wednesday.
Thad Goodchild, CTU’s deputy general counsel, told the board CTU has submitted its “last, best and final offer.” He said the sides have reached tentative agreements on “scores of issues” and are close to a contract agreement he said would be a “historic achievement for all school district stakeholders.”
“Let’s not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” Goodchild said.
Bargaining between the CTU and CPS officially kicked off last April, and the union’s previous contract expired at the end of last June. Negotiations appeared to get off to an amicable start but eventually stagnated, with union officials placing blame solely on CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.
Martinez was fired by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s handpicked Board of Education in December, but his contract allows him to stay on the job for six months following that decision. Johnson previously worked as a CTU organizer before his mayoral election campaign, which the union spent heavily to support.
Last month, a neutral fact-finder issued his recommendations for finalizing a new teacher’s contract, but the union rejected those findings saying the report didn’t go far enough in settling its demands.
Davis Gates and CTU leaders noted the fact-finder agreed with several of their arguments, but the union rejected the report, stating that if it had accepted it, bargaining would essentially come to a close.
While a teachers strike remains a possibility, the union has not yet set a date for a strike authorization vote by its members. Martinez said last month he sees “no reason” for a work stoppage.
The board last year approved the district’s operating budget for 2025, but CPS officials noted it would have to be amended later to account for the cost of a new teachers contract. That amendment has not yet been brought forth.
Davis Gates said the board is next set to meet — and possibly discuss an amendment — on March 20, which she said “means that we should be done before March 20 with this contract.”
“Maybe we all pressure Pedro for a March 20 resolution to this contract,” she said, “so we don’t have to think about the unthinkable.”
