Chicago teachers – winning against the US right

The far right US government has launched a wide range of racist, transphobic and homophobic attacks. But in Chicago teachers are fighting back. Their union has won a new contract which improves their own pay and conditions but also aims to defend all members of school communities including migrants and LGBTQ+ people. John Stephens interviews Corey Blake, a teacher and union activist.

The new contract includes groundbreaking wins around LGBTQ+ rights, anti-racist, pro-migrant struggles and aims to confront the broader reactionary agenda in education. Could you give us a broad overview of it?

Prior to this contract, we were only able to bargain and strike when it came to wages. With this contract, we were able to fight for so much more and come out really strong. That includes green schools, where the contract provides resources for ageing buildings – a lot of our school buildings are covered in mould or asbestos or have lead in them. A specific number of schools are going to be targeted for upgrading to green energy with environmentally sustainable materials. 

We were able to lower our class sizes. It’s already challenging enough to teach, especially in this environment post remote learning and Covid-19 – I don’t want to say post-pandemic because we’re still in the pandemic. Then we have these really oversized classes, and they use them as a way to not hire more teachers. Lowering class sizes is better for the students. It’s better for the collective altogether. 

We were able to secure 90 more librarians. It is so strange to me that any school would be without a librarian. Librarians are crucial to education and literacy. Librarians are crucial to democracy. Librarians are crucial to collective liberation. It says a lot that Donald Trump fired the head of the Library of Congress. Librarians are important – being able to speak to your librarians in our schools is deeply important.

We were able to secure more planning time in elementary schools. Elementary school teachers are simply not given enough time to prepare and do the work that they need to do in order to provide lessons for students. I’m a high school teacher – I get lots of prep time throughout the day, which is great for the different classes I teach, but our elementary school teachers are teaching every single subject while also trying to keep the students engaged, and planning time is crucial. 

We also won more resources for our English learner programs, to be able to provide more support, more training for our students who are English language learners.

Tell us about yourself and how you became part of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

I’m a Latinx, non-binary trans woman. I grew up in Virginia. When I did my undergraduate degree I wanted to study music and I wanted to have some positive impact. I ended up pursuing ethnomusicology – it’s essentially anthropology, but with a focus on music. That’s ultimately what I focused on for my Master’s and my PhD. I lived in Panama for a year, which is where a lot of my family is based.

Adjunct professors are hardly paid anything. So I decided to transfer my teaching license from Virginia to Chicago, and I wanted to particularly teach within the neighbourhood schools. There’s been a massive push in the United States to privatise education, so that they can control the narrative and prevent academic freedom in many cases. There are so many charter schools – what you call academies in Britain – and selective enrolments, and a lot of these schools have really high reputations simply because of the fact that they can choose who goes to them.

Being in the neighbourhood schools was especially important to me because I knew that the skills and the tools that I’ve learned from studying music in various world cultures, as well as the theory and anthropology and sociology that I could help teach my kids how to fight for better communities and how to be leaders as they emerge in the world.

Joining the CTU was a no-brainer. Unions have long been a bastion for progressive values and pushing towards better communities. When I joined Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and started getting to know a little bit more about CTU, I saw that there was an LGBTQ+ committee. There was nobody running it, it had been defunct for a few years. My co-chair Lindsey and I decided we were going to launch it back up again. It’s really important that whenever we’re at the bargaining table, whenever we’re pushing for elective rights within our city and our school district that queer people are at the table as well – it was really important for us to really begin building that community, building that solidarity. And ultimately, this led to a lot of the wins we got out of our contract, our most recent contract.

I’d like to understand the term sanctuary schools. It sounds like a striking defiance of the otherwise extremely aggressive deportation regime in the US.

Chicago is a sanctuary city in general – local laws mean that city authorities, including the police, are instructed not to work with federal immigration authorities, with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Chicago Public Schools, CPS, has a pretty strong policy on that as well. Our new contract helps solidify that more. A lot of our wins are basically solidifying policies that CPS has in place – this is true for the LGBTQ+ protections too.

CPS absolutely will not allow ICE into their buildings. However, there’s still fear as most schools have a group chat, and people will regularly report seeing unmarked vehicles outside the schools. There have been cases where they have waited for students to be picked up from their parents to be stolen by ICE. We want to use community spaces in order to protect our students and their families.

Let’s talk about the LGBTQ+ demands and what you’ve won.

The way we develop these proposals to begin with is talking to lots and lots of queer folks across CPS. I am also on a team within CPS that specifically works to provide support for Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSAs). They’re essentially LGBTQ+ student-run clubs, as well as their friends and allies. These can be social, they can be activists, they can be support groups, whatever the students need at that moment. 

I can meet with other GSA advisors, teacher leaders. As I’ve been developing proposals, it was really important to me that I was listening to what we as a community needed. Additionally, as a trans woman in CPS, it was really important that I think about what me and others like me really needed out of this contract.

CPS has really wonderful policies. I’ve had the opportunity to help revise them later on, or at least provide feedback. But the problem is that unless there are administrators who are enforcing these policies, they essentially mean nothing. Illinois law requires the inclusion of LGBTQ+ topics and curriculum, but again, there are administrators who tell their teachers not to teach the lessons with the trans kids featured in the lessons because that would deny the teachers’ right to believe in only two genders. It’s just absolutely absurd. And it’s been very hard to escalate the issues to the point where policies are followed.

Part of the contract wins were making the policies grievable. That means that anyone who sees a violation of a trans student’s rights, or anything else that is outlined in the policies supporting trans and gender non-conforming students and staff – people can actually take it to the union, and the union can grieve it and hold these administrations accountable. 

Additionally, we are pushing CPS to have at least one designated gender neutral bathroom in every single school. We are pushing to make sure that for all staff and students their correct names and pronouns are used consistently. There is room for mistakes. But when those add up, it becomes a hostile work environment.

All of our lockers and restrooms are required to have menstrual products. We’re now requiring that all clinicians, all social workers, counsellors, psychologists and wellness staff are required to be queer competent, fully trained in LGBTQ+ issues to make sure they’re working effectively with our LGBTQ+ youth.

Another one that’s really important is that any dress codes are required to be approved by a school’s GSA or student council. Principals cannot do any gender-based dress code, and our GSAs have the final say in whether that is acceptable or not.

There are two things that I think are extremely important for enforcing many of these other wins. One of them is a Gender Support Coordinator in every single school – the gender support coordinator essentially is a volunteer position. And that person in each school is going to be able to have space on their school’s website to post resources and materials, LGBTQ+ information for students and parents. They will be a first line of defence when violations to our contract happens and they will be able to escalate it. They will have contact with CTU and CPS and they’re also granted a half day of paid release time in order to attend relevant training. This is really important because now we have the possibility of having somebody in every single school who is going to be ensuring that our queer and trans kids are safe and that they’re able to have the education that they deserve.

The other big thing is the high school networks. Chicago Public Schools is organised into networks – networks are like little mini school districts. The way this new contract works is every single one of those networks will have one person who is specifically tasked with ensuring LGBTQ+ rights and rules are being followed within their network: the implementation of the supporting trans and gender nonconforming student policy; support for LGBTQ+ training in schools for leaders and teams; creating and sustaining GSAs; and providing recommendations and resources for families.

The point in there that was really important that got added was creating and sustaining the GSAs, the Genders and Sexualities Alliances. We know that when we are under attack by fascist regimes and they want to erase us, we have always survived through community, through community building, community organising. GSAs serve as that for our students. GSAs are life-saving student clubs that ensure that our students are able to have that community and those experiences.

Are you confident that you will be able to recruit these gender support coordinators across all the schools? One of the challenges for any union is actually getting the reps in the schools to be able to do the organising that’s needed. Is the CTU prioritising recruiting those people? Do you think that’s going to have an organic take-up?

I think it’ll be a combination of both. There are some regions of our city, particularly on the north side where we won’t have to do much work because there are already people who are eager to do that. In places on the south and west sides, it will be important that we are actively out doing outreach and connecting with somebody from those schools. These are areas of the city that have historically been underfunded. Chicago is a racially segregated city with more white people to the north, and Black and Latinx people to the west and south. The south and west sides have been victims of systemic racism to the point where a lot of these communities are still fighting for just basic funding and for their kids to have the same education as the north. In the areas that are already struggling just to make sure that they get enough teachers – especially these smaller school communities – that’s going to be where our work is going to be because we can’t sacrifice our LGBTQ+ students’ safety.

Are these network level roles paid roles? Is that going to be someone who does this full-time or someone who’s already got a job?

More than likely these roles will be assigned to somebody who is already assigned to the network. I doubt CPS is going to hire new people, mainly because CPS is already struggling financially and part of our contract is that CTU and CPS will work together in order to lobby and advocate for more funding and find funding sources together.

So the contract is a big victory, but you’re going to have to keep working hard on it to make sure it’s not a dead letter and that it moves into implementation. I suppose also this is the first wave of something that you want to refine and improve over time – you’ll find what works and what doesn’t and hopefully strengthen it further.

Absolutely. Another thing that we need to continue to develop is the Gender Support Coordinator. This is brand new. We’ve been providing information about specific people that we think should take on this role. It is the committee’s opinion that if you are a GSA advisor at a school, you are the one who would ideally take this role because you are working directly with LGBTQ+ youth and you can assure their safety and also have the training and the tools that you need in order to implement that school-wide.

Schools that don’t have GSAs, we would hope that there would be other teachers or school staff who have a record of fighting for queer kids, for queer and trans kids. But then that position is also voluntary. And it’s great that we have it, but ultimately any work, any extra work, should be funded. As we’re moving towards our next contract, our next step is to make sure that people in volunteer positions get some financial support for the really important work that they’re doing.

Until then, my committee is going to be doing a lot of extra work in order to make sure that they have all of the materials, all of the support they could possibly need so that they don’t actually have to do all of the extra work, So if we can take that work off of their shoulders and just give them that focus on ensuring that their schools are doing right by our LGBTQ+ students, then I think we’ll have been successful.

We don’t have a contract negotiation process like this in Britain. But one thing that’s similar is how much this is built on the success of the grassroots level. You have the GSAs and in my school we have a Pride Allies Club. You’ve built on the fact that there are LGBTQ+ students, educators and allies who have built up the strength and confidence of people in schools, so negotiations are very well informed about what students actually need. And a lot of educators have maybe had a transformative experience by living and working in an atmosphere of genuine solidarity with trans and LGBTQ+ people.

Yeah, and that’s true for all of our committees as well. So the whole bargaining process begins with rank and file members who join these committees focused on topics that they’re particularly passionate or interested in. All of our proposals went through these committees, then those proposals went to the big bargaining team. I was part of the big bargaining team. CPS took these proposals, put them into legalese. Then we got to look through them and approve them.

Every time our leadership was at the bargaining table with CPS, if we were discussing, for example, the LGBTQ+ safe schools proposals, me and my co-chair Lindsey who are both on the big bargaining team were always there. We got to make the case for our proposals, and we got to listen to why they were against something. That is a crucial element – rank and file members getting to actively be a part of the bargaining process and being able to talk about the topics that they are already experts on.

Wow! So that’s a really open process of negotiation? All the way from formulating the demands, formulating the policy, negotiating it – is there a feedback process? Do members hear about negotiations as they’re ongoing? Can they input and say this is going in the right or wrong direction? How does that work?

Yeah, so I can speak more specifically for my committee and what I’ve seen in our leadership.I would regularly take back the counter proposals to my committee to talk through them. In the big bargaining team, we would get to look at everyone’s and talk through those as well. The leadership of CTU would send out weekly updates on where we’ve had movement, what we still need to work on.

There are some union members with a lot of criticism for how that was handled. We have a little bit of division in the union right now because elections for CTU leadership are coming up. But from my experience – I can only talk about my committee and the work that we’ve done – it has been very transparent.

And in general, not just when it comes to these negotiations, the LGBTQ+ Educators Committee are consulted for anything that has to do with LGBTQ+ rights or queer liberation. It’s become one of the strongest parts of our contract – but only because we as a committee became more actively engaged in the union in ways where our leadership were able to recognise that we were a key and important part of that movement.

The experience I’ve had as a union member in Britain is that you give the leadership the opportunity to take you out on strike and then that’s it. After that, it’s entirely in the hands of the leadership and their negotiation team. Most of the decisions don’t really reside with the rank and file at all, you have a more responsive way of doing things. You’ve also spoken about the concept of “bargaining for the common good”, maybe we could talk about that.

I mentioned that we didn’t have full bargaining rights – we could only bargain on things related to wages. Now we have the power to bargain over important issues like trans issues. This came from a lot of work lobbying legislators, really pushing them to allow us the full scope of bargaining that we should have access to.

Bargaining for the common good, it means that we’re bargaining for more than just our wages, we’re bargaining for more than just basic conditions. We are bargaining for things that are deeply important for the entire community. This contract is a love letter to our students. It is very student centered. There are a lot of wins for staff, but it is very student centered, 

That includes academic freedom. It includes the ability to teach what we believe our students need to become citizens in this world, the tools that our students need to push back on the fascist regime or in general to push back on neoliberalism and these systems of oppression that exist in everything we do. It includes protecting our queer kids, ensuring that our newcomers have the tools that they need to be able to be successful learning English but also building on their home language. It means being able to provide resources so that they can get that education and be successful in this place. It’s about making sure that our schools are safe for our students – they shouldn’t have to be in schools that have asbestos or school buildings that are completely falling apart. Bargaining for the common good means making sure that we are fully addressing the systemic and individual needs of all of our staff and students.

I wanted to ask about the broader context of what you’re doing. Trump is attacking groups including LGBTQ people and migrants. It can seem like there is nothing positive to say about what’s happening in the US. This contract, these advances, stand in contrast to that. What are the connections between what you’re doing and the broader fightback? Is this just a tiny oasis in a huge desert or is this something that you can build on?

This is definitely something we can build on. I believe that this contract can and should serve as a model to other school districts across the United States about how labour unions can push back on this administration. Workers can protect themselves even when our governments do not. There will be a lot of pushback on this. Fox News has been trying to push CTU to talk to them about the contract. There are already conservative groups that are suing Chicago public schools and Illinois for their protection of trans students in sports and bathrooms. The federal government is currently suing Illinois and CPS, arguing that trans girls are violating biological women by existing in those spaces. All of these things are happening, but the fact that we have this in a contract allows us the power to push CPS to defend it. We can’t prevent federal law from happening, even a contract cannot violate federal law. But with these provisions in our contract, it is a strong message that CPS needs to put their money where their mouth is. And when we come under attack, they have to fight it in the courts.

It’s a strong message to our state legislators that they need to push back, that they need to fight to defend this. Illinois is a very progressive state in many ways, yet there’s so much more that has to be done. This contract serves as one front and we are in a united front which will keep us moving forward within the next few years when it’s going to continue to get more and more hostile.

In Britain we have our own really toxic strain of transphobia which is well embedded in the media and the political parties. It’s very good to hear that you’ve been able to do this in the US, where times are even more dangerous and toxic than in Britain. And it’s remarkable that you’ve won all this without going on strike.

A lot of that is because CPS knows that we are willing to strike – we have all of our bargaining rights back because we did strike in 2016 and we struck in 2019. We haven’t gotten a contract without striking in a very long time. CPS knows that we will strike. The power of the union comes from our solidarity and our willingness to fight for what we need and what our communities need. I think that’s deeply important. And being able to trust our members to lead the movement in these proposals is critical in making sure that CPS knows that not only are we willing to fight, but we’re also willing to fight for exactly what we need.