Mayor Brandon Johnson has a long way to go to realize his dream of becoming Chicago’s longest-serving mayor.
But he proudly proclaimed this week that there are “a couple of things that Richard M. Daley and I do have some alignment around: running successful Democratic National Conventions and avoiding teachers strikes.”
A former middle school teacher turned paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson is claiming victory for having delivered a new tentative contract agreement for his former union brethren — and for Chicagoans like him who send their children to Chicago public schools.
The CTU’s House of Delegates voted overwhelmingly Wednesday evening to send the contract to rank-and-file members for a ratification vote on April 10 and 11, according to the union. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said members had a lot of questions about the deal, but they were excited and grateful.
Gates said she doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to get students what everyone agrees they should have: “I can’t quite get why everything about our negotiating process is so charged, both racially, why it’s so gendered, why politicians punch at it so hard,” she said.
At a news conference after the vote, delegates highlighted several contract provisions they were happy about, including smaller class sizes for kindergarteners and across the grades and protections for LGBTQ students.
Still, questions remain about who really came out ahead in this hard-fought battle and whether the contract was worth the months of acrimony and the political price that Johnson had to pay.
Johnson touted the wins in the contract that he said would make for a better educational experience. He said the union and district took full advantage of a change in state law that reinstated the CTU’s right to negotiate over nonpay and benefit issues.
“[When] you’re actually able to land a deal that lowers class sizes for the health and benefit of that child, I would say that it’s worth it,” Johnson said, highlighting an issue that has long been important to both teachers and parents.
Mayor Brandon Johnson brought CPS and CTU leaders together at his City Hall office last month to try to break the stalemate over the contract and budget issues. Union sources said that gathering proved to be a turning point because significant progress was made the next morning.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
The mayor also pointed to an agreement to increase by 50 the number of “sustainable community schools,” a designation that provides funding to bring community organizations into schools that offer supplemental services for families and children. He campaigned on creating more of those programs, and the CTU has long elevated the idea as a solution for under-resourced schools.
“That was part of an outbreak of organizing as a response to the expansion of privatization and school turnarounds that laid primarily veteran teachers off — Black and Brown women,” Johnson said. “Now we have an opportunity to expand to 70? I think it’s worth it.”
Yet another win, Johnson said, was the commitment to hire 400 more assistant teachers and 90 more librarians, and increase funding for arts and sports programs with a heavy emphasis on smaller schools in underresourced neighborhoods. Private fundraising is difficult, if not impossible, “if you’re not sort of a powerhouse school with booster and [parent-teacher organizations] that have raised dollars — some of those schools that now have rides to away games,” Johnson said.
But the rocky road toward a tentative agreement included the mass resignation of Johnson’s fully appointed school board and surprise resistance to the mayor’s financing plan from the partially elected board that came into being later. That delivered two of the most significant political losses of Johnson’s nearly two-year tenure.
In between those hits, Johnson’s replacement, handpicked board did agree to the mayor’s demand to fire schools CEO Pedro Martinez after Martinez refused to reimburse City Hall for a $175 million pension payment for nonteaching school employees.
But Martinez isn’t gone yet. His contract allows him to stay through June because he was terminated without cause. Martinez sued the Board of Education to remove members from intervening in negotiations, and he has remained on the job long enough to resist pressure from City Hall to borrow to cover the pension payment and the cost of the new teachers contract.
From Martinez’s perspective, the CTU initially asked for a lot more, and he was proud to have held his ground for a district facing a $700 million deficit. CPS has said the contract will cost the school district $1.5 billion over four years, but anticipated increases in revenue mean the deficit won’t grow because of the CTU deal.
“We were able to offer a competitive proposal that honors our hardworking educators and does right with our students without adding significant financial distress to the district,” senior CPS official Ben Felton told reporters Tuesday, flanked by Martinez and other top leaders.
The continued presence of Martinez clearly made the negotiations more difficult for the union. In past negotiations, former Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot were the bad guys.
This time, the CTU’s boogeyman was Martinez.
Though the union threatened a strike in the final stages of the talks, the serious threat of a walkout was largely off the table with one of their own in the mayor’s office.
Denied that ultimate leverage, the CTU eventually settled for the same salary package that was on the table last year: 4% raises the first year, then 4% to 5% in the next three years.
Johnson’s comparison to the Daley years is a stretch. During that record 22-year reign, Daley dangled raises CPS often could not afford just to quickly settle a contract and avoid a strike at all costs.
The CTU has also been transformed since the Daley years. Since 2010, the union has become more militant, political and willing to spend its money and flex its political muscle for social justice causes.
Without the CTU’s $2.3 million and another $3.3 million from state and national teachers unions, Johnson would not be mayor today. In contract negotiations, the union has mobilized its members to fight significantly harder to beef up the district’s staffing and provide other measures of support for educators and students.
“With all of the challenges that we had to get to this point, this clearly wasn’t about the raises because that part, in and of itself, stayed the same,” Johnson said. “But all of the other things I just listed off — those things were not agreed upon. And when you’re fighting to ensure that we have a district that respects working people in this city, it will always be worth the fight if the people of this city get to benefit from that fight.”
Asked Tuesday how CPS plans to pay for the new agreement, Johnson said, “We’ll do it. Just like I came in and I had a half-billion dollar deficit in my first budget, had a $1 billion deficit in the second budget. We rectified that. We are leading in this moment.”
Despite being rebuffed by the Board of Education so far on his attempts to have CPS pay its share of the pension cost, Johnson said the “vast majority of board members recognize that securing the pensions and retirement for their workers is their responsibility.” He vowed to work with them and the Illinois General Assembly to “disentangle” city and school district finances.
“It’s ultimately on my watch to ensure that we create systems that are economically solvent,” Johnson said. “And I’m bold enough and audacious enough to take on that challenge.”
Contributing: Sarah Karp