Chicago City Wire

A Chicago-based consultancy firm founder says Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) teachers need to get back to work.

“The Board of Ed exists to fund adults. Period,” Chris Robling, the founding principal of Clearspan Strategic, said in an interview with Chicago City Wire. 

Robling said the union members have been getting full pay for the last year for no reason.

“For nearly a year, defying science and common sense, CTU teachers have received full pay for doing nothing,” Robling said. “That’s why, from the sunny beaches of Cancun to their North Side apartments, they do not want their COVID delusion to end.”

Robling said the union is failing students and parents.

“Not only should this work stoppage end, but Illinois parents should also be liberated from the Marxist, tax-guzzling, comprehensively failing obstacle to education that is CTU,” Robling said. “Chicago parents deserve a new birth of freedom.”

Robling said schools should be reopened.

“Children are entitled to schools that open,” Robling said. “Families need to wake up in a world where tax dollars follow kids, not collective bargaining agreements.”

Robling said the failed system is harming minorities.

“Chicago has ignored generations of children by locking into a failed system,” Robling said. “It disproportionately harms minority kids, and the Democrats prop it up every chance they get. Why? Campaign contributions in recycled tax dollars and union muscle.”

Robling said the union needs to be held accountable.

“We cannot afford the loss of human potential to satisfy a political bulwark,” Robling said. “The sooner we end the unions’ grip on K-12 education, the sooner Illinois parents and kids can look forward to family choice in education. Appalling results deserve accountability. Now is the time.”

CTU teachers have been refusing to return to in-person schooling and the union voted on Jan. 25 to defy Chicago Public Schools (CPS) reopening plan. The school pushed until Jan. 27 to reopen to give the union more time to negotiate, but they continued to refuse. 

“Here’s what I’m hearing from residents all around the city and from parents in particular: If we don’t have stability in the public school system, why should we stay in Chicago? If we have to worry about lockouts and strikes, particularly after a historic contract where everyone thought we had bought labor peace for five years, people vote with their feet,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told the Chicago Tribune.