Railing against plans to reopen Chicago schools, alderman calls on Mayor Lightfoot and CPS to ‘stop these Trumpian practices’
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The Chicago Teachers Union Wednesday remained at odds with Chicago Public Schools over its in-progress reopening plan, with union representatives, clinicians and social workers lambasting the district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot for plowing ahead in what the union maintains is an unsafe manner.
The CTU House of Delegates also is due to convene at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, at which time it could decide to send a vote to members to strike or take other collective action, sources who were not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations have told the Tribune.
Besides a traditional strike, that action could involve more teachers refusing to show up at schools and continuing to provide lessons remotely starting on Monday, when thousands of elementary teachers are scheduled to report in person for the first time since March. A week later, on Feb. 1, nearly 70,000 more students in kindergarten through eighth grade are due to return to in-person learning.
Fewer than 100 individual teachers who already have been required in school, but who chose not to report in person, are currently stripped of their ability to teach remotely and their pay is being withheld. If union members vote to take the same action collectively and the district eventually cuts off all teachers’ access to their Google classrooms, in effect it would mean the district, not the union, would have created the work stoppage, some union sources contend.
Both CPS and CTU officials and their respective supporters have expressed frustration over the months-long back-and-forth between the parties over the reopening negotiations.
During a Wednesday virtual union news conference — which have been a near-daily occurrence since the first wave of educators were told to report in person Jan. 4 ahead of the return of preschool and special education students on Jan. 11 — financial secretary Maria Moreno said the district is putting people at risk.
“You sit there and we’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? You still don’t have a plan for how you close down a pod or a school?’ And now we have more of our members getting infected,” Moreno said. “... You’ve put human beings in situations, in unsafe situations, to work in the middle of a pandemic where people are getting gravely ill and are dying, and you can’t even give an answer to a metric of when somebody gets infected and how you test somebody and how you make sure that people are vaccinated when the vaccines are there already?”
She concluded: “This is incomprehensible, this is a dereliction of responsibility that they have not taken seriously. Everyone should be up in arms for what CPS has failed to do.”
With more than 400,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates urged the public and the CPS administration to look at the issue as one of life and death. She said there are more than 50 schools that just since the first wave of teachers returned Jan. 4 have already had coronavirus-related exposures, incidents, or at which entire pods have been closed and people sent home.
“Members, actual human beings, including students and their families, are quarantining in this moment,” she said. “Human beings are built for survival and what we are experiencing with the educators connected to the Chicago Public Schools, is their involuntary response to survive. They are making decisions that prioritize their health, they are making decisions that prioritize their mortality.”
Davis Gates also said the union, which wants teachers to remain remote until such time as they feel it’s safe to report to buildings, has the support of a supermajority of the City Council and of 70% of families with students in the city’s public schools, she said.
“We want a plan that looks like safety — testing. We want a plan that looks like safety — vaccinations. We want a plan that looks like safety — an actual health metric. None of these things exist to the level in which we need them right now. And, quite frankly, the question should be: How are you reopening without these things?”
CPS CEO Janice Jackson said Tuesday that she wants to reach an agreement with the union but that negotiations must be about how, not whether, to reopen schools. CPS leaders have stressed the inequities and limitations of remote learning and the need to offer choice to parents who want their children to resume in-person learning. They’ve pointed to a $100 million investment in COVID-19 safety measures.
About 38% of preschool through eighth grade students have chosen the in-person option, according to CPS figures. No return date has been set for high school students.
At a separate union news conference Wednesday, one of Chicago’s most progressive Latino politicians stood with the CTU and compared Lightfoot’s City Hall to that of the outgoing presidential administration.
At Corkery Elementary School in Little Village, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, and other elected officials echoed the union’s month-long demand to scrap the ongoing CPS reopening plan.
“What have seen here is the irresponsibility of an administration to continue to push for reopening,” Sigcho-Lopez said, demanding a return to remote learning for all and an elected representative school board. “That’s what needs to happen for us to have a change here in the city of Chicago and stop these Trumpian practices.”
Tribune reporter Hannah Leone contributed.
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