Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, labeled private schools as ‘segregation academies’ in 2018. Last month she called those who supported school choice ‘fascists’. She enrolled her son in private school this month.

Here’s your mirror, Stacy. What changed? It turns out the public schools in her neighborhood are craptastic. She still sends her two daughters to a public elementary school. Perhaps they don’t have dreams of being athletes. It turns out that she was “forced” to send her son to private school. She’s all about the victimization of raising “a black boy” in America, you see.

in her official response, Stacy Davis Gates says she was "forced" to send her son to a private school.

what about other families with kids stuck in your failing government schools, @stacydavisgates?

shouldn't they have the same opportunity to escape? pic.twitter.com/wdPX1UC7P5

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) September 8, 2023

How about other parents of all colors in Chicago? Do they not have the same stress and problems of raising kids in the city? The lack of self-awareness is staggering, even for a president of a teacher’s union. I guess she’s a fascist now, as she labeled school choice supporters just last month. She surely knew she was making a choice for her own son when choosing his school this year when she said that. Union bosses think you are stupid, America. The rules are for little people.

Now that she is rightfully being called a hypocrite, she admits the public schools in her neighborhood are poor quality schools. She justifies her behavior by saying she is doing the best for her son. Here’s the thing, Ms. Gates – that’s the whole point of school choice. Not only is it to opt-out of poor quality public schools, it is to choose the best fit for your child. Every parent should have a choice. That’s the point. Parents who cannot afford private school should have the option of vouchers and scholarships to private schools or charter schools. Children trapped in failing public schools deserve a quality education, same as children everywhere.

In this case, her son Kevin wants to play soccer and the private school offers what he wants.

She said Kevin was an aspiring soccer player, and she and her husband were ‘forced’ to send him ‘to a private high school so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs.’

Davis also attempted to shut-down criticism of her behavior, claiming her children were off-limits – even though she’s shared photos of them on her public social media feeds and in a gushing profile with Chicago magazine.

Davis Gates’ local high school is Harlan Community Academy, which ranks 437 out of the 664 high schools located throughout Illinois, according to NBC Chicago.

I could ridicule her ‘he wants to play soccer’ excuse but I won’t because it doesn’t matter why she chose a particular school. The point is that it should be her right to choose in the first place. School choice boils down to a family decision. I will ridicule her blatant hypocrisy and her selfishness. Her attempt to wave off criticism by saying her children are off-limits is also ridicule-worthy. She uses her children as reasons for making policy decisions and she uses them in social media.

Davis Gates has made her children’s schooling a talking point, and used it to emphasize her opposition to private schools.

In an August 2022 interview with South Side Weekly, she was asked: ‘Do you have concerns about school-choice and privatization supporters running for the school board, and a strategy to oppose that?’

Davis replied: ‘Yes, we are concerned about the encroachment of fascists in Chicago.’

That same month, she wrote on X: ‘*School choice* was actually the choice of racists. It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children. Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?’

In March 2022, she declared: ‘I’m also a mother. My children go to Chicago Public Schools. These are the things that legitimize my space within the coalition.’

Last year in a Chicago Magazine article, cited by NBC Chicago, Davis Gates said: ‘I can’t advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household.’

Uh-huh. Racists. Did I mention that #BLM appears in her X (formerly Twitter) bio? Yeah. There’s that.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates was elected president in May 2022. CTU has about 25,000 members. Her Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators received criticism for mishandling the union’s response to the winter surge in COVID-19 cases and for not being transparent about union finances.

If she wants to toss around the fascist label, she should look at her own union. They abused school children throughout the pandemic, insisting that schools remain closed and online schooling continue long past when it was necessary if it ever was. The teacher’s union demanded that teachers be treated as first responders and go to the head of the line for vaccines when they became available. Then they demanded that schools close anyway. Like other large city teacher unions, they demanded increased pay and other benefits during the pandemic. The teachers’ unions are not about the children, they are all about themselves. Chicago Teachers Union goes on strike frequently.

If Ms. Gates was truly concerned about Chicago students, she would use her own family again in her talking points and lobby for school choice. It is the civil rights battle of today. Children stuck in failing schools, usually in poor neighborhoods, deserve the same education as children in the suburbs.

The pandemic exposed a lot of things. The power of teachers’ unions was one of those things. It needs to be stopped.