Here’s Why 25,000 Teachers Are Protesting in Chicago

By Sushmita Roy

A sea of red t-shirts are flooding the streets of Chicago, the third largest school district in the U.S., where around 25,000 teachers are rallying around the world famous Loop, since Thursday. The Chicago Teachers Union, whose signature is the red t-shirt, is demanding higher pay and better benefits, smaller class sizes and a better working environment along with other labor demands of the Chicago Public School (CPS) authorities. 

On Friday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s team offered donuts and coffee to protestors gathered around her house. Her team also put a note on the coffee table that read, “I hear you” to which a teacher left a response saying, “Smaller class sizes not donuts.”  



The strike affects around 300,000 students and have left many parents in dismay as they desperately search for daycare centres. Public school cafeterias are open for students despite classes not being in session.

The union and the city are yet to reach a deal and Lightfoot is expected to maintain her hard-stand. The mayor has not offered to extend the school sessions — something that has always been part of the deal in the past — indicating that teachers are losing their pay each day they spend protesting. 




“I have a classroom of 33 kids and it’s in an extremely small room,” Heidi Dolcimascolo, a U.S. History teacher at Prosser Career Academy, told the Chicago Sun Times. She said her toes were frozen from the cold mornings she spends protesting on the streets but she wouldn’t give up. 

“It’s not only a fire hazard in that room, because of all the students, but I also can’t get around to every kid.”

She expressed the need to “put in writing” the number of students capped at 28 per classroom for the mutual benefit of students and teachers. 

“We don’t even have enough desks for some of our classes,” Dolcimascolo said. “We have to scatter to neighboring classrooms to borrow desks, then return them when class is over.”

“What kind of message does that send to our students that we don’t even have a desk for you?”

In the United States, middle-class workers have suffered even after the economy recovered from the 2008 recession. And teachers are no less exception oftentimes earning lesser than many other professionals. According to Axios, teachers in 39 states earned less in 2016 than they did in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. 




But Chicago has a different history altogether. The city, the first one to ever host the teachers strike, has a long history of gang violence. Many students, about 75%, rely on the schools for all their meals and see it as an escape from all the violence. That’s also one of the many reasons teachers in Chicago, the most gang-infested city in the U.S., demand smaller class sizes and more funding considering students need more individual attention. 

"The violence is because the kids can't read," Moselean Parker, an elementary school teacher said during the strike. She's spent her own money buying supplies for her classrooms, but says it's not enough.

"Please, give us the books. Give us the psychologists. Give us the social workers. Give us the nurses," she said.

United StatesSushmita Roy