Internationally, many observe May Day as Workers’ Day; internationally, “Mayday” is also a distress call. Last Friday in Chicago, it was both.
Chicago Public Schools declared Friday, May 1, “a Day of Civic action.” Originally, the Chicago Teachers Union wanted schools to be closed. Chicago Public School CEO Macquillaine King pushed back. Acrimonious debate ensued with many parents opposing.
The compromise was an official civic day of action, allowing thousands of students to take a field trip to a downtown Chicago rally. Some 45 schools were provided with buses (or fare cards if enough buses were not available) and sack lunches for students wishing to attend Friday’s rally against immigration enforcement, taxing the rich, and, of course, against President Trump. (RELATED: May Day Protests and Chinese Attack Strategies)
For those students who did not want to attend the “voluntary” rally, the day’s curriculum included politicized content: A local Chicago television station obtained a “copy of that curriculum, which includes teachers talking to students as young as preschool about social justice, transgender rights and protest.”
While CPS stated that less than 1 percent of CPS students joined the field trips, only roughly 87 percent of teachers were in classrooms.
Thousands attended the rally, which was “very much about politics,” according to Zaria Holmes, a CPS student who attended. While CPS stated that less than 1 percent of CPS students joined the field trips, only roughly 87 percent of teachers were in classrooms. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 409: Marxism Infiltrated The Public School System. How Can We Stop It?)
There is no word on the experience of the 99 percent of students who were in class while one in eight teachers were not. However, there is a word on the experience of students who are in Chicago public school classrooms on those days which are not “days of civic action,” that word is “failure.”
According to the Illinois Policy Institute’s last summer report on Chicago Public Schools’ most recent test scores for grades 3 through 8: “Fewer than 1-in-3 students could read at grade level. Fewer than 1-in-5 could do math at grade level.” For 11th-grade students, the results were worse: “Only 22.4 percent … less than 1-in-4, were proficient at reading on the state-required SAT in 2024. Only 18.6 percent of CPS students met proficiency in math.” Results were worse still for minority and low-income students. (RELATED: Graduated, Not Educated)
These dismal results are hardly due to overcrowding. CPS enrollment is 71,378 students lower than in 2014. Additionally, of these fewer students, 41 percent are chronically absent, missing 10 percent or more of the school year.
Nor are these results due to underspending. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, “CPS’s revenue budget for local and state funds reached a record $7.9 billion for 2024-2025. That’s an increase of nearly $3.2 billion in own-source revenues over the past decade.”
Not surprisingly, with all this additional spending, for fiscal year 2026, CPS faced a $734 million deficit. Even after cuts, debt refinancing, a pension plan deferment, additional revenues, one-time funding, and a major donation to CPS, CPS is estimated to end this year with a $45 million deficit. And while administrators expected next year’s deficit to be $529 million, they now think it could be far higher.
These deficits follow CPS reaching an agreement last April to increase Chicago Teachers’ Union salaries from $1.1 billion to $1.25 billion by 2027-2028. The agreement meant that average teacher pay would rise from $86,439 to $114,429. All of this is the very reverse of pay for performance.
To put these dismal current CPS events into context, recall that the Chicago Teachers Union voted to defy an order to return to classrooms in January 2021 to prepare for a February 1 part-time return to in-class instruction, even though many other school districts had returned to in-person learning in the fall. Earlier, the Chicago Teachers Union had posted on social media that the demand to reopen schools was “rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.”
Despite this backdrop of failing performance, falling enrollment, chronic absenteeism, increased spending, and ballooning deficits, Chicago’s teacher union’s desire for last Friday was a cancellation of classes for May Day. They settled for a “Day of Civic Action.”
Certainly, education can take place outside the classroom, and accommodation can be made for it. However, when, as in the case of Chicago’s public school system, so little has been going on inside the classroom, a field trip — and one to a clearly political event and that so clearly served the agenda of the Chicago Teachers Union — should hardly be the priority.
Chicago’s public schools did indeed need a Mayday last Friday. Just not one for International Workers Day, but as a call for distress. They still do. Because their ship is sinking.
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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.
