Union Leader: "All Children Belong to the Union"

Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) president Stacy Davis Gates said on Monday that “all children belong to” the union."

At the City Club Chicago event, Gates bashed President Donald Trump for lessening the power of teachers’ unions, calling his education agenda a “relitigation” of the Civil War while complaining about the failing state of Chicago schools.

Be informed, not misled.

Quoting civil rights activist James Baldwin, Gates tells the crowd, “The children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe.” Gates then mocks parents who would respond by saying, “CTU thinks your children are its children.”

“Yes, we do,” Gates said. “We do.”

The Daily Caller tried to contact the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) for a comment. There was no response.  

While the teachers' unions always claim to be improving education, public education continues to fail.

Gates also implied that Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) and fire federal workers are an attack on the civil rights movement.

Actually, Trump's efforts are to return the responsibility of educating children to the parents to whom the children rightly belong.

"The plan is meant to send education back to the states and give parents greater autonomy over the education of their children," according to his official statement.

The “services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” the department provides, will not be interrupted, the order stated.

“Today, we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making,” Trump said at the signing. “In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the Federal Department of Education.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters shortly before the signing. The department itself will be significantly shrunk and the “great responsibility of educating our nation’s students will return to the states.”

“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” Leavitt said. “When it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education, but we don’t need to be spending more than $3 trillion over the course of a few decades on a department that’s clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students.”

“With today’s executive order, President Trump is delivering on his promise to the American people to dismantle the ineffective and bureaucracy-ridden U.S. Department of Education and return education to the states where it rightfully belongs,” Dr. Keri D. Ingraham, a senior fellow at Independent Women and director of the Discovery Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education, told the press. “It is a historic day in our nation that takes us one step closer to the goal of education freedom for all families nationwide.”

Indeed, public education is failing.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has seen chronic failures within its district, with fewer than one in three elementary students reading at grade level and just 18% testing proficient in math, according to the district’s 2024 report. CTU’s frequent strikes have kept students out of school for days at a time. 

The union fought to keep kids out of schools for over a year during the COVID-19 pandemic. They finished the 2020-2021 school year entirely remotely and did not return to the classroom until August 2021. CTU continued to push through 2022 for remote learning, resulting in schools closing again for five days after the union walked out.

Then there is the "Where's the money?" issue with the union.

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has failed to produce required financial audits disclosing how its money was spent over the past four years.

Multiple union members who work for Chicago Public Schools filed the suit, alleging CTU’s most recent audit only covered the first half of 2019, despite the union constitution and bylaws requiring a yearly publication of finances. The Liberty Justice Center sent a demand letter on Oct. 1 requesting the documents on behalf of the plaintiffs, but the union instead retaliated against the members after requesting their identity under the guise of verifying their union membership, according to a press release.

And there's this:

Chicago schools are also facing a federal investigation due to their alleged refusal to give up discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The district allegedly focuses “on remedial measures only for black students, despite acknowledging that Chicago students of all races struggle academically,” according to ED.

The Chicago school system also allegedly tried to hide its sex education program from the public, which was revealed by the DCNF to be riddled with gender ideology content, including “Gender and sexuality workshops.”

Takeaway

The following is a summary of a radio speech President Ronald Reagan gave on March 12, 1983.

This is a link to his entire speech. 

My fellow Americans:

I'd like to talk to you today about one of the most important issues that touches our lives and shapes our future: the education of America's children. We've always had a love affair with learning in this country. America is a melting pot, and education has been a mainspring for our democracy and freedom, a means of providing gifts of knowledge and opportunity to all citizens, no matter how humble their background, so they could climb higher, help build the American dream, and leave a better life for those who follow.

But in recent years, our traditions of opportunity and excellence in education have been under siege. We've witnessed the growth of a huge education bureaucracy. Parents have often been reduced to the role of outsiders. Government-manufactured inflation made private schools and higher education too expensive for too many families. Even God, the source of all knowledge, was expelled from classrooms.

It's time to face the truth. Advocates of more and more government interference in education have had ample time to make their case, and they've failed. Look at the record. Federal spending on education soared eightfold in the last 20 years, rising much faster than inflation. But during the same period, scholastic aptitude test scores went down, down, and down.

The classroom should be an entrance to life, not an escape from it.

Only one-sixth of our high school graduates have taken junior and senior-level courses in science and math. And many U.S. high schools do not offer sufficient math to prepare graduates for engineering schools.

America can do better. We must move forward again by returning to the sound principles that never failed us when we lived up to them. Can we not begin by welcoming God back into our schools and setting an example for children by striving to abide by His Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? We've sent an amendment to Congress that will permit voluntary prayer in school again.

But better education doesn't mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that Department should be abolished.

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Mindful. Be Prayerful.