With Chicago teachers on the brink of a second strike in 15 months, weary parents plea for a resolution: ‘Put yourselves in CPS families’ shoes’

With prospects escalating of a second Chicago teachers strike in less than two years, parents across the city were left bewildered at how tensions between the school district and teachers union over reopening schools escalated to this point.

Chicago Public Schools announced that all in-person classes would be halted on Wednesday after the Chicago Teachers Union decided its members would not show up to school and will strike if CPS locks them out of remote learning. CPS officials, in turn, indicated they still expected teachers to report to classrooms and are still intent to reopen schools to most kindergarten through eighth graders on Monday.

Washington Park resident Ticina Williams said she had mixed feelings about the 2019 CTU strike, but she is more sympathetic to the plight of teachers during this impasse.

As a mother of two boys at Robert A. Black Magnet Elementary School on the South Side and one at Morgan Park High School, she elected for her younger sons to stay remote because the city was under a stay-at-home advisory and spiking coronavirus rates when parents were presented with the choice in December. High school students in CPS have not yet been invited back.

“Maybe some of the other strikes, I might have had a different opinion,” Williams said, noting the loss of instructional time for students.“But this to me is very serious. Because the consequence could be death.”

Williams said she believes some younger students with parents who cannot watch over them or with special needs do need an option to return to classrooms, but she was disappointed in what she described as CPS’s “too rushed” plan. Now the dueling social media posts and press conferences from CPS and CTU “just leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” she said.

The frustration with the ongoing disagreement was also felt by parents who are against the union’s refusal to return to work. Ryan Griffin, of the new, grassroots Chicago Parents Collective, a group of more than 200 parents who want CPS to proceed with reopening plans, said no strategy will be 100% perfect, but he trusted the public health measures cited by the district.

“Put yourselves in CPS families’ shoes,” Griffin wrote in a statement. “We’ve been dealing with these very issues in our own jobs for 10 months now. Our children are struggling. We need options and optimism from our leaders. Now we are watching an HR dispute hold up the delivery of an absolutely essential public service?”

Niecy Johnson of the Jeffery Manor neighborhood said her children, a fifth grader and sixth grader at Burnham Mathematics & Science Academy, are “ready” to go back, but she decided to wait due to coronavirus fears. She said she understands both sides of the dispute between CTU and CPS because e-learning isn’t working for many students, but teachers have the right to feel safe.

Still, she fears a potential strike would disrupt her children’s learning, she said.

“I’m kind of iffy because our kids do need to be back in school. They really do,” Johnson said. “But I do understand that teachers as well, they don’t want to get COVID either, and I don’t blame them. So I’m in between, to be honest.”

At Wednesday’s Chicago Board of Education meeting, parents on each side of the reopening debate advocated for or against the district’s plans and pleaded with the board to consider families’ circumstances.

In an attempt to break the gridlock, a group of Chicago school leaders on Wednesday offered its own idea for a phased-in reopening plan.

The proposal, from the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, centers on a small pilot program of 50 to 100 reopened schools in a representative sample of the city. The district would prioritize vaccines for returning staff, and direct additional staff to participating schools. As more individual schools demonstrate preparedness, the group said, the pilot would expand.

CPS officials “have to come to grips with the fact that the current plan is unworkable,” said association President Troy LaRaviere. His organization is part of the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of School Administrators union.

“No matter how sincere the district’s faith in its plan is, we need them to understand that their faith does not square with the reality of implementation on the ground in most schools,” LaRaviere said.

Less than 17% of principals and assistant principals said they believed the district was ready to reopen, according to a survey of 377 respondents that the organization released last week.

LaRaviere said that doubt came from a lack of trust in the district.

“If you really want this to work, the No.-1 thing you need is transparency,” he said. “That’s it! Because people don’t trust you. … Continuing to come out with statements and messaging and talking points is not going to do the job.”

Instead, LaRaviere called on the district to involve school leaders in the reopening planning: “We’re the ones they hand the plans off to.”

The proposal came a day after the union itself called for outside mediation to resolve the dispute.

“If solving the problem of how to reopen school buildings while ensuring the safety of educators, staff and students in the middle of a pandemic was easy, then CPS and CTU would have already done it,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten in a news release. “That’s why appointing a mediator is the right move, right now.”

Tribune reporter Hannah Leone contributed.