Fridays are the best time to do things you don’t want covered in the news, media people say, and Fridays before holiday weekends are even better.
It’s therefore no surprise that Gov. JB Pritzker chose Good Friday to lie prostrate before the Chicago Teachers Union by signing HB 2275, which will vastly expand the CTU’s power.
The new law is a major step toward the CTU’s long-term goal of fully controlling Chicago Public Schools. It expands CTU’s negotiation and strike powers to cover matters like class size, staff assignments, charter schools, subcontracting, layoffs and the lengths of the school day and year.
The new law will restore CTU to the position of power it had when it walked out routinely. Prior to limitations on its power, which are now gutted, Chicago teachers went on strike in 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1987. And according to the Chicago Tribune, the union threatened to strike another eight times during the same period.
Chicago teachers were already among the highest paid in the nation when they inflicted a 14-day strike on CPS students in the fall of 2019 that won union members even better pay, said a Chicago Tribune editorial that called for the bill to be vetoed. Now, the CTU will throw the kitchen sink into its demands, which have included rent abatement and other social justice goals far removed from the classroom. The most immediate victim of the new law will be current negotiations over reopening, which probably will be complicated by CTU’s new powers.
Chicago public school parents, if you want your children educated, you have no choice: Put them in a private school if you can afford it or move somewhere that puts education over teachers’ unions.
-Mark Glennon
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
amen
Those poor kids. NOBODY cares about them. Especially not any Democrat in this state.
Wow CTU down vote brigade are out in force.
The flak is thickest as you approach the target.
Great article.
Have the money follow the student, not fund the system, and these issues, including the CTU ne’er-do-wells, all go away.
As if CTU did not have enough power already over taxpayers.
Look carefully at that photo. Would you want those “scholars” anywhere near your own children?
I can see this thread had touched a nerve with the Marxist CTU fools monitoring this board. Ha!
Yes, they are like the tiny ants that invade my house each spring and play follow the leader. Only those ants have more intelligence than a ctu member. Need evidence – just look at how they and their ilk are turning this once hard working city into a crime infested s…hole.
With ctu continually in the national spotlight for supposedly setting the standard for striking and hardball negotiations tactics thanks to state freindly teacher strike laws, I’m sure for jb, signing hb 2275 is all about keeping his national image alive with little concern for us local chumbalone tax payers. The Bidens and the dc lib elite are 100% behind the teachers unions HEROS, teachers unions were their biggest donors. Who cares about some 9 to 5 schmuck trying to pay his prop taxes in chicago…your not even part of the conversation
The politics of this are interesting. Pritzker just stomped on Lightfoot, who apparently has no clout with the state people. Lightfoot is well aware that giving CTU more bargaining power is a ship with the name “Sink Me” on its side. She gave them EVERYTHING they wanted– except for positive PR–last time, and they still went on strike! It was the “most generous contract” in CTU history, and they kicked dirt on her. Being weak and accommodating never pays in Chicago politics. Pritzker knows all of this, but instead of doing the right thing for the kids who go to… Read more »
What sentient being could possibly think the CTU needs MORE power?
I wonder why Lightfoot doesn’t just wage jihad on the CTU. I bet she’d get surprising amounts of support. Her career in politics is already over, so what does she have to lose?
CTU is no longer a labor union. It is now a terrorist organization. School vouchers for all and bust CTU now.
It was encouraging to see Wirepoints start off this article telling CPS students they are doomed. How much longer will it be before they tell all the residents of Chicago they are doomed? How much longer will it be before they tell all the residents of Illinois they are doomed?
Every new Wirepoint article makes those of us that left Chicago and/or Illinois look like geniuses, but we are not. We just know how to learn from history.
They don’t just want to control CPS, CTU wants to control the whole city.
The unintended consequences are never considered. Chicago property values will tank as people flee for better schools.
In Woodstock il, the consequences of property value declining as a function of property tax rates ranging between 3%-4.7% of full fair market value over the past 14 years are well documented.