Questionable spending plus the union’s refusal to release required annual audits should concern members.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s latest federal filing tells you how the union spends members’ money and it calls into question what the union isn’t telling them.
CTU’s filing shows it spent $173,000 on a “recording studio” in New Mexico with no helpful context on its purpose. But it did have a pool.
If CTU released its annual audits to members, as required in its internal rules, spending on a “recording studio” in New Mexico might have an explanation. But since it hasn’t released those audits since September 2020, members can only guess.
CTU’s questionable spending includes a New Mexico recording studio
Each year CTU files a report with the U.S. Department of Labor detailing the money it has received and spent in the previous fiscal year. Buried within its 2025 report is a $173,000 expense to On Point Studios.
The location: Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The type of entity: a recording studio.
CTU counted the money for the studio as “representational activities,” which the U.S. Department of Labor defines as those activities “associated with preparation for, and participation in, the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements and the administration and enforcement of the agreements.”
It is unclear what a recording studio in New Mexico has to do with contract negotiations or administration in Chicago.
But Zillow provides a glimpse of the residential location. The first pictures listed are of the three-bedroom, two-bath home’s pool.
With the union failing to release required annual audits to members, they have reason to question the union’s spending practices.
CTU still hasn’t released required audits to its members
CTU’s internal rules are clear: an annual audit must be performed and published each year.
The CTU financial secretary is required in union bylaws to “furnish an audited report of the Union which shall be printed in the Union’s publication.”
Similarly, the CTU Board of Trustees is to “procure each year, a reliable and adequate audit of the finances of the Union for the preceding fiscal year ending June 30, and to deliver a copy of said audit to other major officers and to announce to the membership of the Union that said report may be inspected in the Union office by any member.”
The last audit was released Sept. 9, 2020, and covered through June 30, 2019. Audits for subsequent fiscal years have not been released. When a CTU member raised questions, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates personally attacked the member, labeling the call for the release of the required audits a racist “dog whistle.”
CTU’s failure to provide required audits led several members to send a demand letter to CTU through their attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center. Instead of providing the required audits, the union engaged in intimidation tactics, singling out the members by name on a member-wide call.
The members then filed suit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, and the union filed a motion to dismiss the case.
In rejecting CTU’s motion to dismiss, the judge noted CTU “does not even directly dispute” that it is required by its constitution to provide members with an annual audit. The latest filing by CTU on Oct. 6 claims a summary audit was provided that should satisfy the lawsuit, but plaintiffs argue it does not represent a complete audit.
Until CTU comes clean with its members, questions about its spending – such as on a poolside recording studio – will continue.
