In the seemingly endless effort to turn students into activists, the Chicago Teachers Union has declared that May 1 will be a “Day of Civic Action and a Defense of Public Education.” The alleged educators, who fought to keep schools closed during the Covid pandemic even as their teachers went on Caribbean vacations, worked to pass the resolution in the March 11 Teachers Union House of Delegates meeting.

The lengthy resolution takes aim at private schools, school choice voucher systems, the Supreme Court decision allowing parents to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ curriculum, and the federal pushback against critical race theory, DEI and affirmative action. The Chicago Teachers Union claims that school choice vouchers, allowing parents to take their tax dollars and use them to pay for private school is a tactic to “use federal power to intimidate school districts into compliance with a white supremacist and anti-democratic agenda.”

The Chicago Teachers Union claims that all of this is an “attack on public education” and breaks “democratic norms” that threaten “the integrity of upcoming elections.” They claim that there is an attack on black and brown communities and that voting rights are being trampled on—primarily because of school choice vouchers, which came about because public schools were not doing the job they had been built to do.

Meanwhile, the school vouchers program that was in effect in Illinois, the Illinois Invest in Kids Act, ended in January 2025. Illinois may opt in to a federal school voucher program. This program would allow donors to “give up to $1,700 to scholarship-awarding organizations for K-12 schools and get an equivalent amount back in federal tax credits,” states local PBS affiliate WTTW.

Those scholarships could then be used “to help pay for private school tuition, along with education-related expenses for public school families, like tutoring or after-school programs. Students are eligible to receive the scholarships if their household income is within 300% of their area’s median income.” The Chicago Teachers Union is opposed to such a plan.

They then issued 9 resolutions as to why they believe students should have the day of school to march around. They declare “May 1 a Day of Civic Action in Defense of Public Education where we are in community engaging our students, their families and our neighbors, and supporting mutual aid efforts, leading civic education, participating in voter registration, know your rights, and mass resistance training from the beginning to the end of the day.”

Teachers planned, per the resolution, to “send petitions and resolutions to the Board of Education and the Mayor asking for their full support and participation in May Day activities by formally declaring May 1 a Day of Civic Action, and in the lead up to May 1 encouraging schools to engage in age-appropriate civic learning, marches and rallies, political education, Peace Concerts, labor history programming, and community safety trainings that equip students, educators, and families to protect themselves and each other.”

That day, which the Chicago Teachers Union said should be an excused absence to “attend a ‘civic event,'” will “organize and promote age-appropriate civic education, labor history programming, and know-your-rights trainings in the days surrounding and on May Day to equip educators, students, and families with tools to defend themselves and their communities.”

Teachers and union members will also be made to participate and part of the activist protocol for the day will be “to reject privatization, illegal wars, union-busting, anti-immigrant and anti-DEI policies, and federal overreach into our classrooms.”