After negotiations stretched late into Wednesday night, the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools are working to finalize a few remaining details Thursday with the expectation that a contract agreement is imminent, sources close to the negotiations said.
A settlement has been within reach for a couple weeks, and the late-night session helped push the two sides nearly to the finish line. A deal this week would bring to an end almost a year of tense negotiations in which the union went to battle with the schools CEO despite having a friendly mayor in office.
If talks are buttoned up Thursday, CTU leaders would then take the terms to their “big bargaining team” — a group of a couple dozen educators who have helped negotiate the contract — for consideration, a source close to the union told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. That team then typically decides whether to recommend the package to the union’s House of Delegates. A final ratification vote by the CTU’s 30,000 members would then seal the deal.
CTU’s leadership did not comment. They insist on sharing details with their membership before talking publicly.
Earlier Thursday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez reportedly indicated in an email to top district staff that a deal had in fact been reached. The district’s chief labor officer, Miguel Perretta, later clarified that “the parties continue to work through the … remaining priorities.
“A previous communication unintentionally misstated the status of negotiations between CPS and CTU. While CPS and CTU leadership bargained late into the night, discussions remain ongoing,” Perretta said in a statement. “Negotiations are continuing today with the goal of finalizing a comprehensive package that CTU leadership can present to its Big Bargaining Team for recommendation to the House of Delegates in the near future.”
These negotiations were the first in more than a decade in which the CTU had the legal authority to bargain over issues outside the classic bread-and-butter topics of salary and benefits. The union has found a way to bargain over issues, like class size, in past contracts, but they had to take a roundabout approach.
The full details of a potential agreement haven’t been released. But the union has already won some firm class size limits — though not as small as some members would like because lowering class sizes is expensive — and secured a promise to hire more librarians after years of complaints that too many schools were going without.
The union ultimately decided to accept the salary offer put forward in the summer of 4% cost-of-living increases in each of the four years of the contract. The CTU also pushed to add upwards of 7,000 more staff members, but became satisfied weeks ago when it won a couple thousand — especially with CPS facing budget deficits in the years ahead. Perhaps the union’s most notable staffing win was a promise to hire 30 librarians in each of the next three years in a district that currently has fewer than 100 for more than 600 schools.
The CTU also pushed in the waning weeks of negotiations for additional pay increases for veteran teachers and was able to get CPS to agree to a substantial boost for those teachers.
But in the end, the biggest obstacles to a deal in these negotiations that have gone on for nearly a year have been more ideological than about money. For months, the union has struggled to find common ground with CPS officials over giving elementary school teachers more planning time, and giving above average teachers three years between performance evaluations — two issues that are not primarily economic, but that teachers care deeply about.
If there’s a deal in the next few days, this would be the first time the CTU has landed a contract without a strike vote under the union’s current leadership, which has been in power since 2010. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates had said she thought this round of negotiations would be more straightforward after the union helped get one of its organizers, Brandon Johnson, elected as mayor in 2023.
But talks turned out to be contentious. The union typically points to the incumbent mayor as its foil, having gone to blows with former mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot. But in these talks, Martinez has been the one painted as impeding a quick and easy deal. The CTU laid out an ambitious 700 proposals and school district officials said the price tag was an exorbitant $10 billion.
At the same time, a conflict erupted over whether the school district would reimburse City Hall for a pension payment that covers CPS staff who aren’t teachers. Though the mayor demanded it, Martinez didn’t put it in the CPS budget — pitting the pension cost against paying for the teachers contract, arguing the school district couldn’t afford both this year.
The mayor and CTU grew frustrated with Martinez for setting up that conflict. The Sun-Times and WBEZ first reported in August that Johnson’s administration was laying the groundwork to oust Martinez two weeks before the school year — and then reported a few weeks later that Johnson asked Martinez if he would agree to leave his post. The schools chief wrote in an op-ed that he rejected that call.
This situation put the mayor’s appointed school board in a corner and eventually saw every member resign at once. Johnson’s new appointees fired Martinez in December as the CTU’s Davis Gates pressed hard for a contract resolution.
A clause in Martinez’s contract keeps him on the job until the end of June because he was let go without cause. CTU leaders have said that Martinez lingering on the job was an obstacle and called him more obstinate after he was fired.
Last week, Johnson called all parties to his office to try to broker a deal. Davis Gates and Martinez emerged from that meeting visibly angry at each other, but union sources said that gathering proved to be a turning point because significant progress was made the following morning.