Vallas: What new school board members should know about Chicago Public Schools

Vallas: What new school board members should know about Chicago Public Schools

Chicago’s first elected school board was just sworn into office. Here’s what members should know about what the Chicago Teachers Union has done to damage Chicago Public Schools and the city’s children, plus eight steps to undo the damage.

As the first-ever elected members of the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education take on their roles, it is important they fully realize what the Chicago Teachers Union has done to create both the district’s financial crisis and academic performance issues.

More importantly, board members should know how they can fix both.

Everyone should understand by now that CPS has a CTU problem, not a revenue problem. The CTU, under its current leadership, has been largely responsible for denying poor children – overwhelmingly Black and Latino – a quality education. They continue to be obstacles to the district improving outcomes for all Chicago children.

Here’s how the CTU has damaged the school system:

• The union has blocked any needed changes to improve schools or adopt better school models, even when desired by principals or the community through their elected local school councils, if those changes at all affected CTU members, their numbers, workloads or job security.

• The CTU is largely responsible for the degradation of academic standards and the abandonment of any real student, teacher or school accountability. The district ending school rankings based on performance and its return to social promotion are intended to conceal those failures.

• The union’s current Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators leadership group has walked out on families five times and kept schools closed during the pandemic for 78 straight weeks with devastating consequences.

• CTU leaders complain a district spending $30,000 per student with one employee per 7.6 students is underfunded, while remaining completely silent about the fact only 54% of funds go to schools, and most school employees – over 22,000 – are not even teachers.

• The CTU works to deny poor, working families even public-school alternatives to their failing neighborhood schools by pushing to close public charter and selective enrollment schools, despite those schools enrolling many students of color. They blocked higher-performing public charter schools from taking over any schools previously closed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

• The union undermines the quality of public charter schools by unionizing their teachers and staff, leading them out on strikes, and imposing mandates with protections that undermine school budgets.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the CTU lobbyist who was bankrolled into office by the union, and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates made efforts for months to oust popular CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. Their motivation stemmed from their need to distract from Gates’ failure to deliver a CTU contract. Martinez must have been as surprised as anyone at their vitriol, after working for years to implement the CTU’s agenda.

Consider the following:

• Martinez fully honored the last contract, which increased CTU member salaries by between 24% and 50%, plus added over 9,000 additional staff positions, despite facing a major financial crisis when COVID-19 relief funds were exhausted. He passed a budget last year that added 500 more teachers and was approved 7-0 by the school board appointed by Johnson.

• The CTU has influenced the district to cap the number of public charter schools and limit charter renewals to only two- or three-year terms, hindering their ability to plan or recruit and retain faculty and students.

• The district embraced a funding formula that takes money from selective-enrollment schools, even though those schools receive less funding per student than the district average, while spending enormous amounts on near-empty, failing neighborhood schools and sustainable community schools.

• CTU pressured the district to remove the remaining Chicago Police officers from all public high schools, overriding the decisions of elected school councils that wanted to keep officers.

There is a way out of the city’s current financial quagmire that can address both city and school district financial challenges without further burdening hard-pressed local property owners. It can also expand the quality of school choices for all families, regardless of income.

This plan requires radically decentralizing CPS and removing the CTU’s stranglehold over the district. The necessary steps include the following:

1. Negotiate a new teachers contract tied to existing revenues.

A new CTU contract must limit salary increases and other costs to the revenues already available to the district, bringing expenditures in line with revenues without requiring state and city bailouts.

2. Break up and radically decentralize the district.

In 2024, the district had 7,556 central and citywide employees, an over 18% increase in school staff since 2020. CPS must reduce bureaucracy and decentralize district operations.

3. Return to pre-COVID staffing levels.

Non-teaching staff have seen a hiring surge since 2019. Analysis from the nonprofit Kids First Chicago found the city used pandemic funds to create 9,000 new positions since 2019, and increase central office staff by 60%.

4. Grant local schools autonomy over their school and staffing models.

Elected local school councils and their school leaders should have the authority to select school models – whether traditional public or charter – and determine how to allocate resources to improve quality.

5. Consolidate schools and lease facilities to public charters.

Under-enrolled schools should be consolidated, and public charters allowed to lease or share unused facilities, saving tens of millions of dollars in operating costs and generating tens of millions in revenue.

6. Expand school choice.

Lifting the cap on charter schools and enrollment and supporting private-school options would save the district money, as charters and private schools operate at lower per-pupil costs.

7. Boost enrollment and funding through alternative and contract schools.

CPS should expand programs for dropouts, expelled students and other underserved groups by partnering with charters or private schools to serve these populations, making them eligible for state and federal funds.

8. Leverage future tax increment financing property tax windfalls.

Property taxes from retiring tax increment financing districts could be used to finance bonds to address critical capital needs and facilitate school consolidations.

While the CTU and CPS administration will resist these recommendations to maintain bureaucratic control, the new elected school board has a chance to reshape the power dynamic in favor of students and families. They should remember: that is exactly why they were elected.

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