The ink is barely dry on the new four-year, $1.5 billion contract between the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Chicago Board of Education, but critics are already sounding the alarm. Chief among them: former CPS CEO, Illinois Policy Institute policy advisor, and one-time mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, who joined Chicago’s Morning Answer on AM 560 with Amy Jacobson and Chris Krok to break down why he believes the deal is “a terrible contract for children and a terrible contract for taxpayers.”
What’s in the Deal?
The contract, championed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the CTU, includes:
- A 4% raise in the first year (with step increases compounding total compensation)
- Guaranteed librarians and nurses in every school — even under-enrolled ones
- Doubling of bilingual staff
- 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave
- Extra prep time for elementary teachers
- Class size reductions
But according to Vallas, the benefits for students are murky at best.
“Barely a third of CPS students are reading at grade level, and only about one-sixth are proficient in math,” Vallas said. “Among Black students, the numbers are even worse. Yet the CTU is awarding itself glowing performance evaluations — 99% of teachers rated ‘proficient’ or ‘excellent’ — and adding layers of bureaucracy without results.”
“A Political Machine, Not an Education System”
Vallas did not hold back in his assessment of the CTU’s influence over the city’s education system.
“This contract has nothing to do with improving outcomes for students. It’s about protecting union jobs and expanding political power,” he said. “The CTU has become a political machine, and this deal is highway robbery — for taxpayers and especially for Chicago’s Black and Latino children.”
Vallas also highlighted the Chicago Teachers Union’s efforts to crack down on charter schools and kill school choice programs like Invest in Kids, which offered tax-credit scholarships to low-income students attending private schools.
“It’s apartheid education policy,” Vallas charged. “They’re trapping students in failing schools, and eliminating the few alternatives those families had.”
A System That “Rewards Failure”
During the interview, Jacobson and Krok pointed to high schools like Diet, where only 2% of tested students are reading at grade level, yet Mayor Johnson praised the school for its basketball championship.
Vallas pointed to nearby Hope Academy, a private Christian school on the West Side, where low-income Black and Latino students outperform CPS averages dramatically.
“Hope has a 400-student waiting list and ranks in the top 20% of Illinois high schools,” he said. “Meanwhile, just a mile away, Manley High School — built for 1,200 students — now has only 76 students and 27 faculty. That’s not a school, that’s a jobs program.”
CPS, he noted, now has one employee for every 7.6 students — with over 22,000 non-instructional employees, many not assigned to schools at all.
“They say every school needs a librarian — well, with this staffing ratio, why don’t they have one already?” he asked.
A COVID Hangover With No Recovery Plan
Vallas linked the district’s prolonged COVID-era closures — which lasted 78 weeks, longer than almost any other major district — to rising crime and student disengagement.
“The crime spike among youth post-COVID is directly tied to the CTU’s school shutdowns,” he said. “The union walked off the job three times during the pandemic and has never been held accountable for the damage done.”
Despite record spending — CPS now shells out roughly $30,000 per student — test scores continue to stagnate or decline, while administrative costs balloon.
Taxpayers: Brace Yourselves
According to Vallas, the $1.5 billion price tag will come straight from taxpayers — via rising property taxes, both for CPS and the city.
“This will max out the CPS property tax levy and require even more city subsidies,” he warned. “Homeowners are going to feel this in their bills, with nothing to show for it.”
What’s Next?
Vallas, who now writes regularly for The Chicago Contrarian, has a new column this week accusing CTU of running an “apartheid school system” that systematically disadvantages poor, minority students.
“We are graduating students who are not prepared for college or the workforce — and we’re rewarding the system that produced those results,” he said. “The people of Chicago need to wake up, and they need to do it at the ballot box.”
If they don’t, he warns, the consequences won’t just be fiscal — they’ll be generational.
With Chicago’s school performance continuing to lag and spending at record highs, Paul Vallas is calling out the new CTU contract as a political power play dressed in the language of equity. While city leaders celebrate the deal, he says students — particularly those in poor neighborhoods — are the ones paying the price.