Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union applauded their agreement late last week with Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King resolving a weekslong dispute over making May 1 a school holiday in order to allow teachers and students to protest the Trump administration and other perceived injustices.
And well they should. Because they got most of what they wanted.
Throughout this debate, we’ve marveled at the amount of effort the mayor and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates have put into transforming Chicago’s public schools on May Day from what they’re supposed to be — places of learning — into platforms to advance their far-left agenda. Even for those who sympathize with CTU’s position on issues, we think there should be broad agreement that it’s not appropriate to rope kids, who have no choice but to be in school, into the political battles waged by adults nor to turn them into CTU acolytes.
So we’re disappointed that King acquiesced at all to CTU and the mayor using kids to put pressure on whomever CTU deems to be in the way of its agenda, whether that be the “ultra-rich,” Gov. JB Pritzker, Springfield lawmakers, Donald Trump, Rahm Emanuel, “neoliberals,” Michael Sacks, the Tribune Editorial Board — we could go on.
She should have stood firm. We bet she knows that, too.
To summarize, the only “concession” CTU and Johnson made with King was to keep schools “open” on May 1. This wasn’t a concession at all because May 1 already is on the CPS calendar and the only way to change that was for the school board to vote publicly to do so. And, clearly, even a number of Johnson appointees on the 21-member board didn’t want to take such a public position for fear of being attacked for it in the upcoming school board elections.
From this point of zero leverage, here’s what CTU obtained. King agreed to make May 1 a “day of observance for district-wide Civic engagement.” As part of that, CPS agreed to try to get “at least” 100 school buses to transport students whose teachers decide to take them on “field trips” to the 1 p.m. May Day event various leftist organizations are holding in Union Park. CPS also would provide those students with bagged lunches.
CPS also agreed not to “retaliate against” teachers who take the day off to protest.
Finally, CPS agreed to make Monday, May 1, 2028, a “teacher-directed professional development day” so that similar May Day activities can be pursued without the pesky inconvenience of teachers and students having to be in school.
None of these are good ideas; nothing in this deal furthers the education of students.
But there’s plenty in this arrangement that furthers the political goals of CTU, which primarily boil down to extracting as much tax money as possible from well-to-do individuals and from corporations in order to sustain a bloated system built for a far larger student population than Chicago currently enjoys.
A May Day curriculum involving instruction about the origins of the day and its long history would be perfectly fine — welcome, even. But anyone who thinks that’s what CTU’s deal is about is hopelessly naive. The way May 1 is shaping up right now, schools will be open, but at many of them little of educational worth will be happening.
We understand the mayor and Davis Gates were putting intense pressure on King. But the CPS CEO held all the cards. She was recently given a three-year contract to run CPS.
What’s more, she’s nearly immune from retaliation. Johnson has no direct power over her now, and the board just gave her the permanent gig. And next year there will be a new, fully elected board, so he (or a successor) won’t even have indirect power over her.
School should have been in regular session on May 1; no “day of observance” was necessary.
Nonpropagandized instruction of the history and relevance of May Day could have been encouraged. And those teachers and students who wanted to participate in the “day of civic action” could have done so outside of school hours.
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