Chicago Public Schools is demanding that teachers report to their class from Monday after weeks of controversial negotiations between the school district and the city’s teachers’ union over reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In an effort to reach an agreement with the union, Chicago Public Schools proposed one staggered timeline for teachers and students to return for personal learning that starts on Tuesday with pre-K and special education and ends on March 1 with the return of pupils from the sixth to the eighth grade.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools officials have said that teachers in the first group who were not given special accommodation are expected to return to school buildings Monday, adding that those who do not return will be considered absent without leave and their access to school district systems is being discontinued.
Both Lightfoot and officials from the country’s third-largest school district – with more than 350,000 students in more than 640 schools – have declined from those comments several times in recent weeks, but there’s still a chance they’ll heed such warnings. , a move that some say could potentially spark a teacher’s union strike.
“Despite making significant compromises in an effort to reach a deal with CTU leadership, we still don’t have an agreement,” said Chicago Public Schools tweeted Friday.
Access to staff vaccinations, distance learning accommodation in the event of an outbreak, and concerns about teachers exposing potentially vulnerable family members to Covid-19 are some of the main issues on which officials and the Chicago Teachers Union continue to disagree, as negotiations to reopen schools safely continue.
Chicago Public Schools said that although Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines state that vaccination personnel are not necessary to safely reopen schools with mitigation measures. plans to vaccinate 1,500 school district employees every week. In a press release on Friday, the union responded by saying that educators, clerks and other school district employees are already struggling to get vaccinated “under the Mayor’s ‘Hunger Games’ system of vaccines.”
Chicago Public Schools “will only commit to vaccinating about 1,500 workers per week, without giving priority to staff expected to return first or those living or working in the most affected communities – while refusing its share of the population. vaccine doses as the city of Chicago supplies rises, ”the union said.
Under the Chicago Public Schools proposal, the district will revert to distance learning for at least two weeks if “the positivity rate of CPS’s surveillance testing program. reaches 2.5 percent or 50 percent of the school is on a 14-day operational break. “
This means that Covid-19 cases “in more than 200 schools, according to the mayor or the CPS leadership, would not be grounds for considering reintroducing distance learning,” said the Chicago Teachers Union.
The school district added that teachers live with medically vulnerable family members will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine from Monday. If they choose to receive the vaccine, they can work from home for two weeks after receiving their first dose. Those who refuse to receive the vaccine while wanting to stay home can take unpaid time off with full benefits, according to Chicago Public Schools.
The union said the proposal would deny “75 percent of educators with family members at high risk for COVID-19 remote housing.”
