Chicago’s public school system is reversing its plan to block online learning tools for teachers who refuse to teach in person.
On Monday night, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called for a “48-hour cooling off period” to attain “a final resolution” that would strike a balance between in-person and virtual teaching.
“We have reached another important milestone today in our efforts to provide in-person learning for our students in the Chicago Public Schools system,” Lightfoot said. “We have secured agreement on one other open issue and made substantial progress on a framework that we hope will address the remaining issues. We are calling for a 48-hour cooling off period that will hopefully lead to a final resolution on all open issues.”
Lightfoot’s statement noted that educators would continue to be able to access their online learning resources, pending government deliberations.
“As a result of the progress we have made, and as a gesture of good faith, for now, teachers will retain access to their Google Suite,” she added. “Students will remain virtual Tuesday and Wednesday, and we will update the CPS school community as there are further developments.”
CPS, under Lightfoot’s direction, was set to return 77,000 K-8 students to their classrooms after a monthslong period of remote coursework as recently as Monday morning despite staunch opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union. Later that day, Lightfoot announced that school instructors who did not comply with the start date would be locked out of their software that enabled them to conduct virtual education.
CTU celebrated the mayor’s Tuesday decision, arguing that the decision signified that the organization is “winning.”
“We are literally working to steer CPS to a more responsible path to reopen schools safely, and we are winning,” the union wrote. “We want to keep working remotely as we bargain an agreement to return to our classrooms safely. And despite the volley of harsh rhetoric we’ve confronted over the weekend from management, they’ve agreed today to stay at the table rather than escalating conflict or locking out educators.”
Among CTU’s demands for a return to in-person learning are a drop in Illinois’s coronavirus positivity rate to below 3%, building enforcement of mask mandates, and case tracing protocols and advanced testing for staff members. The union said its reluctance to return to classrooms is rooted in the fact that union leaders “don’t trust” the system to take proper safety precautions.
“We’re ready to reach a final resolution with our labor partners, but that won’t happen until CTU leadership acknowledges that public health experts — from Chicago-based medical professionals to Dr. Fauci — are encouraging schools to reopen,” CPS CEO Janice Jackson tweeted Monday.
Some parents of CPS students have lambasted CTU for its continuation of remote learning, expressing their concerns about the dwindling quality of education and the emotional toll some students have felt after being away from a traditional classroom setting.
“I think it’s unconscionable that they’ve been in school for two weeks, and their educators are just walking away from them,” Sarah Sachen, a Chicago parent, said. “They’ve had routines. They’re establishing connections. … And to just rip that away, especially for our most vulnerable children, is just incomprehensible.”
The city’s policy reversal follows continued community spread of the coronavirus in the region. In Cook County, 454,485 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed, with nearly 9,000 deaths attributed to the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
