Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates is bringing her militant agenda to 200 more school districts as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s radical agenda will officially be spreading to school districts throughout the state now that its president is taking the lead at the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
Stacy Davis Gates’ tenure as CTU president has been rocked by scandals. The union prioritizes its role as a political party, while overlooking poor student outcomes and a declining student population.
As president of IFT, Davis Gates now leads the union’s affiliates in at least 200 other districts in Illinois while also maintaining her role as CTU president. The two entities will be practically inseparable, with CTU’s agenda becoming the IFT agenda.
CTU has already admitted as much. “The fight for Chicago Public Schools just got more aligned and more unified with the fight for all school children all across our state,” the union posted in an update.
The “fight” to bridge the gap between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers is not a new goal. CTU’s interest in expanding its radical agenda and recent strike threats in other IFT districts are evidence of CTU’s infiltration beyond Chicago city limits.
Take Jackson Potter, a vice president of both CTU and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, who visited Granite City in 2024 and came away with a mission to bridge the gap between Chicago and the rest of Illinois. In other words, he wanted to spread CTU’s militant agenda downstate.
Potter said the work done by CTU in Chicago could be transitioned to fit the needs of Granite City by giving students the “tools they need to form diverse coalitions.”
The “coalition-based effort” is a way for CTU to expand its initiative of “bargaining for the common good.” This tactic is used to force racial justice, climate justice and immigration policies through union contract negotiations rather than through the proper democratic processes involving elected leaders.
CTU’s go-to method of threatening strikes in order to get what it wants has also been mimicked in other districts. Just this school year alone, at least three IFT local affiliates threatened to walk out on students during contract negotiations – a tactic used by CTU to get what it wants through the aggressive use of power.
In just the past 13 years, CTU has walked out on students five times:
- In 2012, a strike during contract negotiations kept kids out of classes for seven days.
- On April 1, 2016, the union conducted an illegal one-day strike in response to alleged “union-busting” efforts by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.
- In 2019, a strike during contract negotiations closed schools for 11 days.
- In January 2021, classes were canceled when CTU refused to return to school for in-person learning following COVID-19 closures.
- In January 2022, CTU walked out on school children for five days. 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.
The other IFT affiliates already were inextricably tied with CTU and its tactics even before Davis Gates presided over both. But now with Davis Gates in charge at IFT and Potter at her side, CTU is in total control.
