A week before Chicago Public Schools students head back to their classrooms, members of the Chicago Teachers Union’s Latine caucus gathered for a press conference Monday, criticizing bilingual staffing levels in the district and a purported lack of progress in ongoing contract negotiations between CPS and the union.
With CTU members continuing to sharpen their criticism of CPS Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez, the press conference marks the latest salvo in a debate on whether a structural deficit exceeding $400 million in each of the next five school years should limit the district’s ability to fully staff and fund its programs.
At Cooper Dual Language Academy, which received 130 migrant students last school year, union members came together to call on Martinez to “step up to the challenge of meeting our students’ needs, or to step aside,” said Walt Disney Magnet School music teacher Kathryn Zamarron.
“We don’t want to have another emergency year,” Cooper dual language teacher Rocio Gonzalez said, recalling staffing challenges in enrolling migrant students at the start of the last year. “We requested help right away, support. We were heard, but we didn’t receive any resources or extra staff,” Gonzalez said.
In response to the influx of 10,000 newcomer students across the district over the last year, CPS said in an emailed statement Monday that it monitors and adjusts English Language Program Teacher positions every two weeks and has allocated more than $77 million in funding – an increase of $10 million compared to last year – “to provide every student access to a multicultural education.” CPS said Cooper had four dedicated bilingual teachers last year and as enrollment grew, the school’s approximately 300 English Learners were pulled into small groups for additional support.
As for the rising tension with the teachers union, CPS said that Martinez, district leaders and the Board of Education are focused on preparing for “a smooth start to the school year” next week. “We’re excited to work together with our school leaders, educators, and parents to continue to put the needs of our students first and build on our academic growth of the past two school years,” the district said.
At the union event Monday, CTU members also decried recent layoffs among teaching assistants, whom the district has said it has guaranteed pay throughout the coming school year by establishing “layoff prevention pools” in which employees who’ve lost their jobs will be assigned to vacancies. CPS does not yet have the total number of teaching assistants that have been rehired, a spokesperson said.
Bargaining amid a budget deficit
Amid ongoing contract negotiations, union organizer Linda Perales said the district has responded to CTU’s bilingual education proposals “with hesitation, with resistance (and) with uncertainty.”
While the five-year span of the union’s current contract overlapped with an unprecedented influx of billions in federal COVID-19 emergency relief funds for schools, negotiations for a successor contract are taking place as the last remnants of those funds are due to expire in the fall.
Obliging 52 of the union’s more than 700 contract proposals – including cost-of-living adjustments, additional positions and other economic demands – would produce a deficit of $2.9 billion next school year, according to a district presentation at a bargaining session last week. If CPS accepted the union’s proposals, the deficit would grow to nearly $4 billion by the 2028-29 school year, Chief Budget Officer Mike Sitkowski said at the negotiations. “We believe our educators deserve fair raises but we must acknowledge what is responsible and sustainable,” he said.
CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said the district’s analysis sends the message that the union’s recommendations for additional librarians, arts programming and support for bilingual students cannot be met.
Martinez has not directly participated in bargaining, CTU members noted Monday. District CEOs have not historically been part of bargaining teams and Martinez has authorized CPS leaders to oversee negotiations, a spokesperson said, noting CPS intends to bargain in good faith.
Costs of new union contracts to come later this year
With the unanimous approval of a $9.9 billion budget last month, CPS said it relied on central office cuts and other strategies to balance an approximately $505 million deficit while increasing resources for schools. District leaders and Board of Education members, whom Mayor Brandon Johnson has appointed to serve until January, heralded CPS’ new “more equitable” funding model for distributing resources to schools, encompassed by the plan. According to Deputy Chief of Schools William Klee, 90% of Local School Councils approved their school budgets this year. Parents and teachers from multiple dual language school communities are among those who spoke out on cuts in the months leading up to the budget vote.
“The District remains committed to working with our labor partners to meet the needs of our bilingual students,” CPS said Monday, adding that the district subsidizes educators’ bilingual certifications and extends early offers to bilingual teachers. “The new budget allocates resources to hire more than 800 new classroom positions, including more than 500 additional teacher positions,” the district noted.
The cost of forthcoming collective bargaining agreements with the CTU and the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association will be addressed in an amendment to the budget expected later this school year, both the district and mayor’s office have said.
Regarding apparent moves by Johnson to replace Martinez, first reported by the Sun-Times, a spokesperson for the mayor, a former teacher and CTU organizer, declined to comment.
The union, CPS and Johnson presented a united front of lobbying in the spring. But their efforts weren’t successful in securing more funding from state lawmakers, who are not required to provide “adequate” funding to districts statewide until 2027, per a school funding reform passed a decade prior.
After Johnson and the CTU continued to advocate for more funding from the state, a spokesperson for Governor JB Pritzker’s office noted in late July that the mayor had not made a request to its office for additional funding for CPS. The state budget is finalized and cannot accommodate allocating additional money to the district, Pritzker’s office said.
The Tribune’s Jake Sheridan contributed.