Later, however, she agreed that the union should be expected to “show our work” to the public, given the hefty price tag to taxpayers who fund schools and pay teachers’ salaries.

“I don’t run away from accountability,” she said.

She said she gauges public opinion by her community interactions. Elderly Black women, in particular, she said, thank her for speaking out fearlessly, saying they never had the chance to do that.

In a recent episode that caught national attention, an unusual message was posted from CTU’s X account. It read in part: “Rest in Power, Rest in Peace, Assata Shakur. Today we honor the life and legacy of a revolutionary fighter, a fierce writer, a revered elder of Black liberation, and a leader of freedom whose spirit continues to live in our struggle.”

Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State trooper in the 1970s. Armed members of the liberation army helped her escape from prison, and she later fled to Cuba.

Seeing the post, Weingarten picked up the phone and called Davis Gates.

“I was concerned when I saw the memorial to Shakur,” Weingarten said. “For whatever else Shakur did, she killed a cop.”

The post drew backlash from conservatives nationally but also from members of the Chicago City Council.

“Chicago teachers union celebrating a Marxist, cop killer and fugitive from justice,” DeSantis wrote on X in September. “Feel bad for school kids trapped in a failing system and that are forced to listen to this leftist drivel. An advertisement for school choice.”

Asked why an official CTU account would send such a message, Davis Gates, a history teacher, remained unapologetic, maintaining Shakur has an important place in history and that she was someone her students had studied. She taught these lessons herself.

Perhaps the schools’ chief critic outside of the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian group, and the Chicago Policy Center, a group whose work includes regularly tracking CTU finances and policy moves, is Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools superintendent, onetime Chicago budget director and mayoral candidate who lost to Johnson.

“They’re a political party. They don’t give a damn about the kids,” Vallas said of the CTU. “The Socialist Party of Chicago is the Chicago’s Teachers Union.”

“They have more nonteaching employees than teachers, and they have almost 11,000 more teaching employees than the city has cops,” Vallas said. “So this is a union that is taking an ever bigger part of the taxpayers’ pie and just delivering abysmal performance. And that’s why people are leaving with their feet.”

Faced with questions over a vast inventory of schools operating at less than one-third capacity, as well as low test scores and a declining population, Davis Gates spoke of deep-seated challenges. Neighborhoods aren’t walkable, she said, and funding for groups that helped students arrive at school safely were just cut. Communities around schools lack grocery stores, jobs and other anchors that would retain current Black families and attract others.

Detractors, though, complain the CTU has stood in the way of hard choices that would push forward progress.

In 2024, Davis Gates referred to standardized testing as “junk science rooted in white supremacy,” when, on a radio show, she was pressed about complaints from union members about low reading and math proficiency in schools.

Her answer inspired a Wall Street Journal editorial that called the remark “convenient for the union because it absolves teachers of any responsibility for failure. If the tests are racist, then black students are doomed to fail, therefore failure is inevitable and it doesn’t matter how or what is taught in school. So give the union a big raise no matter how students perform. Who’s the real systemic racist here?”

A year ago, she accused a reporter of being a “stalker” and said she didn’t consider herself a public figure. “Astonishing outburst of controversial teachers’ union boss on being confronted by reporter,” the Daily Mail wrote in a headline as a result.

In today’s climate, Davis Gates said she is inundated with hateful attacks. Death threats and racist, gendered hate reaches her via social media, email or physical mail. One Christmas, she said she received a card in the mail that read: “F— you n—– b—-!” Davis Gates doesn’t open her mail herself anymore.

A competitive basketball player and runner growing up — including an All-American sprinter at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana — she said all of it makes her go “hard in the paint.”

Ifeoma Nkemdi, a fifth grade teacher at Chicago’s Newberry Math & Science Academy, said while she admired the late Karen Lewis, the former CTU president, Davis Gates was about “drama and theatrical — performative — rather than actionable things that can be measured.” Nkemdi left the union, a process she called painful because of pressure from Davis Gates and others. Nkemdi sought legal assistance from the Illinois Policy Institute, which regularly rails against the CTU and Davis Gates.

“I feel like she is trying to seal her own political status here in Chicago. It’s kind of ‘do it my way, this is my stamp on how to do this.’” Nkemdi said. “I see it and I feel like we have to all be more transparent and we have to learn how to collaborate and communicate in positive ways. And I don’t think she has that style at all.”