The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has many demands in their latest salvo in negotiating a new contract with the public schools system.
While the union’s demands have not been made public, Fox News reports a leaked document “sheds light on the eye-popping demands.”
The $50 billion they are asking for includes a 9% wage hike, fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities, and a myriad of LGBT-related requirements.
According to Fox News, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.
The excessive demands come despite Chicago public schools failing their students, and academic rigor in Illinois continues to slip lower and lower.
A recent Illinois State Board of Education report card is dreadful.
In 30 schools in Illinois, not a single student can read at grade level, 22 of which are in the City of Chicago.
In 53 schools, not a single student can do math at grade level, 33 of which are in Chicago.
Maybe that is why Stacy Davis-Gates, President of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) sends one of her children to a private Catholic high school in Chicago.
But let’s throw more money at a failing system.
The union’s demands have not been made public but a leaked document sheds light on the eye-popping demands.
Union President Stacy Davis Gates’ audacious plan calls for members to bank at least 9% wage increases each year through fiscal year 2028.
The average salary of a teacher in Chicago Public Schools is $93,182, according to research by the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank. Therefore, the average teacher’s pay will increase by half to $144,620 in the 2027-2028 school year, it says.
That figure would equate to more than double the median household income in Chicago, according to Census Bureau statistics.
The demands include money to convert unused school facilities into housing for illegals and provide each migrant student with $2,000 to help with various services.
The contract also asks that all counselors, clinicians, social workers, and school psychologists are ‘queer competent’ and that they should be ‘trained annually on LGBTQ+ issues as a qualification of their job description.’
Each school must also have at least one gender-neutral bathroom.
All this while Chicago’s public pension system is in dire straits.
According to a report from Equable Institute, Chicago’s core public pensions, which include municipal, laborers, police, fire and the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, hold more debt than 44 states with a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion.
