Chicago Public Schools have canceled classes for four consecutive days over the teachers union's COVID concerns.
Unfortunately, there's no end in sight.
The “standoff,” as the local media describes the impasse between local officials and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), comes despite a vote from the school board, which ordered public schools reopen for in-person learning.
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot demanded the same thing and threatened to restrict the wages of teachers who didn't show up. Perhaps knowing these were empty threats, CTU ignored the “ultimatums” of city officials from Lightfoot on down.
Perilously few educators showed up for work today and nearly every one of Chicago's 650 public schools remain closed.
On Monday, Lightfoot called the actions of the city's teachers “illegal.”
Yet the union instinctively knew that Lightfoot never intended to go through with her threats. Case in point, today's revelations that Lightfoot will do nothing to punish teachers other than having “further negotiations” with CTU while remote learning takes a massive toll on children.
Insider's Katie Balevic reports:
Lightfoot appeared on NBC's “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning and called for teachers to return to the classroom for in-person instruction despite the rise in COVID-19 cases.
The standoff began last Tuesday when the teachers union voted to refuse to teach in person until additional safety measures to combat the recent COVID-19 surge, driven in part by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, were implemented.
The union's insane demands come despite a vaccination rate of over 90% among school staff and the city disturbing hundreds of thousands of KN95 masks to teachers.
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“They abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families,” Lightfoot said on Sunday. “We are working diligently every single day at the bargaining table to narrow the differences and to get a deal done.”
The union said instructors intended to teach classes remotely, but several said they were locked out of their accounts, the Chicago Tribune reported. Some parents have since filed a lawsuit against the union, calling their actions an “illegal strike.”
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