Leonie Haimson is a public school activist in New York City who fights for smaller class size, student privacy and against privatization of public funds.
She wrote on her blog:
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit DOE charter rent spending and lack of matching funds for public schools – more on this below.
ask the comptroller to audit DOE’s charter rental payments now!
Last Thursday, September 18, 2025, several large charter school networks held a protest rally in Cadman Plaza and a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to push for the continued expansion of the charter school sector. This was apparently provoked by the fact that the leading candidate for Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he opposes allowing more charter schools to open, especially since they have reached their legal cap in NYC under state law.
Liz Kim, reporter at Gothamist, got hold of a tape of a speech that Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the largest charter school chain, Success Academy, gave to her Charter Management Staff and 158 new teachers, exhorting them to attend this march and rally, and to make at least five “phone-to-action” calls to their elected officials.
In the speech, Moskowitz harshly reprimanded those who had not yet done so: “You did not do the phone-to-action because you thought, ‘This is not very serious,’” she said. “So I want to just reset for all of you. It is an existential threat.” And:
“We have faced threats throughout the last 20 years, we have a core competency in political threats, unfortunately. But this is one of these moments where there is heightened risk, policy risk, political risk, and so we are going to do what we’ve always done, which is to stand up for children and families in a massive way in Cadman Plaza to speak our minds and to make sure that government works for children and families. … government doesn’t naturally work for the people. It has to be forced and made to work for the people. So we’re doing two things. One is this parent mobilization, and the second is our phone to action campaign.
And our goal is to send elected officials, two million messages. Now, teachers, you’ll do a network one now and then when you get to your schools, you’ll do a local one. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the network, because only 25% of the network was doing the phone to action. …And you know, would be natural for you not to understand we have these nice offices, Aren’t they nice? Very nice.
You guys [work] for a not for profit, you are highly compensated. You could say, What? What? Me worry? What’s there to worry about? But there’s a lot to worry about, and this is not a theoretical worry. We lived through eight years of Bill de Blasio. The first thing he did when he became mayor is he threw out three of our schools.”
This is untrue. De Blasio did not kick out three of her schools; he rejected three Success charter co-locations that had been proposed by Bloomberg before he left office but not yet implemented. De Blasio also accepted co-locations for five other Success charter schools.
In any event, after a barrage of negative television ads, DOE officials were browbeaten into finding and renting private space for these three Success charter schools at city expense for $5.4K – $11K per student. By last year, the number of Success charter schools rented directly by DOE had risen to nine, with buildings added under both Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams, at a cost of $14.3 million annually. By renting these buildings directly and failing to ask Success to rent the buildings themselves, they are sacrificing 60 percent reimbursement from the state for those expenses.
At the meeting, Moskowitz was clear that she was requiring all network staff and teachers to both make phone calls and participate in the rally:
“When we ask you to do phone to action, you kind of do it. You can’t make people chase you down. … we’ve kind of gotten loosey goosey here and just know your managers are going to hold you accountable to an extraordinary standard of performance. … When your network are giving a directive, I think we’re getting a little democratic here. We are quite hierarchical.
There is a chain of command, and when your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task. Are we clear? I do not want to have to chase people down for phone to action. Is there some argument or particular reason? Anyone live in New Jersey? Okay, that’s not an excuse. I hate to tell you, list your 120 Wall Street address and get it done. ….”
She then told her staff and teachers to take out their phones and make all five phone calls to elected officials right then and there.
According to a report in Labor Notes, Success Academy employees were also required to send emails to elected officials, and were ordered to “submit screenshots of these emails to their managers to confirm they had sent them.”
Success Academy was not the only charter chain to make participation in the rally mandatory for staff, parents and students. It was also required by the Zeta charter chain, founded by Emily Kim, former attorney for Success Academy. A document sent to staff at Zeta Charter Schools made this clear:
“100% attendance expected from all Zeta families, students, and staff. Each student must attend with a parent/guardian to ensure the safety of every child. Students cannot attend the rally without an adult family member or authorized chaperone.”
Students, their parents and staff had to arrive at Zeta at 6:30 AM to get on the bus to Cadman Plaza, according to the schedule. If parents wanted to bring their younger children, they had “to bring their own seats for the bus ride to the rally,” presumably meaning they had to pay for their own transportation to get to Cadman Plaza.
Teachers at Zeta were told it was their responsibility to get parents to attend:
“All teachers must ensure 100% completion through family follow-up calls Mon., Sept. 8th- Wed., Sept. 10th. Your Principal and Operations Director will share a school-wide tracker to follow up and log all family calls accordingly.”
There is a real question about whether mandatory attendance at a political event or forcing teachers to make political phone calls is legal. The day after the rally, on Friday, John Liu, Chair of the Senate NYC Education Committee and Shelley B. Mayer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education sent a letter to NY State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and John King, Chancellor of State University of New York, whose agencies authorize and oversee charter schools.
Senators Liu and Mayer expressed “great concern that many charter schools in New York City cancelled classes and pressured students, families, and staff to participate in a political “March for Excellence” on September 18, 2025. We urge the state to conduct a thorough investigation into potential violations of state law.”
They also pointed out how“canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds. We urge SUNY and the State Education Department to exercise their oversight authority and fully investigate this matter to determine any possible violations of state law, and if such violations are found, to claw back a portion of state per capita funding from each school administration that engaged in this event, and to take steps to ensure future misuse of student’s precious school time does not continue.”
Though they didn’t specify any laws that might have been broken, in 2023 Governor Hochul signed into law Senate Bill 4982, which prohibits employers from coercing employees into attending or participating in meetings where the primary purpose is to communicate the employer’s opinions on religious or political matters. The law also holds that the courts may impose monetary penalties on employers who do this, and that employees can seek “equitable relief and damages” in court if they do.
In any case, this is not the first time that Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy have been found guilty of breaking laws. Repeatedly, her charter schools have been shown to deny students their legal rights, violating their privacy, and pushing out those who do not make the grade either in terms of behavior or test scores. A sample of these documented violations are listed at the end of this blog post.
Evidence of inflated charter rental payments and missing matching funds
Another issue of great concern is how charter schools now drain more than $3 billion dollars annually from the DOE budget, plus charge more than a hundred million dollars per year to DOE in rental subsidies. NYC is the only district in the nation that is obligated to either co-locate charters in public schools or help pay for their rent in private buildings. This applies to all new and expanding charter schools since 2014, after they go through a perfunctory appeal process, according to a law pushed through by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and the charter lobby. The amount spent on their rental expenses by DOE has risen sharply over time –though 60% of these expenditures are supposed to be reimbursed by the state.
In 2019 and 2021, Class Size Matters issued two reports that provided evidence that DOE had overspent on rental assistance to charter schools by $21 million. We also revealed suspicious charges for rental subsidies paid by DOE to several charter schools, including those run by Success, that owned or subleased their own buildings.
In one case, the rent for two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million in one year – more than quadrupling , causing DOE to pay $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in 2020.
We also found that public schools co-located with charter schools were owed millions of dollars in matching funds for facility enhancements, compared to the amounts required by state law. From 2014 to 2019, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million.
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit these programs
Shortly after the release of our second report, in March 2022, Senator John Liu, Senator Robert Jackson, and Rita Joseph, chair of the Council Education Committee, sent a letter to Comptroller Brad Lander, urging him to audit this spending, based upon our troubling findings. I recently learned that no such audit has been conducted. An analysisalso shows that Lander has audited fewer DOE programs than any other NYC Comptroller since 2003 at this point in office.
We are now engaged in examining DOE own reports of their spending on charter school rent, which continues to rise sharply higher each year, as well as their continuing failure to provide sufficient matching funds to public schools for facility upgrades and repairs.
Please email the Comptroller now and urge him to launch an audit on these programs before he leaves office in January, by filling out the form here.
Where it says, “Your Suggestion,”please write:
“I urge you to audit DOE spending on charter rent, especially charter schools that own or sublease their own buildings, as well as charters whose buildings DOE rents directly and thus is unable to receive 60% reimbursement from the state. Also please audit the lack of public school matching funds, as there is evidence that they continue to be owed millions for facility upgrades.”
Feel free to rephrase this in any way you like.
On my blog, at the end of this post, is a list revealing the documented pattern of Success Academy violations, including failing to provide students with their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them for minor infractions, violating their privacy, and pushing them out when they do not conform to rigid behavioral expectations or do not score high enough on standardized exams.
2. If you haven’t already, please also fill out this brief survey on class sizes at your school this year. So far, from the unscientific sample of teachers and parents who have responded, class sizes have increased in as many schools as have decreased, despite the fact that more than 700 schools received funds to lower class size. If DOE is simply pushing up class sizes in the schools that did not receive this funding, that would be a matter of great concern.
Jennifer Frey served as Dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College. It required students to read deeply in classic tests and to converse vigorously with each other.
More than a quarter of the student body signed up for this rigorous class.
Yet two years after the Honor College opened, it was closed. Its leadrs said that students didn’t want this kind of education, the heavy focus on the liberal arts and the Great Cobversation about the meaning of truth goodness, and beauty. Dean Frey thinks the administrators were wrong.
University students, we’re told, are in crisis. Even at our most elite institutions, they have emaciated attention spans. They can’t — or just won’t — read books. They use artificial intelligence to write their essays. They lack resilience and are beset by mentalhealthcrises. They complain that they can’t speak their minds, hobbled by an oppressive ideological monoculture and censorship regimes. As a philosopher, I am most distressed by reports that students have no appetite to study the traditional liberal arts; they understand their coursework only as a step toward specific careers.
Over the past two years as the inaugural dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College, focused on studying the classic texts of the Western tradition, I’ve seen little evidence of these trends. The curriculum I helped build and teach required students to read thousands of pages of difficult material every semester, decipher historical texts across disciplines and genres and debate ideas vigorously and civilly in small, Socratic seminars. It was tremendously popular among students, who not only do the reading but also engage in rigorous and lively conversations across deep differences in seminars, hallways and dorms. For the past two years, we attracted over a quarter of each freshman class to this reading-heavy, humanities-focused curriculum.
Our success in Tulsa derives from our old-fashioned approach to liberal learning, which does not attempt to prepare students for any career but equips them to fashion meaningful and deeply fulfilling lives. This classical model of education, found in the work of both Plato and Aristotle, asks students to seek to discover what is true, good and beautiful, and to understand why. It is a truly liberating education because it requires deep and sustained reflection about the ultimate questions of human life. The goal is to achieve a modicum of self-knowledge and wisdom about our own humanity. It certainly captured the hearts and minds of our students.
Sadly, this education has fared less well with my university’s new administration. After the former president and provost departed this year, the newly installed provost informed me that the Honors College must “go in a different direction.” That meant eliminating the entire dean’s office and associated staff positions as well as many of our distinctive programs and — through increased class sizes — effectively ending our small seminars. (A representative of the university told The Times that while it had “restructured” the Honors College, the university believes that academics and student experiences will “remain the same.”)
The stated reason for these cuts was to save money — the same reason the University of Tulsa gave in 2019 when it targeted many of the same traditional forms of liberal learning for elimination. Back then, the administration attempted to turn the university into a vocational school. Those efforts largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model.
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An unpleasant truth has emerged in Tulsa over the years. It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.
For those who do care to see liberal learning thrive on our campuses, the work my colleagues and I did at Tulsa should be a model. How did we do it? We created an intentional community where our students lived in the same dorm and studied the same texts. We shared wisdom, virtue and friendship as our goals. When a university education is truly rooted in the liberal arts, it can cultivate the interior habits of freedom that young people need to live well. Material success alone cannot help a person who lacks the ability to form a clear, informed vision of what is true, good and beautiful. But this vision is something our students both want and need.
At Tulsa, we invited our students to enter “the great conversation” with some of the most influential thinkers of our inherited intellectual tradition. For their first two years they encountered a set curriculum of texts from Homer to Hannah Arendt. These texts were carefully chosen by an interdisciplinary faculty because they transcend their time and place in two senses: They influenced a broader tradition, and they had the potential to help our students reflect in a sustained way on what it means to be a good human being and citizen. Our seminars were led by faculty members who did not lecture or use secondary sources. Rather, the role of the faculty members was to foster and guide conversations among our students that allowed them to think through these questions for and among themselves.
That our students threw themselves into the task of reading and discussing the great works with one another should not shock. When we — students and teachers alike — share wisdom as a common goal, we will want to do the reading, to dispute one another, to exchange ideas and arguments, to propose amendments and to offer our personal insights. Liberal learning occurs in dialogue with those who object to us, who offer a different perspective or experience — who read the same book as we do in a completely different light.
At the Honors College, we taught our students that wisdom is a distant goal, and that we need to work on ourselves as we try to approach it. We need to cultivate what our college called “the virtues of liberal learning.” For example, we need to cultivate the humility to recognize that we have much to learn from the past and from one another. We need to cultivate a love of truth for its own sake and the courage to speak our minds and to follow the truth wherever it may lead us — even when it leads us into difficult waters where our disagreements are deep and unsettling.
When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it. The problem with liberal education in today’s academy does not lie with our students. The real threat to liberal learning is from an administrative class that is content to offer students far less than their own humanity calls for — and deserves.
Thanks to the tireless work of Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, and her hardy band of parent advocates, New York City is reducing class sizes to meet the requirements of state law. After 25 years of failed “reforms” like high-stakes testing, competition, merit pay, and choice, the city is finally embarked on a reform that has a solid research base and actually helps students. Teachers can devote more time to each students. Discipline problems will be less.
Ahead of a key deadline to reduce class sizes, New York City’s sprawling school system will spend upwards of $400 million as it races to fill 3,700 new teaching positions by the fall, new data shows.
Under the state’s 2022 class size law, 60% of classrooms must comply next school year with caps between 20 and 25 students, depending on grade level. It’s expected to be the first time schools have to make real changes to abide by the regulation.
To meet that benchmark, principals developed and had approved 741 school-specific plans in exchange for more funding. Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and her deputies revealed during a City Council hearing on Tuesday that costs associated with those plans will top $400 million, paid for with a combination of state and city funds.
While nearly all schools will use those dollars to bring on more teachers, some also expect to hire about 100 assistant principals or convert spaces into classrooms.
Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City, is a tireless advocate for reform policies that work. She has spent years collecting research about the benefits of class size reduction and prodding legislators to take action.
She wrote recently about the cross-pollination between New York State and Michigan, where state school board leaders used her research to advocate for lower class sizes.
She wrote:
On April 5 and 6, the Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, held its annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. More than 400 parents, teachers, advocates, school board members, and other elected officials gathered to learn from each other’s work and be re-energized for the challenges of protecting our public schools from the ravages of budget cuts, right-wing censorship, and privatization.
It was a great weekend to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, hear from eloquent education leaders, and participate in eye-opening workshops. I led a workshop on the risks of using AI in the classroom, along with Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and retired teacher/blogger extraordinaire, Peter Greene. You can take a look at our collective power point presentation here.
At one point, Diane Ravitch, the chair and founder of NPE,introduced each of the board members from the floor. When she told me to stand, I asked her to inform the attendees about the law we helped pass for class size reduction in NYC. She responded, you tell it –and so I briefly recounted how smaller class sizes are supposed to be phased in over the next three yearsin our schools, hoping this might lend encouragement to others in the room to advocate for similar measures in their own states and districts.
Perhaps the personal high point for me was the thrill of meeting Tim Walz, on his birthday no less, who said to me that indeed class size does matter. Here are videos with excerpts from some of the other terrific speeches at the conference.
Then, just four days ago, Prof. Julian Heilig Vasquez, another NPE board member, texted me a link to this news story from the Detroit News:
State Board of Education calls for smaller class sizes after Detroit News investigation
Lansing — Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution Tuesday calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.
The proposal, if enacted by state lawmakers, would represent a sea change for Michigan schools as leaders look to boost struggling literacy rates. Across the state, elementary school classes featuring more than 20 students have been widespread.
Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was “overdue.”
“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.
A months-long Detroit News investigation published in April found 206 elementary classes — ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade — across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them. Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.
Less than a month after The News’ probe, the Democratic-led State Board of Education, which advises state policymakers on education standards, voted 6-1 on Tuesday in favor of Robinson’s resolution. The resolution said lawmakers should provide funding in the next state budget for school districts with high rates of poverty to lower their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
By the 2030-31 school year, the resolution said, limits should be instituted to cap class sizes at 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade, at 23 students per class in fourth grade through eighth grade, and at 25 students per class in high school.
“Many studies show that class size reduction leads to better student outcomes in every way that can be measured, including better grades and test scores, fewer behavior problems, greater likelihood to graduate from high school on time and subsequently enroll in college,” the resolution said.
The resolution added that the Legislature should increase funding to ensure schools are “able to lower class sizes to the mandated levels.”
In an interview, Pamela Pugh, the president of the state board, labeled the resolution an “urgent call” for action. Pugh said the board hasn’t made a similar request in the decade she’s served on the panel.
…Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for action on class sizes after the reporting from The News and as Michigan’s reading scores have fallen behind other states.
During her State of the State address in February, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently. Michigan invests more per student than most states but achieves “bottom 10 results,” the governor said.
“I think the science would tell us that we’ve got to bring down class sizes,” Whitmer said in April.
On Wednesday, state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, said he was open to a conversation about timelines for implementing class size limits and about how schools could achieve the proposed standards with staffing and physical space.
As I read the story, I was delighted, of course; and noticed that the class size caps cited in the resolution were identical to those required to be phased in for NYC schools. I also noted language in the resolution that echoed the words in some of our research summaries.
I reached out to Diane to ask her if she knew whether Mitchell Robinson had attended the NPE conference, and she confirmed that indeed he had. I then emailed him to ask if our New Yorklaw had played any role in his decision to introduce the resolution, and he immediately responded,
“Leonie, your work in NYC was the direct model and inspiration for this resolution! I was in your session in Columbus, and went home motivated to put together the resolution, using the figures from your bill and the research base on the website.”
He cautioned me that the proposal still has to be enacted into law, and that it would be “an uphill battle,” as Republicans hadretaken the state House.
Then he added: “But that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands for another 2 years—we need to stay on offense and advance good ideas whenever we can.”
I wholeheartedly agree. This resolution and what may hopefully follow for Michigan students reveals just how importantgatherings like the NPE conference are to enable the exchangeof ideas and positive examples of what’s occurring elsewhere. This sort of interaction can be vital to our collective struggle,not just to defend our public schools from the attempts of Trump et.al. to undermine them, but also to push for the sort of positive changes that will allow all our kids to receive the high qualityeducation they deserve.
Not so very long ago, when North Carolina had forward-looking governors like Terry Sanford and James Hunt, North Carolina was considered the best state in the South for its public schools and universities.
Since the Tea Party takeover in 2010, the Republican-dominated legislature has done its worst to shed that reputation. Now it strives to be a state that ignores and underfunds public schools while pouring money into substandard charter schools and segregated voucher schools.
Where once North Carolina boasted of having more National Board Certified teachers than any other state, it now treats teachers disrespectfully, underpaying them and driving out some of its best teachers.
North Carolina is in a race to the bottom, hoping to fall behind Mississippi, Alabama, even Florida, in its maltreatment of the teaching profession. The state Republicans don’t want its children to be well-educated.
Just recently, the Republican leaders in the State Senate decided to increase class sizes and to lower the percentage of licensed and certified teachers in its classroom.
Legislation filed Monday by state House Republican education leaders would eliminate class-size requirements in schools and allow school districts to hire unlicensed teachers. The “Public School Operational Relief” bill would change class-size requirements in elementary schools to class-size “recommendations.” House Bill 806 also would only require 50% of the teachers in a public school to have a license — down from the 100% requirement for traditional public schools.
The bill comes at a time when schools are struggling to find enough teachers. A state report released last week showed the teacher turnover rate was 9.88%, meaning nearly one out of every 10 teachers left the profession between March 2023 and March 2024.
If adopted, the bill would have major ramifications for how North Carolina public schools educate their students. Three of the legislation’s primary sponsors are the Republican co-chairs of the House K-12 Education Committee: Rep. David Willis of Union County, Rep. Brian Biggs of Randolph County and Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County. The bill’s fourth primary sponsor is Rep. Heather Rhyne, a Lincoln County Republican and House Majority Freshman Leader.
Eliminating school class-size requirements Under state law, class sizes are capped in K-3 class sizes with no limits for other grade levels. Charter schools are exempt from the class-size limits. State GOP lawmakers lowered K-3 class size limits in 2017, saying it would help improve instruction.
But school districts, such as Wake County, have complained it’s led to them reassigning students and putting enrollment caps at some elementary schools.
Currently, the state funds one teacher for every 18 students in kindergarten, 16 students in first grade and 17 students in second and third grades. Individual classrooms are allowed to go three students above that number. The bill would make K-3 the same as grades 4-12, with class size limits being recommendations only.
Lowering the number of licensed teachers under current law, school districts are required to have all their teachers be licensed. This includes people who have received temporary licenses allowing them to teach while they meet their training requirements.
Nearly half of all the new teachers in North Carolina enter classrooms under alternative licensure routes, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Charter schools are only required under state law to have 50% of their teachers be licensed. The new bill would have all public schools — charter schools and traditional public schools — use the 50% teacher licensure requirement in each school.
While the bill says school districts can hire unlicensed teachers, it says you’d need to be a college graduate to teach the core subject areas of mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts.…
The legislation could run afoul of a 2022 N.C. Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to transfer funds to public schools to help provide every student with a sound, basic education and access to highly qualified teachers. But a pending ruling by the Supreme Court could throw out the 2022 ruling in the Leandro case.
After nearly a year of bargaining, the Chicago Teachers Union reached a landmark agreement with the City of Chicago and the school board. Karen Lewis, the late President of the Chicago Teachers, was a champion for the city’s children, their teachers, and the public schools. She must be smiling in heaven to see what the CTU has accomplished.
CTU to Hold Press Conference to Announce Results of Special House of Delegates Meeting
Union to announce results of next step to transform Chicago Public Schools after the 60+ rank and file members of the Big Bargaining Team sent tentative agreement to the House of Delegate members for approval.
What: Press conference announcing results of House of Delegates vote
Where: Chicago Teachers Union, 1901 W Carroll Ave; enter through the East entrance off Wolcott; parking will be available for camera trucks in the South lot (on Fulton)
When: Immediately following House of Delegates meeting (Meeting starts at 4:45pm and we will alert press once the media is adjourned)
Who: CTU officers, big bargaining team members, and elected delegates
In the next step toward ratifying a contract that represents a major leap forward in the process of transforming Chicago Public Schools started by CTU in 2012, the union will hold a special House of Delegates meeting on Wednesday, April 2nd. At the meeting, the elected delegates of the union will vote on whether or not the tentative agreement landed by the 60 rank and file members of the Big Bargaining Team shall be sent to the full membership for a vote as early as next week.
The union will hold a press conference immediately following the meeting to announce whether the tentative agreement that creates smaller class sizes, a historic investment in sports, grants recess students were being denied, and enshrines protections for Black history and academic freedom – among more than 150 other items – is going to a full membership vote or back to the bargaining table for improvements.
BACKGROUND
After more than eleven months of bargaining, working without a contract throughout the entire school year, and for the first time in more than 15 years of doing so without a strike or strike vote, the Chicago Teachers Union announced their big bargaining team made up of rank and file members approved a tentative agreement with Chicago Public Schools.
The tentative agreement will go to CTU’s House of Delegates Wednesday which will decide whether or not to advance it to CTU’s 30,000 members for a ratification vote. If accepted, it will represent a major leap forward in the transformation of a district that is still recovering from the gutting and financial irresponsibility carried out by Trump’s Project 2025 style efforts under Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, and other privatization forces that closed over 200 public schools between 2002 and 2018.
Despite the efforts of right wing actors like Paul Vallas, The Liberty Justice Center, and Illinois Policy Institute, and the MAGA forces that seek to deny the investments Chicago’s students deserve, this proposed contract builds upon the past several contracts won by CTU in 2012, 2016, and 2019. It charts a new direction of investment, expansion of sustainable community and dual language schools, increased staffing, and a focus on reparatory equity to provide the educational experience Chicago students deserve no matter what neighborhood they live in.
The 2012 strike won the air conditioning that kept CPS open during the back-to-school heatwave at the beginning of the school year. 2016 established the model of 20 sustainable community schools, a program that helped to stabilize and resource schools like Dyett High School whose boy’s basketball team won the state championship this year. 2019 won social workers and nurses in every school and established the sanctuary status that protected CPS students from Trump’s federal agents earlier this year.
In 2025, some highlights of the Chicago Teachers Union contract include:
Doubles the number of libraries and librarians for our schools
Enforceable and smaller class sizes for all grade levels
Ensuring social workers and nurses serve students in every school, every instructional day
Doubles the bilingual education staffing supports for students
Additional staffing, curricular and enrollment supports for Early Childhood education students and programs.
Creates 215 more case manager positions district-wide to support students with disabilities.
A cost of living adjustment of 17-20% compounded (tied to inflation) over the four years of the contract
Provide new steps that compensate veteran educators for their experience
Increases in prep time for clinicians, elementary and special education teachers so students arrive to classrooms ready for them
Expanded benefits for dental, vision, infertility and abortion care, gender-affirming care, hearing aids, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, chiropractic services
A more than tripling of the number of Sustainable Community Schools, from 20 to 70, over the course of the agreement.
Provides CTU, CPS, City and sister agency coordination for the first time to provide housing support, section 8 vouchers, rental assistance and affordable units to CPS families in need.
Enshrines 12 weeks paid parental leave, equal parental, personal illness, and supplemental leave rights for PSRPs to teachers
A Green Schools initiation of additional resources and collaboration to remediate lead, asbestos and mold in aging school buildings while upgrading to green energy with environmentally sustainable technology, materials and practices.
Protections for academic freedom, Black history, and culturally relevant curriculum for the first time in the contract.
An additional $10 million annual investment in sports programming
Protections for academic freedom that enshrine educators’ ability to teach Black, indigenous, and other history
“Our union is bargaining for what every parent wants for their child in our school communities. It shouldn’t be a fight for children to get access to arts, sports, wrap around supports, and libraries. It’s what should already exist,” explains CTU Local 1 President Stacy Davis Gates. “We’re proud to have landed a transformative contract that turns away from decades of disinvesting in Black children and turns toward creating the world-class education system for every single student in CPS no matter their zip code. If the contract is ratified by our members, we will be one major leap forward toward the educational experience Chicago’s children and the mainly women workers who serve them in our schools deserve.”
Throughout the process, the CEO played an unprecedented role of obstruction, was fired but allowed to serve an additional six months, and even enlisted a temporary restraining order against the Board of Education that supervises him in order to make himself the sole decision-maker on contract negotiations for the district.
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The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, more than 300,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information, please visit the CTU website at www.ctulocal1.org.
Class Size Matters is one of the most effective—if not the MOST effective—advocacy organizations for public schools in New York City. Its leader, Leonie Haimson, fights for reduced class sizes, more funding, and the privacy of student data. I am a member of the board of Class Size Matters.
On June 12, CSM will hold its annual awards dinner. The awards are called the Skinny, in contrast to the Broad Award, which was given to districts that raised test scores, closed schools, and used metrics inappropriately.
I will be there to celebrate the award winners, who are parent-members of the Board of Education who stood strong for students, teachers, and well-funded public schools.
Please join us!
Class Size Matters Skinny Award Dinner
START:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•6:00 PM
END:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•9:00 PM
LOCATION: 1st floor•124 Waverly Pl. , New York, NY 10011 US
Bob Shepherd—author, editor, assessment developer, textbook writer, classroom teacher, and all-purpose polymath, wrote this comment. After a long career in education publishing, Bob closed out his career by teaching school in Florida.
He wrote:
THIS is the most important thing about teaching, at least at the middle- and high-school levels. Teachers have far, far too many students and a laughably small amount of prep time (that is, laughably small to anyone who actually bothers to prepare significant lessons for his or her classes), and literally impossible amounts of add-on work in the form of mandates to watch other teachers’ classes, oversee car or bus line or cafeteria sittings, do test prep, proctor tests, fill out (often in duplicate) ridiculous amounts of paperwork (grades, attendance, IEP and 501 reports, evaluation materials, lesson plans, bellwork professional development paperwork, and so on). If anyone ever bother actually to sit down and sum up the number of hours required of middle-school and high-school teachers, he or she would soon see that these requirements exceed the amount of hours in the day or week, and so, the fact is, that people are fudging the work, submitting bs material whenever they can, thrown together rather than reasoned out. A high-school teacher might have 180-200 students, and he or she is supposed to give each individual, differentiated attention.
Right. MIGHT AS WELL REQUIRE TEACHERS TO FLAP THEIR ARMS AND SO FLY. Or to locate objects by remote viewing. Or make sense of any proposal by Donald Trump. Or enter that parallel dimension and recover the lost ships and airplanes of the Bermuda Triangle. Or bring back a golden apple from the tree at the edge of the world. Or net the Salmon of Doubt.
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has been nearly invisible these past three years, other than lamenting test scores. Veteran educator Nancy Bailey has some suggestions about how he could help kids, schools, and teachers right now. This post was reposted by the Network for Public Education.
The secretary keeps talking about raising the bar. Nancy Bailey has some thoughts about some bars he could work on. Reposted with permission.
Every child in K12 should have access to a vital arts program.
2. Career Education
Career-technical education is essential, but companies pushing their agendas into high schools to get workers raises concerns.
Tax dollars should help students decide what careers they want, giving them the chance to experience high school, not creating schools for corporate preparation.
When children’s privacy is violated in ways that are overt, visible, and knowable, the violation is unquestioned. It is unacceptable. In most cases, it is illegal.
So why is it different when the violation is hidden, opaque, electronic, commercial, and complicated?
6. High-Stakes Standardized Testing
President Biden promised teachers and parents he’d end harmful high-stakes standardized tests. Instead, he pushed assessments even during the pandemic.
Can Cardona show the American people who want these tests reduced or eliminated what, if anything, the Biden administration will finally do to end high-stakes standardized tests?
No amount of lead is O.K. for developing children, and it can lead to learning disabilities.
8. Reading
Reading has become a volatile issue, and Cardona has been mostly silent. Many commercial programs with little independent study, but nonetheless called the Science of Reading, are being pushed into classrooms.
The subject of reading deserves a better forum than short, often hostile debates on X.
Cardona should call for a new National Reading Panelto study programs and address reading instruction. The panel should include teachers who teach reading since they were left off the last panel. This panel should consider the concerns of the last NRP member, the only educator on the panel, Joanne Yatvin (Yatvin, 2002). Parents should also be given a voice on this panel. A new NRP would allow for a better collection of the research, old and the latest findings, and a review of the work of the last NRP.
9. Recess
Every public school in the nation should give children several unstructured breaks throughout the school day, supervised, on safe, well-designed playgrounds.
Americans need to know the status of their public school buildings. How are the HVAC systems and air quality? How many school facilities are still falling apart? Are public school buildings safe?
Are new schools being built to support teachers?
11. School Choice
The Biden administration discussed regulating charter schools (Lieberman, 2022). But concerns about vouchers, educational savings account, nonprofit and for-profit charters, and religion in schools needs to be better addressed.
In addition, the Biden administration should describe what they mean by community schools (often called charter schools), partnerships, and social impact bonds and how these schools are still public.
Closing school libraries has been a disaster in many school districts, see Philadelphia as an example.
13. School Safety
The gun lobby is unfortunately influential, so despite shootings in this country, don’t hold your breath for meaningful gun laws. It was thoughtful of Cardona to visit Parkland.
In the meantime, school administrators must devise creative ways to make schools safe and identify students in their schools who need mental health help. See class size above.
14. Social-Emotional Learning
Concerns about the data collected on students includes social-emotional learning. Teachers always want their students to be socially and emotionally healthy, but social-emotional learning seems more about collecting unnecessary sensitive data about students.
Who is using this information and why?
15. Special Education
Parents are in danger of losing special education services. The All Handicapped Children’s Act reauthorized to IDEA should have evolved into a more inclusive and better programs for students with exceptional needs, but instead it has been hijacked by those who don’t want to pay for it.
Cardona should look into special education and create a task force to study it and determine exactly how much special education funding schools receive and the kind of services students receive. He might start with Tammy Kolbe’s work and the National Education Policy Center report Funding Special Education: Charting a Path that Confronts Complexity and Crafts Coherence.
16. Teacher Preparation
School reform has changed teacher preparation dramatically. There needs to be more effort to oversee these mostly fast-track nonprofit or for-profit programs often connected to charter schools.
Cardona should step up here to promote fully university-prepared teachers, and he should work with university education programs to improve their coursework and degree offerings. The United States Department of Education might provide scholarships to attract young people who want to pursue a teaching career in university education programs, not unknown nonprofits or charter school preparation.
Fast-track groups like Teach for America are a concern because they turn those without real qualifications into the system with little understanding of child development or what’s needed to teach well, and Grow Your Own programs are ill-defined.
17. Technology
While technology is useful to learning, a recent Columbia University study indicates that children read better with paper print not online.
I am impressed how educational technology has had no effect on scale, on reading outcomes, on reading difficulties, on equity issues.
Is Cardona behind teachers or for replacing them with technology? Actions matter.
18. Third-Grade Retention
Third-grade retention is unnecessary. No child should be made to feel like a failure. Children can still learn to read in third grade, can still grow and become great learners. Speaking out on this issue would help end it.
Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for better public schools and reduced class sizes. She leads a small but powerful organization called Class Size Matters. I am a member of her board (unpaid, of course, as she is).
CSM is powerful because Leonie is tireless. She attends meetings of the City Council, the Panel on Education Policy (I.e., the Board of Education); she testifies at City Council hearings and goes to Albany to testify when the education committees meet. She finds lawyers to work pro bono and files lawsuit to seek more funding for the schools. She works with parent groups to support or oppose the latest decision by the mayor. She meets with elected representatives. She writes op-Ed’s for the local press. She almost single-handedly collapsed Bill Gates’ inBloom, which hoped to collect personally identifiable information about every student in every state. She scrutizes the budget of the NYC public schools, even more intensely than those who are paid to do it. She once blocked a bad deal that saved the city $600 million, by exposing the sordid record of the contractor.
The elected officials in Albany are now considering whether to renew mayoral control of the public schools. Michael Bloomberg persuaded the Legislature to give him control soon after he was elected in 2001. He promised all sorts of miraculous improvements. He would be accountable, he said.
Leonie testified recently at a hearing on mayoral control and explained that mayoral control did not increase accountability. In fact, it decreased accountability. No one listened to parents. One of Bloomberg’s chancellors (his second, who lasted only 90 days) mocked parents who expressed their grievances at a public hearing.
The mayor hired a lawyer with no experience in education to be the schools’ chancellor. He did not trust educators and surrounded himself with people from the corporate sector.
The mayor had a majority of appointments on the city’s “Panel on Education Policy,” a toothless replacement for its Board of Education. When the members of the Panel threatened to reverse one of his decisions, he fired the disobedient appointees on the spot and replaced them with others who served his wishes.
The mayor could do whatever he wanted, regardless of the views of teachers, parents, students, communities. Beloved public schools that served the neediest of students were closed and replaced with small schools that did not accept the neediest of students. He opened scores of charter schools that were free to reject or exclude students they did not want, then crowed about their test scores. (Now a private citizen, Bloomberg continues to give hundreds of millions to charter schools; no big deal for him, as his assets exceed $60 billion).
Leonie stands on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, and persistence. Sometimes I think she wins battles because the electeds don’t want her to pester them anymore.
She is the undisputed champion of reduced class sizes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 