It’s the CTU leaders whose strikes, constant disruptions, COVID driven shutdown, abandonment of standards, and efforts to end public school choice that are responsible for school closings and the enrollment decline that will force many more schools to close.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is being assailed by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) for reportedly developing a list of at least 100 schools that could be closed and/or consolidated due to low utilization rates. The CTU wants Martinez’s head and CORE leaders are pouncing on the issue despite Martinez repeatedly denying that he has any such plan to close schools. The bickering and hostility are part of the struggle between Martinez and the CTU’s ally Mayor Brandon Johnson -- who reportedly has asked for Martinez’s resignation.
Ever since Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 near empty schools in 2013, the CTU has seized on the closures as rallying cry to a means to deflect away from their role in our failing schools or to demonize its opponents. The fact is, the CTU bears sole responsibility for the closing of schools as well as the creation of a climate that has seen an unprecedented exodus of black families with school-age children from Chicago. Uncomfortable truths that the CTU would prefer to keep hidden from the public, with this in mind, it will be helpful to explain what role the CTU played in the school closures.
The CTU was responsible for the school closings for which it blames former Mayor Rahm Emanuel
Most of the 50 schools Rahm Emanuel closed would not be empty if CTU leadership had not forced the former mayor to block public charter schools from inhabiting those campuses. This, even though public charters were willing to pay rent and enroll the few community students who had attended the schools when they were closed. One hundred twenty-six public charter schools in the Chicago Public Schools district were effectively barred from renting any of the closed schools.
Today, charter schools educate more than 54,000 children in the CPS district. In CPS, one in four high school students and one in 10 elementary students attend public, non-profit charter schools. More than 98 percent of the students enrolled are students of color and 86 percent receive free or reduced cost lunch. Severely limiting these pupils’ ability to access taxpayer-funded public buildings was a blatant form of discrimination. Furthermore, despite the considerable share of the school district students registered in charters, less than three percent of the school district’s capital spending went to charters.
The CTU blocked the opening of alternative schools created to reclaim dropouts
Aside from doing battle against charters, the CTU also has made it impossible to expand public charter schools to include state authorized “alternative schools,” such as university-run schools for dropouts which could have restored closed or under enrolled schools to productive use. The CTU similarly opposed legislation which would have authorized the state to award charters to such alternative public schools.
According to the University of Illinois-Chicago Great Cities Institute, Chicago had an at-risk population of over 46,000 young adults ages 16-24 who were out of school and were currently unemployed in 2021. Though the reasons for unemployment are manifold, it is fair to say the CTU's intransigence on alternative schools, created to recoup dropouts and help them earn a GED or marketable skill for a career, contributed to this jobless rate.
The union’s CORE leadership has frequently shut and threatened to shut down schools
The union’s behavior during COVID was part of its claimed “new gospel” of strike power that spread across the country after CTU’s 2012 strike. That gospel was developed and implemented by the militant Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, CORE, which rose to power in 2010. Since then, the CTU has carried out two strikes, and in defiance of the law, walked out on students three times.
Two years ago, CORE leaders authorized a walk-out on students over COVID-19 protocols, leaving parents just hours to scramble for a back-up plan after the union decided in the dark of night not to show up for in-person classes the following morning.
The CORE leadership was responsible for the longest school shut down in history
Criticizing Emanuel over the closing of near-empty schools is particularly hypocritical given the catastrophic consequences of closing school campuses after COVID-19 struck. CTU leadership was the force behind Chicago’s indefensible, catastrophically long shutdown of its schools, ostensibly because of COVID-19. The CTU’s last shutdown extended well into a period after guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared in-person learning was safe and after local parochial or private schools had resumed in-person learning, demonstrating there was little risk.
School closings had an adverse effect on student academic performance as state test scores, already abysmal pre-pandemic, plummeted. While reading scores have recovered, math scores have yet to recover. Last year, just 31 percent of all elementary school students on the 2024 state test met or exceeded proficiency in reading, while math proficiency was 19 percent, still far below 24 percent proficiency in math in pre-COVID 2019. Meanwhile, the UIC Crime Lab reported dramatic increases in violent crime committed against and by school age youth 17 years and younger since 2019.
CTU resistance to local school improvements and even public-school choices has driven down enrollment
As neighborhood schools continue to deteriorate and fail students, the CTU resists every effort to make the necessary changes that would improve student performance. At the very heart of CORE’s opposition to change is their fear any school rearrangement would impact their members benefits, workload, staff assignments, job security, or the union’s membership numbers. The CTU also opposes the empowering better school model, share school or the invite-in a proven public charter school operator. While the CTU opposes these forms of school choice, the district allocates only 54 percent of school income to the local schools.
The CTU has also forced CPS to return to the deceptive practice of social promotion to indulge the union’s desperate bid to conceal poor student performance, failing schools, and inferior teachers. Additionally, under the Board of Education’s new strategic plan, the end of school rankings based on performance is called for over fear of the loss of students, as the union experiences angst by virtue of “parents who are dissatisfied with their school's rankings will seek a better school.” The CTU’s assault on magnet schools is an effort to conceal failure by eliminating school contrast comparisons.
Meanwhile, the CTU has pressured the district to undermine even public-school choice. Waging an insurgent war against charter schools, the union has forced limitations to be placed on the number of charter schools in Chicago and has compelled the city to limit the number of students enrolled in charters. Furthermore, the union has demanded and won shorter charter renewal periods, which disrupt and undermine charter schools’ ability to recruit and retain staff while encroaching district mandates limit their ability to innovate. As the CTU takes up arms against charters, it similarly hounds the school district into shifting funding away from higher performing magnet schools, despite magnates receiving less funding than the district average.
Seriously under-enrolled schools are the legacy of the CTU’s CORE caucus
CTU’s constant disruptions and opposition to school choice have created a great student exodus. Since 2000, the most significant impact of the CTU’s insurgency against schools has been in the black community. Black enrollment in CPS for 2024 is 113,000, or less than half the 227,000 in the 1999-2000 school year. A staggering drop over the last two decades, while there was a 14 percent decline in the city’s black population from 2000 to 2020, the number of black children age 17 and younger in CPS schools fell by a staggering 49 percent as black families with children exited Chicago in record numbers.
Today, more than a third of Chicago’s 474 traditional, stand-alone public schools are half empty or worse and the 20 most-empty schools operate at 25 percent or less capacity. Astonishingly, 10 schools function at 10 percent capacity. For example: Manley High School enrolls 76 students and spends $44,000 per student, or $3.4 million annually. Douglass High School’s enrollment, for instance, is worse, with just 34 enrolled. Due entirely to the CTU’s non-stop harassment of Chicago, CPS spends $68,000 per student or $2.3 million to keep Douglass’ doors open.
The failure to close or consolidate schools costs the district over $100 million annually in operating costs. That expenditure is closely matched by the tens of millions of dollars in lost of income from effectively succumbing to CTU pressure to bar existing public charters which, according to the Illinois Network Charter School Network, currently pays between $1,200-$1,400 per student on facilities or using those buildings to house alternative schools and occupational training centers to reclaim pupils who have dropped out.
School consolidations would make it easier to meet the union’s per-school staffing demands, including more librarians, nurses or other support personnel. If the CTU were to believe that those staff are needed to improve student outcomes, it would favor school closings and consolidations so the district can more easily provide the needed support staff for every school. That the CTU so vehemently opposes consolidating schools reveals the union fears consolidations would reduce its membership, its union dues and a decline of its political power.
Yes, Mayor Johnson, school closures did have a devastating impact on Chicago’s children and their families, but it was CTU driven COVID shutdowns, a series of strikes, and the constant disruptions that did the real damage. The constant disruption driven by the CTU’s militant CORE leadership combined with the union applying pressure to the district to abandon high standards and accountability, while limiting families even public school choices, has contributed to a free fall in the district’s enrollment. This will, eventually at some point in the near future, require more school closures.
