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WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden pledged the Chicago Teachers Union’s deadlock with City Hall on Monday over reopening schools, indicating his support for teachers’ safety concerns over COVID-19 afterwards, has learned According to the Sun-Times, senior White House officials were briefed on the standoff by Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Teachers, I know they want to work,” said Biden, when asked about CTU by a reporter at a press conference after an event on American manufacturing. “They just want to work in a safe environment and as safe as we can rationally do, and we can do it.”
When asked, “Should teachers go back to school,” Biden said, “we should make classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers and for the help that is in these schools? who maintain these facilities. “
Biden did not refer directly to Chicago in his response or to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, whose main critics are the politically powerful CTU.
People have to be convinced and convinced that a “school is safe and secure for everyone,” Biden said. Among the keys to reopening schools is the presence of widespread testing and functioning ventilation systems, he said – two points of contention between Chicago public school officials and the CTU in recent months.
The president added: “We should be able to open all schools, kindergarten through eighth grade, if in fact we administer these tests, and we will have the additional benefit that I might add, of handing over millions. people at work. . “
CTU is the local branch of AFT Weingarten.
“The White House is really concerned about the reopening and really concerned about getting it right,” Weingarten told The Sun-Times. “And I felt it was my moral obligation to inform the White House this weekend, which I did.
Weingarten said she briefed senior executives at Biden on “what’s going on in Chicago, from my perspective,” and was “very pleased” with her remarks on Monday.
“People know that in-person learning is really important, but they want to be safe,” she says. As to whether Biden is taking sides, Weingarten said the president “is siding with science and trying to get this pandemic under control and trying to open safe schools. I think that’s what he ranks with.
With Biden as president, the teachers’ unions have a table seat in the White House with two allies – Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, a member of the union that teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College.
After Biden spoke, Chicago officials and CTU executives found points of agreement in his comments.
The school district shared a video of the president’s response on its social media accounts, commenting, “We couldn’t agree more. The district has invested over $ 100 million to ensure the health and safety of our community.
Union members, meanwhile, said they were encouraged to hear Biden discuss the situation. CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said Biden “does not take sides” but “puts the safety of every stakeholder first in every city and state in this country.”
Lightfoot: “ Confidence that we’ll do something ”
Negotiations continued Monday between the union and school officials with a deadline Wednesday set to reach a deal or otherwise risk a disruption of classes. The CTU voted this weekend to refuse in-person work until a deal is reached, a move the city said it would consider a strike.
“We had a lot of very productive conversations with the folks at CTU,” Lightfoot said at a press conference Monday after receiving a dose of the coronavirus vaccine – and before Biden was asked about CTU. “They literally negotiated every day on the weekend. All last week every day. And we will continue to be at the table until we have … the remaining issues resolved.
“In partnership with CTU, if we come together in good faith, I have no doubts that we will do something that obviously protects their members, but also gives families the opportunity, if it is convenient for them, to be able to dismiss their members. children to in-person learning, ”she said.
CTU President Jesse Sharkey told reporters in the evening that negotiations were “slow because there were difficulties in it.”
The union is pushing for members who have medically vulnerable relatives at home to be provided with housing to work remotely and for teachers to be forced to return to classrooms only after being vaccinated. The CTU is also calling for an increase in staff and student testing and a public health measure that would determine when schools should reopen or close.
Biden has made tackling the pandemic – and reopening schools and reviving the economy – a key part of his first 100 million 100-day immunization program.
On Thursday, his first full day in office, Biden signed an executive order reopening schools, stating that his policy is “to provide support to help create the conditions for safe in-person learning as quickly as possible; ensuring high quality education and the provision of essential services often received by students and young children in school, higher education institutions, childcare services and Head Start programs; mitigate the learning losses caused by the pandemic; and addressing the disparities and inequalities in education that the pandemic has created and exacerbated. “
The powerful national teacher unions allied with the Democrats are a crucial part of Biden’s base. Last Thursday, the day after the inauguration, Jill Biden hosted a virtual event with 11,000 teachers: Weingarten and National Education Association President Becky Pringle were with the First Lady in the White House.
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