Last week, as charter school supporters pushed back on an NAACP resolution calling for a moratorium on new charter schools, Chicago’s teachers union actually put one in place.
In a new, eleventh-hour labor agreement, reached last week to avert a strike, Chicago Public Schools agreed to a temporary cap on charter school enrollment, the first in the country imposed through collective bargaining with a union.
Teachers unions have backed efforts to limit the growth of charter schools around the country. They’re pouring money into a Massachusetts campaign to keep a state cap in place, and the American Federation of Teachers heaped praise on the NAACP resolution over the weekend.
Meanwhile, a new article in the American Prospect connects the Chicago policy to larger trend. Unions, which have been trying to organize charter school teachers, are using labor negotiations to get more say over charter governance.
Conditions in the Windy City may have been especially favorable to a charter school cap won at the bargaining table.
Illinois is among the states where public employees, including teachers, have a legal right to strike. That gives them leverage in labor talks that their counterparts in states like Florida don’t enjoy.
And Chicago Public Schools were already struggling under the weight of “unrealistic” budgets, crippling pension obligations and a heavy reliance on short-term loans. Last month, that state of affairs prompted Moody’s Investors Service to push the district’s credit ratings further into “junk” territory. In other words, the school district faced pressure to offer concessions that would placate the union without costing taxpayers more money.
And many state charter school laws — including Florida’s — limit districts’ ability to unilaterally halt charter school growth, regardless of what commitments they make to unions. The Prospect offers a case in point from California:
During its last round of contract negotiations in 2014, the Los Angeles teachers union, in partnership with local community groups, called on the Los Angeles Unified School District to ensure that all schools under its purview—district and charter—be held to the same set of transparency, equity, and accountability standards. The union also proposed requiring that before the district opens up any new school, it first must assess what the economic, educational, and communal impact would be on existing schools. (Under California state law, however, school districts are prohibited from considering such factors when reviewing new charter school applications.)
Even in Chicago, people who apply to open charter schools, but get denied by local districts, can appeal to the state Charter School Commission. But The 74 reports teachers unions are pushing to take that law off the books, and charter school operators in the city say they see the agreed-upon cap as a “real threat.”
In other words, it’s unclear what teeth the Chicago cap has, or what chance teachers unions might stand trying to replicate it elsewhere. But copycat efforts could open a new front in local political battles over charter schools, where teachers unions around the country are clearly pushing to wield more power and using labor negotiations to do so.
