Despite having put five of her kids in Chicago Public Schools, Blaire Flowers said once her eldest daughter graduates high school, she may have to make the difficult decision of moving her children to a school district in the suburbs.
“It’s not worth the fight,” Flowers said. “My son is missing out on too much. You want me to sit here and wait while (teachers) scream and holler about wanting more money, and I’m still not getting the basic services my son should be getting from CPS.”
Following months of turmoil that has consumed the district, some parents say they have had enough of the constant battling between the three groups leading the public school system. With district CEO Pedro Martinez’s firing in December, upheaval on the school board, and a four-year Chicago Teachers Union contract in its ninth month of negotiations, some parents say their students have become an afterthought.
The district has ignored various services her children needed, Flowers said, leading her to believe that contract talks have blinded the district and CTU. She believes it’s difficult for parents to have a voice.
Growing up in the Austin neighborhood, Flowers said the Chicago Teachers Union was trying to protect students and educators. Now, sending her children to CPS, she feels the district and CTU disrespect parents, and the union, whose contract expired in June, is attempting to make parents “obsolete.”
“It seems like CPS and the teachers union is like parents are down here … under our shoes, and everyone else is up here,” Flowers said, making it difficult for parents to have a voice in their children’s education. Her children have been asking for various services that have been sidelined because the district wants to solve the CTU problem first. Meanwhile, the union, she said, is “whining” only about what they want.
Her son, who has an individualized education program, or IEP, was set to begin receiving speech therapy through the district at the beginning of this year. However, she was told they were unable to find a vendor to start the service and no update has been provided.
With Mayor Brandon Johnson, CTU and Martinez fighting, “We don’t know what’s going on,” Flowers said. “Services are being canceled left and right for our children, and we are the ones that are being left to … keep moving forward while everyone else is just breaking down in front of our eyes. It just doesn’t seem like any of them care about the families that all of this fighting is affecting them.”
While these concerns mount, Flowers and some other parents said they are left wondering how long their children’s needs will fall by the wayside while the district and union continue their battles.
In a statement to the Tribune, the CTU said its members, many of whom are also CPS parents, are eager to settle this contract.
“We know that parents want fully staffed schools, the ability to teach the truth, protections for our vulnerable students, and a robust and rich school day,” a CTU spokesperson said Jan. 21, “We continue to bargain, while the CEO has been busy in court, they added, referring to Martinez’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the school board from stripping him of his duties.
CPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CTU and CPS have held regular press conferences with updates on the bargaining process, typically during business hours (and often within minutes of each other), available via live stream or televised live on local channels. CTU said it would hold a public update on their proposals on Jan. 22.
It goes to figure that emotions are running high among school district stakeholders — parents, teachers and administrators — nine months into negotiations, according to Eunice Han, Ph.D., an associate professor of economics at the University of Utah who has written extensively about the impact of teachers’ unions. “It’s so critical to have the support of parents and neighbors,” she said. “If the negotiation process is too long, it just becomes personal to everybody,” Han said, adding that the longer the process, the more pressure and mental stress for those involved.
‘We are being used’
Other parents shared a similar sentiment to Flowers’: Without a contract deal in sight and no clear idea of all of the sticking points, it appears the district, as well as the union, are attempting to push parents out of conversations they said they’ve been excluded from.
Norma Lopez, a CPS parent and longtime Local School Council member, said she disagrees with the union attempting to create teacher committees that she believes would essentially take over Local School Councils. She believes if the union is successful in creating this group, it will destroy local councils and remove parent input entirely.
The union has proposed a committee of teachers having a role in approving school budgets, weighing in on the school’s improvement plans as well and evaluating principals, all things that LSCs do.
“Parents who work on (LSCs) voluntarily and are committed to our students’ education, they’re taking our opinion and our work and our input out of the schools,” Lopez said. “This is the way I’ve been able to support my kids’ education, to support my family, and to know how to navigate the system … to help my kids. I think this negotiation will negatively impact my family and families like mine.”
After the 2019 teachers strike, the second strike she witnessed, Lopez said she was no longer able to support the union. While she was happy that they were able to win what they had fought for, she said she didn’t appreciate her children being used essentially as pawns to achieve it.
“I realized that while they are presenting to the public (certain) information, the negotiation between closed doors has information nobody’s sharing,” Lopez said. “We are being used for political purposes and I don’t agree with that.”
Since then, Lopez said she has been unable to trust the union. With what’s occurred in recent months, she said the current turmoil seems to be more for power over CPS rather than bettering education for students and meeting their needs.
Other parents raised concerns about the union’s listed contract proposals. Maria Owens, a Chicago native and grandparent to several CPS students, opposes CTU’s proposals to increase teachers’ preparation time, as well as ending the current method for evaluating teachers. She believes neither proposal translates to something more beneficial for students.
“Students are already not all getting the appropriate amount of rigor and attention to detail that needs to be done for them to be successful,” Owens said. “To not hold us responsible for their performance to me is a very big mistake. Our success needs to be tied to their success, no doubt about it.”
Having attended Julian High School several years ago, Owens said the current district is a “different world” from when she attended. As a student, she got the feeling that teachers cared about their jobs and that your performance as a student mattered.
Today, Owens’ perception has changed, and she’s frustrated.
“They don’t have the same vigor for the job,” Owens said. “It’s an us vs. them mentality with so many of them. It seems as though CTU is more concerned about their benefits than students’ outcomes. ,They’re always an afterthought.”
“If the students’ best interest so happens to align with the teacher’s best interest, it’s great,” Owens said. “But so many of the things that they’re proposing are opposite of what’s best for the kids, and that concerns me.”
With salary increases on the table, Owens said that teachers have to deserve it to receive a raise.
“If we’re going to give teachers a raise, which I firmly believe they deserve … there ought to be a connection to how well they perform to the raise you get,” Owens said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rewarding really, really good teachers and holding those who are not meeting standards to account. I don’t think that the union is concerned with that type of system.”
While she understands what the teachers are fighting for, Katrina Adams, a mother of three, said if the union’s salary demands are met of a 5% raise annually for the first two years of the contract and 4% to 5% in the following years, she expects the students to reap the benefits. With higher compensation, academic test scores and student performance should improve as well, she said. “If you give (them) these raises … we can expect our kids to thrive … and expect more than 30% (of students) to be at grade level.”
Meanwhile, the University of Utah’s Han said data shows that there’s a strong correlation between teachers’ pay, teachers’ morale, and student performance. Teachers’ raises should be at the minimum in line with inflation and the rising cost of living, making a 4% annual raise “the minimum you should aim for,” she said. “It’s very reasonable to pay teachers more if the goal is to keep those teachers in the long term,” Han said. “We have a teacher shortage now and we’re going to have teacher shortages in the future.”
Yet, in recent months, Adams said she feels politics has taken over the district.
“I feel like politics is taking over our children having the best education (and) things just flowing smoothly in the school,” said Adams, adding that the students are the only ones suffering.
“Everything is about Pedro being fired … about the CTU contract, but I don’t hear anybody talking about how 30% of the students are reading at grade level,” Adams said. “I don’t hear any talks about plans on bringing them up academically, plans on preparing them to thrive for the future. That has just been put on a back burner … and that’s not fair.”
