The scandal-plagued president of the Chicago Teachers Union will now also be leading the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which has affiliates in at least 200 districts across the state.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s radical agenda will be spreading to school districts throughout the state now that its president is taking the reins at the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates was elected the next president of IFT Oct. 18, and she’ll be taking her scandals – and radical agenda – along with her.
As president of IFT, she now will be leading 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.
Here are the districts at risk of a CTU takeover and the radical positions parents in those districts should be watching for.
At least 200 districts are at risk of CTU infiltration
While CTU is IFT’s most well-known affiliate, the union has affiliates in at least 200 other Illinois school districts, according to data published by the Illinois State Board of Education, and represents school districts in Gurnee, DeKalb, Quincy, the Metro East and more.
Its affiliate locations range from Galena Unit School District 120 in the uppermost northwest corner of Illinois to the Joppa-Maple Grove Unit District 38 in the southern tip of the state.
CTU pushes politically motivated “bargaining for the common good”
From threatening physical violence against a principal to failing to pay her own utility bills, Davis Gates brings a long line of scandals into her IFT presidency.
But she also brings CTU’s radical political agenda into the 200 additional districts she now represents.
CTU prides itself in demanding social justice and other progressive provisions during negotiations rather than sticking to typical wage and benefit demands. It has come at a cost to the teachers CTU allegedly represents. Just 18% of the union’s spending went toward teacher representation in fiscal year 2025. The rest went to administration, politics and other leadership priorities.
CTU’s mission to put politically motivated provisions in its union contract is part of a broader movement of “bargaining for the common good” – a euphemism for using union contract negotiations to tackle issues such as racial justice, climate justice and immigration at the bargaining table, outside the normal democratic process.
While the strategy was initiated by CTU, it didn’t stay isolated to Chicago. After CTU’s 2012 strike ended, “union leaders planned town halls in other cities across the country, in New York and Cleveland, San Francisco and Tampa, to spread the new gospel” of putting “things on the table that hadn’t been on the table before.”
What might these other 200 IFT affiliates now implement under Davis Gates’ rule? CTU provides extensive examples. Recent costly and politically-motivated CTU demands included:
- “Police-free schools”
- Cash for asylum seekers
- Carbon neutrality in the district, among other things
CTU also demanded and obtained provisions keeping secrets from parents regarding their student’s preferred gender identity.
While the 200 IFT affiliates may not have seen such demands yet, they should be prepared for Davis Gates to force her “bargaining for the common good” strategy in districts throughout the state now that she’s in control. Teachers should be prepared to see less of their dues going toward teacher representation, with politics taking priority over what the members in those districts want.
And it isn’t hyperbole to say the union is coming for power in who gets to shape the next generation.
Davis Gates who said, “‘CTU thinks your children are its children.’ Yes, we do. We do. We do.”
Parents and teachers beware.
