Chicago Teachers Union president with $50B in new demands tells Chicagoans to stop asking about the ‘cost’

In June, the contract between the Chicago Teachers Union and the city’s public school system is set to expire, at which point, the two parties will enter into negotiations, and union president Stacy Davis Gates already has a list of proposed increases she expects to range in the tens of billions.

According to reporter Mark Glennon and Wirepoints, Davis Gates spoke before a crowd at the City Club of Chicago on Tuesday to address the upcoming negotiations, saying “it’s gonna get a little hot in this city” because as reported by the Chicago Sun Times, the list of demands she was coming to the table with are “defiant” contract stipulations.

Elsewhere, other Wirepoints journalists reported that Davis Gates has publicly vocalized that under her leadership, the union is on a mission to achieve “cultural transformation” within the city’s school system as well as the city itself—the police presence in schools has already been eliminated—and some of the “defiant” new proposals she’ll be bringing to the negotiating table in June include:

  • staffing up “nearly empty, failing schools”;

  • wiping out standardized testing;

  • providing teachers with additional “healthcare” benefits and now rental assistance;

  • ending any hint of school choice, like charter and magnet schools.

(Davis Gates’s own son enjoys enrollment at a private school.)

As mentioned above, Davis Gates expects these proposals to be very expensive, but she doesn’t want to hear it; from Glennon:

They’re gonna say, ‘these are great proposals and can’t nobody pay for it and CTU with all of this, that and the other and who’s gonna pay for it, Stacy?’

‘Stop asking that question,’ she said. ‘Ask another question.’

Specifically, she said it will cost ‘$50 billion dollars and three cents… And so what? That’s audacity.’

(How she arrived at the number I have no idea.)

As Glennon also notes:

For a little context, $50 billion would be roughly five times the current Chicago school budget and over double what the State of Illinois collects every year for income taxes.

Don’t forget, this is the same woman making nearly $300k a year, who as of this past November, owed the city nearly $6,000 in unpaid utility bills—as if it weren’t obvious enough from her Tuesday speech, Davis Gates has an out-of-this-world sense of entitlement and absolutely no idea from where wealth and government cash comes. The lady who can’t even figure out how to pay basic bills wants to negotiate contracts totalling in the billions; she also claimed “MAGA wants” her on a “plantation.” Um girl, you’re already there—but you’re the master, profiting off the exploitation of students, families, and taxpayers.

Now, as I highlighted in a previous essay, Chicago Public Schools for FY 2021 ranked in the top 5 public school systems for dollars spent per student in a school district (at that time, it was a little over $18,000 per student, per year); as Glennon reports now though, that number has jumped:

This is in a city, mind you, that already spends an astonishing $29,000 per student, including all sources and money for the capital budget. And Chicago Public Schools already faces a $391 million deficit for next and nearly $700 million for the following year when ‘Covid relief’ money will have run out.

(This price per pupil keeps Chicago in one of the top spending slots across the country, while also ranking as one of the worst school systems in terms of results.)

It’s too bad that such obvious and simple solutions, like declining to renew the contracts and rebuilding from the ground up, are such a pipe dream, because that’s exactly what needs to happen if these public school children are to have any chance of receiving a true education.

Because, Davis Gates has an ally in Brandon Johnson, a friendliness that former CTU leaders did not have with previous mayors:

The CTU was Johnson’s largest campaign donor, and Davis Gates introduced him at his victory party.

I expect Davis Gates to walk away with her $50 billion wishlist intact. RIP to the remaining students on her CPS plantation.

Hat tip: Peter Von Buol.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.

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