In dueling press conferences Friday, Chicago Public Schools officials and Chicago Teachers Union members each emphasized that valuable progress had been made in their long-running contract negotiations.
But in the eight months since the union launched its demands, a fleeting period of harmony between CPS and the teachers union has devolved into rancor.
With each side providing updates on collective bargaining in back-to-back press conferences Friday, accusations abounded — with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez offering far more blunt criticism of the union than typical following his Dec. 20 termination by the Board of Education.
Just days after unanimously voting to fire Martinez without cause, members of the board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer, attended contract negotiations. Then, on Christmas Eve, Cook County Circuit Judge Joel Chupack granted Martinez a temporary restraining order that prevents the board from removing his powers while the schools chief is contractually entitled to serve another six months at the helm of the fourth-largest school district in the nation.
At CTU’s Friday’s press conference outside its headquarters in the United Center neighborhood, union President Stacy Davis Gates accused Martinez of stalling negotiations since being granted the injunction. “I think the greatest threat to our bargaining momentum is, quite frankly, the Supreme Being of the Chicago Public Schools that’s basically in control of everything,” she said of the CEO.
At a CPS press conference that followed at its downtown offices, district officials enumerated the dozens of agreements they said have been reached. Their attempts to formalize them — in order to focus on remaining sticking points — have been held up by the union, district officials said.
Martinez also countered the notion he had sole control over contract negotiations, pointing to the expanded, 21-member, partially elected board to be seated Jan.15 that he said will approve the contract. The body is likely to make a more democratic decision than the current board of seven mayoral appointees, he said.
“They’re going to make sure that they’re representing all perspectives and not just one,” he said, alluding to the teachers union and promising to continue to negotiate in good faith. “It’s just going to make a better overall proposal that really does represent our children, that keeps us still financially responsible, and that is still aligned to our values.”
As the union has done in recent weeks, Davis Gates said the contract should be finalized with urgency. “We have offered compromise. We should have a settlement today,” she said.
Tentative agreements sought ahead of ‘challenging’ budget season
Martinez said the district is devoted to providing educators the most it can in a challenging budget environment, commending CPS teachers’ dedication. “Our offer of 4% cost-of-living adjustments keep Chicago educators exactly where they should be, the highest-paid urban public school teachers in the United States.”
A union counterproposal of 5% to 6% raises can’t be granted in the face of the district’s $500 million budget deficit, he said. “We need to maintain the current proposal for the fiscal health of the school system,” he said. “If we overextend ourselves today, it will be …children who pay the price tomorrow,” Martinez said.
Union representatives continued to argue Friday that the deficit shouldn’t prevent CPS from covering the cost of the contract and providing full funding to schools.
Davis Gates and other CTU leaders suggested Friday that CPS could cover the cost by either spending its reserves or using the $370 million tax-increment finance surplus City Council recently agreed to provide the district.
“There’s never been a contract negotiation in the history of these negotiations where the Chicago Public Schools says, ‘We got money.’ We got a lot of money,’” Davis Gates said Friday.
Global credit ratings agency S&P recently warned CPS that if the district aims to maintain its “BB+/Stable” rating, neither drawing on its reserves nor taking on new debt to fund the contract is an option.
Following the approval of the city budget last month, CPS is set to receive $370 million in TIF surplus funds this year — still leaving the district with a shortfall if CTU were to receive 4% raises, according to the S&P’s analysis.
The district couldn’t cover the contract through its reserves even if it wanted to, Martinez said Friday. “Our cash reserves are less than $50 million for an operating budget of well over $7 billion,” he said, noting that the district borrows money to cover expenses throughout the school year.
CTU Deputy General Counsel Thaddeus Goodchild said Friday that it was “astounding” that Martinez’s “prerogatives supersede those of the mayor and the members of the Board of Education.”
Sticking points
CPS Chief Labor Relations Officer Miguel Perretta said that since receiving a narrowed list of nearly 90 demands from the union in December, the district has been “laser-focused” on tackling the union’s priorities, offering 66 responses so far.
But, he said items from CTU’s initial list of more than 700 demands continue to re-emerge. “While a lot has been said that CTU has scaled back some of their proposals, that’s not the reality,” Perretta said.
Davis Gates said Friday that the union has “collapsed hundreds of proposals,” but declined to say how many union demands remain active. “All of those proposals represent the great dissatisfaction that many of our members, paraprofessionals, clerks, teachers, (and) assistants have in their school communities,” she said.
“Pedro is a problem,” Davis Gates said, concluding the union press conference, which portrayed Martinez as the source of delays.
But even among the most contested topics, progress at the bargaining table is being made, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova. CTU has demanded that elementary school teachers get 30 additional minutes of preparation time per day — a proposal administrators have balked at, with increased planning implying less time for instruction.
But this week, CTU clarified that it is not seeking decreased instructional time, Chkoumbova said. How the school day and year might change in order to oblige the request for more planning time — while maintaining teachers’ time with students — is now being assessed, she said.
“Whether or not that’s going to mean adding additional instructional days for kids, to compensate for some less time during the school day…the conversation is rigorous. It requires a lot of exploration,” said Chkoumbova, who also defended the frequency of the district’s teacher assessments.
Citing two studies, union president Davis Gates said in a prior union press conference Thursday that the evaluations have a proven bias particularly against Black teachers working in predominantly Black schools. “Even white teachers get marginal reviews or marginal evaluations when they teach at majority-Black schools,” she said.
“Young people get a better education if they have Black teachers,” she said. “But in Chicago, a city full of Black people, a city full of Black children going to the public schools, we have a hard time both recruiting and retaining them.”
Chkoumbova said the district has made commitments to increase mentoring for teachers in high-need communities. “But expanding teacher evaluation cycles to once in three years, or reducing the requirements for teachers to meet certain performance benchmarks, doesn’t necessarily address that particular issue,” she said of the union’s proposals to change CPS’ educator evaluator system.
As for the number of teachers in schools, Martinez said CTU recently walked back a demand in its initial set of contract proposals that a cumulative 14,000 additional employees that the union demanded be hired. Since he became CEO of the district in 2019, Martinez said, 7,000 staffers have been hired, with equity in mind. “I hear a lot of narratives out there, but please, I invite you to go to our schools,” he said of staff diversity.
The district has agreed to increase staffing strategically, Martinez said, noting an increased number of students with complex needs. “We have more students that have IEPs,” he said of students with disabilities. “We have more English learners.”
But, the federal COVID-19 relief funds that made the prior staffing increases possible no longer exist. “Those funds expired. So our No. 1 priority is to ensure that we can protect the gains and staffing that are driving our student gains,” Martinez said, advocating for allies to work together to secure more funding for CPS. “We have to be championing for more resources.”
The Tribune’s Nell Salzman contributed.
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