Chicago City Wire

The controversial Chicago Teacher’s Union President Stacy Davis Gates refuses to send her son to the city’s public schools instead opting to enroll him to the exclusive De La Salle Institute.

Davis Gates lashed out at SubX for posting a story that include her son’s MaxPreps profile.

“We live in a time with extremist political rhetoric, and it has led to violence,” she told WBEZ.

“My children, my family should not have to endure this. And doxing a child is violent, and it’s unacceptable, and it needs to be rejected and decried by every institutional leader. It’s just not okay.”

Davis Gates made that comment even though she has deemed programs that would allow other students to attend her son’s school through a public scholarship tax abatement program as “racist.”

De La Salle notably costs $14,750 per year which boasts 88 percent placement of students in four year instituions.

In contrast to De La Salle’s out of pocket expenses, Chicago Public Schools gobbles up nearly $30,000 in taxpayer funds per student, much of which goes to teacher benefits.

The performance at CPS has been struggling in recent years. Prior to the pandemic 42 percent of CPS students went on to attend a four year university. That number has since dropped.

The situation is notable given Davis-Gates vehement stance against allowing private school choice for public schools students with many accusing her of hypocrisy.

She used extreme language to lash out against school choice advocates saying she was “concerned about the encroachment of fascists in Chicago” in regards to school choice funding.  

Still, Davis Gates defended the move in an interview with WBEZ to send her son to one of the city’s elite private schools while publicly vilifying others who would seek to do so.

“It was a very difficult decision for us because there is not a lot to offer Black youth who are entering high school,” Davis Gates she told WBEZ of the options provided by Chicago Public Schools.

“In many of our schools on the South Side and the West Side, the course offerings are very marginal and limited. Then the other thing, and it was a very strong priority, was his ability to participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities, which quite frankly, don’t exist in many of the schools, high schools in particular.”

Wirepoints reported Davis Gates called school choice programs “racist.”

“On Twitter, she has said things like ‘School choice was actually the choice of racists. It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children.’ Private schools are ‘Segregation Academies,’ she wrote on Twitter. ‘Call them private schools supported by taxpayer funds – vouchers – so your northern cousins understand better,’ she said. And she linked to an article titled ‘The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,’” Mark Glennon wrote for Wirepoints.

Davis Gates' comments referred to the Invest In Kids Tax Scholarship Program which has now been mothballed.

Invest In Kids helps nearly 9,400 statewide, but Hispanic students participate more on a per capita basis.

The program was unpopular with the CTU which is increasingly a dominant force in local and state politics.

Invest In Kids was left out of the 2024 state budget leaving the future of its low income participants in jeopardy.

The school choice program helped place students, many who would have to attend inferior CPS schools, in high achieving private schools, some with 100% of graduating classes being place in four year universities which far outperforms that of CPS.