CTU’s credibility questioned in Springfield as their biggest ally, Mayor Brandon Johnson, heads to state Capitol

SPRINGFIELD — The Chicago Teachers Union’s role in the debate over legislation that would extend for two years a moratorium on closing public schools in the city  — including selective enrollment and magnet schools — has raised questions about the powerful union’s credibility in Springfield for some lawmakers.

The CTU’s biggest ally, Mayor Brandon Johnson, is headed to the state Capitol on Wednesday to plead for more school funding from the state amid negotiations over a new teachers union contract and on the same day a Senate committee hearing is scheduled on the moratorium extension, which was approved by the House last month.

The legislation is the latest test for a teachers union that exerts tremendous influence in Chicago, where it helped elect a governmental neophyte as mayor, but whose extreme progressivism under President Stacy Davis Gates finds a better fit with the City Council than with the broader geographical and ideological universe of Springfield.

“Springfield is just incredibly different than City Hall,” said state Rep. Margaret Croke, the House sponsor of the school closing moratorium bill.

The measure to extend an existing school closings moratorium until 2027 was overwhelmingly passed by the House in a 92-8 vote on April 18, with all eight “no” votes coming from Democrats. The vote was viewed as a resounding slap at the union, which labeled the legislation “racist,” much to the consternation of legislators who supported it.

“You can’t do that. We live together. We’re friends. So people were pretty offended by that and they also thought, I think, about how if they were ever put in that same position how uncomfortable that would be for them. They don’t want to be called ‘racist.’ They don’t want to be put in that position,” said Croke, who represents a swath of Chicago’s North Side, said of her fellow lawmakers.

“I was very surprised that CTU was not taking this as a win. The fact that they (could eventually) have a two-year school moratorium (for) all schools in CPS, I think, is something that they should be celebrating,” she said.

In a statement, the CTU said its members and school parents “only want one thing: fully funded equitably resourced schools for every child in every neighborhood, which means fully funding CPS.” The union said the school closing moratorium legislation “only exacerbates” racial disparities in school funding.

“Lawmakers in Springfield should focus on how they will fully fund public schools instead of distracting themselves with bills that defund Black and Brown schools. The only thing that matters to voters is whether these politicians in Springfield did their job: fully funding the schools our students deserve,” the union said.

The existing moratorium on school closures that ends in January was part of historic 2021 legislation that authorized the creation of an elected Chicago public school board. Under a setup signed into law by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker earlier this year, the first election is set for November and the board seated with the new year will still have 11 of its 21 members be appointed by Johnson before a fully-elected board takes over in 2027.

CTU found itself on both sides of the “hybrid” board issue to the dismay of Democrats who control state government. Having previously backed a fully-elected school board, the union abruptly switched its support to the “hybrid” model after Johnson’s election.

Johnson joined in support for the hybrid school board model and it was ultimately approved in March in a concession to the new mayor.

The school closing moratorium legislation morphed out of a measure introduced by Croke that was specifically aimed at protecting competitive selective enrollment schools from closures after Johnson’s school board announced its intention last year to prioritize investments in neighborhood schools in a forthcoming five-year plan.

Croke later amended the bill at the request of others so that the moratorium would cover all CPS schools. That did not change the union’s position, and the Johnson administration also opposes the bill.

The proposed five-year plan for CPS under the Johnson administration as well as CPS budget guidance for individual schools added to existing tensions among parents and officials at selective enrollment and magnet schools. No school closings were proposed as part of the plan, but parents and officials had already seen student transportation eliminated due to a bus driver shortage, and recently unveiled school budgets show positions would be eliminated from many of those schools.

With the expiration of federal COVID-19 emergency relief funds in September, CPS faces a budget shortfall of at least $391 million next school year. Johnson has said his Springfield wish list, in part, includes $1 billion in state funds that are “owed” to the “families of Chicago,” including greater state aid under the evidence-based funding formula and additional teacher pension funds.

But Johnson’s wish list is likely to be viewed as wishful thinking in budget-conscious Springfield. and his visit comes as the school closings moratorium debate has, at times, pitted progressives against each other as CTU pursues its far-left agenda.

State Sen. Robert Martwick, one of the main sponsors of the 2021 legislation that created the elected school board, believes the House vote on the moratorium legislation only hurt the CTU’s credibility in terms of that specific bill.

Martwick supported the two-year moratorium extension but said he takes seriously opponents’ concerns over whether the bill could create budgetary issues that adversely affect neighborhood schools. He defended the CTU as an organization that works hard “to protect interests that do not directly affect their members.”

“To be fair, they have a history of calling out what they see are injustices. And many times they’ve been right but nobody’s right all the time,” said Martwick, a Chicago Democrat. “I don’t expect them to change. What they do, it’s kind of a core of who they are.”

One veteran education lobbyist who’s now retired noted CTU in the past has frequently lobbied as a lone wolf, with an agenda far more progressive than its parent Illinois Federation of Teachers or the rival Illinois Education Association.

“They really push the envelope to the point of breaking and it’s not appreciated in Springfield,” said the former lobbyist, who asked not to be identified so that he could speak openly about union matters.

A longtime Democratic lawmaker said of CTU that “clearly they lack credibility, but they don’t need it because they use intimidation.”

“Nobody’s telling them to stop it,” said the lawmaker, who asked not to be identified so they could speak candidly about the union’s tactics without retribution.

“I don’t hear anybody saying anything to them about cutting this stuff out. They just keep going,” the legislator said.

State Rep. Natalie Manley of Joliet, who is part of the House Democrats’ leadership team, said she doesn’t believe House Democrats hurt their relationship with CTU on the school-closing bill and said future issues such as increased school funding will be decided on their own merits.

“There’s a lot of highly emotional issues in front of the General Assembly. Neighborhood schools are at the top of that list,” said Manley, who voted in favor of the moratorium extension.

“It’s not a flexing contest. It’s not a power struggle,” she said.

Bob Bruno, an expert on organized labor who wrote a book about CTU, said the House’s overwhelming passage of the school closing bill was “a unique vote” that won’t impact the union’s ability to push forth other items on its Springfield agenda.

If the CTU doesn’t succeed in its push for more funding for CPS this spring, it’ll be for reasons beyond the union’s control, Bruno said. Though he added that since the union’s demands for more school funding have been echoed by CPS, they could be difficult for lawmakers to ignore.

“The state of the budget overall, the state’s revenue, their expenses, what the state of the economy is, what the trend of the state’s overall financial situation (is), what are the other demands that are going to be placed in the budget. It’s going to be those kinds of things that will matter,” said Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Pritzker, who has promoted his efforts to stabilize the state’s financial situation as a pushback to Johnson’s money requests, also has said he supports the school closing moratorium.

“I can tell you that I favor the House bill that was passed,” he said at an unrelated news conference in Springfield on Tuesday.

“First and foremost I think that the whole purpose of allowing Chicago to elect a school board like every other school district in the state is to allow people to have real input through their representatives. That doesn’t happen when you’ve got either a hybrid or a fully appointed board,” he said. “And so, it seems to me before any really major changes are made to the system in Chicago that we ought to make sure that the board is fully represented of all the people.”