They’ve been fighting the mayor since the nineties. Now they have a chance to put one of their own into office.
Over the past few decades, the Chicago Teachers Union has become a powerful force within city politics, growing a vast network of supporters and developing relationships with Illinois lawmakers. It’s used that power to wage the same fight with nearly every Chicago mayor since the 1990s: give teachers more control over their classrooms and their contracts.
Now one of its own, CTU staff organizer and former Chicago Public Schools teacher Brandon Johnson, is running for mayor—and he’ll be facing off in the runoff election Tuesday against Paul Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools. CTU has contributed over $1 million to Johnson’s campaign, and its role in city politics has been thrust into the spotlight as a result of the race.
The stakes of this runoff are high for CTU because the next mayor of Chicago will play a big role as the union enters on a new chapter: Beginning 2024, CTU will be allowed to collectively bargain over issues like school staffing levels, class sizes, layoffs, length of the school year and health and safety standards for the first time. They’ll also phase into having an elected school board, instead of a mayor-appointed one. These changes came after Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law handing teachers rights that the union had been asking for for the last 25 years.
If Johnson wins Tuesday’s election, CTU will have an ally in the mayor’s office when it starts to negotiate its contract and influence CPS. But if Vallas wins, they’re facing a former CPS executive that championed charter schools, expanded standardized testing, diverted funds away from teacher’s pension funds, and meted out harsh punishments for under-performing schools.
Each candidate has a very different proposal for CPS if they win the race. Vallas, who became CPS’s first mayor-appointed CEO in 1995, wants to bring back more standardized testing, give more power to principals and local leaders, and make it easier for charter schools to open. ”We should be running districts of schools, not school districts,” Vallas said during a March debate with Johnson. “I really believe in radical decentralization.”
On the flip side, Johnson wants to end the model of per-pupil funding in favor of guaranteeing schools a baseline of resources that includes librarians and social workers. Johnson believes this approach would ensure schools have the necessary staffing, regardless of student enrollment, and would work toward balancing out resource inequities between schools across Chicago. “We need to overhaul the CPS funding formula so that we’re fully funding every single public school,” said Johnson during the debate. “That’s the norm, that’s the baseline. Our people deserve that.”
CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said the union supports Johnson because he brings a much-needed voice for CPS to city hall. “A middle school teacher is at the top and he is speaking life into the city and saying you can be safe, have a well paying job, and your kids can go to well resourced schools,” she told me in an interview. “He’s building a multi-generational and multi-racial movement that provides everyone a seat at the table. That’s the only thing the residents of this city desire.”
The race has certainly tightened with Vallas holding a five-point lead over Johnson—-when just weeks ago during the first round of the mayoral election, Vallas held a 12 percent lead over Johnson.
