Thank You and Farewell

Dear IFT Member,

Tomorrow, I will turn over the leadership of our union to a new president and executive officers elected by your representatives at our triennial convention. You’ve seen a few other emails from me recently with my reflections from the last 15 years, but I can’t step aside without expressing the intense feelings of pride I have in you as a member and in this incredible union I love. 

We have been through so much in our time together. From anti-union Senate Bill 7 to the pension crises of Senate Bill 1 (and now our drive to fix Tier 2 pensions) to the Rauner years of no budgets and universities falling into junk bond credit ratings to the Janus decision that ended fair share to the COVID pandemic and the extraordinary challenges of “Trump 1” and now “Trump 2.0,” the list of what we’ve dealt with together goes on. And on.

Despite all of this—possibly because of it—today our union is stronger, larger, more powerful, and more united than ever. To me, that is the greatest achievement of our time together. 

We lost things along the way, but we gained so much more. We elected our own union brother, Brandon Johnson, as the mayor of Chicago. We became the first state in the nation ever to end a private school voucher program. We regained bargaining rights for the Chicago Teachers Union, Local 1. We won more school board races statewide than ever before. And we enshrined collective bargaining in our state constitution. These are incredible accomplishments, and we did it by standing together in this union.

We are stronger internally too. We have an elected executive board that is more reflective of our statewide membership than ever before. We’ve created new funds to support local educational efforts and to assist members who’ve suffered from severe weather events and other tragedies. And we have done it all while maintaining fiscal responsibility and reasonable dues.

I have been an IFT member since my first day on the job teaching English at Niles North High School in Skokie in 1993. I never set out to be a union leader, but with the encouragement and support of my incredible colleagues in the (then named) Niles Township Federation of Teachers, I learned the meaning of professional unionism and solidarity. I took those lessons to heart, and they have guided me every day during my time as your president. I hope you agree that they have served me well.

There is more left to do (aka, we must get the governor and lawmakers to pay what they owe our schools and students!), and I have tremendous confidence in you and our new leaders to get it done. I urge you to stand together as you move ahead; we know that outside forces will try to divide and weaken us with attacks on our leaders and our professions. We cannot let them succeed, and I know you won’t.

It has been the greatest honor and privilege of my life to be your president. As I take on my next professional challenge, please know that I will always stand by your side. I will always be an IFT member. And I will forever bleed IFT/AFT blue.

With gratitude and in solidarity,

Dan Montgomery IFT President