Op-Ed: Your kids now belong to the Chicago Teachers Union

By Mailee Smith | Illinois Policy Institute
The Center Square

Students who can’t read and secrecy from parents – that’s just part of the legacy of Stacy Davis Gates during her tenure as president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Now it’s coming for families outside of Chicago.

Davis Gates was just chosen to head up the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the state union affiliated with at least 200 local teachers unions throughout Illinois. Those affiliates include unions in Galena, Peoria, Champaign, Quincy, East St. Louis and more.

It’s not hyperbole that Davis Gates thinks children belong to the union. She has admitted it. During a June 2025 speech at the City Club of Chicago, Davis Gates joked that her detractors say, “CTU thinks your children are its children.”

She then smiled, laughed deridingly and said, “Yes, we do. We do. We do.”

Her reach has now expanded from the 316,000 children in Chicago Public Schools to more than 341,000 additional children in the other districts represented by IFT.

Davis Gates confirmed her plan to unite all IFT affiliates under the CTU mission umbrella in a recent interview with WTTW. “I think that the state of Illinois needs leadership in this moment to create a united front,” she said.

What can those 200 new communities expect from this “united front”? More politicking, poorer student outcomes, more union militancy and secrecy from parents, just to name a few.

CTU has focused more on politics and less on teacher representation since Davis Gates took office. In its fiscal year 2025, the union expanded political spending to a new high of $4.23 million, quadruple what it was in the year before she took office.

Yet just 18% of its total spending in 2025 was on representing teachers – what should be its core priority.

In the meantime, student proficiency has suffered since Davis Gates and her Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, a radical slate of union leadership candidates, took over the union in 2010.

Fewer than 1-in-3 Chicago students could read at grade level in 2024. Even fewer could do math. It was even worse for the district’s minority and low-income students. Enrollment has dropped by more than 86,000 students – that’s more than a fifth of the number of students enrolled in 2010.

Notably, Davis Gates’ own son is one of the students who has left CPS’ failing schools. She placed him in private school so he could have “a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs.”

Union militancy has also increased, with strikes becoming the go-to tool of the union. CTU has walked out on students and families five times in the last 13 years. In January 2022, parents were notified of the walkout after 11 p.m. on a school night, leaving them just hours to develop a back-up plan after the union decided not to show up for Chicago’s children.

Then there’s the radical demands CTU has made in contract negotiations, such as police-free schools and cash to asylum seekers.

The union’s most recent contract includes hiding students’ preferred gender identity from parents. The district must “respect students’ privacy, especially if parents or family members do not know how students identify or express their identity.” Another provision provides, “All students and staff are permitted to use the bathroom or locker room that corresponds to their gender identity,” with no limits on when male teachers can use female student bathrooms.

While the other 200 IFT affiliates may not have seen such demands yet, they should be prepared for Davis Gates’ mission to put politically motivated provisions in its union contract. Teachers should be prepared to see less of their union dues going toward teacher representation, with politics taking priority over what the members in those districts want.

And parents should be prepared for Davis Gates and her CTU leaders to counter what they think is best for students in their communities.

After all, those children all belong to CTU now.