A big money race is enveloping Chicago’s first-ever school board elections.
So much so, in fact, that a group of progressive state and local politicians called on Oct. 28 for state legislation to clamp down on substantial donations by wealthy individuals from out of state in reaction to what we’ve seen in the school board races.
State Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, lead author of the state law that opened the door to school board elections in Chicago, complained at a news media event about the current contests being “corrupted by outside donors.” He called for new campaign contribution limits.
Martwick and the CTU’s other supporters can moan and whine all they want, but any attempts at the state level to limit spending by school-choice advocates, which include some of the country’s wealthiest families, would almost surely meet with court rulings determining they violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.
By giving Chicago voters, rather than Chicago’s mayor, control over Chicago Public Schools, the influence of ideological cash was beyond predictable.
But it’s hardly all on one side. Political action committees aligned with both the CTU and advocates of charter schools are spending big in the nine contested races before Chicago voters right now. Organizations tied to the CTU have spent nearly $2 million on the school board races so far, according to Tribune reporting. Groups affiliated with school-choice advocates have laid out about $1.6 million.
Those are remarkable outlays given that, under the gradual approach being taken to a fully elected Chicago Board of Education, Mayor Brandon Johnson will get to appoint 11 of 21 school board seats early next year and maintain effective control over Chicago Public Schools no matter the election outcome. Johnson, of course, is a former CTU organizer and is tied at the hip to the union, even as mayor. The teachers union and its pro-school choice opponents are fighting tooth and nail even though the outcome of these elections won’t change the policy direction at CPS for at least the next two years.
But that bottom line reality masks what’s at stake here and why the campaign is being waged so intensely.
Opponents of the CTU will consider it a victory if some independent voices are elected to the new board in order to call out and push back on the CTU’s agenda. The union’s vision would mean the hiring of potentially thousands more union members to staff a school system that has shrunk dramatically over the past decade and in which roughly a third of schools are enrolled at less than half their capacity.
The CTU clearly doesn’t want even to crack the door open to such scrutiny from the Chicago Board of Education.
Beyond the eye-popping expenditures, the CTU has resorted to smearing candidates endorsed by charter school advocates as MAGA acolytes of former President Donald Trump in mailers repeatedly stuffing Chicagoans’ mailboxes over the past several weeks. That most of these candidates are lifelong Democrats and many have laudable track records of constructive personal involvement in the schools clearly is an afterthought to a union desperately employing these scorched-earth tactics.
Will these gambits work? The union clearly believes that a bevy of unfamiliar names on the ballot will make it easier to define them as something they’re not — pawns in some sort of national strategy to destroy public schools. (If you haven’t already, we invite you to review our endorsements in these races. We assure you; the vast majority of these candidates have extensive on-the-ground experience with Chicago’s schools, as members of Local School Councils or in other ways.)
Whatever the outcome on Nov. 5, the democratization of Chicago’s schools over the longer haul is clearly more of a headache for the CTU than the union anticipated during its long push for an elected school board. The fear by CTU critics during that debate was that an elected school board would lead to union dominance over the process, wresting control over CPS from the mayors with whom the CTU had battled in the past. Don’t forget — CPS accounts for well over half what Chicagoans pay on their property tax bills.
But then in 2023 the union managed to get one of its own elected as Chicago mayor. The need for an elected school board from the CTU’s perspective became nil, at least in the short term.
So, in 2027, the CTU will be faced with the enormous financial burden of bankrolling the reelection campaign of a mayor who in the most recent poll we saw had an approval rating of 14%. Yes, 14%. At the same time, the CTU likely will have to shell out considerably more than the $2 million they’ve spent in this cycle (which involves 10 races, 1 of which isn’t even contested) as compared with the 21 upcoming races for the fully elected school board in 2027.
You think those union dues are high now, Chicago Public Schools teachers?
And 2027 won’t be the end of this costly trench warfare over the future of Chicago’s schools. Those advocating for school choice for the city’s families are playing a long game here. To maintain its status as Chicago’s new political machine, the CTU’s political costs will explode.
No amount of boohooing regarding “out-of-state billionaires” will change that reality.
For the Chicago Teachers Union, the timeworn adage applies: Be careful what you wish for. It just might bite.
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