On April 14, members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) ratified its new contract with 97 percent approval. The nearly year-long negotiation process was steered by union president Stacy Davis Gates, whose leadership of the CTU as a militant force for progressive politics has followed in the footsteps of former CTU president Karen Lewis. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) middle school teacher, was also a key figure in the process. The CTU’s contract gains and movement building suggest a mode of successful resistance during a critical time for all advocates for public education to stand up to the budget cuts and draconian policies of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
The Progressive spoke with Davis Gates on April 14 about the CTU’s contract and what it means for Chicagoans and for public education at large. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: I saw the news today that your union contract was ratified by a huge margin, so congratulations on that.
Davis Gates: It’s a remarkable process that we have here at the union. I’m the third president that has invested in this idea that rank-and-file members need to be at the negotiating table and they also need to ratify every part of the process in order for it to work. It makes me very proud that our members are this engaged with the collective bargaining process and that they also use it to make it better for all of the stakeholders in the school process.
Q: Can you talk about some of the important gains the CTU has won in this contract?
Davis Gates: We spent a lot of time dealing with lawmakers, people like Rahm Emanuel, people like Paul Vallas, people like Arne Duncan, who cut, closed, consolidated, and privatized. This contract marks the beginning of a new path forward, where we’re investing in school communities. We’re giving young people recess for thirty minutes on the elementary school level—every day. We are funding the sports programs more robustly. Money for equipment, money for uniforms. We’ve doubled the amount of bilingual support that our young people will see in their school communities. We are bringing case loads down for case managers who serve our most vulnerable diverse learners, so these people can actually work to make sure that kids are getting the services.
We’ve enshrined protections for safe schools for our LGBTQIA+ students. We will have gender neutral bathrooms. The district has already started making those available to young people. Gender-affirming care has been codified in our insurance for our members. We’ve reaffirmed our commitment as a union and as a school district with our sanctuary protections. So I’m saying that this contract has everything—social workers and nurses and every school for every instructional day kids are there. Kindergarteners will walk into a classroom in August—twenty-three students, a teacher, and a teacher’s assistant. Those are just significant benefits of a contract that centers the student.
Q: What are some of the ways you’re seeing the dismantling of the Department of Education and other attacks on public education affect Chicago public schools, teachers, and students?
Davis Gates: DOGE already happened in Chicago. Our public school system was ravaged by the types of policies that are being implemented at the federal level right now: summarily firing female workers, Black female workers from the schools; closing schools—Rahm Emanuel closed fifty of them. Turning schools around, which means that you fired everyone in the building and then you brought in who you wanted to. Privatizing schools, pushing out workers that have been anchored in the work for a long time and bringing in new workers so you can work them until their fingernails fall off and then replace them. We’ve survived all of that. This contract is a testament to that survival.
Organizers have got to figure out who has already had this fight. And I’ll tell you, here in Chicago, we’ve had this fight. In order to resist what was happening, we had to form coalitions with families, students, community organizations, community leaders and organizers, other labor unions. We want the world to know that if you ally yourself with others, and you understand the power of solidarity, then you can withstand this. And not only can you just survive it, you can actually see a day where you expand democracy.
Q: A lot of these issues you’ve been fighting for in this contract are important no matter what’s happening at the federal level. But how do you see the work you’re doing right now as unique to the current political moment? In other words, what’s different about right now?
Davis Gates: Look, you have people running this country right now whose intention is to enrich the rich. Going into space is a luxury event. Meanwhile, you have people in Chicago who are living on the street. The only way that you can take a luxury trip to space is if you’re not paying your fair share. And so in this moment, I think it is important for us, especially in blue states, especially in blue cities, especially in blue counties, to lead—not just to use the rhetoric of progressives or Democrats or blue leaders. You actually have to do something about it.
With the Department of Education cuts, if that happens to us in Chicago—and we know we’ve been in the crosshairs of the right wing for a very long time—then our blue mayor, our blue county board president, and our blue governor, JB Pritzker, they’re going to have to put together rainy day funds. The state of Illinois is one of the biggest contributors to this entire country as it relates to the money we send the federal government. I think that’s an important note. There should be no starving kid in Chicago. There should be no school in Chicago without a school library and librarian. We should be able to withstand this and show the world how to fight back.
Q: Can you talk about community schools in CPS? Why they’re important, how they’ve succeeded in Chicago, and how this contract helps move this approach forward.
Davis Gates: Cameron Elementary School is in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, a traditionally Puerto Rican neighborhood. That sustainable community school became a landing space for many of the migrants from Venezuela. And because it was a sustainable community school, it was able to respond best to the bilingual needs of the young people, respond to the housing needs of the families, respond to the supports that they needed because it was already a sustainable community school. That sustainable community school was able to absorb an unexpected influx of students because it had community infrastructure and bilingual infrastructure. With this contract, we more than tripled the number of sustainable community schools that would be in the Chicago public schools. We have a mayor who says that this district should be a sustainable community school district. I think we put a pretty decent down payment on that today.
Q: Beyond Chicago, how do you see the CTU being a blueprint for success for teachers unions in other places trying to resist the Trump Administration and protect their schools and communities?
Davis Gates: We’ve already resisted the type of marginalization that the neoliberal ring of the Democratic Party gave us, which was good practice for what we’re facing now. The blueprint is anchored in the young people who deserve a well-resourced education—a rich, joyful education. Connect with the families and the neighbors that love them, too. And then begin to connect with the community and create solidarity through a shared conclusion. The conclusion is we want to keep our children safe, supported, loved, and educated. So if we can all agree on that, then we can find our way through the messiness and the labor of coalition work. And that’s what Chicago has done. We resisted. Rahm closed fifty schools in 2013. This year, school closings were stopped by a board of education that is no longer appointed, but elected. We put in the work with all stakeholders to expand democracy, to protect children, and to build a Chicago where a middle school teacher can be the mayor of Chicago; where we have Delia Ramirez, a community organizer, as a Congresswoman.
Look, if you want to know how to withstand this, you go on strike. You fight for other people. You prove to them that you are invested in the community, in the school, and in the young people. The practice of solidarity, the practice of coalition, those two practices are going to be critically important for how we withstand these moments. But not just for survival—to make a better path forward. Survival is one thing; living is another one.