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CHICAGO (AP) – The Chicago teachers’ union said Sunday its members voted to challenge a back-to-class order over concerns about COVID-19, setting up a confrontation with district officials who said they refused to reverse the order would amount to an illegal strike.
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Public Schools in Chicago, the third largest district in the country, wanted about 10,000 K-8 teachers and other staff to return to school on Monday to prepare to welcome about 70,000 students for part-time classes at school from February 1st. No return date has been set for high school students.
The teachers’ union, however, opposes the plan out of concern for the health of its members and has asked them to continue teaching at home in defiance of the district plan. The union said the district’s safety plan was insufficient and before teachers can return safely to schools, vaccinations should be more widespread and different measures to measure infections should be in place.
“There is no doubt that we all want to return to face-to-face teaching. The problem is CPS’s current lack of preparation for a return to face-to-face teaching, and the clear and current danger to health. of our families and our school communities, ”the union said in a statement.
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The two sides have been negotiating for months and talks continued after the vote result was announced in hopes of reaching a deal.
CPS officials said on Sunday they had agreed to delay the return of teachers by two days to give the parties more time to negotiate. But they said kindergarten to grade 8 teachers should still resume in-person teaching on February 1.
“We now agree on much more than we disagree, but our discussions remain ongoing and more time is needed to reach a resolution,” district CEO Janice Jackson said in a statement.
School officials argued that distance learning was not working for all students, including many low-income and black and Latino students who make up the majority of the district. The district’s safety plan includes thousands of air purifiers, more cleaning, and a voluntary testing program.
The district of about 355,000 students, which switched to full-time online education last March due to the pandemic, has gradually welcomed students again. Thousands of preschool and special education resumed in-person learning earlier this month, and teachers who did not return to their classrooms were punished.
The union also argued that schools do not need to be fully staffed with lower attendance than expected.
CPS data showed that about 19% of students who were eligible for pre-kindergarten and special in-person learning at the start of the month participated. That figure was even lower than a December poll that showed about 6,500 of the nearly 17,000 eligible kindergarten and special education students were interested.
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The union’s collective agreement, which was approved after a 2019 strike, bars its roughly 25,000 members from striking and prohibits district officials from locking them out. District officials said a union vote to disobey the order to return to school on Monday would violate the contract.
Union officials, however, say returning to in-person training before its members are vaccinated and without other safeguards in place would put them at greater risk of contracting the virus. They argue that if the district tries to punish teachers for staying home on Monday, then the district would be responsible for a work stoppage.
Illinois is scheduled to begin the next phase of its vaccination plan on Monday, which expands eligibility to teachers and those aged 65 and older. The district announced on Friday that it would begin immunizing teachers and staff from mid-February and that the process would take months.
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The Chicago vote comes at a time of great uncertainty in the United States about how and when schools should resume in-person teaching.
President Joe Biden has pledged that the majority of schools will reopen within the first 100 days of his term. It promises new federal guidelines on decisions to open schools and a “large-scale” effort by the Department of Education to identify and share the best ways to teach during a pandemic.
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