A Chicago teachers union board member advocated against reopening schools while she was vacationing in Puerto Rico.
Sarah Chambers, a member of the union’s executive board and area vice president, urged special education teachers on Thursday not to return to classrooms on Monday as planned. Hours earlier, she posted a photo of herself poolside, sparking backlash, according to WGN9, a local outlet.
Chambers’s Instagram post reads in part: “Spending the last day of 2020 poolside. We have the whole pool to ourselves. Then, we are going to old San Juan to get some yummy seafood mofongo! We have an entire private Airbnb house to ourselves. I’m here with my friend who also had covid.” Her account has since been made private.
She added that she received a negative test result and consulted her doctor before her trip. The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
The union has threatened a possible strike should the schools go through with their plan to reopen. Chicago’s public school system is expecting to go back to in-person learning later this month for some and next month for others. Schools will implement temperature checks and health screeners in addition to other measures such as social distancing and hand sanitation stations. The teachers union has pushed back on the notion of restarting in-person schooling before teachers get the COVID-19 vaccination.
The contradicting nature of Chambers’s actions has not been uncommon around the holiday times, as a handful of politicians have encouraged people to abide by health officials’ recommendations to avoid traveling while not doing so themselves. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and others, have all been accused of hypocrisy after being spotted breaking their own rules.
