President Biden acknowledged the concerns of the Chicago Teachers Union in its fight against the Windy City’s plan to restart in-person learning.
“The teachers, I know they want to work,” Biden said on Monday when he was asked about the CTU by a reporter, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “They just want to work in a safe environment, and as safe as we can rationally make it, and we can do that.”
The union recently voted to remain working from home due to concerns over the coronavirus, which defies the Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plans.
“We should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers, and for the help that is in those schools maintaining those facilities,” the president added. “We should be able to open up every, every school, kindergarten through eighth grade, if in fact we administer these tests, and we’ll have the added advantage, I might add, [of] putting millions of people back to work.”
In all, about 86% of the 25,000 members voted on the resolution, with 71% voting in support of working from home, which goes against the plan to bring 70,000 elementary students back into classrooms beginning on Monday.
American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, which is the parent organization overseeing the CTU, briefed the White House over the weekend about the standoff.
“The White House is really concerned about reopening and really concerned about doing it right,” Weingarten said. “And I felt it was my moral obligation to brief the White House this weekend, which I did.”
Two points of contention in the battle are the ventilation systems at the schools and access to testing.
“We need new ventilation systems in those schools. We need testing for people coming in and out of the classes,” Biden said. “We need testing for teachers, as well as students. And we need the capacity — the capacity to know that, in fact, or the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone.”
Children are less likely to experience adverse outcomes from COVID-19 infections, and a growing body of evidence suggests that schools don’t contribute much to rapid community spread. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new guidelines recommending “that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely.”
