Community
Chicago Students Return to School After Union Dispute Over COVID Safety Protocol
Chicago teachers had taken a work action, electing to temporarily teach remotely from home, due to concerns over lack of PPE, a regular testing and vaccination program for students, and related concerns. Rather than allow students to receive instruction remotely, however, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS administration cancelled school entirely starting last Thursday. Students return to classrooms in-person on Wednesday.
By Brandon Patterson
Chicago Public School students will return to in-person learning on Wednesday following five days of cancelled classes after the CPS administration and the teachers’ union reached a deal on COVID safety precautions in schools.
Chicago teachers had taken a work action, electing to temporarily teach remotely from home, due to concerns over lack of PPE, a regular testing and vaccination program for students, and related concerns. Rather than allow students to receive instruction remotely, however, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS administration cancelled school entirely starting last Thursday. Students return to classrooms in-person on Wednesday.
The latest work action marked the second since Lightfoot took office in 2019, when the Chicago Teachers’ Union, which has earned a reputation for using its power to bargain for improved conditions for CPS students, went on strike for school improvements, including putting a nurse in every school, more social workers, and reduced class sizes, as well as increased pay.
This time, CTU members were fighting to push the city to address what it considered inadequate COVID safety protocol amid the post-holiday COVID surge.
Among the chief demands, teachers wanted N-95 masks distributed to all students, not just teachers, and an opt-out COVID testing program, rather than a test-in program, as proposed by CPS administration, meaning that all CPS students would be tested for COVID 19 by default unless their parents opted them out of the program, and an in-school contract tracing system.
CTU had wanted schools to be remote for the first two weeks of January while the district set up the protocol, but Lightfoot and CPS administration insisted on an immediate return to in-person, even other cities, including Los Angeles, have gone remote to start the year off.
Chicago teachers cited the greater vulnerability of CPS students and families to COVID-19 as cause for their call. About 90% of CPS students are Black or Latinx – populations that are twice and three times as likely to die from COVID-19 compared to white people – and most are low-income.
Vaccination rates among students at some of the city’s public schools on the South and West sides are also incredibly low. For example, at Manley Career Academy High School on the West Side, just 10% of students are fully vaccinated, compared to 83% of students at Lane Tech High School on the North Side, according to local news outlet Block Club Chicago.
Many CPS students also live in multi-generational households, CTU President Jesse Sharkey noted in an interview on CNN on Monday, and risk taking the virus home to older relatives. And despite a return to in-person instruction, some CPS parents say they will continue to keep their kids home from school during the surge due to COVID fears.
“The fact that the majority of our Black and Latinx students have seen relatives and neighbors die from COVID at two and three times the rates, respectively, of white families is nothing short of a national tragedy,” said Chicago teacher Jackson Potter in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times last week. “In order to create the infrastructure and mitigation necessary to curb the spread of COVID in CPS, we need clear and appropriate measures.”
This story was written using reporting from Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Sun Times.
