The Chicago Teachers Union sounds the death knell for the success and growth of any school.
This is the case in Chicago Public Schools, where leadership of the CTU Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) brought on declining student skills, declining enrollment and soaring costs, according to a study by the Illinois Policy Institute.
And this is now the case for the Acero Schools charter network, where the administration recently announcement it closes seven of its 15 schools.
These closures are not an aberration; they are the product of the CTU’s anti-charter strategy that aims to eliminate charter schools that they never wanted to exist in the first place. The plan: unionize charter school employees, weaken them, then absorb them into the district’s public schools. The result: Chicago families are suffering.
In 2018, the same year, Acero teachers voted to unionize and merge with CTU — former CTU President Jesse Sharkey explicitly admitted his motivation to “undermine further charter expansion,” such as unionizing and merging charter schools into the CTU.
Later that year, the CTU employed its favored tactic by leading Acero teachers on strike, marking the First of all charter school strike in the country, which led to the cancellation of classes for the 7,000 students in the network’s 15 schools.
Now that seven Acero schools are fencecurrent CTU president Stacy Davis Gates says she wants to save them by absorbent them in CPS.
It’s game, set, match – or unionization, closure, absorption – for the CTU.
Among other things, Acero administrators cite declining enrollment and significant operating costs — two of many negative effects CTU has also had on CPS. “Unlike CPS, Acero schools cannot operate with a budget deficit; we legally have to balance our budget,” his statement reads:.
But this is not a simple budgetary question. The CTU deliberately undermined the very schools it unionized.
The CTU has directly attacked charter schools in its last two teacher contracts with CPS, demanding a moratorium on their growth. A cover letter negotiated under Sharkey in his recently expired contract mandated a “zero net increase” in the number of charter schools over the life of the four-year contract and limited enrollment to 101% of those schools’ capacity in 2019-20.
In other words, the CTU deliberately prevented the growth of new charter schools and the enrollment of students in existing ones. It is requests for the new contract, continue this assault, limiting the number of students enrolled in charters between now and the 2027-28 school year to the same capacity as those enrolled in the 2023-24 school year.
The union also played a key role in the CPS’s decision to limit length of charter school contracts to just three years, as opposed to the 10-year maximum allowed under state law. The reduced duration of the contract allows Stronger for charters to plan or invest in schools. The situation is also less attractive to staff or prospective students, who realize their school might no longer exist in just a few years.
The CTU’s goal of undermining charters also manifested itself at the Illinois statehouse, affecting not only Chicagoans but students and families across the state. During the six legislative sessions from 2011 to 2022, the union puts pressure on lawmakers on at least 50 bills related to charter schools and educational choice, according to an analysis by the Illinois Policy Institute.
For example, the union opposed at least three bills removing limits on the total number of charter schools that can operate statewide or in Chicago.
Of course, the CTU’s fight against educational options is not limited to charters. The union also advocated for the elimination of the Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program, declaring that it must end “for good”. When state lawmakers authorized the program to end, at least 15,000 children found themselves stranded without scholarships. At least four private schools in Illinois farm after Invest in Kids expires.
Unlike the CTU, the people of Illinois did not want the scholarship program to end. A survey of 800 voters conducted by Echelon Insights for the Illinois Policy Institute found that respondents supported the program 3 to 1, with at least 60 percent support from voters regardless of political party.
It’s no wonder Chicago parents want options, whether they’re offered through charter schools or private schools. Since CORE took over CTU leadership in 2010, CPS enrollment plummeted and student skills plummeted. Only about 1 in 4 students can read at school level and, for mathematics, it is even less.
Families chose Acero charter schools because these schools were a better fit for their children. If CTU has its way completely, these students will be sent back to a school system that doesn’t work, possibly condemning families to the city’s lowest-performing schools.
Amid the CTU’s abysmal record at CPS and its fiery fight to undermine charter schools, it’s unclear why anyone thought it was a good idea to unionize charter schools under the banner of the CTU. But it happened, and now CTU’s own members in the closing schools are suffering the consequences of CTU’s years-long strategy. Acero students at these seven schools are losing the teachers and environments they know. Parents are once again losing their options.
Unfortunately, the families affected by the Acero closures are nothing more than strategic collateral damage to the CTU in its anti-charter, anti-parent strategy.
Mailee Smith is senior director of labor policy and attorney at the Illinois Policy Institute.
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