Chicago City Wire

Heather Cherone, the lead news reporter covering Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and its teachers' union for Chicago's PBS affiliate, is married to a former CPS teacher and union activist.

Her husband, Michael Cherone, taught mathematics at CPS from 2001 through 2014 before leaving to go to business school. 

While a CPS teacher, Michael Cherone was among the most prolific CTU members, street protesting and posting on social media in support of then-union president Karen Lewis as she led a Sept. 2012 strike -- the union's first since 1987--- publicly sparring with then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Former CTU activist Michael Cherone pledged to burn down the "penthouses" of Chicagoans who didn't support keeping empty CPS schools open. | Twitter.com

On Sept. 10, 2012, the day the strike began, Michael Cherone chronicled picketing teachers, traveling the city, chronicling the strike, posting dozens of times that day on Twitter.com.

"Can you hear us now Rahm?," Cherone posted. "Whose schools? Whose city? Whose students? Our schools! our city! Our students!"

Cherone called out CPS vendors who delivered to schools that day, accusing them of "crossing the picket line."

"Balton Distribution just crossed our picket to deliver," he wrote in one tweet.

"So Bareman's Dairy drivers arent Teamsters? They just crossed our picket line," he wrote in another.

Cherone tweeted photos of himself manning a megaphone with marching union members in the Loop, boasting that they had "City Hall COMPLETELY surrounded."

The following spring, Michael Cherone took to social media to join CTU in protesting CPS' closing of 50 mostly-empty schools to save taxpayers' money.

"If you close our schools, I will torch your penthouses" read a photo posted by Cherone in March 2013.

"How do you spell racist? C-P-S," he posted.

Simultaneous with Michael Cherone's activism, Heather Cherone served as City Hall Reporter for the now-defunct "DNA Info" in 2012, writing about Emanuel's battles with Lewis--- and CTU hard-liners like her husband.

Both Heather and Michael are 46. They live in Park Ridge.

Michael Cherone went to University of Chicago Booth School of Business from 2016-2018, then took a job for Follett Learning, selling education software to school districts, according to Linkedin.

He left that job last year to go back to public education, taking a position as a teaching assistant at Carpenter Elementary in Park Ridge.

Heather Cherone, nee MacDonald, started her career at the Los Angeles Daily News in 2000. She spent seven years in California before moving to Chicago for a job as a “community producer” with the Chicago Tribune in 2007.

Cherone worked at DNA Info from 2012-2017, then for The Daily Line from 2018-2020 before joining WTTW-TV (PBS) as “senior political reporter” in April 2020.