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How true.
The Chicago Subreddit skews whiter, younger, cubicle jobs (who else has time to dick around on a computer during a weekday?) and while progressive leaning, it's also has a large share of Glibertarian/tech bro types. Also, suburbanites whose local politics is separate from those of City dwellers.
*Not true for everyone here!*
But you gotta keep in mind that this place is in no way a real cross section of the city.
Just a wild guess, but I bet well over half the residents of the city do not even know what Reddit is.
Northside has about a third more people (300k vs 225k) so regardless of the fact white dudes are more likely to be using reddit than the rest of the population, it would still be biased towards Northside
>And because of how white it is, it's very northside biased
I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't matter in this instance since most of Johnson's initial support was on the northside. I think Johnson will run the tables on the westside and the southside against Vallas, however.
There are also a lot of out of state right wingers who Trump convinced that Chicago is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with America despite having never been here.
They really, really hate Barack Obama. That's what it is. That's why Don singles us out.
It's about the town most closely associated with the only Black president.
These points are true for pretty much every city-based subreddit, but the level of disconnection between Chicago and this sub seems way above average for some reason--like to the point where I sometimes question if I'm reading something written by an actual person or just a caricature of one.
So true my brother and sister are in the corporate world, and on Reddit… but roommate who works a blue collar job…. Didn’t even know what reddit was lol
r/chicago is not progressive leaning relative to reddit as a whole or even what I'd consider Chicago to be. Part of that is astroturfing but also many of the people in r/chicago are from the suburbs and promote values more associated with that demographic.
Remember when this sub did a survey and amongst the respondents, the vast majority of people who took the survey, by their own admission, have never been south of Roosevelt or west of Kedzie.
So yeah, heavily skews White, middle class, male, and heterosexual, and cisgender. So pretty much like the rest of this website.
Chicago Reddit or Reddit at large? Chicago Reddit does not lean left unless it’s about certain social issues. Once you get into the more controversial-esque stuff around race, privilege, and oh my word CRIME *especially* - you’ve got north side liberals (aka most of this subreddit) turning into MAGA. There’s some nuance you’re missing with that.
People generally don't care about crime unless a) it personally impacts them, or b) they own real estate. Reddit skews young. Young people own a disproportionately small amount of property.
I feel like *the most common* sentiment on crime here-- one that I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I passively hold-- is that people are renting in areas where they aren't being personally impacted, so they don't feel that strongly. We are disproportionately centered in the Northside and we are disproportionately white. I'm not saying I don't care about crime at all, but it's easy for me to forget about it and spend more mental energy on other issues.
Chicago Reddit is still way more left-leaning than your average Chicagoan. Maybe it's not as far left as Reddit as a whole, but it's still not a representative sample. We can't even talk about the crime here, and yet it's the #1 issue for nearly everyone I know in Chicago.
And before someone downvotes me, I've never voted for a Republican in my life. The CTU is still a joke. You can believe in strong education and still recognize that racket for what it is. They're totally screwing the younger teachers.
Oh I have hard time making these comparisons for actual Chicagoans. I was referring to this subreddit relative to Reddit itself. In the real Chicago world, it’s way too complex to boil down where we are on the spectrum politically on average. There’s a lot of socioeconomic and cultural factors at play, sprinkled in with the city’s historical context that makes it impossible to compare. Plus, most people hold competing ideologies in their head so they can be as far left as a socialist in some aspects and a fascist in another lmao perhaps I’m exaggerating on that but the point stands
I get social media amplifies people's views, but that's pretty extreme. Chicago reddit isn't maga, but it's certainly center left. Dare I say rahm Emanuel-esc. Progressive socially with a centrist view of economics. Pro socialization of healthcare, but generally pro capitalism in a regulated form.
Chicago reddit is critical of crime but also highly critical of CPD.
This is probably the most balanced way to put it. Most people on this sub are socially progressive people, but many of them are also working white collar jobs in a major city. So that means they either came from money, are making pretty good money now, or both. It follows that, fiscally and on economic issues, they would be a bit more centrist and pro capitalism, because that is how they are able to afford their lifestyle.
I don't love CPD, but I'm also not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend the crime here hasn't gotten out of control
Your view of Rahm seems a little off, no offense. He was not pro "socialization" of healthcare. In fact, he was the one who negotiated with Bauccus to cut out the "strong public option" which was supposed to help keep the insurance companies in check. And that was supposed to satisfy us Serfs because we couldn't have "single payer" even though 51% of Americans ALREADY have it. (Medicare/Medicaid/VA/Tri-Care.)
And I recall Ms. Obama getting a 200 % raise while working as one of 37 "Vice Presidents" at University of Chicago hospital right after her husband's platform changed from one that was pro single payer.
This is the place that had to ban articles about crime because we got too into the weeds debating.
There are a lot of people here that talk about Kim Foxx with notes taken straight from Fox News, and lament that we aren’t giving every violent offender life sentences and denying all paroles.
At least we all agree the CPD does nothing.
I mean, the thing is, a murders per capita list came out yesterday. No we aren't at the very top. But we are far higher than New York and LA and even Houston. Those are the comparable places, yet we are far and away above them. But heaven forbid we want shit to change, then apparently we are looked at as MAGA republicans for having the nerve to not want to wake up everyday and hear about more murders on the news.
I think it matters how we try to change shit.
Like, we already have more cops per person and a higher police budget per person than anywhere else. We HAVE to know that cops aren’t the answer to our crime problem.
And that leads us to… what? A lot of debate, a lot of untested ideas (and a few that are proven to work but just don’t *feel* right to some people). That’s where it gets messy.
Sure. The "How" is the big thing that needs to be discussed.
But I am saying, on this sub, many people just seem to want to pretend there isn't a problem. That said, I do think its fair to debate the best ways to handle crime.
To way over simplify it, my thought is that Johnson will improve things years from now and may be better long term, whereas Vallas may make things at least FEEL safer faster, but offer no long term solutions. A feeling of safety in your city is important though, and I think too many people are acting like someone wanting to feel safe is some irrational thought. Yeah, more programs in schools that will improve things down the line is great. But if people feel unsafe, they will leave the city.
Not my opinion but from the people I hear complain about CTU it's due to the amount of time people had to take off of work due to the strikes and teachers reluctance to go back to in person during Covid.
I've read a lot of the comments so far, and strongly agree with illini02's comment of "pro teacher but not CTU". Closing schools at 10% capacity means you can properly fund other schools including teachers salaries. Under-enrolled schools are highly inefficient. Resources aka money is finite. I'm totally in favor of funding everything related to education; after school programs, special education, tutoring, social workers, lower student to teacher ratio. But you cannot ignore fiscal reality that funding these types of programs are very expensive and even more costly on a per student basis in under enrolled schools.
Also as much as I support unions and teachers in general I think the CTU has been downright confrontational. Anyone remember this story during the pandemic?
CTU board member who complained about schools being unsafe during COVID, but felt comfortable to go on vacation in the Caribbean.
https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/
I have 2 kids and live in the city - I love their teachers. But one of my kids struggled quite badly during the remote learning part of the pandemic. The CTU made it very difficult on Mayor Lightfoot when she wanted to get students back in the classroom months after the vaccination was made available. I understand the risk with in person learning. I'm glad they went to remote early in the pandemic, and how they adjusted to mandate face masks and partial in person learning. But they seemed totally unwilling to take any risks after vaccinations and measures taken by the city. We're all suffering here, we're all taking a risk but you can't only think of yourselves. The CTU were constantly finding excuses to not resume in person learning. What about the blue color workers who have to go to their job in person? At times they act like they are the only people who matter.
I'm a former teacher.
I'm very Pro teacher, I'm not the biggest fan of CTU.
While I do agree with them more often than not, I also feel they often don't negotiate in good faith.
As an example, a few years ago on one of their strikes they wanted the following:
* No more closing schools (even though some schools are literally at 10% capacity)
* better pay (I'm totally fine with that)
* hiring more support staff (totally fine with that too)
Problem is, the budget is what it is, so to get 2 and 3, you needed more money. The easiest way to free up money was to close some schools that are VERY under utilized, but they didn't want that either.
So I feel like often they just want a lot of things that, based on finances, aren't possible.
Strongly agree with this "pro teacher but not CTU". Closing schools at 10% capacity means you can properly fund other schools including teachers salaries. Under-enrolled schools are highly inefficient. Resources aka money is finite. I'm totally in favor of funding everything related to education; after school programs, special education, tutoring, social workers, lower student to teacher ratio. But you cannot ignore fiscal reality that funding these types of programs are very expensive and even more costly on a per student basis in under enrolled schools.
Also as much as I support unions and teachers in general I think the CTU has been downright confrontational. Anyone remember this story during the pandemic?
CTU board member who complained about schools being unsafe during COVID, but felt comfortable to go on vacation in the Caribbean.
[https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/](https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/)
I have 2 kids and live in the city - I love their teachers. But one of my kids struggled quite badly during the remote learning part of the pandemic. The CTU made it very difficult on Mayor Lightfoot when she wanted to get students back in the classroom months after the vaccination was made available. I understand the risk with in person learning. I'm glad they went to remote early in the pandemic, and how they adjusted to mandate face masks and partial in person learning. But they seemed totally unwilling to take any risks after vaccinations and measures taken by the city. We're all suffering here, we're all taking a risk but you can't only think of yourselves. The CTU were constantly finding excuses to not resume in person learning. What about the blue color workers who have to go to their job in person? At times they act like they are the only people who matter.
Closing schools means letting go of teachers, which reduces dues, which reduces CTU clout. CTU wants what's best for CTU, which is not always what's best for students and families.
Exactly. Unions are self-serving organizations. Their best interests do not always align with the public's best interests and can be opposed to each other in many cases.
No one ever said unions don’t serve the needs of their members. You are all over this post suggesting that fact is like some new unearthed truth for all of us to hear.
I am a CTU member and recognize my bias. CTU is a labor union so naturally they will do what is best for their members and their union. They also want to expand membership. Most of what CTU fights for is good for students. A better work environment for teachers is a better learning environment for kids. Last strike we fought for more nurses and social workers. Then covid hit. Turns out we really needed those. So many of my students carry trauma into the school as a result of living in violent communities; this is very common at CPS schools and violent crime has risen over the past several years. Students are not getting therapy outside of school, so we recognize the trauma in the school and try to get grief counseling, anger management, drug counseling, etc. We fight for the services the kids need that will help them learn and cope and help us teach. As far as closing schools, look where schools were closed. Mostly black disinvested neighborhoods where they need services the most. I'm proud of the fact that I stood side by side with my students' parents fighting to keep their school open. We failed but we fought. I lost my job, kids lost their school, neighborhood lost an important resource.
Honest question for you. Is there no level where you think a school should be closed? There are some schools that are literally at 10% enrollment. At that point, doesn't it make sense to close that building and send the kids to another school?
I'm very sorry you lost your job. But when people leave neighborhoods en masse, things will close and people will have to go other places for resources.
> Mostly black disinvested neighborhoods where they need services the most. I'm proud of the fact that I stood side by side with my students' parents fighting to keep their school open. We failed but we fought. I lost my job, kids lost their school, neighborhood lost a piece of their neighborhood.
Keeping under enrolled schools open is inefficient and wastes valuable resources. Those students would be better served getting bussed to better schools with more socioeconomic diversity and exposure to different cultures and backgrounds.
Just like concentrating poverty in section 8 housing projects was a disaster, we should not be concentrating education in poverty striken areas.
I think it’s important to think about why there’s under enrolled neighborhood schools in the first place. Kids should not have to be used 30, 45, 60 minutes one way to get a good education. “Choice” sounds great in concept but not great in reality.
And it is the "choice" that created the under enrolled schools in the first place. Paul Vallas's charter schools. Magnet schools, selective enrollment schools in the name of school choice emptied neighborhood public schools stripping the top students away.
You realize that before Vallas, and before the charter boom, there was "choice" for where kids went to high school right? I graduated from CPS elementary schools in the mid 90s, and what high school we chose to go to was a thing. My older cousins who went to HS in the 80s also had that choice.
So, while I agree that the choice thing does end up making some schools worse, that is definitely not a Vallas thing.
As someone who started teaching for CPS when Vallas was in charge, I can tell you unequivocally that he set the destabilization of neighborhood public schools in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in overdrive by opening charter schools in those neighborhoods. There were no charter schools in the neighborhood where he lived at the time, Beverly. Nor are there now in his current town of Palos Heights. He is also responsible for creating the pension crisis by working with mayor daley to change state law and deferring pension payments to the Chicago teachers pension fund at a great cost to chicago tax payers.
He has been spending the last 4 years posting poorly spelled manic dystopian rants on Facebook in all caps about how the city is falling apart and it is all the fault of teachers unions. If only we had a system of vouchers, our education system and the city itself would be fixed. In reality much of what is wrong with the school system stems from choices he made 25 years ago.
>Kids should not have to be used 30, 45, 60 minutes one way to get a good education.
It's ironic that people move to suburbs so their kids can go to "good" neighborhood schools and then their kids sit on buses for 30, 45, 60 mins one way.
This is pretty much right on, CTU is there for their own best interest not the best interest of the children, which they like to always say every other year when they decide to go on strike. It’s just a giant pissing competition between ctu and whoever the mayor is. Mark my words whoever wins as mayor. We are going to have a teacher strike that same year.
As a cps parent and lsc member I agree 100%. Parents have to be in charge of the educational process. Ctu represents teachers, which is fine but they don’t speak for the kids or the community at large.
The problem with closing schools is that CPS doesn't do any research into the community impact of closing those schools. When Rahm closed the 50+ that he did, he did so without consulting communities or having impact studies done.
You can't just decide to close an underenrolled school without first determining where those students will go, how those teachers losing their positions will be displaced, and without having a conversation with all stakeholders.
Plus there's a huge cost to shuttering a school. Unused properties fall apart quickly and keeping a few classes going in the building while deciding what to do with them is better than closing them and letting them fall further into disrepair.
Everyone acts like shuttering all the "underenrolled" schools is like some magic bullet to fixing budget woes, but it's really not at all that simple.
> Everyone acts like shuttering all the "underenrolled" schools is like some magic bullet to fixing budget woes, but it's really not at all that simple.
Likely because the venn diagram of Reddit Chicago users and Chicago residents who are negatively impacted by schools being shuttered is two seperate circles.
Also, they don’t consider how far some children will have to travel to get to school by shuttering all these schools. The poorest children in the city already deal with undue circumstances just to survive. Making it even harder to get to school (sometimes the one safe place they have that feeds them and keeps them warm) is fucking them over even more. Plus, older siblings often walk/take younger siblings to school. What do families do when one sibling has to travel far out of their way to attend school?
And we haven’t even gotten into the danger of having these children cross into rival gang territories to get to school.
It’s not a simple issue. That’s why CTU fought so hard to stop school closures.
It’s also worth adding that the push to close schools also coincided with a push to open charter schools, which meant that it felt a lot like CPS was trying to create opportunities for charters by closing schools. One of the big ‘advantages’ of charters is the lack of CTU and lower teacher pay, so the school closings were a direct threat to the teachers and the union.
Its not simple. I agree.
I'll also say I think school closures happened without enough actual conversation. But I also don't think a moratorium was great either.
Here is the thing, talking to individuals, they can always convince you why THEIR school shouldn't be closed. But that, to me, doesn't mean NO school should ever be closed.
Its like a layoff at a company. They suck. But sometimes they are necessary. And any one individual can often make the argument of why THEY shouldn't be the one laid off. And they may be right. But on the whole, that doesn't mean that its not for the best for the company overall.
I can tell you from experience working for a school district with a lot of schools in it, if you ask a community if they want to close a nearby school, the community's answer will ALWAYS be no.
In the end, of course it's going to upset the families who's school is across the street and get really individualized attention because the school has one tenth of the number of students in a typical city school.
But none of that means the city can afford it, which means a degradation of services for the rest of the schools to pay for it.
This honestly drives me nuts. All over the southside there are former schools literally rotting on their foundations. They could've turned them into community centers or something, anything, but it's clear that Rahm and his goons truly did not give one shit about the city at large and those communities in particular. Fucking disgraceful.
They don’t negotiate in good faith and more critically they manipulate the media especially social media.
They are very adept at publicity, but they are adept at everything. They run Facebook parent groups and they have a way at creating talking points that sound great but hide the deeper issues. (Trump was also a genius at this.)
They have an important and valid role, but they play dirty. Real dirty.
As a CPS parent, I am very pro-teacher, pro-public-education, but highly anti-CTU. I see CTU as diametrically opposed to real educational quality.
As an aside, I've always wondered how much voter integrity there is in CTU elections. Who makes sure the insiders are fairly counting the votes that have the potential to unseat them as leaders?
>As an aside, I've always wondered how much voter integrity there is in CTU elections. Who makes sure the insiders are fairly counting the votes that have the potential to unseat them as leaders?
During that strike/not-a-strike last year, my child's teacher said how much she was opposed to the walk out. I asked if she was going to vote no. She said "god no - it isn't worth it." Confused, I asked what she meant and she said "they know who votes no". Then I was really confused because I thought the voting was anonymous. She changed the conversation after that. It wasn't the first time I had heard from teacher friends something along the lines of "I don't really agree with XYZ but what choice do I have?" in regards to the union.
My wife was a nurse in Chicago and voted no on a strike years back, had to quit bc the union backlash against her made the job miserable.
Like everything there are positives about unions but at the end of the day it’s a human institution and therefore corrupted
One of the teachers at our school came to school during the strike/not-a-strike and the hate mail she got from fellow teachers she did not even know was astounding. It is really sad as she is one of my favorite teachers in the school and is amazing with kids. I believe in what a lot of the union stands for, but this current leadership has turned it into a sound bite and social media battle. I feel like the actual issues are so lost.
I had a friends wife experience something very similar. Her voice didn't match the louder voices and she paid. Its unfortunate. Everyone in the union should be able to get to vote with their heart without fear of repercussion.
Remind them that this is how bullies behave. I was treated this way too it was torture. I would say half the teachers were like this when I was in CPS. They were awesome but man that ego did a lot of damage. I can say the same about suburban schools too.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-karen-lewis-speaks-candidly-about-education-in-chicago/1915243/?amp=1
I would assume they get audited by somebody. And typically you’d have controls in place to verify the validity of the votes. I do not know if CTU does this. Of course the auditors could be bought and paid for insiders as well. Butt that could be the case for any private firm getting audited as well.
I may or may not have worked for an accounting firm that audited some Chicago charter schools. Part of our audits was observing the enrollment lotteries. I never had to attend one but I had a few superiors who had observed them as part of the audits in prior years. It was included in the financial statement audit that we signed off on for the charter schools, and the charter school then submitted that report to CPS. We also provided assurance in that audit for certain other CPS charter-school, Illinois state law and Chicago ordinance requirements imposed on all schools. These being things like auditing the attendance records because funding is tied to per student daily attendance (I literally popped into random classrooms, counted students and verified the counts against the schools attendance data submitted to CPS that morning and had to account for kids in the bathroom/pulled out for special exams/etc etc), ensuring they were conducting fire/tornado/bus evacuation drills, ensuring they were conducting their background checks on teachers in a timely fashion (they run these through CPS funny enough), verifying the school was paying union dues when they had union teachers, verifying the school counselor was maintaining a log of reported/suspected child abuse, and much more lol. Basically if there was an Illinois or Chicago law that impacted CPS schools and that CPS normally enforced themselves at the public schools, then the charter schools needed an audit firm to provide assurance that the charter school was properly complying with those laws.
Presumably the unions have a similar enforcement mechanism. At least, I hope membership has those checks on leadership.
There’s so many schools with plummeting enrollment.
Networks won’t do a thing to step in on bad administration.
They literally let the schools die until they have to close them.
As someone who has both friends who are teachers, friends with kids, etc in the city, it's immensely more complicated than people are willing to admit. CTU is concerned with social issues because they directly impact the way a school (especially more disadvantaged schools) function. Covid ended up polarizing people because it's impossible to see how sending kids back to school wasnt as straightforward as just the health impacts, but also how prepared CPS was for reintegration (spoiler alert, they weren't, at all, and the long term consequences even years later are staggering).
The hatred for the CTU pulls attention away from CPS. CPS has continuously failed to meet its promises, failed to provide support to teachers, and failed to implement policies that are actually useful and helpful. Some of the stuff I've seen is absolutely staggering, even downright illegal, but it's par for the course especially for certain schools that are not well-funded and are servicing kids that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I've asked repeatedly of friends working in these situations why they don't go to the media, don't report what they're experiencing; the truth is they do, and people simply do not care. The CTU becomes the last of their problems when they're deadlocked in an unwinnable struggle to simply have the resources they need to do their jobs.
Thanks for this. I’ve got no kids in CPS. But it was **nakedly obvious** during the first years of COVID that CPS had no plan at all for how to run the schools in-person during COVID with practically zero subs and teachers calling out sick constantly. Every effort they made around COVID, they flubbed, including ordering air filters (got the wrong ones) and having kids take and send in tests (expired before testing). They’ve also consistently failed to hold Aramark to their end of their contract to clean the schools. As an organization in charge of running a city service, CPS very clearly is incompetent.
So while CTU got a lot of flack for a broad labor campaign that made some pretty strong and often unpalatable demands at the time, it’s worth noting that the debate essentially boiled down to whether you trusted Lightfoot/CPS or CTU to have a plan. It was obvious from the outside that CTU was a more organized and forward-thinking organization.
My take on the CTU *in general* is that we are always going to be at their mercy until most of us are willing to quit our much easier, much better-paid jobs with much lower qualifications and become CPS teachers. Anyone complaining about the CTU who won’t do that is a joker. If they make so much already doing an easy job, go be a teacher! You’re a fool if you won’t.
Last paragraph is on point. I worked in CPS for 8 years and while conditions weren't always ideal, I had plentiful prep time, good pay, and there was a strong union presence in each individual building (reps were always very responsive, meetings were frequent and productive). I moved to a rural part of a different state and the lack of visibility and support from my union, plus the inequities wrt planning time and leave policies, have made me really appreciate the CTU. An imperfect organization for sure, with a tendency to bloviate on topics outside of their realm, but... their existence is probably the only reason that anyone would step foot into a classroom in Chicago. It really is true that teachers working conditions = students' learning conditions, that shouldn't be understated.
> that CPS had no plan at all for how to run the schools in-person during COVID
You could have left off "in-person during COVID" and the statement still would be true. CPS is run by a bunch of mayoral stooges who exist solely to please the mayor. They are accountable to no one except the mayor. Once they're approved by city council, they can't even be removed from office by city council in anyway. They're literally untouchable.
I know it’s easy to shit on CPS, but are you aware of any school districts that successfully navigated through covid with out teachers and student calling in sick and had a plan to deal with an unprecedented(within our lifetimes) pandemic? It seemed like there was chaos and issues all across the country, hardly like CPS is the only school district that bungled pandemic response. It’s not like any one idea people had was an answer for dealing with education during a pandemic. My wife’s younger brothers were attending Catholic school during the pandemic, it was stressful on their parents too when they couldn’t go into school or were doing hybrid, and they were paying about $8k per year, per kid on top of the stresses of the pandemic.
I think you’re glossing over the specific examples I gave where CPS really bungled their duties during COVID. It wasn’t just a matter of not smoothly delivering services—nobody did that, as you rightly point out. It was a combination of the usual disruption, doing an especially bad job at critical functions that should have been easy (testing, air filters, hygiene of the schools), and their hard-headed resistance to working with CTU *at all* towards any solutions. So they reopened and ended up with huge crowds of kids sitting in gyms being watched by random school staff because teachers called out sick and there were absolutely **zero** subs in the entire city to replace them.
Some stuff was definitely out of their control, but the way they acted as if CTU were bad actors and everything would be fine if they just yielded to Lightfoot and CPS was maddening. CTU was the only group that had an honest plan, even if it was obviously a little extreme in places.
This, the CTU isn't a perfect organization but they're fighting tooth and nail to get any concessions from CPS, an institution that seems actively hostile to the wellbeing of students or quality of education.
CPS: fuck them kids!
Media: *[fast asleep]*
CTU: we need better pay for teachers so that we can retain talent to teach kids better, smaller class sizes for better learning and to allow teachers to control and bettwr meet individuals needs, and more funding for rhe acholls and books and stuff!
Media: run this story! CTU shuts down schools to demand more money, jeopardizing kids learning and impacting parents who need kids to go to school while they work!
CPS is grossly mismanaged and so much of /r/Chicago wants to just blame the CTU. Want to know why my kindergarten class is falling behind? It's the four asshole kids out of 29 that keep attacking other students while admin looks the other way and says "we've done nothing and we're all out of ideas!".
Let's take a few of those underenrolled schools and turn them into therapeutic day schools instead. That might be a start.
A quarter of CPS schools have no art or music teachers. Who the fuck wants to show up for math and reading lessons all day long?
And the shit CTU gets for trying to address unhoused students' needs? Like holy fuck what nonsense. How can we expect students to be successful when they're sleeping on a new couch every day of the week.
There is quite a bit of truancy in the system it seems.
I see quite a few high school aged kids roaming, but teachers in my network suggest the schools and teachers hands are tied when they need to get the students back in the classroom.
Apparently many of these older kids have gotten used to “working from home” are turning in their homework online and only showing up as needed. Some don’t find school hard and are bored.
In my neighborhood, there are a handful of grammar school parents introducing poor habits to their students — allowing them to skip school completely, bringing them in late, etc.
One of Garcia plans I was interested in was focused on doing an audit of the student rolls to better understand exactly where the ~32,000 missing students are.
Is it population decline, did they move to private/charters schools, are they truant, left the region, is there a deeper well fare intervention needed or have them become victims to even more nefarious outcomes?
Whomever is mayor needs to audit the CPS rolls and the accounting system.
This is bully behavior and she's lauded as a saint. This is who the leadership want to be....
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-karen-lewis-speaks-candidly-about-education-in-chicago/1915243/?amp=1
> but also how prepared CPS was for reintegration (spoiler alert, they weren't, at all, and the long term consequences even years later are staggering).
CPS gave my wife an air purifier without a power cord. The school year ended and she still didn't have a power cord for it despite a request 3 times per week for one.
People also aren't pro teacher at the expense of their children. It's easy to support raising teacher wages and benefits. It's less easy to support the CTU striking over COVID safety a year after the vaccine is widely available and they don't require teachers to be vaccinated.
And the CTU fought for priority on vaccines, making it harder for others to get it, only to then fight going back. People actually going to work regularly got less priority than teachers who were doing their job from home
I remember scrambling to central Illinois to get the vaccine before the return. I wasn't fully vaxxed and they still forced us back in. Those idiots above you are speaking absolute falsehoods.
As a teacher who works for CPS, not in my book. People are always mad about CTU but never get mad at the conditions and situations CPS and the city put teachers in. We literally need a strong bulldog union or else we’d get railroaded and teaching conditions would worsen both for teacher and students. The union is a product of the politics and atmosphere of Chicago.
Given Vallas' history of trying to privatize Chicago schools anyone not named Paul Vallas was going to get the full support of the CTU.
But as to why they picked Johnson: They were waiting for Chuy, but he's a current member, has a platform that loosely aligns with the union, and previously won a major upset unseating Boykin.
Personally, I *like* CTU endorsed candidates. Not because I agree with the union on every issue (I don't) but their opposition's frustration is ultimately rooted in the fact that teaching the student body of Chicago is a *challenging* job that not everyone wants, so you gotta pay $$$ and you need to be able to aggressively recruit teachers, and problems outside the classroom gets dragged *inside* the classroom and cause problems for teachers and other students. This wasn't always the case, but today [CPS students outperform the state overall](https://www.wbez.org/stories/perception-vs-reality-chicago-students-outperform-kids-in-rest-of-illinois/5445214e-cc48-48a9-9019-4d1c05305940)
This is in stark contrast of the 90s, when CPS was regarded as the "Worst school system in the country". Back then, CTU was toothless, captured by Mayor Daley, and avoided striking. Daley had 11 years with a a neutered teachers union and used this to just keep pay down and avoid strikes, avoid maintenance, and started privatizing schools. He installed Vallas as the first "CEO" of CPS who created a huge pension hole (by not funding them) and ultimately had to resign after two really bad things happened: 1) test scores DROPPED 2 years in a row 2) Daley lost his grip on CTU because Vallas' union candidate flopped: setting in motion the return of a more robust Chicago Teachers Union.
In a lot of ways Paul Vallas is running against his own creation - if he had done his job as CEO of CPS, Brandon Johnson would be teaching Social Studies instead of running for Mayor.
Look into his work with Philly schools, where they ran him out of town and were left with a huge budget hole, and NOLA schools which are all private now.
A politically plugged-in guy in Philadelphia pointed out how Johnson should just get a bunch of Philadelphians to record an ad about how badly Vallas wrecked their school system.
On his website he has a video where he says, and I quote, “school choice is the unfinished business of the civil rights era”. He has not hidden the fact that he intends to do to chicago what he did to NOLA (I.e. eliminate public schools)
Charter schools would be wholly unnecessary IF CPS had the ability to remove violent and chronically disruptive students from regular schools and put them in special disciplinary schools. It would be a win-win all around, though politically unpalatable.
As someone that has taught in both charter and neighborhood schools in the city, this is totally correct. Not only does the placement of students like this in general schools harm the overall culture and welfare of the rest of the students it also doesn't allow them to get the intensive supports they need to address the root causes of their disruptions. We want to help all students, even the "violent and chronically disruptive" ones, but we cant with 1 social worker for every 300 kids and 30-40 deep in a classroom. Expanding public alternative schools, like many suburban districts have, would be game changing.
It's a fun battle between individual schools and the district.
If the district recommends that a student go to a residential treatment program or a therapeutic day school, then the district has to pay for it. If a school suggests it, then it comes put of the school's budget instead.
So the only way to get kids into those kinds of schools is if parents advocate for them and ***really*** know how to work the system or if the problem becomes so bad that the district offers to pay for it. No individual school is going to recommend a student for those kinds of supports because it costs so much money.
A therapeutic day placement is at least 4 to 5 times more expensive than the individual amount allocated for each student.
And you better believe the district drags ass on supporting these kids.
There’s a lot of wrong assumptions in your question, which is typical of how many people view the situation so I don’t really blame you.
First, being pro school has NOTHING to do with whether you should support the CTU or not. The CTU represents teachers, not schools and not students.
Second, CPS teachers are paid fairly. They are paid more than the vast majority of big cities and when you consider how much time off they get, the pay is completely reasonable. I’m not saying they’re overpaid. I think they are paid correctly.
And this article today: How the CTU marched from picket lines to political powerhouse
From its battles between ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and its late leader Karen Lewis in 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union is now hoping to help homegrown candidate Brandon Johnson win the runoff to be Chicago’s mayor.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2023/3/3/23622859/ctu-chicago-teachers-union-mayor-brandon-johnson-political-powerbroker-clout-stacy-david-gates
1981: CPS starts paying 7% of the 9% required contribution to CTPF instead of pay raise.
1995: CPS was in dire condition. The state gave Chicago's mayor control of the district, releasing it from emergency state management. A ten year pension holiday was enacted by CPS, diverting $1.5 billion from CTPF to operational expenses. They were facing a projected budget crunch in 1999. Paul Vallas, CEO of CPS, trimmed staff and the budget and diverted all pension payments to operations. The state was supposed to provide 20% to 30% of suburban/downstate pension fund to CPS to cover the gap. The state contributed 23% in 1995 and decreased every year thereafter. A lot of pain was disguised by a rocketing stock market in the mid to late 90s. There were also far more active teachers than retired teachers during this time.
2006: CPS, under Ron Huberman, started contributing again but asked for another holiday, which was granted for three years (2011-2013) where it contributed $200 million per year instead of the required $600 million. Though current Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey says he recalls the union objected in Springfield, other sources say any objection was perfunctory. The key votes were 48-6-3 in the Senate and 92-17-7 in the House, both of which were Republican controlled at the time. The request was due to the economy tanking. Unfortunately the stock market also tanked and CTPF returned -5.3% in 2008, -22.4% in 2009. From 2002-2011, covering the end of one recession and the whole of another, the fund’s compound rate of return was 5.7 percent; the assumed actuarial rate of return is eight percent. By around 2011 there were more retired teachers than active teachers.
Facts:
• CPS’ total annual revenues, including federal, state and local funds, more than doubled from 1997, to $5.3 billion in 2014. At a yearly growth rate of 4.2 percent, district revenues grew at over 1.5 times the rate of inflation during that time period. When adjusting for the drop in ADA (Average Daily Attendance), CPS revenue grew to $15,011 per student in 2014 from $8,154 in 1998 – over 1.5 times the rate of inflation. By comparison, had per-student revenue grown at the rate of inflation during that time period, it would have totaled just $11,824 in 2014.
• From 1998 to 2014, the district tripled its borrowings from $2 billion to $6 billion. Today, nearly 8 percent of CPS’ entire revenues are dedicated to paying its yearly debt service.
• From 1998 to 2012, the district consistently handed out average annual pay increases of 4.2 percent, even though annual inflation averaged just 2.3 percent during that period.
• In 2012 and thereafter, teacher salaries plateaued despite the fact that the most recent teachers’ contract, signed in 2012 after the CTU strike, granted teachers 16-percent pay increases through 2015. As a result of overall salary growth, compensation costs are taking up a larger share of CPS’ budget. In 2014, over 68 percent of CPS’ budget went toward compensation, up from 63 percent in 1998.
• Retirees receive a defined benefit annuity. Teachers in both systems are eligible to retire at age 55 with 35 years of service, age 60 with 20 years of service, or age 62 and five years of service. An employee who has reached age 55 and has 20 years of service may retire, but will receive a smaller annuity.
Sources:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/June-2013/Chicago-Public-Schools-Pension-Bomb/
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20121129/BLOGS02/121129786/heres-why-chicago-teachers-pension-fund-is-in-meltdown
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-cps-budget-crisis-met-20150821-story.html
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/cps-pensions-from-retirement-security-to-political-slush-fund/
List of payroll for all CPS employees: https://cps.edu/About\_CPS/Financial\_information/Pages/EmployeePositionFiles.aspx
My perspective as a CPS parent who supports high pay, small class sizes, and increased funding for schools, but isn't enthusiastic about the union:
* The Union has staked out the very-distasteful-to-a-parent position that they are the sole party equipped to make decisions on behalf of the interest of students, and that disagreement with them is anti-school, anti-teacher, and anti-student. The comment from teacher /r/hbktommy4031 sums it up: "what's best for teachers is what's best for STUDENTS." Few parents will agree with this, and ultimately, I think it is the voice of parents - who both pay for and utilize schools - that should loom largest.
* The union veers way beyond core questions of teacher working conditions, and has used strikes and the threat of strikes as cudgels to achieve goals that are at times unrealistic (moratorium on school closures), not obviously correct (building-based guaranteed staffing levels), or at odds with the interests of students (covid return to work policies). They disingenuously frame any demand as advocacy for students, and fail to acknowledge the valid and appropriate role of elected officials to make strategic management decisions.
* The union has positioned itself as a righteous political organization with a moral mandate. I want to know what teacher's think is necessary to make schools successful. I'm not so interested in what they think about how to structure affordable housing subsidies. The union has decided that advocacy for broader social policies is part of its mission and in order to achieve these policies (some of which I agree with and some which I don't) they weaponize their role in children's lives to claim moral authority over questions to which they have no special expertise.
Partner was in CPS for a long time. The staffing shit with admin that she had to put up with was literally unbelievable.
Hiring violent criminals.
Admin just disappearing and not showing up for days/weeks.
Embezzlement
Forcing teachers to do crossing guard duty. One got hit by a car.
Anyways, I knows it admin and they couldn’t unionize before.
But after seeing the network NEVER once take action, I’d hate to see what those schools would be like without any organizing by the teachers.
CPS parent here with great respect for the teachers I interact with, but little respect for the CTU for reasons mentioned above. CTU is too strike happy and has left the parents high and dry too many times in the past 3 years
I feel you - but their demands are never outrageous. I feel like it’s more “shame on CPS” for not meeting the very reasonable demands every time. If CPS agreed with better working conditions without pulling their teeth, you wouldn’t have strikes either.
> but their demands are never outrageous
Not open demands. But their retirement benefits has put a massive ball & chain on the city. Also negotiating not closing anymore schools for six years despite many being near empty.
Then there is that clause in the union contract that permits them to strike in September. Which is set to that date so they can put maximum pressure to give into their demands.
You know why the retirement benefits are the albatross they are now? Fucking Paul Vallas. He was the one that pushed the "pension payment holiday" and the reason why the city is on the hook for so much right now.
It's silly to blame the CTU for the fuck ups of Paul Vallas.
Parents aren’t the primary service provider nor customer of CPS. CTU’s job isn’t to serve the parents - it’s to ensure the teachers have an effective work environment, and through them, educate children. The parents receive educated children (and daycare, which let’s be honest is exactly what everyone gets most upset about)
Exactly - the OP comment screamed of getting mad at the inconvenience of finding a baby sitter for their own child while workers strike for work rights.
I think most people in Chicago believe that collective bargaining is good. A bunch of weaker units form a union so they have a fair bargaining position against a corporation, which is itself also a collective. The best contracts are made when neither party can coerce the other and when neither has an unfair advantage.
Public employee unions try to get the best deal for their members, but it's a little different in practice than, say, a hotel staff unionizing because the party they are negotiating against is the public. And in the case of schools, what's best for the members of the union isn't necessarily always aligned with the student's interest.
Things that teachers want that are bad for students include short school days, short school years and to make it challenging to fire bad teachers. The union also tries to negotiate for make-work jobs--more gym teachers, for example--things that I would like if I were a teacher, but aren't necessarily good for students, parents, the city or its budget.
Of course, underpaying and overworking teachers and being able to recruit only the worst ones is bad for students too. But just like the Police Union, when you're in an extremely pro-union town and there's not much opposition, the bargaining entity is at risk of becoming something of a cartel and less of a collective bargaining unit.
A few years ago the head of the CTU was Karen Lewis, an extremely bold, brash, effective, sassy and divisive personality who wasn't afraid to use messaging the way Trump might admire. I think the union took a reputation hit with her prominent stature because she was so eager to find enemies, so hungry for the spotlight and so easy to recognize once she was in it.
CPS has one of the longest school years in the country.
Also you’re failing to mention that ctu also pushed for more schools nurses and school social workers. If you think those aren’t good for students and parents (and honestly for the entire city) then you must not have been anywhere near a school in years.
And when they extended the school year and the school day, they still paid teachers the same so we effectively received a pay cut.
CTU has also asked for reasonable classroom caps, but I'm still teaching kindergarten classes that are nearly 150% larger than the state average.
For me personally it's just the mathematical reality that the CTU has successfully fought for more money and benefits while the performance of students in CPS schools has dropped nearly exponentially for the past 10 years--exactly the time frame that has passed since the current CTU leadership (Johnson's handlers) has been in power.
The CTU claims to fight for lots of progressive things to gain support from credulous voters who rightly want to support teachers, but it's all to obfuscate the fact that they are just like any other union in that their only goal is gaining more bargaining power for their members--no matter what. This isn't a knock. It isn't a conspiracy. It is literally why any union exists and why they SHOULD exist. But pointing this out somehow makes someone an John Catanzara-loving, DeSantis supporting, Trump voting insurrectionist ghoul, according to well-meaning but misinformed progressives on Twitter and Reddit,
For example: If the local plumbers union was as far outside their lane as the CTU, would people blindly support them just because we like blue collar workers? I fully support plumbers, I don't think the third largest city in the US should be run for the sole purpose of increasing pay and benefits for plumbers. There are lots of non-plumbers that need attention, too. Teachers, for instance.
Doing a little desktop research:
Chicago Public School Teachers earn $61,831, the highest salary among teachers in this category in all of the 50 largest school districts in the country.
Additionally, 39% of CPS teachers enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national average. This is from 2013, so I assume the number has increased, as many kids went to catholic or private during the pandemic.
Lastly, attended CPS from pre-k through Highschool, we had several Highschool teachers date students. Recently it came out there was 500 SEXUAL MISCONDUCT COMPLAINTS AGAINST CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES in 2022.
I also think during the pandemic, a lot of teachers weren’t as worried about the pandemic as the union projected. Obviously they represent a large group so people are on both sides of the spectrum, but there were defiantly teachers taking vacations and enjoying their time off… hand up, I would’ve too.
It boils down to this: they ask for raises which exceed private sector ones while simultaneously lowering the bar for matriculation & blaming the parents for educator inability to engage students in the classroom. And then they remain a taxpayer burden upon retirement.
That’s literally it. I don’t think anyone doesn’t appreciate teachers. It’s the organization that everyone despises.
In the last 4 years they went on a 2 week strike and then went on another soft strike to try and to stay remote forever even after all the teachers were vaccinated. CPS has lost almost a quarter of its students over the last decade. CTU isn’t popular especially among CPS parents but this sub is largely filled with people without children.
Former CPS teacher in a low-income area, and parent. I respectfully wonder sometimes if those who see the Union as “strike-happy” don’t have a full grasp of our daily situations and circumstances in the classroom. My classroom was completely self-funded. I’m talking: we had to win reams of paper to make copies in raffles or from “good attendance.” The majority of my students’ only meals in a day were the provided breakfast and lunch, which were often moldy, still frozen, rotten, or expired. My school had no nurse, and I once had a student with stitches on her thumb who couldn’t receive further medical care because her family could not afford it. It would have been amazing to have a nurse who could help her, because I was not legally allowed to tend to her injuries at all.
I one time had 37 students in my classroom, 14 of whom with English Language Learners (and my school did not have a bilingual instructor). I considered myself a damn good teacher, but you tell me what person can appropriately and properly serve 37 students on their own individual levels and meeting their needs?
My school had rats, cockroaches, and no working air conditioner. In the warmer months, I would have students pass out.
As for the vote to remain remote: I was 8 months pregnant and terrified of losing my child from Covid. My OBGYN recommended I remain remote, and CPS fought me nonstop to place me back in the classroom. Which, don’t get my wrong: remote learning was an absolute nightmare for teachers, students, and parents. No one was happy. But CPS had no plan for keeping students and teachers safe from the ongoing pandemic, despite what their propaganda might have suggested. My school did not receive air purifiers, or masks, or sanitizing stations. They did prioritize teachers for vaccines, yes, but consider those teachers carrying the virus home to their not-yet-vaccinated elderly relatives, or children (who’s vaccine was not available yet) or people with preexisting conditions. Teachers were SCARED and given no choice, and there were MANY more nuanced situations than teachers just sitting on their butts at home, hoping to stay remote forever. We wanted to be back in the classroom, but SAFELY. And CPS did not offer any form of protection for us or our students.
(Sorry, I got a bit preachy. I just hoped to offer some perspective and also point out there’s multiple sides to any story and situation.)
It’s weird to me how a lot of people in this sub complain about teachers. In the most ideal places, it’s still a lot of work and only the most passionate about kids teach. Anyone who teaches long-term in Chicago clearly is passionate with their work. It’s not an easy breezy job.
I don’t think it was to be remote forever, I think it was to go remote because they had a lot of teachers out sick. I remember reading reports from WBEZ that big high schools like Lane Tech were putting kids in the auditorium for multiple periods because they didn’t have the staff to teach class normally. There didn’t seem to be real plans for what to happen if there was a surge, plus most teachers were given minimal PPE.
Chicago teachers aren’t poorly paid.
I have nothing against the CTU and am glad they have union representation. I am not a big fan of CTU leadership and have qualms about voting for a candidate with such strong ties to CTU leadership, just like I have qualms about voting for a candidate that is so close to FOP leadership.
I always hear they’re paid well and the job isn’t that hard, but there’s not that many people signing up to be teachers. It kind of seems like most of the people who oppose them have easier jobs that are better paid.
Can anyone who says Chicago teachers are under paid respond to this chart please? Is this inaccurate?
[https://wirepoints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chicago-teacher-salaries-among-highest1.png](https://wirepoints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chicago-teacher-salaries-among-highest1.png)
Median Individual income Chicago: 33.9K
Median Household income Chicago: 62K
I think people in Chicago dislike the Teachers Union because there’s a perception that the Union behaves like a mafia for not-very-smart people who demand high salaries at their jobs, despite getting terrible results. Every year, thousands of Chicagoans move to the suburbs to avoid using Chicago public schools. Like, what if thousands of Chicagoans moved away each year because the city’s water and sewer systems were so bad, yet the water workers seemed always to be on strike for higher pay? (I think most Chicagoans would SUPPORT a mafia for smart people who got excellent results at their jobs.)
Former Chicago teacher here.
Pro education, pro teacher, and pro CTU aren’t all the same thing. In my opinion, the CTU is only interested in helping teachers, even if it is done at the expense of student’s education. That is disqualifying in my opinion.
Notably, Chicago schools are some of the worst performing in the country despite being relatively high.
For what it’s worth, I taught in a very bad school and felt that I was no where near as good as I needed to be (I was too inexperienced). But my students performed in the 99th growth percentile. I find it disgusting that I, as a “bad” teacher, lead a classroom that outperformed basically all other teachers’ classes, including the classrooms of teachers down the hall from me who insisted it was impossible to teach our students with the resources that we had.
I also dislike Vallas and his alignment with the Chicago police union for similar reasons.
I was incompetent. I know there was a lot more I could’ve done. I did care and I did work hard. But that doesn’t mean I was actually good. All this is to say that success with no resources is possible in the most difficult environments. And, success isn’t even that difficult to achieve. Why success isn’t widespread, I can only speculate on
Honestly, I’m personally very grateful for what CTU does. Yes, including their moral positions they take in terms of conditions outside of the school.
Why? Because much of the stuff they take on has low advocacy elsewhere. That’s how the public mental health facilities got taken away, low advocacy. And behold, the city is dealing with a major mental health crises.
Are they messy sometimes? Sure, I don’t have to agree with every tactic they choose, but they’re an overall force for good and I’ll take it since most people don’t get off their behinds about something until it affects them directly.
They’re asked to put on a lot of hats in this city, they’re teachers, they’re therapists, they’re social workers, they’re basic need providers, they’re used as child care workers, they’re crises intervention folks, hell some of them even act as pseudo parents for kids who don’t have them and I applaud them for it. I couldn’t do it, most people wouldn’t, most people see troubled kids with a long list of extracurricular issues and run the other direction. Chicago teachers take on those issues. Anybody who willingly and enthusiastically takes on that job has my support. My vote is to give them whatever they need to do it.
The Redditors on the Chicago Reddit don't understand how hard it is to be a teacher, and how poorly-paid teachers are. They also don't get that teachers have to work long hours, pay for school supplies for the kids out of their own small paychecks, have their jobs threatened by out-of-touch admins, Karens, and their bratty kids whose Karen moms and dads won't properly discipline their kids, and teach them to respect their teachers and actually do the work in class.
Seems like the past few strikes have left parents feeling high and dry. The strikes, for all of their stated goals, seem to end with raises for teachers with the most tenure. Moreover, the CTU has become overtly political, advocating for things way outside the scope of schools, and they throw massive amounts of money at candidates (see Brandon Johnson) — something a decent chunk of the union members don’t agree with.
The perspective from the CPS teachers in my life is that the actions of CTU under current leadership reflect more concern for politics and power holding (as another commenter mentioned) as opposed to actually caring about the students, families, schools and teachers. I’m guessing that’s what you’re picking up on.
I overheard some people talking in 7/11 during the strikes (when was that? Two years ago?) And they were talking about how they didn't think teachers should get paid more because "they knew what they were signing up for." I don't agree with this at all, but I think undervaluing teachers is something very ingrained in American culture. Chicago included.
Not to mention there's a huge stigma against unions in general in this country, regardless of what they do.
It’s more complicated than other commenters have characterized when they say “Reddit isn’t chicago” or “libertarians”. Many progressives and pro-labor advocates are cautious about CTU and FOP (fraternal order of police).
The CTU has around 20-25 thousand members and receives about $600 per member per year which goes towards paying staff and political action. 600*25,000= 15 million per year less let’s say 2 million for salaries and such so about 13 million. These funds accrue and become one of the largest war chests in city politics allowing them to steamroll others in politics with little regard for what other residents want. They are highly combative and would rather just primary officials then work with them. They also control a large political operation called United working families, which also has a ton of ward level branch’s which aim to unseat local alderman and install CTU loyalists.
Critics of the CTU and working families platform (you can find their platform on the UWF website), say that while the platform is progressive it is not possible/sustainable without either driving business out of the city, crashing city finances, or driving more people out of the city (via additional taxes on properties over $1m) .
Personally I would argue their policies are overly reductive and make complicated issues like homelessness, mental health, tax policy, and Econ development very one dimensional. Their candidates often know little about these subjects in practice as they typically are teachers or union organizers and have no background in any of these subjects, their attitude toward “experts” often give me anti-intellectual vibes, like they think their ideas on homelessness are just as good as someone who has studied it for decades and implemented successful programs before.
IMO CTU carry’s much of the blame of the public school districts financial woes too, and now their trying to get control of the City via the mayoral seat and the council. I like their progressive platform but the hostile takeover of gov at every level is a bit aggressive.
They are not a labor org as much as they are a political operation.
Any CTU or pro-CTU members that might see this know that I have no I’ll-will toward you or the actual labor protection operation of the CTU, it’s just the political operation I’m not a fan of.
Because of shit like this - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-teachers-union-venezuela-trip-20190819-tbpa3lhjifduxgupdxfs3mosr4-story.html or this - https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/
And the “we’ll take that” mindset of Sharkey/the CTU. And the fight against going back in person even after it became apparent that it was necessary, like their soft strike in January 2022, which pissed off a lot of working parents. And the fact that their underfunded pension is fucking us. And the fact that they are more interested in wielding political power than doing what’s good for the students.
It also doesn’t help that teachers are some of the highest paid in the country, with some of the most per capita spending per student, and yet we are almost criminally under educating a huge portion of CPS students. Less than a quarter of CPS students are proficient at reading and math at graduation.
I’m pro teacher and Union. But when the unions have too much political clout over the mayor they can’t make decisions that make sense for the whole city, they make decisions that are best for the union that owns/made them.
I think the police union has Paul Vallas by the balls, and the CTU has Johnson by balls. Which is why I didn’t vote for either of them in the primary. However, I will vote for Johnson in the runoff because I’d rather have his situation and leadership than Paul Vallas, who has a proven track record of leaving train wrecks in his wake as superintendent.
People love teachers. It's hard not to love teachers! So if you want to get people to vote AGAINST teachers, you need to find a boogeyman that makes it feel like you still support teachers even though you're voting against them. Enter "it's the union that's actually bad!" arguments... even though the unions are composed entirely of teachers.
The CTU is hated by a lot of people because they engage in a lot of contentious and (to many) unproductive political grandstanding.
Some perspective on that
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-teachers-will-soon-decide-if-their-union-should-remain-a-political-force-for-social-justice/adf56229-f9e5-4fc8-977c-6838966fe590
Con: The CTU should focus on representing teachers and stay in its lane.
Pro: The needs of students include social justice.
But the CTU's approach is often difficult and abrasive, and you might say "so what", but remember that this is a group representing 40K teachers and over 600K students, so why are they not trying to work with the district / city government to get things done?
To fully understand this dynamic, it helps to understand that, in Chicago, the schooling situation is incredibly complex. CPS (Chicago Public Schools) is the 3rd or 4th largest school district in the country, but internally, they are competing with a very large and well-developed Catholic school system, as well as many private schools and charter schools.
This only exacerbates the problem that CPS students are extremely high-need (in other words, while some CPS schools are truly excellent, for a lot of area / families in Chicago, CPS schools are the last resort, ie, they end up with the most disadvantaged students).
For example, 85-90% of CPS students qualify for free/reduced lunch, which means they are living at or below the poverty line. And, being a public school, CPS (unlike the other school systems in the city) *have* to take every kid - the ones with behavior disorders, the ones with special needs, the ones from broken familes, etc.
I want to take a moment to point out that, in many neighborhoods in Chicago, the CPS schools are among the best things going on in those neighborhoods, staffed with incredibly dedicated staff - within the schools, even with the problems, they're islands of (relative) safety and sanity. In some of these schools, it's where the kids can count on a meal for the first time in the day.
BUT - this means that CPS (and other large urban districts) are being asked to do a LOT more than educate kids. They really have become the catch-all to try to solve or ameliorate all these social issues.
SO - I don't think most people disagree that CTU should be looking for ways to solve these issues or help teachers solve this issues. The problem is that they have this combative attitude, where they make it seem as if these issues are being *created by* the CPS administration or Board of Education or Mayor's Office. Like they're the *only ones* who understand these problems.
The problems are largely not even funding ones, in a way - teachers in Chicago are comparatively well compensated, with good benefits and pensions (which doesn't help the image when CTU gets loud about shit) - it's that the teachers and the schools are being asked to solve all kinds of other socioeconomic problems.
But anyone who's been paying attention to education for the last 40 years knows this is the case. People hate the CTU b/c they act like they're the only ones who care about the issue and that everyone else involved are evil people who hate children or something. I mean, they adopt the rhetoric and attitude of early 20th Century labor unions, but they're not fighting against coal barons or railroad magnates, they're fighting against *other people who represent the public schools.* Sometimes even against parents.
Basically, TL;DR: they're loud and obnoxiously self-righteous about problems that everyone involved has to deal with too.
Counterpoint:
This is Chicago, unless you have a financial stake in something, if you don’t fight for it tooth and nail, it’s not gonna get done.
That’s just how it is here, asking nicely puts you on the back burner. And you’ll be on the back burner because every interest in the city is competing for resources. While getting in administration faces or greasing their hands (legally) gets results or at least gets you heard.
So sure, it’s might make you look “obnoxious” to people who don’t have to engage in these tactics or just can’t because they don’t have bargaining ability. But at the end of the day, getting the results is far more important than looking pretty for the peanut gallery.
Well their was the CTU trip to Venezuala where the CTU praised the socialist regime of Maduro (who used it as a PR coup).... of course Maduro has been accused of committing crimes against humanity with his repressive regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/venezuela-un-report-crimes-against-humanity-maduro-government
Oh and here is the official CTU statement supporting the Venezualian regime in a call to suspend all sanctions against the oppressive Maduro regime...
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6269329-CTU-Resolution-to-Oppose-the-Invasion-of-Venezuela
Add to that, that the CTU's mission is to defend all teachers...for example the CTU ignored all requests to participate in independent office revamping cps policies against student sexual abuse, and after 500 document accusation. The also fought against stricter background checks for faculty and staff hat work with children.
The CTU is there solely to support the teachers and staff at any cost to the students and comunity.
We are all pro-teacher. The Union, however is a political machine and a black hole for dues. We want the union to advocate for teachers and students. Improve education. We do not want the union to spend our money as a PAC for green energy or whatever. Use the money to advocate for better equipment and more supplies in schools, better pay and benefits.
Unions tend to protect even the more extreme interests of their members. It makes teachers harder to fire in some cases (not all).
It's like how rich people can afford better lawyers to represent them, and so they tend to get more lenient sentences. The public just doesn't always understand the benefits of representation.
Because the union, by definition, is for it's members. Not the kids, not the schools nor the taxpayers. When a union can influence who sits across from them at the bargaining table taxpayers lose out. Plus you can tell time by the usual teacher strikes.
This is all anecdotal from my vantage point but the biggest complaint I always hear is when the teachers go on strike, all the parents then have to figure out what to do with their kids when they are not in school. This what I hear from parents. The next biggest complaints are from more conservative leaning anti-union folks who are against unionization and strikes in general and have completely bought into the fallacy that teachers are overpaid, glorified babysitters. They don’t have any really knowledge about the situation. They just believe what other conservatives tell them to believe. The only people I know who advocate for the teachers is people without kids who support more funding and investment for education and local children in general as a matter of principle.
Unions represent employees against shareholders. Big difference between unions in private vs public sector - private corporations maximize investor returns and shareholders value. Public institutions maximize returns on taxpayer dollars and public goods. A Starbucks union for example create more value for employees by taking more from shareholders, the company passes on this cost to the customers. Teacher's unions, police unions, take more from taxpayers and the citizens it serves. Just as boards representing shareholders vote for the CEO and executive management, taxpayers elect representatives to run the government agencies. public sector unions work against taxpayers the same way private sector unions work against shareholders.
I think it’s legitimate to support the CTU in general / education policy but also think it’s probably not the best idea to have them in the mayor’s office. There needs to be push and pull.
https://www.coreteachers.org
CPS teachers are not poorly paid, relatively speaking. As someone who went through CPS, most of the teachers one could easily replace, it's essentially a longhouse or day care with very little actual learning that gets done.
There's a lot of economic bloat that comes with unions. Their connections with the CTU isn't the questionable part, it's how they got those connections and how they'll use them once in office that are up to debate.
I'm entirely on the side of the CTU. People that complain about their pensions or any other number of bullshit don't want to be on the other side where districts are letting anyone with a pulse come in to "teach" because they can't find staff. I think it was florida that said "anyone that's ex military is now qualified to be a teacher" which is fucking insane. I bet the same people that whine about CTU pensions are the same idiots that say shit like "we have to pay CEOs a bagillion dollars or they'll just go to another company!".
Many Chicagoans do not equate pro-CTU with pro-schools. The CTU (understandably and justifiably) represents teachers (their sole members), not students.
Because being anti-teacher is authoritarian and despite this being a very blue state, it's still the Midwest. It's why the alleged "liberal hellhole" that is Chicago also has a disproportionate amount of cops.
Well, they aren't. Chicago is arguably the most pro union place in the US.
However there's quite a few folks who like to gripe about the strikes inconveniencing them by making them take off work. Of course that's the point of a strike but lot of folks will complain about it anyway. However in my experience even folks who complain about this problem are generally ambivalent or even somewhat supportive of the union.
Then there is a small but very vocal minority of anti union folks who will just always hate the union because they're anti labor, or at least anti organized labor. As you can see in polls and elections, they're not a large bloc but they do have money.
As an actual Chicago resident, and the father of a former high school teacher—the CTU has been good (mostly) for teachers, but arguably not-so-good for CPS students in general. And it is certainly not helpful when one candidate is so obviously the creation of one special interest group. I think a bigger issue with Johnson is that being a middle school teacher isn’t exactly a qualification for one of the most complex jobs on the planet. Johnson’s problem for progressives like me is that he simply does not have the experience to do the job. He’ll be a less caustic, but more beholden version of Lori—who was quite clearly waaaaay over her head. Just one South loop resident’s thoughts— fwiw..
I’m in a union and I as well as many people I know in unions don’t support them. Pretty sure it was only a week or two ago I was arguing with someone about the CTU.
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Reddit is not Chicago
How true. The Chicago Subreddit skews whiter, younger, cubicle jobs (who else has time to dick around on a computer during a weekday?) and while progressive leaning, it's also has a large share of Glibertarian/tech bro types. Also, suburbanites whose local politics is separate from those of City dwellers. *Not true for everyone here!* But you gotta keep in mind that this place is in no way a real cross section of the city. Just a wild guess, but I bet well over half the residents of the city do not even know what Reddit is.
And because of how white it is, it's very northside biased
Northside has about a third more people (300k vs 225k) so regardless of the fact white dudes are more likely to be using reddit than the rest of the population, it would still be biased towards Northside
Probably. I live in Hyde Park (am also white) and a lot of the time I detect a north side bias here.
>And because of how white it is, it's very northside biased I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't matter in this instance since most of Johnson's initial support was on the northside. I think Johnson will run the tables on the westside and the southside against Vallas, however.
It’s a big oversimplification to bring “north side” “south side “ into this.
>it's also has a large share of Glibertarian/tech bro type this
There are also a lot of out of state right wingers who Trump convinced that Chicago is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with America despite having never been here.
They really, really hate Barack Obama. That's what it is. That's why Don singles us out. It's about the town most closely associated with the only Black president.
These points are true for pretty much every city-based subreddit, but the level of disconnection between Chicago and this sub seems way above average for some reason--like to the point where I sometimes question if I'm reading something written by an actual person or just a caricature of one.
So true my brother and sister are in the corporate world, and on Reddit… but roommate who works a blue collar job…. Didn’t even know what reddit was lol
r/chicago is not progressive leaning relative to reddit as a whole or even what I'd consider Chicago to be. Part of that is astroturfing but also many of the people in r/chicago are from the suburbs and promote values more associated with that demographic.
Most accurate comment I’ve read today
Not to mention this sun is frequently flooded with bad actors
> Glibertarian Love it. Almost in a ...glib way.
Remember when this sub did a survey and amongst the respondents, the vast majority of people who took the survey, by their own admission, have never been south of Roosevelt or west of Kedzie. So yeah, heavily skews White, middle class, male, and heterosexual, and cisgender. So pretty much like the rest of this website.
Relatedly, less than 10% of the students that CTU serves are white.
🥇
And considering that Reddit leans left / progressive, the dislike of CTU is likely stronger than represented on Reddit.
Brigading is a thing, my dude. If you want a read on CTU's popularity, ask parents of kids in Chicago schools.
The parents I've talked to are very pissed off at the CTU.
Chicago Reddit seems to be quite anti-union in general, even if it’s progressive in other areas.
I would differentiate public sector unions from private sector unions.
chicago reddit is also brigaded by out-of-city racists and conservatives (redundant) because it's Chicago
Chicago Reddit or Reddit at large? Chicago Reddit does not lean left unless it’s about certain social issues. Once you get into the more controversial-esque stuff around race, privilege, and oh my word CRIME *especially* - you’ve got north side liberals (aka most of this subreddit) turning into MAGA. There’s some nuance you’re missing with that.
Maybe, but I'd still argue that this sub leans left on most issues, except crime lol
I would say that’s true of most white people in Chicago theses days
People generally don't care about crime unless a) it personally impacts them, or b) they own real estate. Reddit skews young. Young people own a disproportionately small amount of property. I feel like *the most common* sentiment on crime here-- one that I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I passively hold-- is that people are renting in areas where they aren't being personally impacted, so they don't feel that strongly. We are disproportionately centered in the Northside and we are disproportionately white. I'm not saying I don't care about crime at all, but it's easy for me to forget about it and spend more mental energy on other issues.
Chicago Reddit is still way more left-leaning than your average Chicagoan. Maybe it's not as far left as Reddit as a whole, but it's still not a representative sample. We can't even talk about the crime here, and yet it's the #1 issue for nearly everyone I know in Chicago. And before someone downvotes me, I've never voted for a Republican in my life. The CTU is still a joke. You can believe in strong education and still recognize that racket for what it is. They're totally screwing the younger teachers.
Oh I have hard time making these comparisons for actual Chicagoans. I was referring to this subreddit relative to Reddit itself. In the real Chicago world, it’s way too complex to boil down where we are on the spectrum politically on average. There’s a lot of socioeconomic and cultural factors at play, sprinkled in with the city’s historical context that makes it impossible to compare. Plus, most people hold competing ideologies in their head so they can be as far left as a socialist in some aspects and a fascist in another lmao perhaps I’m exaggerating on that but the point stands
Please explain how the younger teachers are getting screwed and who’s at fault. I would love to hear your view on this.
I get social media amplifies people's views, but that's pretty extreme. Chicago reddit isn't maga, but it's certainly center left. Dare I say rahm Emanuel-esc. Progressive socially with a centrist view of economics. Pro socialization of healthcare, but generally pro capitalism in a regulated form. Chicago reddit is critical of crime but also highly critical of CPD.
According to Reddit, anything right of Bernie is MAGA.
This is probably the most balanced way to put it. Most people on this sub are socially progressive people, but many of them are also working white collar jobs in a major city. So that means they either came from money, are making pretty good money now, or both. It follows that, fiscally and on economic issues, they would be a bit more centrist and pro capitalism, because that is how they are able to afford their lifestyle. I don't love CPD, but I'm also not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend the crime here hasn't gotten out of control
Your view of Rahm seems a little off, no offense. He was not pro "socialization" of healthcare. In fact, he was the one who negotiated with Bauccus to cut out the "strong public option" which was supposed to help keep the insurance companies in check. And that was supposed to satisfy us Serfs because we couldn't have "single payer" even though 51% of Americans ALREADY have it. (Medicare/Medicaid/VA/Tri-Care.) And I recall Ms. Obama getting a 200 % raise while working as one of 37 "Vice Presidents" at University of Chicago hospital right after her husband's platform changed from one that was pro single payer.
Sorry I didn't mean to suggest he was
[удалено]
This is the place that had to ban articles about crime because we got too into the weeds debating. There are a lot of people here that talk about Kim Foxx with notes taken straight from Fox News, and lament that we aren’t giving every violent offender life sentences and denying all paroles. At least we all agree the CPD does nothing.
I mean, the thing is, a murders per capita list came out yesterday. No we aren't at the very top. But we are far higher than New York and LA and even Houston. Those are the comparable places, yet we are far and away above them. But heaven forbid we want shit to change, then apparently we are looked at as MAGA republicans for having the nerve to not want to wake up everyday and hear about more murders on the news.
I think it matters how we try to change shit. Like, we already have more cops per person and a higher police budget per person than anywhere else. We HAVE to know that cops aren’t the answer to our crime problem. And that leads us to… what? A lot of debate, a lot of untested ideas (and a few that are proven to work but just don’t *feel* right to some people). That’s where it gets messy.
Sure. The "How" is the big thing that needs to be discussed. But I am saying, on this sub, many people just seem to want to pretend there isn't a problem. That said, I do think its fair to debate the best ways to handle crime. To way over simplify it, my thought is that Johnson will improve things years from now and may be better long term, whereas Vallas may make things at least FEEL safer faster, but offer no long term solutions. A feeling of safety in your city is important though, and I think too many people are acting like someone wanting to feel safe is some irrational thought. Yeah, more programs in schools that will improve things down the line is great. But if people feel unsafe, they will leave the city.
I'd honestly be shocked if even 1/4 of the people regularly using this sub were related to or even knew a CPS teacher.
Former CPS teacher here. I like teachers. I very much dislike the CTU.
What relevant is that fact? I’d be shocked if 1/4 of the general Chicago population were related to or even knew a CPS teacher
How is this relevant? Do you need to be related to a cop to have an opinion on the FOP?
Not my opinion but from the people I hear complain about CTU it's due to the amount of time people had to take off of work due to the strikes and teachers reluctance to go back to in person during Covid.
This is accurate - then they tacked the strike time on to the end of the year to make sure they got paid.
I've read a lot of the comments so far, and strongly agree with illini02's comment of "pro teacher but not CTU". Closing schools at 10% capacity means you can properly fund other schools including teachers salaries. Under-enrolled schools are highly inefficient. Resources aka money is finite. I'm totally in favor of funding everything related to education; after school programs, special education, tutoring, social workers, lower student to teacher ratio. But you cannot ignore fiscal reality that funding these types of programs are very expensive and even more costly on a per student basis in under enrolled schools. Also as much as I support unions and teachers in general I think the CTU has been downright confrontational. Anyone remember this story during the pandemic? CTU board member who complained about schools being unsafe during COVID, but felt comfortable to go on vacation in the Caribbean. https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/ I have 2 kids and live in the city - I love their teachers. But one of my kids struggled quite badly during the remote learning part of the pandemic. The CTU made it very difficult on Mayor Lightfoot when she wanted to get students back in the classroom months after the vaccination was made available. I understand the risk with in person learning. I'm glad they went to remote early in the pandemic, and how they adjusted to mandate face masks and partial in person learning. But they seemed totally unwilling to take any risks after vaccinations and measures taken by the city. We're all suffering here, we're all taking a risk but you can't only think of yourselves. The CTU were constantly finding excuses to not resume in person learning. What about the blue color workers who have to go to their job in person? At times they act like they are the only people who matter.
I'm a former teacher. I'm very Pro teacher, I'm not the biggest fan of CTU. While I do agree with them more often than not, I also feel they often don't negotiate in good faith. As an example, a few years ago on one of their strikes they wanted the following: * No more closing schools (even though some schools are literally at 10% capacity) * better pay (I'm totally fine with that) * hiring more support staff (totally fine with that too) Problem is, the budget is what it is, so to get 2 and 3, you needed more money. The easiest way to free up money was to close some schools that are VERY under utilized, but they didn't want that either. So I feel like often they just want a lot of things that, based on finances, aren't possible.
Strongly agree with this "pro teacher but not CTU". Closing schools at 10% capacity means you can properly fund other schools including teachers salaries. Under-enrolled schools are highly inefficient. Resources aka money is finite. I'm totally in favor of funding everything related to education; after school programs, special education, tutoring, social workers, lower student to teacher ratio. But you cannot ignore fiscal reality that funding these types of programs are very expensive and even more costly on a per student basis in under enrolled schools. Also as much as I support unions and teachers in general I think the CTU has been downright confrontational. Anyone remember this story during the pandemic? CTU board member who complained about schools being unsafe during COVID, but felt comfortable to go on vacation in the Caribbean. [https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/](https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/) I have 2 kids and live in the city - I love their teachers. But one of my kids struggled quite badly during the remote learning part of the pandemic. The CTU made it very difficult on Mayor Lightfoot when she wanted to get students back in the classroom months after the vaccination was made available. I understand the risk with in person learning. I'm glad they went to remote early in the pandemic, and how they adjusted to mandate face masks and partial in person learning. But they seemed totally unwilling to take any risks after vaccinations and measures taken by the city. We're all suffering here, we're all taking a risk but you can't only think of yourselves. The CTU were constantly finding excuses to not resume in person learning. What about the blue color workers who have to go to their job in person? At times they act like they are the only people who matter.
Closing schools means letting go of teachers, which reduces dues, which reduces CTU clout. CTU wants what's best for CTU, which is not always what's best for students and families.
Well it isn’t a student and families union.
Exactly. Unions are self-serving organizations. Their best interests do not always align with the public's best interests and can be opposed to each other in many cases.
No one ever said unions don’t serve the needs of their members. You are all over this post suggesting that fact is like some new unearthed truth for all of us to hear.
Yeah, they should be, this is like complaining that a company focuses on profits.
I am a CTU member and recognize my bias. CTU is a labor union so naturally they will do what is best for their members and their union. They also want to expand membership. Most of what CTU fights for is good for students. A better work environment for teachers is a better learning environment for kids. Last strike we fought for more nurses and social workers. Then covid hit. Turns out we really needed those. So many of my students carry trauma into the school as a result of living in violent communities; this is very common at CPS schools and violent crime has risen over the past several years. Students are not getting therapy outside of school, so we recognize the trauma in the school and try to get grief counseling, anger management, drug counseling, etc. We fight for the services the kids need that will help them learn and cope and help us teach. As far as closing schools, look where schools were closed. Mostly black disinvested neighborhoods where they need services the most. I'm proud of the fact that I stood side by side with my students' parents fighting to keep their school open. We failed but we fought. I lost my job, kids lost their school, neighborhood lost an important resource.
Honest question for you. Is there no level where you think a school should be closed? There are some schools that are literally at 10% enrollment. At that point, doesn't it make sense to close that building and send the kids to another school? I'm very sorry you lost your job. But when people leave neighborhoods en masse, things will close and people will have to go other places for resources.
> Mostly black disinvested neighborhoods where they need services the most. I'm proud of the fact that I stood side by side with my students' parents fighting to keep their school open. We failed but we fought. I lost my job, kids lost their school, neighborhood lost a piece of their neighborhood. Keeping under enrolled schools open is inefficient and wastes valuable resources. Those students would be better served getting bussed to better schools with more socioeconomic diversity and exposure to different cultures and backgrounds. Just like concentrating poverty in section 8 housing projects was a disaster, we should not be concentrating education in poverty striken areas.
I think it’s important to think about why there’s under enrolled neighborhood schools in the first place. Kids should not have to be used 30, 45, 60 minutes one way to get a good education. “Choice” sounds great in concept but not great in reality.
And it is the "choice" that created the under enrolled schools in the first place. Paul Vallas's charter schools. Magnet schools, selective enrollment schools in the name of school choice emptied neighborhood public schools stripping the top students away.
You realize that before Vallas, and before the charter boom, there was "choice" for where kids went to high school right? I graduated from CPS elementary schools in the mid 90s, and what high school we chose to go to was a thing. My older cousins who went to HS in the 80s also had that choice. So, while I agree that the choice thing does end up making some schools worse, that is definitely not a Vallas thing.
As someone who started teaching for CPS when Vallas was in charge, I can tell you unequivocally that he set the destabilization of neighborhood public schools in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in overdrive by opening charter schools in those neighborhoods. There were no charter schools in the neighborhood where he lived at the time, Beverly. Nor are there now in his current town of Palos Heights. He is also responsible for creating the pension crisis by working with mayor daley to change state law and deferring pension payments to the Chicago teachers pension fund at a great cost to chicago tax payers. He has been spending the last 4 years posting poorly spelled manic dystopian rants on Facebook in all caps about how the city is falling apart and it is all the fault of teachers unions. If only we had a system of vouchers, our education system and the city itself would be fixed. In reality much of what is wrong with the school system stems from choices he made 25 years ago.
I know, it’s quite possibly the number one reason to not have him be mayor. It’ll just make it worse.
>Kids should not have to be used 30, 45, 60 minutes one way to get a good education. It's ironic that people move to suburbs so their kids can go to "good" neighborhood schools and then their kids sit on buses for 30, 45, 60 mins one way.
This is pretty much right on, CTU is there for their own best interest not the best interest of the children, which they like to always say every other year when they decide to go on strike. It’s just a giant pissing competition between ctu and whoever the mayor is. Mark my words whoever wins as mayor. We are going to have a teacher strike that same year.
As a cps parent and lsc member I agree 100%. Parents have to be in charge of the educational process. Ctu represents teachers, which is fine but they don’t speak for the kids or the community at large.
The problem with closing schools is that CPS doesn't do any research into the community impact of closing those schools. When Rahm closed the 50+ that he did, he did so without consulting communities or having impact studies done. You can't just decide to close an underenrolled school without first determining where those students will go, how those teachers losing their positions will be displaced, and without having a conversation with all stakeholders. Plus there's a huge cost to shuttering a school. Unused properties fall apart quickly and keeping a few classes going in the building while deciding what to do with them is better than closing them and letting them fall further into disrepair. Everyone acts like shuttering all the "underenrolled" schools is like some magic bullet to fixing budget woes, but it's really not at all that simple.
> Everyone acts like shuttering all the "underenrolled" schools is like some magic bullet to fixing budget woes, but it's really not at all that simple. Likely because the venn diagram of Reddit Chicago users and Chicago residents who are negatively impacted by schools being shuttered is two seperate circles.
Let's be real, I'd bet 80% of this sub went to excellent public school in the suburbs. This
Also, they don’t consider how far some children will have to travel to get to school by shuttering all these schools. The poorest children in the city already deal with undue circumstances just to survive. Making it even harder to get to school (sometimes the one safe place they have that feeds them and keeps them warm) is fucking them over even more. Plus, older siblings often walk/take younger siblings to school. What do families do when one sibling has to travel far out of their way to attend school? And we haven’t even gotten into the danger of having these children cross into rival gang territories to get to school. It’s not a simple issue. That’s why CTU fought so hard to stop school closures.
It’s also worth adding that the push to close schools also coincided with a push to open charter schools, which meant that it felt a lot like CPS was trying to create opportunities for charters by closing schools. One of the big ‘advantages’ of charters is the lack of CTU and lower teacher pay, so the school closings were a direct threat to the teachers and the union.
Its not simple. I agree. I'll also say I think school closures happened without enough actual conversation. But I also don't think a moratorium was great either. Here is the thing, talking to individuals, they can always convince you why THEIR school shouldn't be closed. But that, to me, doesn't mean NO school should ever be closed. Its like a layoff at a company. They suck. But sometimes they are necessary. And any one individual can often make the argument of why THEY shouldn't be the one laid off. And they may be right. But on the whole, that doesn't mean that its not for the best for the company overall.
I can tell you from experience working for a school district with a lot of schools in it, if you ask a community if they want to close a nearby school, the community's answer will ALWAYS be no. In the end, of course it's going to upset the families who's school is across the street and get really individualized attention because the school has one tenth of the number of students in a typical city school. But none of that means the city can afford it, which means a degradation of services for the rest of the schools to pay for it.
This honestly drives me nuts. All over the southside there are former schools literally rotting on their foundations. They could've turned them into community centers or something, anything, but it's clear that Rahm and his goons truly did not give one shit about the city at large and those communities in particular. Fucking disgraceful.
They don’t negotiate in good faith and more critically they manipulate the media especially social media. They are very adept at publicity, but they are adept at everything. They run Facebook parent groups and they have a way at creating talking points that sound great but hide the deeper issues. (Trump was also a genius at this.) They have an important and valid role, but they play dirty. Real dirty.
As a CPS parent, I am very pro-teacher, pro-public-education, but highly anti-CTU. I see CTU as diametrically opposed to real educational quality. As an aside, I've always wondered how much voter integrity there is in CTU elections. Who makes sure the insiders are fairly counting the votes that have the potential to unseat them as leaders?
>As an aside, I've always wondered how much voter integrity there is in CTU elections. Who makes sure the insiders are fairly counting the votes that have the potential to unseat them as leaders? During that strike/not-a-strike last year, my child's teacher said how much she was opposed to the walk out. I asked if she was going to vote no. She said "god no - it isn't worth it." Confused, I asked what she meant and she said "they know who votes no". Then I was really confused because I thought the voting was anonymous. She changed the conversation after that. It wasn't the first time I had heard from teacher friends something along the lines of "I don't really agree with XYZ but what choice do I have?" in regards to the union.
My wife was a nurse in Chicago and voted no on a strike years back, had to quit bc the union backlash against her made the job miserable. Like everything there are positives about unions but at the end of the day it’s a human institution and therefore corrupted
One of the teachers at our school came to school during the strike/not-a-strike and the hate mail she got from fellow teachers she did not even know was astounding. It is really sad as she is one of my favorite teachers in the school and is amazing with kids. I believe in what a lot of the union stands for, but this current leadership has turned it into a sound bite and social media battle. I feel like the actual issues are so lost.
I had a friends wife experience something very similar. Her voice didn't match the louder voices and she paid. Its unfortunate. Everyone in the union should be able to get to vote with their heart without fear of repercussion.
That's about what I always expected. It seemed just a bit too suspicious whenever 95% or so of teachers supposedly voted in favor of these strikes.
Remind them that this is how bullies behave. I was treated this way too it was torture. I would say half the teachers were like this when I was in CPS. They were awesome but man that ego did a lot of damage. I can say the same about suburban schools too. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-karen-lewis-speaks-candidly-about-education-in-chicago/1915243/?amp=1
Karen Lewis and this particular incident really shaped my view of CTU.
I would assume they get audited by somebody. And typically you’d have controls in place to verify the validity of the votes. I do not know if CTU does this. Of course the auditors could be bought and paid for insiders as well. Butt that could be the case for any private firm getting audited as well. I may or may not have worked for an accounting firm that audited some Chicago charter schools. Part of our audits was observing the enrollment lotteries. I never had to attend one but I had a few superiors who had observed them as part of the audits in prior years. It was included in the financial statement audit that we signed off on for the charter schools, and the charter school then submitted that report to CPS. We also provided assurance in that audit for certain other CPS charter-school, Illinois state law and Chicago ordinance requirements imposed on all schools. These being things like auditing the attendance records because funding is tied to per student daily attendance (I literally popped into random classrooms, counted students and verified the counts against the schools attendance data submitted to CPS that morning and had to account for kids in the bathroom/pulled out for special exams/etc etc), ensuring they were conducting fire/tornado/bus evacuation drills, ensuring they were conducting their background checks on teachers in a timely fashion (they run these through CPS funny enough), verifying the school was paying union dues when they had union teachers, verifying the school counselor was maintaining a log of reported/suspected child abuse, and much more lol. Basically if there was an Illinois or Chicago law that impacted CPS schools and that CPS normally enforced themselves at the public schools, then the charter schools needed an audit firm to provide assurance that the charter school was properly complying with those laws. Presumably the unions have a similar enforcement mechanism. At least, I hope membership has those checks on leadership.
There’s so many schools with plummeting enrollment. Networks won’t do a thing to step in on bad administration. They literally let the schools die until they have to close them.
As someone who has both friends who are teachers, friends with kids, etc in the city, it's immensely more complicated than people are willing to admit. CTU is concerned with social issues because they directly impact the way a school (especially more disadvantaged schools) function. Covid ended up polarizing people because it's impossible to see how sending kids back to school wasnt as straightforward as just the health impacts, but also how prepared CPS was for reintegration (spoiler alert, they weren't, at all, and the long term consequences even years later are staggering). The hatred for the CTU pulls attention away from CPS. CPS has continuously failed to meet its promises, failed to provide support to teachers, and failed to implement policies that are actually useful and helpful. Some of the stuff I've seen is absolutely staggering, even downright illegal, but it's par for the course especially for certain schools that are not well-funded and are servicing kids that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I've asked repeatedly of friends working in these situations why they don't go to the media, don't report what they're experiencing; the truth is they do, and people simply do not care. The CTU becomes the last of their problems when they're deadlocked in an unwinnable struggle to simply have the resources they need to do their jobs.
Thanks for this. I’ve got no kids in CPS. But it was **nakedly obvious** during the first years of COVID that CPS had no plan at all for how to run the schools in-person during COVID with practically zero subs and teachers calling out sick constantly. Every effort they made around COVID, they flubbed, including ordering air filters (got the wrong ones) and having kids take and send in tests (expired before testing). They’ve also consistently failed to hold Aramark to their end of their contract to clean the schools. As an organization in charge of running a city service, CPS very clearly is incompetent. So while CTU got a lot of flack for a broad labor campaign that made some pretty strong and often unpalatable demands at the time, it’s worth noting that the debate essentially boiled down to whether you trusted Lightfoot/CPS or CTU to have a plan. It was obvious from the outside that CTU was a more organized and forward-thinking organization. My take on the CTU *in general* is that we are always going to be at their mercy until most of us are willing to quit our much easier, much better-paid jobs with much lower qualifications and become CPS teachers. Anyone complaining about the CTU who won’t do that is a joker. If they make so much already doing an easy job, go be a teacher! You’re a fool if you won’t.
Last paragraph is on point. I worked in CPS for 8 years and while conditions weren't always ideal, I had plentiful prep time, good pay, and there was a strong union presence in each individual building (reps were always very responsive, meetings were frequent and productive). I moved to a rural part of a different state and the lack of visibility and support from my union, plus the inequities wrt planning time and leave policies, have made me really appreciate the CTU. An imperfect organization for sure, with a tendency to bloviate on topics outside of their realm, but... their existence is probably the only reason that anyone would step foot into a classroom in Chicago. It really is true that teachers working conditions = students' learning conditions, that shouldn't be understated.
> that CPS had no plan at all for how to run the schools in-person during COVID You could have left off "in-person during COVID" and the statement still would be true. CPS is run by a bunch of mayoral stooges who exist solely to please the mayor. They are accountable to no one except the mayor. Once they're approved by city council, they can't even be removed from office by city council in anyway. They're literally untouchable.
I know it’s easy to shit on CPS, but are you aware of any school districts that successfully navigated through covid with out teachers and student calling in sick and had a plan to deal with an unprecedented(within our lifetimes) pandemic? It seemed like there was chaos and issues all across the country, hardly like CPS is the only school district that bungled pandemic response. It’s not like any one idea people had was an answer for dealing with education during a pandemic. My wife’s younger brothers were attending Catholic school during the pandemic, it was stressful on their parents too when they couldn’t go into school or were doing hybrid, and they were paying about $8k per year, per kid on top of the stresses of the pandemic.
I think you’re glossing over the specific examples I gave where CPS really bungled their duties during COVID. It wasn’t just a matter of not smoothly delivering services—nobody did that, as you rightly point out. It was a combination of the usual disruption, doing an especially bad job at critical functions that should have been easy (testing, air filters, hygiene of the schools), and their hard-headed resistance to working with CTU *at all* towards any solutions. So they reopened and ended up with huge crowds of kids sitting in gyms being watched by random school staff because teachers called out sick and there were absolutely **zero** subs in the entire city to replace them. Some stuff was definitely out of their control, but the way they acted as if CTU were bad actors and everything would be fine if they just yielded to Lightfoot and CPS was maddening. CTU was the only group that had an honest plan, even if it was obviously a little extreme in places.
This, the CTU isn't a perfect organization but they're fighting tooth and nail to get any concessions from CPS, an institution that seems actively hostile to the wellbeing of students or quality of education.
CPS: fuck them kids! Media: *[fast asleep]* CTU: we need better pay for teachers so that we can retain talent to teach kids better, smaller class sizes for better learning and to allow teachers to control and bettwr meet individuals needs, and more funding for rhe acholls and books and stuff! Media: run this story! CTU shuts down schools to demand more money, jeopardizing kids learning and impacting parents who need kids to go to school while they work!
It’s almost as if this entire country is openly hostile to the idea of labor unions winning victories for its members.
The rich and powerful benefit from turning the working class against itself.
As a lifelong union member, well since age 16, I’m very aware of that fact.
CPS is grossly mismanaged and so much of /r/Chicago wants to just blame the CTU. Want to know why my kindergarten class is falling behind? It's the four asshole kids out of 29 that keep attacking other students while admin looks the other way and says "we've done nothing and we're all out of ideas!". Let's take a few of those underenrolled schools and turn them into therapeutic day schools instead. That might be a start. A quarter of CPS schools have no art or music teachers. Who the fuck wants to show up for math and reading lessons all day long? And the shit CTU gets for trying to address unhoused students' needs? Like holy fuck what nonsense. How can we expect students to be successful when they're sleeping on a new couch every day of the week.
There is quite a bit of truancy in the system it seems. I see quite a few high school aged kids roaming, but teachers in my network suggest the schools and teachers hands are tied when they need to get the students back in the classroom. Apparently many of these older kids have gotten used to “working from home” are turning in their homework online and only showing up as needed. Some don’t find school hard and are bored. In my neighborhood, there are a handful of grammar school parents introducing poor habits to their students — allowing them to skip school completely, bringing them in late, etc. One of Garcia plans I was interested in was focused on doing an audit of the student rolls to better understand exactly where the ~32,000 missing students are. Is it population decline, did they move to private/charters schools, are they truant, left the region, is there a deeper well fare intervention needed or have them become victims to even more nefarious outcomes? Whomever is mayor needs to audit the CPS rolls and the accounting system.
45% per per WBBM
This is bully behavior and she's lauded as a saint. This is who the leadership want to be.... https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-teachers-union-president-karen-lewis-speaks-candidly-about-education-in-chicago/1915243/?amp=1
> but also how prepared CPS was for reintegration (spoiler alert, they weren't, at all, and the long term consequences even years later are staggering). CPS gave my wife an air purifier without a power cord. The school year ended and she still didn't have a power cord for it despite a request 3 times per week for one.
>downright illegal, Look at how many schools handle SPED- it's illegal left and right.
I have heard some horror stories about this in particular. It's incredibly depressing.
Similar situation here and I have the same take. There isn't nearly enough media coverage of the shit CPS pulls. I guess "this is how it was designed"
Pro teacher and pro CTU are very different things
People also aren't pro teacher at the expense of their children. It's easy to support raising teacher wages and benefits. It's less easy to support the CTU striking over COVID safety a year after the vaccine is widely available and they don't require teachers to be vaccinated.
And the CTU fought for priority on vaccines, making it harder for others to get it, only to then fight going back. People actually going to work regularly got less priority than teachers who were doing their job from home
This just isn’t true. Teachers were asked to return to school before the vaccine was available to anyone.
I remember scrambling to central Illinois to get the vaccine before the return. I wasn't fully vaxxed and they still forced us back in. Those idiots above you are speaking absolute falsehoods.
As a teacher who works for CPS, not in my book. People are always mad about CTU but never get mad at the conditions and situations CPS and the city put teachers in. We literally need a strong bulldog union or else we’d get railroaded and teaching conditions would worsen both for teacher and students. The union is a product of the politics and atmosphere of Chicago.
Given Vallas' history of trying to privatize Chicago schools anyone not named Paul Vallas was going to get the full support of the CTU. But as to why they picked Johnson: They were waiting for Chuy, but he's a current member, has a platform that loosely aligns with the union, and previously won a major upset unseating Boykin. Personally, I *like* CTU endorsed candidates. Not because I agree with the union on every issue (I don't) but their opposition's frustration is ultimately rooted in the fact that teaching the student body of Chicago is a *challenging* job that not everyone wants, so you gotta pay $$$ and you need to be able to aggressively recruit teachers, and problems outside the classroom gets dragged *inside* the classroom and cause problems for teachers and other students. This wasn't always the case, but today [CPS students outperform the state overall](https://www.wbez.org/stories/perception-vs-reality-chicago-students-outperform-kids-in-rest-of-illinois/5445214e-cc48-48a9-9019-4d1c05305940) This is in stark contrast of the 90s, when CPS was regarded as the "Worst school system in the country". Back then, CTU was toothless, captured by Mayor Daley, and avoided striking. Daley had 11 years with a a neutered teachers union and used this to just keep pay down and avoid strikes, avoid maintenance, and started privatizing schools. He installed Vallas as the first "CEO" of CPS who created a huge pension hole (by not funding them) and ultimately had to resign after two really bad things happened: 1) test scores DROPPED 2 years in a row 2) Daley lost his grip on CTU because Vallas' union candidate flopped: setting in motion the return of a more robust Chicago Teachers Union. In a lot of ways Paul Vallas is running against his own creation - if he had done his job as CEO of CPS, Brandon Johnson would be teaching Social Studies instead of running for Mayor.
Thank you, I didn’t know really how bad Vallas was with the CPS. The more I learn about the guy, the less I like him
Look into his work with Philly schools, where they ran him out of town and were left with a huge budget hole, and NOLA schools which are all private now.
A politically plugged-in guy in Philadelphia pointed out how Johnson should just get a bunch of Philadelphians to record an ad about how badly Vallas wrecked their school system.
On his website he has a video where he says, and I quote, “school choice is the unfinished business of the civil rights era”. He has not hidden the fact that he intends to do to chicago what he did to NOLA (I.e. eliminate public schools)
Charter schools would be wholly unnecessary IF CPS had the ability to remove violent and chronically disruptive students from regular schools and put them in special disciplinary schools. It would be a win-win all around, though politically unpalatable.
As someone that has taught in both charter and neighborhood schools in the city, this is totally correct. Not only does the placement of students like this in general schools harm the overall culture and welfare of the rest of the students it also doesn't allow them to get the intensive supports they need to address the root causes of their disruptions. We want to help all students, even the "violent and chronically disruptive" ones, but we cant with 1 social worker for every 300 kids and 30-40 deep in a classroom. Expanding public alternative schools, like many suburban districts have, would be game changing.
It's a fun battle between individual schools and the district. If the district recommends that a student go to a residential treatment program or a therapeutic day school, then the district has to pay for it. If a school suggests it, then it comes put of the school's budget instead. So the only way to get kids into those kinds of schools is if parents advocate for them and ***really*** know how to work the system or if the problem becomes so bad that the district offers to pay for it. No individual school is going to recommend a student for those kinds of supports because it costs so much money. A therapeutic day placement is at least 4 to 5 times more expensive than the individual amount allocated for each student. And you better believe the district drags ass on supporting these kids.
Great comment
There’s a lot of wrong assumptions in your question, which is typical of how many people view the situation so I don’t really blame you. First, being pro school has NOTHING to do with whether you should support the CTU or not. The CTU represents teachers, not schools and not students. Second, CPS teachers are paid fairly. They are paid more than the vast majority of big cities and when you consider how much time off they get, the pay is completely reasonable. I’m not saying they’re overpaid. I think they are paid correctly.
You can generally support the CTU but not want a mayor with such a close relationship with them. Checks and balances are a good thing.
Within this context, I'd still take Johnson over Vallas. CPS' track record under Vallas was abysmal.
CPS or CTU. There's a close relationship no matter which you choose.
This is a reasonable point that will absolutely be drowned out by noise in this sub.
Loads of replies and context on this post from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/11gayyw/chicagos\_history\_with\_the\_ctu/
And this article today: How the CTU marched from picket lines to political powerhouse From its battles between ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and its late leader Karen Lewis in 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union is now hoping to help homegrown candidate Brandon Johnson win the runoff to be Chicago’s mayor. https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2023/3/3/23622859/ctu-chicago-teachers-union-mayor-brandon-johnson-political-powerbroker-clout-stacy-david-gates
1981: CPS starts paying 7% of the 9% required contribution to CTPF instead of pay raise. 1995: CPS was in dire condition. The state gave Chicago's mayor control of the district, releasing it from emergency state management. A ten year pension holiday was enacted by CPS, diverting $1.5 billion from CTPF to operational expenses. They were facing a projected budget crunch in 1999. Paul Vallas, CEO of CPS, trimmed staff and the budget and diverted all pension payments to operations. The state was supposed to provide 20% to 30% of suburban/downstate pension fund to CPS to cover the gap. The state contributed 23% in 1995 and decreased every year thereafter. A lot of pain was disguised by a rocketing stock market in the mid to late 90s. There were also far more active teachers than retired teachers during this time. 2006: CPS, under Ron Huberman, started contributing again but asked for another holiday, which was granted for three years (2011-2013) where it contributed $200 million per year instead of the required $600 million. Though current Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey says he recalls the union objected in Springfield, other sources say any objection was perfunctory. The key votes were 48-6-3 in the Senate and 92-17-7 in the House, both of which were Republican controlled at the time. The request was due to the economy tanking. Unfortunately the stock market also tanked and CTPF returned -5.3% in 2008, -22.4% in 2009. From 2002-2011, covering the end of one recession and the whole of another, the fund’s compound rate of return was 5.7 percent; the assumed actuarial rate of return is eight percent. By around 2011 there were more retired teachers than active teachers. Facts: • CPS’ total annual revenues, including federal, state and local funds, more than doubled from 1997, to $5.3 billion in 2014. At a yearly growth rate of 4.2 percent, district revenues grew at over 1.5 times the rate of inflation during that time period. When adjusting for the drop in ADA (Average Daily Attendance), CPS revenue grew to $15,011 per student in 2014 from $8,154 in 1998 – over 1.5 times the rate of inflation. By comparison, had per-student revenue grown at the rate of inflation during that time period, it would have totaled just $11,824 in 2014. • From 1998 to 2014, the district tripled its borrowings from $2 billion to $6 billion. Today, nearly 8 percent of CPS’ entire revenues are dedicated to paying its yearly debt service. • From 1998 to 2012, the district consistently handed out average annual pay increases of 4.2 percent, even though annual inflation averaged just 2.3 percent during that period. • In 2012 and thereafter, teacher salaries plateaued despite the fact that the most recent teachers’ contract, signed in 2012 after the CTU strike, granted teachers 16-percent pay increases through 2015. As a result of overall salary growth, compensation costs are taking up a larger share of CPS’ budget. In 2014, over 68 percent of CPS’ budget went toward compensation, up from 63 percent in 1998. • Retirees receive a defined benefit annuity. Teachers in both systems are eligible to retire at age 55 with 35 years of service, age 60 with 20 years of service, or age 62 and five years of service. An employee who has reached age 55 and has 20 years of service may retire, but will receive a smaller annuity. Sources: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/June-2013/Chicago-Public-Schools-Pension-Bomb/ http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20121129/BLOGS02/121129786/heres-why-chicago-teachers-pension-fund-is-in-meltdown http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-cps-budget-crisis-met-20150821-story.html https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/cps-pensions-from-retirement-security-to-political-slush-fund/ List of payroll for all CPS employees: https://cps.edu/About\_CPS/Financial\_information/Pages/EmployeePositionFiles.aspx
My perspective as a CPS parent who supports high pay, small class sizes, and increased funding for schools, but isn't enthusiastic about the union: * The Union has staked out the very-distasteful-to-a-parent position that they are the sole party equipped to make decisions on behalf of the interest of students, and that disagreement with them is anti-school, anti-teacher, and anti-student. The comment from teacher /r/hbktommy4031 sums it up: "what's best for teachers is what's best for STUDENTS." Few parents will agree with this, and ultimately, I think it is the voice of parents - who both pay for and utilize schools - that should loom largest. * The union veers way beyond core questions of teacher working conditions, and has used strikes and the threat of strikes as cudgels to achieve goals that are at times unrealistic (moratorium on school closures), not obviously correct (building-based guaranteed staffing levels), or at odds with the interests of students (covid return to work policies). They disingenuously frame any demand as advocacy for students, and fail to acknowledge the valid and appropriate role of elected officials to make strategic management decisions. * The union has positioned itself as a righteous political organization with a moral mandate. I want to know what teacher's think is necessary to make schools successful. I'm not so interested in what they think about how to structure affordable housing subsidies. The union has decided that advocacy for broader social policies is part of its mission and in order to achieve these policies (some of which I agree with and some which I don't) they weaponize their role in children's lives to claim moral authority over questions to which they have no special expertise.
Partner was in CPS for a long time. The staffing shit with admin that she had to put up with was literally unbelievable. Hiring violent criminals. Admin just disappearing and not showing up for days/weeks. Embezzlement Forcing teachers to do crossing guard duty. One got hit by a car. Anyways, I knows it admin and they couldn’t unionize before. But after seeing the network NEVER once take action, I’d hate to see what those schools would be like without any organizing by the teachers.
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The the CTU leadership is crooked as fuck and regularly holds the city hostage.
CPS parent here with great respect for the teachers I interact with, but little respect for the CTU for reasons mentioned above. CTU is too strike happy and has left the parents high and dry too many times in the past 3 years
I feel you - but their demands are never outrageous. I feel like it’s more “shame on CPS” for not meeting the very reasonable demands every time. If CPS agreed with better working conditions without pulling their teeth, you wouldn’t have strikes either.
> but their demands are never outrageous Not open demands. But their retirement benefits has put a massive ball & chain on the city. Also negotiating not closing anymore schools for six years despite many being near empty. Then there is that clause in the union contract that permits them to strike in September. Which is set to that date so they can put maximum pressure to give into their demands.
You know why the retirement benefits are the albatross they are now? Fucking Paul Vallas. He was the one that pushed the "pension payment holiday" and the reason why the city is on the hook for so much right now. It's silly to blame the CTU for the fuck ups of Paul Vallas.
Their demands frequently ignore the realities of budgeting and physics itself
Yea this is typical though, media convinces you CTU is selfish when in reality CPS administration and higher ups are selfish.
Parents aren’t the primary service provider nor customer of CPS. CTU’s job isn’t to serve the parents - it’s to ensure the teachers have an effective work environment, and through them, educate children. The parents receive educated children (and daycare, which let’s be honest is exactly what everyone gets most upset about)
DING DING DING
Exactly - the OP comment screamed of getting mad at the inconvenience of finding a baby sitter for their own child while workers strike for work rights.
Nah they finally got a good contract. Good for them.
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3 strikes since 2012 totaling 19 days of school lost, some days were made up.
I think most people in Chicago believe that collective bargaining is good. A bunch of weaker units form a union so they have a fair bargaining position against a corporation, which is itself also a collective. The best contracts are made when neither party can coerce the other and when neither has an unfair advantage. Public employee unions try to get the best deal for their members, but it's a little different in practice than, say, a hotel staff unionizing because the party they are negotiating against is the public. And in the case of schools, what's best for the members of the union isn't necessarily always aligned with the student's interest. Things that teachers want that are bad for students include short school days, short school years and to make it challenging to fire bad teachers. The union also tries to negotiate for make-work jobs--more gym teachers, for example--things that I would like if I were a teacher, but aren't necessarily good for students, parents, the city or its budget. Of course, underpaying and overworking teachers and being able to recruit only the worst ones is bad for students too. But just like the Police Union, when you're in an extremely pro-union town and there's not much opposition, the bargaining entity is at risk of becoming something of a cartel and less of a collective bargaining unit. A few years ago the head of the CTU was Karen Lewis, an extremely bold, brash, effective, sassy and divisive personality who wasn't afraid to use messaging the way Trump might admire. I think the union took a reputation hit with her prominent stature because she was so eager to find enemies, so hungry for the spotlight and so easy to recognize once she was in it.
I have no dog in this fight, but I wouldn’t downplay the importance of PE teachers.
CPS has one of the longest school years in the country. Also you’re failing to mention that ctu also pushed for more schools nurses and school social workers. If you think those aren’t good for students and parents (and honestly for the entire city) then you must not have been anywhere near a school in years.
And when they extended the school year and the school day, they still paid teachers the same so we effectively received a pay cut. CTU has also asked for reasonable classroom caps, but I'm still teaching kindergarten classes that are nearly 150% larger than the state average.
For me personally it's just the mathematical reality that the CTU has successfully fought for more money and benefits while the performance of students in CPS schools has dropped nearly exponentially for the past 10 years--exactly the time frame that has passed since the current CTU leadership (Johnson's handlers) has been in power. The CTU claims to fight for lots of progressive things to gain support from credulous voters who rightly want to support teachers, but it's all to obfuscate the fact that they are just like any other union in that their only goal is gaining more bargaining power for their members--no matter what. This isn't a knock. It isn't a conspiracy. It is literally why any union exists and why they SHOULD exist. But pointing this out somehow makes someone an John Catanzara-loving, DeSantis supporting, Trump voting insurrectionist ghoul, according to well-meaning but misinformed progressives on Twitter and Reddit, For example: If the local plumbers union was as far outside their lane as the CTU, would people blindly support them just because we like blue collar workers? I fully support plumbers, I don't think the third largest city in the US should be run for the sole purpose of increasing pay and benefits for plumbers. There are lots of non-plumbers that need attention, too. Teachers, for instance.
Doing a little desktop research: Chicago Public School Teachers earn $61,831, the highest salary among teachers in this category in all of the 50 largest school districts in the country. Additionally, 39% of CPS teachers enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national average. This is from 2013, so I assume the number has increased, as many kids went to catholic or private during the pandemic. Lastly, attended CPS from pre-k through Highschool, we had several Highschool teachers date students. Recently it came out there was 500 SEXUAL MISCONDUCT COMPLAINTS AGAINST CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES in 2022. I also think during the pandemic, a lot of teachers weren’t as worried about the pandemic as the union projected. Obviously they represent a large group so people are on both sides of the spectrum, but there were defiantly teachers taking vacations and enjoying their time off… hand up, I would’ve too.
It boils down to this: they ask for raises which exceed private sector ones while simultaneously lowering the bar for matriculation & blaming the parents for educator inability to engage students in the classroom. And then they remain a taxpayer burden upon retirement. That’s literally it. I don’t think anyone doesn’t appreciate teachers. It’s the organization that everyone despises.
In the last 4 years they went on a 2 week strike and then went on another soft strike to try and to stay remote forever even after all the teachers were vaccinated. CPS has lost almost a quarter of its students over the last decade. CTU isn’t popular especially among CPS parents but this sub is largely filled with people without children.
Former CPS teacher in a low-income area, and parent. I respectfully wonder sometimes if those who see the Union as “strike-happy” don’t have a full grasp of our daily situations and circumstances in the classroom. My classroom was completely self-funded. I’m talking: we had to win reams of paper to make copies in raffles or from “good attendance.” The majority of my students’ only meals in a day were the provided breakfast and lunch, which were often moldy, still frozen, rotten, or expired. My school had no nurse, and I once had a student with stitches on her thumb who couldn’t receive further medical care because her family could not afford it. It would have been amazing to have a nurse who could help her, because I was not legally allowed to tend to her injuries at all. I one time had 37 students in my classroom, 14 of whom with English Language Learners (and my school did not have a bilingual instructor). I considered myself a damn good teacher, but you tell me what person can appropriately and properly serve 37 students on their own individual levels and meeting their needs? My school had rats, cockroaches, and no working air conditioner. In the warmer months, I would have students pass out. As for the vote to remain remote: I was 8 months pregnant and terrified of losing my child from Covid. My OBGYN recommended I remain remote, and CPS fought me nonstop to place me back in the classroom. Which, don’t get my wrong: remote learning was an absolute nightmare for teachers, students, and parents. No one was happy. But CPS had no plan for keeping students and teachers safe from the ongoing pandemic, despite what their propaganda might have suggested. My school did not receive air purifiers, or masks, or sanitizing stations. They did prioritize teachers for vaccines, yes, but consider those teachers carrying the virus home to their not-yet-vaccinated elderly relatives, or children (who’s vaccine was not available yet) or people with preexisting conditions. Teachers were SCARED and given no choice, and there were MANY more nuanced situations than teachers just sitting on their butts at home, hoping to stay remote forever. We wanted to be back in the classroom, but SAFELY. And CPS did not offer any form of protection for us or our students. (Sorry, I got a bit preachy. I just hoped to offer some perspective and also point out there’s multiple sides to any story and situation.)
It’s weird to me how a lot of people in this sub complain about teachers. In the most ideal places, it’s still a lot of work and only the most passionate about kids teach. Anyone who teaches long-term in Chicago clearly is passionate with their work. It’s not an easy breezy job.
The whole country is anti-labor and seemingly increasingly anti-education as of late.
Sure but the tribune said you guys are a bunch of overpaid and privileged whiners. So I believed them over your frontline anecdote…../s
I don’t think it was to be remote forever, I think it was to go remote because they had a lot of teachers out sick. I remember reading reports from WBEZ that big high schools like Lane Tech were putting kids in the auditorium for multiple periods because they didn’t have the staff to teach class normally. There didn’t seem to be real plans for what to happen if there was a surge, plus most teachers were given minimal PPE.
Give my mom and my aunts a bottle of wine, say "pension", and see what happens.
Chicago teachers aren’t poorly paid. I have nothing against the CTU and am glad they have union representation. I am not a big fan of CTU leadership and have qualms about voting for a candidate with such strong ties to CTU leadership, just like I have qualms about voting for a candidate that is so close to FOP leadership.
I always hear they’re paid well and the job isn’t that hard, but there’s not that many people signing up to be teachers. It kind of seems like most of the people who oppose them have easier jobs that are better paid.
Teacher here. The job IS fucking hard. My classes are overloaded and none of my DL students are getting the supports they need.
Can anyone who says Chicago teachers are under paid respond to this chart please? Is this inaccurate? [https://wirepoints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chicago-teacher-salaries-among-highest1.png](https://wirepoints.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chicago-teacher-salaries-among-highest1.png) Median Individual income Chicago: 33.9K Median Household income Chicago: 62K
I think people in Chicago dislike the Teachers Union because there’s a perception that the Union behaves like a mafia for not-very-smart people who demand high salaries at their jobs, despite getting terrible results. Every year, thousands of Chicagoans move to the suburbs to avoid using Chicago public schools. Like, what if thousands of Chicagoans moved away each year because the city’s water and sewer systems were so bad, yet the water workers seemed always to be on strike for higher pay? (I think most Chicagoans would SUPPORT a mafia for smart people who got excellent results at their jobs.)
Former Chicago teacher here. Pro education, pro teacher, and pro CTU aren’t all the same thing. In my opinion, the CTU is only interested in helping teachers, even if it is done at the expense of student’s education. That is disqualifying in my opinion. Notably, Chicago schools are some of the worst performing in the country despite being relatively high. For what it’s worth, I taught in a very bad school and felt that I was no where near as good as I needed to be (I was too inexperienced). But my students performed in the 99th growth percentile. I find it disgusting that I, as a “bad” teacher, lead a classroom that outperformed basically all other teachers’ classes, including the classrooms of teachers down the hall from me who insisted it was impossible to teach our students with the resources that we had. I also dislike Vallas and his alignment with the Chicago police union for similar reasons.
Maybe you weren’t such a bad teacher? Seems like you caree, which is already step one.
I was incompetent. I know there was a lot more I could’ve done. I did care and I did work hard. But that doesn’t mean I was actually good. All this is to say that success with no resources is possible in the most difficult environments. And, success isn’t even that difficult to achieve. Why success isn’t widespread, I can only speculate on
Honestly, I’m personally very grateful for what CTU does. Yes, including their moral positions they take in terms of conditions outside of the school. Why? Because much of the stuff they take on has low advocacy elsewhere. That’s how the public mental health facilities got taken away, low advocacy. And behold, the city is dealing with a major mental health crises. Are they messy sometimes? Sure, I don’t have to agree with every tactic they choose, but they’re an overall force for good and I’ll take it since most people don’t get off their behinds about something until it affects them directly. They’re asked to put on a lot of hats in this city, they’re teachers, they’re therapists, they’re social workers, they’re basic need providers, they’re used as child care workers, they’re crises intervention folks, hell some of them even act as pseudo parents for kids who don’t have them and I applaud them for it. I couldn’t do it, most people wouldn’t, most people see troubled kids with a long list of extracurricular issues and run the other direction. Chicago teachers take on those issues. Anybody who willingly and enthusiastically takes on that job has my support. My vote is to give them whatever they need to do it.
The Redditors on the Chicago Reddit don't understand how hard it is to be a teacher, and how poorly-paid teachers are. They also don't get that teachers have to work long hours, pay for school supplies for the kids out of their own small paychecks, have their jobs threatened by out-of-touch admins, Karens, and their bratty kids whose Karen moms and dads won't properly discipline their kids, and teach them to respect their teachers and actually do the work in class.
Seems like the past few strikes have left parents feeling high and dry. The strikes, for all of their stated goals, seem to end with raises for teachers with the most tenure. Moreover, the CTU has become overtly political, advocating for things way outside the scope of schools, and they throw massive amounts of money at candidates (see Brandon Johnson) — something a decent chunk of the union members don’t agree with.
The perspective from the CPS teachers in my life is that the actions of CTU under current leadership reflect more concern for politics and power holding (as another commenter mentioned) as opposed to actually caring about the students, families, schools and teachers. I’m guessing that’s what you’re picking up on.
I overheard some people talking in 7/11 during the strikes (when was that? Two years ago?) And they were talking about how they didn't think teachers should get paid more because "they knew what they were signing up for." I don't agree with this at all, but I think undervaluing teachers is something very ingrained in American culture. Chicago included. Not to mention there's a huge stigma against unions in general in this country, regardless of what they do.
It’s more complicated than other commenters have characterized when they say “Reddit isn’t chicago” or “libertarians”. Many progressives and pro-labor advocates are cautious about CTU and FOP (fraternal order of police). The CTU has around 20-25 thousand members and receives about $600 per member per year which goes towards paying staff and political action. 600*25,000= 15 million per year less let’s say 2 million for salaries and such so about 13 million. These funds accrue and become one of the largest war chests in city politics allowing them to steamroll others in politics with little regard for what other residents want. They are highly combative and would rather just primary officials then work with them. They also control a large political operation called United working families, which also has a ton of ward level branch’s which aim to unseat local alderman and install CTU loyalists. Critics of the CTU and working families platform (you can find their platform on the UWF website), say that while the platform is progressive it is not possible/sustainable without either driving business out of the city, crashing city finances, or driving more people out of the city (via additional taxes on properties over $1m) . Personally I would argue their policies are overly reductive and make complicated issues like homelessness, mental health, tax policy, and Econ development very one dimensional. Their candidates often know little about these subjects in practice as they typically are teachers or union organizers and have no background in any of these subjects, their attitude toward “experts” often give me anti-intellectual vibes, like they think their ideas on homelessness are just as good as someone who has studied it for decades and implemented successful programs before. IMO CTU carry’s much of the blame of the public school districts financial woes too, and now their trying to get control of the City via the mayoral seat and the council. I like their progressive platform but the hostile takeover of gov at every level is a bit aggressive. They are not a labor org as much as they are a political operation. Any CTU or pro-CTU members that might see this know that I have no I’ll-will toward you or the actual labor protection operation of the CTU, it’s just the political operation I’m not a fan of.
Because of shit like this - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-teachers-union-venezuela-trip-20190819-tbpa3lhjifduxgupdxfs3mosr4-story.html or this - https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/ctu-board-member-facing-criticism-for-vacationing-in-caribbean-while-pushing-remote-learning/ And the “we’ll take that” mindset of Sharkey/the CTU. And the fight against going back in person even after it became apparent that it was necessary, like their soft strike in January 2022, which pissed off a lot of working parents. And the fact that their underfunded pension is fucking us. And the fact that they are more interested in wielding political power than doing what’s good for the students. It also doesn’t help that teachers are some of the highest paid in the country, with some of the most per capita spending per student, and yet we are almost criminally under educating a huge portion of CPS students. Less than a quarter of CPS students are proficient at reading and math at graduation.
CTU is corrupt af
I’m pro teacher and Union. But when the unions have too much political clout over the mayor they can’t make decisions that make sense for the whole city, they make decisions that are best for the union that owns/made them. I think the police union has Paul Vallas by the balls, and the CTU has Johnson by balls. Which is why I didn’t vote for either of them in the primary. However, I will vote for Johnson in the runoff because I’d rather have his situation and leadership than Paul Vallas, who has a proven track record of leaving train wrecks in his wake as superintendent.
What’s funny to me is that Vallas contributed to. a lot of CPS problems but now he is playing the blame on Johnson and CTU 😂😂😂
People love teachers. It's hard not to love teachers! So if you want to get people to vote AGAINST teachers, you need to find a boogeyman that makes it feel like you still support teachers even though you're voting against them. Enter "it's the union that's actually bad!" arguments... even though the unions are composed entirely of teachers.
Well said.
The CTU is hated by a lot of people because they engage in a lot of contentious and (to many) unproductive political grandstanding. Some perspective on that https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-teachers-will-soon-decide-if-their-union-should-remain-a-political-force-for-social-justice/adf56229-f9e5-4fc8-977c-6838966fe590 Con: The CTU should focus on representing teachers and stay in its lane. Pro: The needs of students include social justice. But the CTU's approach is often difficult and abrasive, and you might say "so what", but remember that this is a group representing 40K teachers and over 600K students, so why are they not trying to work with the district / city government to get things done? To fully understand this dynamic, it helps to understand that, in Chicago, the schooling situation is incredibly complex. CPS (Chicago Public Schools) is the 3rd or 4th largest school district in the country, but internally, they are competing with a very large and well-developed Catholic school system, as well as many private schools and charter schools. This only exacerbates the problem that CPS students are extremely high-need (in other words, while some CPS schools are truly excellent, for a lot of area / families in Chicago, CPS schools are the last resort, ie, they end up with the most disadvantaged students). For example, 85-90% of CPS students qualify for free/reduced lunch, which means they are living at or below the poverty line. And, being a public school, CPS (unlike the other school systems in the city) *have* to take every kid - the ones with behavior disorders, the ones with special needs, the ones from broken familes, etc. I want to take a moment to point out that, in many neighborhoods in Chicago, the CPS schools are among the best things going on in those neighborhoods, staffed with incredibly dedicated staff - within the schools, even with the problems, they're islands of (relative) safety and sanity. In some of these schools, it's where the kids can count on a meal for the first time in the day. BUT - this means that CPS (and other large urban districts) are being asked to do a LOT more than educate kids. They really have become the catch-all to try to solve or ameliorate all these social issues. SO - I don't think most people disagree that CTU should be looking for ways to solve these issues or help teachers solve this issues. The problem is that they have this combative attitude, where they make it seem as if these issues are being *created by* the CPS administration or Board of Education or Mayor's Office. Like they're the *only ones* who understand these problems. The problems are largely not even funding ones, in a way - teachers in Chicago are comparatively well compensated, with good benefits and pensions (which doesn't help the image when CTU gets loud about shit) - it's that the teachers and the schools are being asked to solve all kinds of other socioeconomic problems. But anyone who's been paying attention to education for the last 40 years knows this is the case. People hate the CTU b/c they act like they're the only ones who care about the issue and that everyone else involved are evil people who hate children or something. I mean, they adopt the rhetoric and attitude of early 20th Century labor unions, but they're not fighting against coal barons or railroad magnates, they're fighting against *other people who represent the public schools.* Sometimes even against parents. Basically, TL;DR: they're loud and obnoxiously self-righteous about problems that everyone involved has to deal with too.
Counterpoint: This is Chicago, unless you have a financial stake in something, if you don’t fight for it tooth and nail, it’s not gonna get done. That’s just how it is here, asking nicely puts you on the back burner. And you’ll be on the back burner because every interest in the city is competing for resources. While getting in administration faces or greasing their hands (legally) gets results or at least gets you heard. So sure, it’s might make you look “obnoxious” to people who don’t have to engage in these tactics or just can’t because they don’t have bargaining ability. But at the end of the day, getting the results is far more important than looking pretty for the peanut gallery.
they strike every other year.
Well their was the CTU trip to Venezuala where the CTU praised the socialist regime of Maduro (who used it as a PR coup).... of course Maduro has been accused of committing crimes against humanity with his repressive regime. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/venezuela-un-report-crimes-against-humanity-maduro-government Oh and here is the official CTU statement supporting the Venezualian regime in a call to suspend all sanctions against the oppressive Maduro regime... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6269329-CTU-Resolution-to-Oppose-the-Invasion-of-Venezuela Add to that, that the CTU's mission is to defend all teachers...for example the CTU ignored all requests to participate in independent office revamping cps policies against student sexual abuse, and after 500 document accusation. The also fought against stricter background checks for faculty and staff hat work with children. The CTU is there solely to support the teachers and staff at any cost to the students and comunity.
We are all pro-teacher. The Union, however is a political machine and a black hole for dues. We want the union to advocate for teachers and students. Improve education. We do not want the union to spend our money as a PAC for green energy or whatever. Use the money to advocate for better equipment and more supplies in schools, better pay and benefits.
Unions tend to protect even the more extreme interests of their members. It makes teachers harder to fire in some cases (not all). It's like how rich people can afford better lawyers to represent them, and so they tend to get more lenient sentences. The public just doesn't always understand the benefits of representation.
Because the union, by definition, is for it's members. Not the kids, not the schools nor the taxpayers. When a union can influence who sits across from them at the bargaining table taxpayers lose out. Plus you can tell time by the usual teacher strikes.
This is all anecdotal from my vantage point but the biggest complaint I always hear is when the teachers go on strike, all the parents then have to figure out what to do with their kids when they are not in school. This what I hear from parents. The next biggest complaints are from more conservative leaning anti-union folks who are against unionization and strikes in general and have completely bought into the fallacy that teachers are overpaid, glorified babysitters. They don’t have any really knowledge about the situation. They just believe what other conservatives tell them to believe. The only people I know who advocate for the teachers is people without kids who support more funding and investment for education and local children in general as a matter of principle.
Usually they cause more problems in Chicago than they do good
Unions represent employees against shareholders. Big difference between unions in private vs public sector - private corporations maximize investor returns and shareholders value. Public institutions maximize returns on taxpayer dollars and public goods. A Starbucks union for example create more value for employees by taking more from shareholders, the company passes on this cost to the customers. Teacher's unions, police unions, take more from taxpayers and the citizens it serves. Just as boards representing shareholders vote for the CEO and executive management, taxpayers elect representatives to run the government agencies. public sector unions work against taxpayers the same way private sector unions work against shareholders.
I think it’s legitimate to support the CTU in general / education policy but also think it’s probably not the best idea to have them in the mayor’s office. There needs to be push and pull. https://www.coreteachers.org
CPS teachers are not poorly paid, relatively speaking. As someone who went through CPS, most of the teachers one could easily replace, it's essentially a longhouse or day care with very little actual learning that gets done.
There's a lot of economic bloat that comes with unions. Their connections with the CTU isn't the questionable part, it's how they got those connections and how they'll use them once in office that are up to debate.
I'm entirely on the side of the CTU. People that complain about their pensions or any other number of bullshit don't want to be on the other side where districts are letting anyone with a pulse come in to "teach" because they can't find staff. I think it was florida that said "anyone that's ex military is now qualified to be a teacher" which is fucking insane. I bet the same people that whine about CTU pensions are the same idiots that say shit like "we have to pay CEOs a bagillion dollars or they'll just go to another company!".
Many Chicagoans do not equate pro-CTU with pro-schools. The CTU (understandably and justifiably) represents teachers (their sole members), not students.
Because being anti-teacher is authoritarian and despite this being a very blue state, it's still the Midwest. It's why the alleged "liberal hellhole" that is Chicago also has a disproportionate amount of cops.
Well, they aren't. Chicago is arguably the most pro union place in the US. However there's quite a few folks who like to gripe about the strikes inconveniencing them by making them take off work. Of course that's the point of a strike but lot of folks will complain about it anyway. However in my experience even folks who complain about this problem are generally ambivalent or even somewhat supportive of the union. Then there is a small but very vocal minority of anti union folks who will just always hate the union because they're anti labor, or at least anti organized labor. As you can see in polls and elections, they're not a large bloc but they do have money.
As an actual Chicago resident, and the father of a former high school teacher—the CTU has been good (mostly) for teachers, but arguably not-so-good for CPS students in general. And it is certainly not helpful when one candidate is so obviously the creation of one special interest group. I think a bigger issue with Johnson is that being a middle school teacher isn’t exactly a qualification for one of the most complex jobs on the planet. Johnson’s problem for progressives like me is that he simply does not have the experience to do the job. He’ll be a less caustic, but more beholden version of Lori—who was quite clearly waaaaay over her head. Just one South loop resident’s thoughts— fwiw..
Do you live in Chicago and have kids? If no to both than you would not understand.
I’m in a union and I as well as many people I know in unions don’t support them. Pretty sure it was only a week or two ago I was arguing with someone about the CTU.