Democrats split over education in Chicago mayoral runoff

The two Democrats vying to become Chicago’s next mayor are in many ways a study in contrasts. Brandon Johnson is a 47-year-old county commissioner and Black progressive whose campaign has been largely bankrolled by Chicago’s teachers union. Paul Vallas is a 69-year-old former education administrator and consultant, a white moderate who has been endorsed by Chicago’s police union.

One thing the two men have in common is past careers in public education – a fraught and combustible issue that looms large in Chicago politics. Mr. Johnson taught middle school and then worked for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) as an organizer. Mr. Vallas was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley in the 1990s and later helped oversee New Orleans’ charter-led school reforms after Hurricane Katrina.

Those experiences, however, have guided the candidates to radically different conclusions about how to fix public schools in Chicago, from where to invest resources and how to assess school performance to the role of charters and parental choice.

After a decade in which the city’s public school enrollment declined by nearly a fifth to 322,000 students – and with schools still reeling from pandemic disruptions – analysts say education poses a looming challenge for the next mayor. It also may be a harbinger for national politics, on a critical issue where Democrats have long held an advantage, but where Republicans have lately been gaining ground. Which candidate’s vision for education reform prevails in next Tuesday’s runoff – particularly among Chicago’s Black and Latino voters, many of whom did not vote for either of the two candidates in the first round of balloting – may send a signal about the Democratic Party’s direction.

In the Black community, education is “right behind public safety” as an issue, says Delmarie Cobb, a Democratic strategist in Chicago. “What the pandemic uncovered is the disinvestment [in communities] and inequity.”

The race is tight: While Mr. Vallas led in the first round of balloting, in which violent crime and how to reduce it was a dominant theme, a recent poll by IZQ Strategies put him at 44%, narrowly behind Mr. Johnson at 48%, with 10% still undecided. Another poll has Mr. Vallas ahead by 5 points.

Mr. Johnson’s campaign has emphasized support for neighborhood schools that can also deliver social services. But how voters respond to his message may hinge on their view of the powerful union that wants to elect him. The CTU led citywide strikes in 2012 and 2019, and repeatedly blocked a return to in-person pandemic schooling, forcing parents to scramble to find child care, particularly those who couldn’t work remotely. To its critics, the CTU has become an interest group that blocks reform and holds back students; Mr. Johnson and his fellow activists insist that they are defending public schools and the communities that rely on them.

The union has generally won this argument among parents. A poll taken in January 2019 found the CTU had a 62% favorable opinion among likely voters. But the union’s inflexibility toward the reopening of schools during the pandemic hurt its reputation, particularly among white and Latino residents, says Peter Giangreco, another Democratic strategist based here.

“The popularity of the teachers’ union has taken a hit,” says Mr. Giangreco, who said he’s not seen such negative views of the CTU in 30 years of working on local campaigns. “There’s a real concern that Brandon Johnson is way too beholden to that union.”

In the IZQ Strategies poll, just 48% of respondents had a favorable opinion of the CTU. That’s better, however, than the 38% favorability rating for the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which has endorsed Mr. Vallas and his pledge to ramp up hiring of cops.

While the two candidates are at odds over what ails Chicago’s schools, their disagreements have little overlap with the education-related issues that fire up Republican voters. In this deep-blue city, neither campaign is talking about books with LGBTQ+ themes in schools or which bathrooms transgender students should use, issues that are now center stage in GOP-run statehouses and conservative media.

“This is not a cultural battle over schools like you see in Florida. It’s an old-fashioned political battle. It’s about money. It’s about power,” says Frank Calabrese, an independent political analyst in Chicago.

That power to run schools will be diluted during the next mayor’s term as Chicago prepares to transition to a 21-member school board in 2025, which will include mayoral appointees. By 2027 the board will be fully elected, which means the battle over education will shift to board elections.

But a brewing crisis over funding for half-empty schools, which has been eased by pandemic relief money, won’t wait that long, says Mr. Calabrese. “The reality is you’re going to have to consolidate more schools and that’s going to cause more angst among the teachers union.”

Two views at Chopin Elementary

On a recent morning, cars and school buses pulled up at the Frederic Chopin Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side. The four-story, redbrick building has white Ionic columns and occupies a city block. But it only enrolls 311 students, down from 423 in 2018.

Christina Williams’ first grade son isn’t among them. She brings him here to catch a bus to a public magnet school, which she praises. Her view of the teachers union is more jaundiced after seeing how long it waited to bring students back during the pandemic. “I’m pro-union, but I don’t like the CTU,” says Ms. Williams, a therapist who asked for her maiden name to be used so as not to get into a public fight. “They operate like a mob.”

Ashton Dean, a home health care worker who used to work for the school district, disagrees. She says the teachers at Chopin Elementary, where her daughter attends pre-K, are looking out for their students and that the CTU does the same when it advocates for a better education for all. “We expect these people to watch over our kids for eight hours a day. The least we can do is to give them the resources they need,” she says.

Mr. Vallas argues that his record running schools in Chicago and cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans makes him the right candidate to fix K-12 education. He wants to see school buildings stay open in evenings and on weekends for community-run programs and favors an expansion of alternative schools for adults who left school without graduating.

But he has faced criticism over funding shortfalls in teacher pensions in Chicago after he left and whether the resulting squeeze on budgets led to the closing of 50 schools under Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the 2010s. That period saw an upsurge in organizing by the CTU, which staged its first strike in decades to oppose Mr. Emanuel’s reforms. In 2019, it staged a walkout under Mayor Lori Lightfoot – who lost her reelection bid this year. That strike, primarily over pay, benefits, and conditions, got national attention: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren visited a picket line, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called the union “the conscience of the United States of America.”

“It took a while, but the political class in the state and the city really brought an activist union into existence,” says Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has studied the CTU.

He says whoever wins the April 4 runoff, the union will remain a political force in Chicago. “The CTU’s perspective is broader than just bargaining contracts. They really do feel like they have a responsibility to influence the way the city is governed,” he says.

A new teachers’ contract must be agreed to next year, which raises the possibility that the CTU will be negotiating with one of its own, Mr. Johnson. The union has given more than $1 million to his campaign, along with national and state teachers unions. In a televised debate, Mr. Johnson couldn’t name one issue where he disagreed with the union.

This lack of independence could push voters toward his rival, argues Mr. Giangreco. “There’s a lot of people willing to hold their nose and vote for Vallas despite [the fact that] he’s more conservative than Chicago voters,” he says.

Challenge of shrinking enrollment

Mr. Vallas has lauded school choice, which is popular with many Republicans and was recently adopted as a statewide policy in neighboring Iowa. But he has avoided any talk about school consolidation, which in Chicago remains a highly charged issue that intersects with the racial politics of a highly segregated city.

A decadeslong exodus of Black families from the city means fewer school-age children to enroll in local schools that were already below capacity. That makes any further consolidation in Black neighborhoods politically sensitive, given historic underinvestment in those communities and lingering resentment over the last round of closures. By contrast, Chicago’s Latino population, which is roughly on par with the Black population, skews younger and is the largest bloc in the public schools.  

Chicago isn’t alone in facing a crisis of falling enrollment. Smaller cohorts of U.S.-born children and a slowdown in legal immigration over the last decade have left many urban school districts with too many classrooms and not enough students. The pandemic also led more families to move out of cities, while others enrolled kids in private schools that were quicker to resume in-person classes. 

Burke Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side, a short drive from the Hyde Park neighborhood where Barack Obama began his career in Democratic politics, has seen better days. Its hulking century-old brick building has a new playground outside, but its K-8 student body of 293 has fallen by nearly one-third in five years. Only 1% of students are considered proficient in math, down from almost 4% pre-pandemic. (The school district has also seen a decline, though not as precipitous.)

Among parents waiting to collect their children there was little talk of the mayoral race. Most were focused on their daily grind and, when asked, unsure about voting at all. Some expressed surprise that Ms. Lightfoot was out of the race. 

In the first round, Ms. Lightfoot won virtually all of Chicago’s Black-majority wards, including the neighborhood that Burke Elementary serves. To beat Mr. Vallas, say analysts, Mr. Johnson will need to win a clear majority of Black voters while holding the mostly white wards on the North Side where his progressive policies are popular.

His defense of neighborhood schools goes down well in progressive circles. But his opposition to school choice isn’t necessarily a winning argument with Black parents who are frustrated by their local schools, says a Democrat who requested anonymity to discuss the candidates. Some may also worry about the taxes Mr. Johnson wants to raise, this Democrat adds. “The Black community is not as liberal as Brandon is.”