After a dispute with the Chicago Teachers Union, which had threatened to stay home in order to compel education online during a coronavirus outbreak, public school administrators cancelled classes for Wednesday.
Teachers’ union members have questioned the district’s reaction to the Omicron variety, which has caused cases in the city to reach record numbers, and said that circumstances in classrooms were dangerous. They voted on Tuesday to refuse to report to school facilities despite the fact that they had just returned from winter vacation two days before.
Instead of returning to virtual teaching, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that it was undesirable and useless to do so. As a result, her administration chose to cancel all classes while leaving the facilities available in case of an emergency child care situation.
Democrat Ms. Lightfoot called on teachers to go to work, implying that they were planning an unlawful work stoppage in order to protest. It was announced late Tuesday night by the Chicago Teachers Union that 73 percent of its members who cast ballots supported stopping in-person training.
As the extremely infectious Omicron virus makes a comeback, so do disputes that were once thought to be resolved. Following a relatively peaceful autumn, during which administrators, labour unions, and families all agreed that remote education was a non-starter, the brinkmanship between the nation’s third-largest school district and its union demonstrates just how fast political agreement can be lost.
Chicago Public Schools, like other school districts, has had to deal with a scarcity of examinations as well as a low immunisation rate among pupils, which is far from universal. Unusually significant numbers of staff members have called in ill, and there is widespread fear among almost everyone. In addition to Cleveland and Milwaukee, many other districts have gone online for a period of time, although without the involvement of a public labour struggle.
Coronavirus cases have risen to their highest level in Chicago since the outbreak started, according to the city’s health department. However, as has been the case across the country, adults who have had vaccinations have had reduced rates of hospitalisation and mortality, while children of all ages — regardless of vaccination status — have been largely spared from serious consequences.
Furthermore, evidence from Chicago and other cities indicates that Covid-19 transmission inside schools has been restricted, with the vast majority of teacher and student cases occurring outside of school premises. In Chicago Public Schools, more than 90 percent of staff have received a complete round of vaccinations.
Members of the strong Chicago Teachers Union, on the other hand, have accused the school system of failing to adapt to Omicron and the increased possibility of outbreaks. During the Christmas break, they had requested either universal P.C.R. testing of students and staff or a two-week shift to remote learning, both of which were granted.
When it comes to closing down school facilities if significant numbers of staff and pupils are infected with the coronavirus, Pedro Martinez, the district’s top executive, stated on Tuesday that he would be more forceful. He, on the other hand, argued against a district-wide closure, claiming that disinformation was at the basis of the public’s concern over reopening.
However, the district’s botched attempt to test tens of thousands of children during the Christmas break only served to increase the anxiety of parents and teachers. The vast majority of the approximately 150,000 mail-in P.C.R. examinations that were issued to pupils were never received back. The vast majority of the approximately 40,000 tests that were sent in returned incorrect results.
To minimise quarantines and school closures, the Centers for Disease Control has encouraged schools to use a test-to-stay strategy, which requires close contacts of positive virus patients to submit to two quick antigen tests in a week; only those who test positive are required to remain at home.
School closures on an epidemic scale have led to a reaction against union-affiliated Democrats in states such as Virginia and New Jersey, especially in mostly white suburbs, according to the National Education Association. Ms. Weingarten, on the other hand, said that she was not concerned about the political repercussions in Chicago. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the majority of its public school pupils are African-American or Latino in origin.
Relations between the union and City Hall have been exceedingly acrimonious for more than a decade, spanning both Ms. Lightfoot’s and her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel’s terms in office. Teachers went on strike for 11 days in March of this year, months before the epidemic, in order to gain concessions from Ms. Lightfoot on issues like as compensation, class sizes, and support personnel. When schools returned to in-person education for the first time a year ago, the city and the teachers’ union engaged in weeks of contentious bargaining.
According to Ms. Hadden, “having these very public head-butting sessions is actually bad for, I believe, the whole Chicago Public Schools system.” It was also said that, “People want us to rise above ourselves, to rise beyond our extremely strong urge to be perfectly correct or to avoid being seen as caving in to pressure.”
