Education
Chicago Teachers Union Educators Vote to Approve New Contract
(WTTW News)
Rank-and-file members of the Chicago Teachers Union have overwhelmingly approved their tentative labor contract, the latest step toward finalizing the new four-year agreement.
CTU officials on Monday morning announced that 97% of its members who voted last week cast ballots in favor of the contract proposal, a mark union President Stacy Davis Gates called “overwhelming (and) historic.”
“We’re gonna pay for schools in this city to thrive,” Davis Gates said at a press event Monday. “We’re gonna have safe and clean public transit. We’re gonna have a place where all of the work that we are doing to give young people the schools they deserve, we can give them a city that they deserve. That’s going to take all of us.”
According to the union, 85% of its 30,000 members voted between Thursday and Friday.
With those results set, the last hurdle to finalizing the deal comes from Chicago’s partially elected Board of Education, which also must vote to approve the agreement later this month.
Under the proposed deal — which Chicago Public Schools officials say will cost $1.5 billion over the life of the contract — teachers will see raises of 4% to 7.5% in the first year and 4% to 8.5% each during the remaining three years of the deal, depending on their level of education and tenure, officials said.
The deal also includes enforceable class size limits, setting the maximum number of students in first through third grade classrooms at 28. Fourth through eighth grade classes can have no more than 30 students before additional staff members are automatically added, union officials said.
The contract expands services offered to special education, bilingual and unhoused students and will add teacher prep time and increase the number of libraries and librarians districtwide, while also expanding funding for sports programming and access to career and technical education opportunities.
Union leaders have hailed the four-year deal a “historic achievement” that represented the fulfillment of promises Mayor Brandon Johnson made to transform CPS into a school district that offers a well-rounded education to every Chicago child and security to its employees.
The proposed contract includes additional services for the district’s most vulnerable students and protects the academic freedoms of CPS educators.
CTU leaders had long pushed to get the contract finished because they sought an additional “force field” amid attacks from the Trump administration.
Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said Monday Trump and his handpicked Education Secretary Linda McMahon are “deconstructing our education infrastructure.”
“There’s fundamental structures that are there to benefit our students (and) that’s getting wiped out,” he said. “So when that gets wiped out … what do we lean on? That’s a strong district with a strong union, because at the end of the day we need teachers and paraprofessionals to advocate for the students and their families.”
By reaching this agreement, it marks the first time in 15 years that the CTU’s leadership has reached an agreement with Chicago Public Schools officials without first taking a strike vote. In 2012, CTU went on strike for seven days. In 2016, a late-night agreement averted a second walkout under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In 2019, an 11-day strike followed the breakdown of negotiations with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
“While we didn’t take the picket line in ‘25, it is the cumulative impact of all of those sacrifices that those members made in that moment, that the parents and the students made in this moment,” Davis Gates said. “That’s why this is coalition work, because they share in that.”
Heather Cherone contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
