Fighting school privatization is a working-class struggle

What we can learn from the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s organizing efforts

Ontario’s Ministry of Education is arguably the largest ministry in the provincial government with the lowest level of privatization, perhaps even country-wide. What little privatization there is in Ontario’s K-12 publicly funded education system amounts to running school buses and taking care of buildings, creating and implementing online credit programs, and providing childcare services before and after school. In recent years, school boards have been experimenting with alternative revenue streams, such as attracting and charging fees for international students, as a method of dealing with chronic underfunding. The current status of public education in the province is, however, at risk, through a variety of governmental steps that mark the implementation of a typical privatization plan. The slippery slope of privatization starts with underfunding and moves through a variety of steps to break the public’s confidence in the public system, thus opening discussions about what an open market in education could provide. If an Ontario government wanted to introduce a marketplace to monetize competition in publicly funded K-12 education, what could it look like? MPPs of previous political parties have floated large scale ideas, but none have followed through. However, this isn’t the case just south of the border, and the experiences there should act as examples for us in our fight to protect publicly funded education in Ontario.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the city’s public education authority, introduced for-profit schools in the mid-nineties, using a “charter” schools business model. Charter schools operate as a public/private partnership, where the local government hands over the operation and funding decisions to a corporate entity, who in turn contracts out the day-to-day operation of school-based services and instruction. Proponents of charters believe they can run education programs more efficiently and save rate-payer money. Today, approximately 125 of Chicago’s more than 635 public schools are charters. But, the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) pushed back against charters through workplace organizing drives that successfully won union contracts for charter school teachers and support staffs, effectively centralizing the organizing power of all workers, and uniting them as a labour force. CTU even became the country’s first union to use strike action in a charter school to win better deals. The Chicago Teachers’ Union story has attracted well-deserved international attention. Education sector unions across the United States and beyond continue to study the progress of CTU to learn how to make gains against privatization. Measurably, one of CTU’s greatest achievements occurred in the Spring of 2023, where after years of systematic organizing at worksites and into communities, the CTU helped elect Brandon Johnson, a CTU organizer since 2011, as the 57th Mayor of Chicago. Without question, the election of Brandon Johnson is a major accomplishment that will help stem the private sector’s attempts to grab hold of the education system in that city; however, this victory didn’t happen overnight. To get here CTU organizers first picked a working-class fight against Chicago’s privatized charter school system, a fight that created meaningful relationships between public school workers and their communities.

Following CTU’s very successful negotiation campaign in 2012, where education workers made major gains by going on strike and winning the support of many community groups, Chicago Public Schools management decided to immediately close nearly 50 schools. The school closures aimed to punish the CTU and its members. More importantly, the management of Chicago Public Schools allowed charters to proliferate in urban neighbourhoods. The sudden increase in charters sharply reduced CTU membership but that wasn’t the only concern. Chicago city schools have higher populations of racialized students which means the school closures, along with the problems associated with charter schools, disproportionately impacted Hispanic and Black students. Since then, organizing ideology has led to union contracts in 25% of Chicago’s 12 charter school networks. CTU leadership would prefer that the municipal government eliminate charters and for-profit education altogether, but in the mean-time winning union contracts to improve working conditions for educators and learning conditions for kids is the next best way to fight against privatization. It brings together the semi-privatized workers and situates them in a unionized environment that can foster increased community and worker relationships, all focused on the vital role that public education plays in creating the best outcomes for all students.

To organize in charter schools means to fight against the deep pockets of private for-profit interests. Charter holders have immense financial and political capital to protect their interests. They run elaborate advertising campaigns and make large donations to key electoral campaigns. They demonize the CTU by attacking union leadership in the media with targeted language like “power grab,” arguing that the CTU is against “innovation” and only wants to create more “red-tape.” Charter proponents characterize unionizing efforts as “big union bosses” against parental choice. They argue that union contracts are very restrictive for competition. What’s more is that charter capitalists steadfastly maintain the false narrative that CTU’s collective agreements mean cuts to staffing and resources. These tactics are textbook privatization playbook moves that aim to falsely discredit the services provided by a public education system. Yet, despite the attacks from charter supporters, the CTU engages in deep organizing within its membership and into communities.

The Chicago Teachers’ Union isn’t just defending the working and learning conditions of educators and students against privatization, they’re finding ways to flex their power and influence. CTU leadership intentionally chooses to go on the offensive, especially to confront the misinformation and neoliberal spin, by listening to the stories of members. Members tell working-class stories about kids whose families can’t afford basic necessities and about teaching in ill-resourced and under-staffed schools, particularly in charters. CTU organizers help active members sharpen these stories and use straight talk to debunk the myths of charters. This is why CTU’s fight against privatization is so important. They’re proving that with good relational organizing, an education sector union can engage rank and file members to reach through community partnerships and push back against pedagogical profiteering. For example, CTU runs an organizer training program every July called the Summer Organizing Institute, where 30 applicants learn how to use organizing principles and practices in their respective school communities. They are hired on as interns and paid to undertake tasks based on their learning. Some Institute interns are selected because of their affiliation with progressive groups like social and climate justice organizations. Training involves classroom theory and in-the-field praxis. During training, organizer interns visit members’ homes to ask questions designed to optimize listening and to bolster neighbourhood-based organizing meetings. This means that CTU members quickly learn the importance of community allyship as a foundation of trade unionism. CTU’s annual training institute wants new organizers to learn that the material and social struggle of members impacts everyone, like the intersections of working in unhealthy school buildings, living around local industrial pollution, and breathing the smoke of wild fires induced by global warming. Above all, CTU is an organizing union because it views educators as members of communities, not just workers in publicly funded schools.

The leaders and organizers of CTU make a strong case as to why the fight against charters is a working-class issue. A publicly funded education system with non-unionized educators erodes and devalues the socioeconomic interests of families and workers. Chicago Public Schools administration might argue that charters are a viable financial solution to education, but the socioeconomic impacts suggest otherwise, as the successful operation of any charter school system requires a profit margin, one that doesn’t flip resources and profit back into schools and student supports. Chicago Public Schools provides funding for charters and regular schools at the same per pupil rate, but unlike charters, non-charter school accounting doesn’t have to serve up a percentage slice to the charter holder. Administrative costs in Chicago charters tend to be high as well, since the 12 charter networks require separate business structures. Privatization in publicly funded school systems like Chicago’s not only redirects funding away from classrooms, it promotes the classist idea that to have quality public services like education some people have to get rich (and subsequently others must do without). To combat neoliberalism, CTU members call attention to the fact that charter schools don’t operate in wealthy, suburban neighbourhoods and charter schools have fewer special educators, councillors, and social workers. They successfully won overall enrollment caps in charter networks to prevent student drift and stabilize the system. They argue that their members live and work in the city and want what’s best for their students, that investing in classrooms leads to better student enrolment, and thus stronger taxation growth for urban neighbourhoods.

During the 2023 Summer Organizing Institute, educators enrolled in CTU’s organizer program spent some time canvassing residents in an elementary charter school downtown neighbourhood. CTU organizers conducted outreach to parents and community members that the charter school management have been reluctant to be a “sanctuary” school. CTU members in the elementary school have been working under an expired contract and management refuses to come to the table to re-negotiate a fair deal, one that includes important sanctuary language. Sanctuary language means that school management and staff do their best to support newcomers, for example by offering interpretation services during important special education meetings. More importantly, however, sanctuary schools do not cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement. This is particularly important for newcomers going through immigration processes because an anti-immigration Federal government could decide to aggressively pursue and detain undocumented children while attending school. It mandates that education is a human right for all students. Sanctuary language was successfully negotiated for all CPS schools in 2019, but charters don’t have to adopt sanctuary school practices if they don’t want to.

The implementation of sanctuary school policy is more than protecting vulnerable, racialized kids in the building from federal state agencies, such as the Trump Administration-established Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which targets and deports migrant families seeking a new life. It illustrates that workers can use collective action to fight against the underpinnings of powerful neoliberals who champion low wage policies and who blame immigration for economic and social problems in society, and to bargain for sanctuary language to push back the encroachment of privatized education and institutional racism, and to bargain for sanctuary schools because it protects children and publicly funded education. Due diligence and good custodial management of public infrastructure aside, the learning that goes on in school classrooms is not a business. In other words, the education of children is not capital. Charter schools erode and undermine this central belief by monetizing learning at the expense of children, families, and communities.

With this, we can see how CTU has led and continues a key discourse on the transformational role of organizing within the membership and with community as its very core. What this means for public education and OSSTF/FEESO’s fight to protect and enhance our own system requires us to look deeply at how we organize with educators, parents, and students as a collective. As what we can learn from the Summer Organizing Institute is that organizing is to enable the power of people to work collectively to a devoted cause, and the need for us to remain vigilant from encroaching privatization. We cannot wait for an existential crisis to fight back, we build power now before it’s too late.