Name: With possible teacher strike vote looming, CPS chief says union talks need to focus on how, not whether, to reopen schools
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With possible teacher strike vote looming, CPS chief says union talks need to focus on how, not whether, to reopen schools

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AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneJan 20, 2021 at 7:10 pmThe Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body is expected to convene Wednesday and could send a vote to members as soon as Thursday to strike or take other collective action as early as next week, several sources told the Tribune.With that looming threat, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson held a roundtable Tuesday morning with a small group of parents inside the gymnasium at Belmont-Cragin Elementary. Asked about talks with the union and the possibility of a teachers strike, Jackson said the district is “incredibly interested” in coming to a resolution and the parties are continuing to meet regularly.Advertisement“We can’t do this work without teachers ... so for that reason alone it’s in all of our interests to have an agreement,” Jackson said. “ ... People can’t make heads or tails of the back-and-forth.”More than 6,500 prekindergarten and special education students were signed up to return to CPS buildings Jan. 11 for the district’s first in-person classes since the coronavirus pandemic caused schools statewide to close in March. Another 70,000 kindergarten through eighth grade students have chosen to return on Feb. 1, with their teachers expected back on Monday. No return date has been set for high schoolers.AdvertisementReferring to messaging the district promoted over the weekend listing “items that CPS and CTU agree upon for a safe reopening,” Jackson said she wants people to know what specifically is being negotiated and said the district has delivered on every health and safety precaution.“We are still having conversations around staffing and I think we’ll get to a resolution on that,” Jackson said. “It has to be that we are talking about how to reopen schools safely, not a debate around whether or not schools should reopen.”On Twitter, the district shared a graphic about points of agreement between the union and CPS, saying: “Our disagreements are largely due to CTU’s insistence that we stray from public health guidance.”The backlash from CTU supporters was to be expected. The union’s official account tweeted “not today, Satan,” prompting comments about the union’s use of the devil’s name.LOL...not today, Satan. Not today. — ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1)A strike, which requires a vote of the union’s nearly 25,000 members, is among collective actions delegates may consider, according to the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the details. Union members walked off the job for 11 days in 2019 before settling their current contract.But delegates are also considering an action shy of a work stoppage. With fewer than three-quarters of teachers called back to schools last week showing up each day, some members are wondering what would happen if they took collective action to work remotely rather than a traditional strike. On Friday, 901 out of 3,787 school-based staff members were marked absent, and nearly 90 were considered absent without leave for repeatedly failing to swipe in. Those educators were , and their pay was withheld.Jackson said she prefers to focus on staff members who are returning rather than those who are resisting.“It’s a huge distraction and I think feeds into something that I know parents are incredibly irritated about, this back-and-forth between CTU and CPS,” Jackson said.AdvertisementThough CPS officials released staff attendance data, they have still not provided student attendance numbers for the first week of in-person learning. Jackson said it’s complicated to track attendance with students in person, remote and hybrid, but that the district will provide those numbers.“We want to make sure it’s accurate. ... The importance is we have an option for everybody,” she said. “I think that we keep getting into these percentages around whether it’s opt-in or attendance, there is no right answer and because more people choose one thing over the other doesn’t make it right. And so I think the goal which we’ve tried to articulate is a path toward in-person instruction for every student in CPS.”CPS late Friday released a school-by-school breakdown of 38 self-reported COVID-19 cases among school-based staff members between Sunday and Thursday, along with 56 close contacts and six learning pods whose members were told to quarantine.The cases correspond with the dates they were confirmed, and most of the positive cases involved people who were not in schools last week, according to CPS. The district sends notifications after contact tracers confirm the case and identify contacts. Citing privacy laws, the district said it can’t confirm if a particular case at a school was a student or staff member. The greatest number of cases self-reported at any school was two, at three schools, and more than 30 schools had an isolated case.Entire pods were quarantined at Ashe Elementary, where one case was reported; Darwin Elementary, where one case was reported; Fiske Elementary, where two cases were reported; Schubert, open as a learning hub, where one case was reported; Southside Occupational High, where one case was reported; and Otis Elementary, where one case was reported, according to CPS.Jackson said the fact that most cases have been isolated and that she’s seen principals and staff members follow protocols has only made her more confident in the district’s plan.Advertisement“I cannot promise a COVID-free environment,” Jackson said. “Nobody can. If anybody tells you that, run in a different direction; they’re lying.”Jackson said CPS is looking at ways to “beef up” additional personal protective equipment, especially for teachers who have to be in close contact with students, and that parents are free to send their children with any protective gear they feel is necessary.She reiterated that teachers who have children in CPS can have their children attend in-person classes four days per week. Most elementary students who choose the in-person option will be on a hybrid model with three days of remote learning each week.Parent group Raise Your Hand has raised concerns about allowing children of CPS teachers to attend school four days per week, tweeting again on Tuesday that it could compromise pod integrity and was not communicated to parents when they were asked to choose between in-school and remote learning.At the roundtable Tuesday, Jackson said some parents who left the district this year said sitting in front of a computer doesn’t work for their child, and that they’d reenroll when schools reopened.Parent Miriam Abdellatif said she felt more comfortable opting her son in after learning about the district’s protocols. “Plus I felt that he needs to go, because it’s his first year,” she said. “I’m not a teacher. I could try my best but I’m very sure that I cannot do the job that the teacher is doing to make him love what he’s studying and to make him do it right.”AdvertisementIn the afternoon, the CTU hosted a Little Village Car Caravan for Safe Schools, to draw attention to the union’s reopening demands and support locked-out educators.Linda Perales, a cluster teacher at Corkery Elementary, said she has been locked out of her virtual classroom since Jan. 12 “because I am practicing my rights to work in a safe working environment.”The district’s reopening plan “has many holes,” she said. “It relies heavily on students wearing a mask all day and students being able to social distance. I teach students in the cluster program that are unable to wear a mask all day. They are unable to social distance because they need help with eating, toileting, hand over hand to hold their pencil.”Many students live in multigenerational households and have parents who are essential workers, Perales said. “It’s not safe to expose so many people to COVID-19,” she said.Also locked out since Tuesday, Lily Aranda, a preschool teacher at McCormick Elementary, said her students have been receiving instruction from a substitute working remotely.“It has been extremely frustrating to see that CPS has not taken into account the lives of their teachers and their students,” Aranda said.AdvertisementThe district maintains that it has taken those lives into account, and Jackson said leaders would not pursue reopening if they didn’t believe it was supported by public health guidance. Reopening materials discount the CTU’s proposed alternatives, such as delaying in-person learning until every educator has at least one vaccine dose or making it optional, pairing volunteers with students who opt in.“Limiting in-person education to teacher preferences allows adult preferences to override a family’s educational choices, and will further inequity and disproportionately harm vulnerable students,” according to one document.Asked about what the newer, more contagious COVID-19 strain means for schools, Jackson deferred to city’s health department.“A lot of the mitigation strategies that we have in place work to reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, no matter what the strand is,” Jackson said. “I think if they believed this was not safe, if there was some new threat, they would make a different decision.”She said the district will be ready to welcome more students Feb. 1 “provided everything falls into place with our teachers.”“We are not against the union,” Jackson said, calling teachers the “bedrock” of the schools. “If we don’t have teachers in the classroom, operationally, this is impossible.”Advertisement Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneJan 20, 2021 at 7:10 pmThe Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body is expected to convene Wednesday and could send a vote to members as soon as Thursday to strike or take other collective action as early as next week, several sources told the Tribune.With that looming threat, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson held a roundtable Tuesday morning with a small group of parents inside the gymnasium at Belmont-Cragin Elementary. Asked about talks with the union and the possibility of a teachers strike, Jackson said the district is “incredibly interested” in...

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Hannah Leone

The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the 6th highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.

With possible teacher strike vote looming, CPS chief says union talks need to focus on how, not whether, to reopen schools

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