The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has kicked off a season of contract negotiations by issuing a $50 billion list of demands that will enrich the union at taxpayers’ expense and provide little, if any, benefit to the city’s students.
Right now, Chicago Public Schools delivers terrible results at a very high cost. Last school year, the district spent more than $21,000 per student, well above the national average of $14,347. And on the last Nation’s Report Card, only 21 percent of the city’s eighth graders were proficient readers.
But that is of no concern to the CTU, based on its list of demands. The union intends to require every school to have at least one sex-neutral restroom and for every counselor and social worker to undergo training on “LGBTQ+ issues” each year. It also specifies that no union member may be compelled to tell a student’s parents when the student rejects his or her sex. Since when does a labor union get to decide what parents are allowed to know about their own children?
This isn’t the only way the contract veers into social issues and away from academics. CTU wants taxpayers to pay for unused school facilities to be turned into migrant housing and to pay $2,000 in “support” to each unaccompanied minor. Ever-hungry for more members, the union also insists each school must have a “newcomer liaison.”
The union is also pushing for policies that will make its youth violence problem worse. The contract put forward by CTU
