Biden, asked about Chicago schools’ reopening plan, says buildings need to be ‘safe and secure for everyone’

CHICAGO — Reopening safely means reopening later, Chicago Teachers Union leaders and members said at a virtual news conference Monday amid their push to continue working remotely.

“The pandemic is temporary; death is permanent,” said union Deputy General Counsel Thad Goodchild.

Chicago’s reopening fight was also referenced in the first question asked of President Joe Biden during an afternoon news briefing Monday.

“I believe we should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers and for the help that’s in those schools maintaining the facilities,” Biden said. “We need new ventilation systems in those schools, we need testing for people coming in and out of the schools, we need testing for teachers as well as students and we need the capacity, the capacity to know that in fact the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone.”

Biden said he believed every school for kindergarten through eighth grade should be able to open “if we can in fact administer these tests.”

“The teachers I know, they want to work, they just want to work in a safe environment,” he said.

The CTU announced Sunday that 71% of voting members cast ballots to continue teaching remotely. In response, the district said it would push back the required return of kindergarten through eighth grade teachers for two days, until Wednesday, while negotiations with the union continue. The Chicago Board of Education also meets Wednesday, when it could approve an increase in an emergency authorization from $75 million to $100 million, allowing more pandemic-related spending by Chicago Public Schools without the usual approval process.

At an unrelated news conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said her administration and the teachers union had “productive conversations” over the weekend and batted away a question about contingency plans in case they can’t reach a deal.

“I’m going to focus on the glass half-full,” she said. “We made a lot of progress, I think, over the course of the weekend and I feel confident that if we come to the table every single day with the focus on putting our kids first, doing what needs to be done to protect our teachers and school community, that we are going to get a deal done.”

During the pandemic, she said, “there have never been any easy choices. There just haven’t been. There’s no easy choices now.”

“I think in partnership with the CTU, if we come together in good faith, I have every confidence whatsoever we will get something done that obviously protects their members but also gives families the options if it’s right for them to be able to send their children back to in-person learning,” Lightfoot said.

Asked if all teachers need to be in person, Lightfoot reiterated that she wants “to give those families for whom in-person learning is the right option the option to do so.”

“CPS has been working really, really diligently from the very beginning of this pandemic, but certainly through this school year and particularly over the last couple months, to make sure we’re reaching out, we’re educating people, we’re answering questions, we’re listening and being responsive,” the mayor said.

“It’s not unlike what we’ve been talking about today about vaccine hesitancy. Folks are a little nervous and tentative. I think as they start to see, as we’ve seen now — I think we’re in week three of students being back — things are going fine. ... I’m hearing from more and more parents about the fact that they want to have that opportunity if it’s right for them.”

At the morning CTU news conference, members shook their heads as Goodchild described what he said was the school district’s 85% denial rate for staff members who requested to work from home because they have a family member susceptible to COVID-19.

Just 1 in 5 eligible students attended classes in school buildings each day during the week of Jan. 11, the first week of in-person learning for preschool and some special education students. Because that number is so low, Goodchild argued that the district didn’t need all teachers to return in person, and suggested that the number who returned voluntarily would be enough to staff schools until vaccination is more widespread.

As of Monday, teachers and other school staff were eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, as Illinois progresses with its vaccination plan. The Chicago Department of Public Health will begin distributing the vaccine to the district in mid-February, according to a Friday news release from the district.

Union members emphasized a desire to return, but under safer conditions.

“We want to return,” said teacher Dawn Kelly. “We love what we do. This is not a profession where you get rich. You do this because you have a heart to do it.”

Kelly said she was among the teachers who were locked out of their virtual classrooms after she defied the district’s in-person return date for pre-K and special education educators.

“I had made the decision that I was going to remain remote. I was going to exercise my right to a safe work environment and to protect my health. For a week and a day, I was allowed to teach my kids, but on the seventh day, I was locked out,” she said, adding she has regained access and has continued to teach remotely.

Tens of thousands of elementary students are still scheduled to begin a hybrid schedule on Feb. 1 that will include in-person classes. CPS officials said they hope to reach a deal with the teachers union that will allow that plan to move forward. The district has been adamant that any agreement include an in-person option. No return date has been set for high school students.

Late Monday afternoon, CTU president Jesse Sharkey said the union has been looking for solutions at the bargaining table, but doesn’t have them yet.

“CPS needs to examine its priorities,” he said. “... We feel like for a long time, they’ve been very stuck on a set of ideas which constrain us, which keep us from being able to find solutions.”

A preschool teacher said she and some peers successfully worked remotely Monday, but they know others who were still locked out.

CTU leaders and educators said they appreciated Biden’s remark. ”Someone heard us. That means everything,” said Shavon Coleman, a teacher assistant in Lawndale. “All the things CTU has been asking of CPS, is what he said.”

When one reporter noted Biden has not said that teachers must be vaccinated before schools reopen and asked if CTU believes teachers should not return until they are provided vaccines, CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates reminded reporters that many schools still do not have a full-time nurse or social worker.

“We believe no teachers should have to work unsafely,” Davis Gates said. She added that teachers want to return, but not the same way that they left.

“Not only do we need vaccines, we need sustainable community schools,” she said.

It’s not all labor strife in CPS, which later Monday announced it had been “instrumental in brokering” a new three-year collective bargaining agreement for the union representing its engineers. The engineers have been reporting to schools throughout the coronavirus pandemic, working on facilities and ventilation upgrades, said Chief Operating Officer Arnie Rivera.

While the agreement, retroactive to July, is between the engineers union and facilities management firms Aramark and Sodexo, whose contracts with CPS expire in June, it would carry on under whoever takes over facilities management, Rivera said.

The deal includes annual cost-of-living raises of 3% in year one and 3.25% in years two and three. CPS estimates it will cost $3.42 million in year one, $5.96 million in year two and $8.58 million in year three. Fewer than half of Local 399′s 500 affected members voted, but their approval was unanimous, said recording secretary Vince Winters. He said the local had not taken a position on CTU’s ongoing action.

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