The Chicago Teachers Union warned Thursday that an arbitrator who will issue recommendations in the ongoing contract battle between the union and Chicago Public Schools is limited by law in what he can consider and that it will likely reject his findings, paving the way for a potential strike vote.
CTU leaders say the law is “stacked against” the union and has become a perfunctory step.
“It is deeply frustrating [to be at this point],” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates. “To force our hand to take a strike vote is a very cruel and mean joke.”
State law requires that an arbitrator be called in before the CTU can move to strike. The arbitrator, called a fact finder, is hearing from both sides this week and is expected to issue recommendations in early February.
The two sides have 15 days to decide whether to reject or accept the findings. Though the union must wait 30 days to actually strike, it can take a strike vote any time after rejecting the findings.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said he does not think the school district is moving toward a strike but said he is worried parents are getting frustrated with the bickering between the school district and the union. Martinez said he hoped the arbitrator would help both sides agree on a “mutual set of facts so they can move forward in a productive way.”
Martinez and his team said they anticipated that the fact finder would agree with their assessment that the school district doesn’t have the money to meet contract demands for things like additional staff and salary increases for veteran teachers.
Davis Gates has been accusing Martinez of being a major roadblock to getting a contract done, especially since the board voted last month to fire him, effective in June. She said the union approached negotiations differently this round than in the past, believing that its positions were aligned with the mayor and the school board.
Both sides say they have agreed on some big items, including health care provisions for staff, more planning time for special education staff and more staff to serve bilingual students. But they have yet to come to agreement on raises for teachers, class-size caps for middle school students and some key noneconomic issues important to teachers, such as planning time and evaluations.
The school district has offered 4% raises each year for the four-year contract. CTU wants 5% the first two years and 4% in years 3 and 4. The union also wants more veteran teachers to get salary increases based on experience, a proposal that CPS has thus far rejected.
In past contract cycles, one or both parties have rejected the fact finder’s findings.
CTU deputy general Thad Goodchild said the law calling for fact finding was written by former mayoral foe Rahm Emanuel, who ensured it was advantageous to the school district. For example, it instructs the fact finder to compare the salary offer for CTU staff with those in the 10 largest school districts in the U.S., “four of which are in non-union school districts in Right to Work Republican states,” Goodchild said.
The law also instructs the fact finder to only consider whether the school district has the “financial ability to fund the proposals based on the existing available resources, ensuring that such ability is not based on assumptions of the lines of credit, reserve funds, or the expectations of receiving new or increased sources of revenue.”
CTU researcher Pavlyn Jankov said these limits on what the arbitrator can consider make no sense. “So, the district actually wants the fact finder to only look at what’s in the bank account right now, which is like deciding if you can pay rent based on what’s in your pocketbook rather than in your next paycheck,” he said.
He maintains that the school district is in a good financial position to make some commitments. He says the school district has a healthy fund balance, has the capacity to borrow more, should be getting more money from the state and, over the next few years, is expecting hundreds of millions from special taxing districts called TIFs.
But CPS officials say they are facing budget deficits of at least $500 million in the years ahead and that the district already is paying too much in interest to banks for past borrowing. CPS Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton said that if the district makes more commitments in the contract, there will be consequences.
“If we agreed to their proposals, we would be jeopardizing the jobs of the existing staff members that we have,” he said. “We will not set ourselves up to add staff with one hand and then lay off or furlough our existing staff who’ve been in the classroom for years, doing the work every day on behalf of children. … We’ve reached our capacity to add more staff and to add more salary. We simply cannot afford to do more than that.”
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.