Stacy Davis Gates: CPS students need a leader who refuses to accept inequities as the status quo

If any moment reveals the performance of a school district CEO, it is the first day back to school.

As Chicago Public Schools students return to class Monday, they return to schools that continue to lack the resources, staff and programming required to serve the needs of all of our students

Despite the Tribune’s editorial pages describing the district’s CEO as “the responsible adult in the room,” the lack of urgency to deliver the schools our students deserve is actually a failure to deliver the results spelled out in the job description.

In the corporate world, a CEO is charged with the financial health of the company. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez saw the fiscal cliff that the end of federal COVID-19 relief funds signified and sat on his hands as he drove the district over the edge.

A CEO is charged with the functional operations of his or her company. Under Martinez, district operations continue to fall below federally mandated guidelines on special education, bilingual supports and more.

A CEO is charged with delivering quality service to its customers. Martinez laid off 300 teachers assistants at the end of the last school year and only rehired 40% of them, meaning schools they work in will not have the necessary student supports. Eighty percent of our schools do not have libraries or librarians. There is not a neighborhood school serving a Black-majority student population that has a full complement of honors and AP classes in the entire city. Julian High School hasn’t had a full-time math teacher in two years. Washington Elementary is in a prefabricated building in desperate need of reconstruction. In a city that celebrates its professional men and women’s sports teams, we have too few organized or well-funded sports programs in our district.

My first and most important job as the president of the Chicago Teachers Union is to create liberation and opportunity for every single student in CPS. I do not take that responsibility lightly, and it is why I am outspoken about the inequities that undercut our students’ and educators’ abilities to succeed, such as racism, privatization, austerity and gender inequality. It is my duty as a mother, educator and leader to believe that the inequities that were deemed “good enough” by past school leaders such as Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are not good enough for Chicago’s youth.

Martinez and I have much in common. We’re both first-generation college graduates and beneficiaries of a public school education improved by educators like Jackie Vaughn, who led CTU when Martinez was a CPS student and participated in strikes to ensure we received better than what the city’s elite told us to accept. He and I understand the transformative nature of public education because we are proof of it. I’m one generation removed from the cotton fields of Mississippi and Arkansas. He’s the son of Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. for better opportunities.

The responsibility of leaders like the two of us is to figure out how to make this possible for those who come behind us.

Critically acclaimed American writer Toni Morrison said to those of us who ascend to positions of influence and power: “When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”

This is why, when educators, parents and communities come together with demands that can end generations of disinvestment and inequity, telling them there isn’t enough funding to meet basic needs is an unacceptable response.

It is the same argument that was made against A. Philip Randolph’s Freedom Budget and repeated again when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. launched his Poor People’s Campaign. It is old and stale and a sign of short-sightedness instead of leadership.

For years, the opportunities available to children of color have been predicated on what Wall Street banks say is “reasonable” or “good enough.” Bankers, however, rarely see the value or potential in our children beyond being a source of wealth to extract profits from.

The job of the CEO is not to bend the knee to JPMorgan Chase; it is to stand up for Chicago’s students and deliver the resources they deserve.

If the first day of school is a measure of performance of district leadership, then it should not be measured in how much it capitulates to the banks. It should be measured in how many teachers assistants are missing; how many extra desks are pulled into our classrooms; how much mold and asbestos are left uncleaned; how little sports, arts and music students are exposed to; and how much free labor teachers are expected to do to compensate for the lack of resources.

Our students can absolutely succeed. Pedro and I are evidence of that. But that success should be supported by the district CEO, not in spite of him.

Stacy Davis Gates is president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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