It’s déjà vu all over again. In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) struck for nearly two weeks and won pay raises. But the budget crunch that prompted the 2012 strike hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s gotten worse. Therefore, to get their way, the CTU’s 27,000 members have again voted to authorize another strike.
The strike threat is just another indicator of the deep well of fiscal problems into which the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois have sunk.
“The problem is that the [Chicago Teachers Union's] success over the years has made Chicago schools more expensive and less effective... Teacher pension costs now consume nearly half of the school system’s state funding.”
Part of the blame for the current morass rests with the CTU. The union’s power at the bargaining table and in the political process has rendered Chicago schools organizationally ill-equipped to educate children. But it has made the schools adept at serving the needs of adults.
It’s important to recognize that the CTU does not exist to represent the interests of Chicago’s school children, their parents, or the taxpayers who underwrite public education. Rather, the CTU’s mission is to increase teachers’ salaries, benefits, and job security, as well as secure work rules that shield them from management. That’s what advancing teachers’ interests means when the chips are down. So one should ignore CTU President Karen Lewis’ rhetoric that what’s good for teachers is good for kids.
The problem is that the CTU’s success over the years has made Chicago schools more expensive and less effective. In lifetime earnings, Chicago teachers are the best compensated among the 10 largest school districts in the country, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality. Teacher pension costs now consume nearly half of the school system’s state funding. Ironically, the gold-plated benefits that the CTU fought for are now coming back to haunt it.
Furthermore, the CTU, like teacher unions elsewhere, has helped to create a system where poor-performing teachers are nearly impossible to fire; where nearly all teachers are rated satisfactory ever year; and where compensation is totally disconnected from performance.
Given those realities, what organization could be expected to perform well? No wonder one out of three children don’t graduate from Chicago schools.
A strike authorization vote is the CTU’s way of putting pressure on Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner. The CTU hopes that either the mayor or the governor will somehow fill a $480 million budget gap to allow the school district to accede to more of its demands.
Despite the dismal budget picture and the fact that Chicago just enacted a huge property tax increase, the union’s demands are expansive. It wants Chicago schools to hire over 1,000 new school employees (nurses, psychologists, assistants, and so on), provide a 3 percent salary increase for teachers and pay them for snow days. All these things would cost $1 billion. Of course, more new employees mean more dues-paying union members and better pay for teachers, regardless if kids are learning anything in school.
Huge deficits are the new normal in the Chicago school system. Part of the problem is a dispute between Mayor Emanuel and Governor Rauner over who is really responsible for paying for Chicago teacher pensions. The mayor says the state and the governor says the city. Given that the state has been operating without a budget for months because the state legislature and the governor have been unable to pass one, a state bailout is unlikely.
Ultimately, CPS is the mayor’s problem. The teachers’ contract expired in June. Since then the CTU has been negotiating, on-and-off, a contract with the Chicago School Board, whose members are appointed by the mayor.
In light of these deep-seated problems, the mayor and the governor should push back against the CTU. The basic question both have asked is whether it’s worth continuing to throw good money after bad—without at least getting some reforms that would improve school performance in return. This question is even more pressing when Illinois’ pervasive promises of the past are crowding out kids’ futures. It’s time for some tough answers.
This piece originally appeared in Chicago Sun-Times
This piece originally appeared in Chicago Sun-Times