CTU president not ruling out strike, says CPS’ hypothetical closure list ‘triggers a trauma’

CHICAGO — The powerful president of the Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday wouldn’t rule out a strike as contract negotiations with the district continue and amid efforts by the mayor and his allies to oust schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

“We shouldn’t have to go on strike,” union president Stacy Davis Gates told WGN during a sit-down interview. “We’ve been right every single time we’ve gone on strike, so there should be some equity and respect for our expertise.”

Talks between the district Martinez leads and teachers remain sluggish. The district is offering raises of 4 to 5 percent over the next four years, but CTU wants more, including the filling of 1,200 teacher vacancies, smaller class sizes, and increased assistance for bilingual students. To fund the teachers’ demands, Davis Gates wants Martinez to turn to Springfield and ask that they boost funding for all Illinois schools.

She said CPS ran figures and crafted a list of schools that could be closed. The union, she said, obtained an encrypted document crafted by CPS’ Office of Innovation and Incubation that showed how much cash closures could save the strapped district.

“I can’t tell you who ordered it, I just know that it exists, and I know that it triggers a trauma, a profound trauma and memory in this city that no one ever wants to revisit again,” Davis Gates said, referring to the 50 school closings the city saw in 2013 under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “There’s another document that we’ve seen that basically says that if we keep status quo as it is now and provide raises to teachers, clinicians, paraprofessionals at mid-year, they would have thousands of layoffs.”

“I think Pedro has to tell us how he right now plans to pay for school next year,” she added.

Martinez has denied that efforts are underway to close schools and has asked the Chicago Board of Education to pass a non-binding resolution promising as much until 2027.

Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday stressed that he and legislative leaders have sent as much money to the district as possible.

“I’d like to put more money into our education system,” Pritzker said Wednesday. “I think we all have acknowledged just by virtue of our following the evidence-based funding model, that we are not funding properly K-12 education in the state of Illinois, and so now the question is where do you find the dollars to do that?”

Martinez balanced CPS’s $9.9 billion budget without including a pension payment for non-teaching school employees. To make the pension payment and fund CTU demands, Mayor Brandon Johnson appealed to Martinez to take out a high-interest short-term loan. Martinez has fought the move.

The CEO penned an op-ed published in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune in which he rebuffed Johnson’s call to resign . The school board, all appointees of the mayor, is scheduled to convene Thursday. Sources confirmed to WGN earlier this week that Johnson has the votes needed to oust the CEO. The union’s governing body over the weekend issued a unanimous vote of no confidence in him.

Martinez has rallied more than 20 members of City Council and former CPS CEOs to support him.

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