Only half of CPS teachers comply with reopening
Educators failed to show up Monday; CEO calls out aldermen opposing return
More than half of Chicago Public Schools teachers who were expected to return to schools Monday did not show up.
The Chicago Teachers Union has promised to support members who choose to teach remotely rather than report to schools because of ongoing concerns about adequate COVID-19 safeguards, and of 2,137 teachers ordered back Monday, only 1,062 complied, according to CPS.
Overall, 60% of staff members who did not have accommodations approved showed up Monday, including seven out of 10 paraprofessionals. Another 350 employees either failed the required health screening and were not allowed inside “or were absent for other verified reasons,” according to CPS. About 5,800 staff members were expected to work in person this week, with the first students, including pre-kindergartners and some special education students, due to return for in-person classes Jan. 11.
It’s not unusual for attendance to be low just after winter break, and about 17% of employees were absent the first two days back last year, according to CPS. Speaking at a Tuesday morning news conference, CPS CEO Janice Jackson said employees who were absent from buildings Monday received a communication to find out why, and the district is reminding them of its policy for absences without leave.
Jackson didn’t clarify what consequences staff members might face for failing to show up for work in person but said they would be handled on a school-by-school, case-bycase basis and that the district will follow its progressive discipline policy, meaning those who continue not to show up could face severe consequences.
“At the end of the day it serves no one’s interest to fire teachers so I’m not going to lead with that,” Jackson said, though she did not deny that could eventually be an option.
Since the district released demographic information on student responses to intent-to-return forms, CPS and CTU leaders have selected different data points to emphasize in their respective positions on reopening.
The union has focused on the disproportionate percentage of students planning to return who are white, who make up 11% of the student population but 23% of those who opted for in-person learning. The district has focused on the fact that more than two-thirds of 77,000 students opting in are Black or Latino.
On Tuesday, Jackson said basing arguments on the proportion of white students opting in “really falls flat” and has nothing to do with the responsibility to provide a quality education to students of color.
“Let’s start with a fact,” Jackson said. “The majority of students and families that have opted to return are Black and Latino. That’s a fact, OK.”
A reporter interrupted her to bring up the demographics of the school district, which is nearly 90% nonwhite.
“Exactly,” Jackson continued, “which is why this point around white parents opting in is fascinating to me. Number one, white parents opting in at a higher rate for in-person instruction does not nullify our obligation to be responsive to the data that we’re seeing and how it’s impacting Black and Latino families. I don’t see how the two go together. If white families want to see their students in-person instruction, that is their individual choice and right. Everybody across the district has the same right.”
A year from now, Jackson predicted, there will be a reckoning around what happened to students who were not properly served by remote learning. Many have parents who are essential workers and can’t be home to help with schoolwork.
“When we drill down deeper and look at who is accessing remote learning and who is being left behind, they are overwhelmingly Black students on the South and West sides of Chicago.” Jackson said. “When we open up the schools, which many people see as assets and resources in their community, people will come. So we cannot sit back and allow a generation to just falter because of made-up reasons around why we can’t do reopening.”
At a separate news conference Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she understands the concerns of teachers and is “of course” worried about safety, but rejected criticism that officials haven’t done enough to work with the union.
“Forty-nine meetings and counting is strong evidence of a commitment to being in partnership with the CTU,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot said opening schools makes a big difference in the lives of children who don’t have the same access to educational excellence at home.
“What this really is about, obviously parents have the opportunity to make the choice that is best for them and their family,” she said. “But why would we set up a (situation) where if you’re wealthy and you’re white, you get a set of options that if you’re poor or working class and you’re Black and you’re brown, you do not?”
Officials have “an obligation to level the playing field for our children so that they have the same kind of educational opportunities as anybody else regardless of wealth, ZIP code, immigration status,” Lightfoot said.
In a not-so-subtle reference to aldermen, Lightfoot encouraged elected officials to go into neighborhood schools to see the safety measures being put forward and “drop into e-learning classes” where they’ll see it works for some but “absolutely fundamentally” doesn’t for others.
She said she watched 3and 4-year-olds struggling to mute and un-mute themselves, and children with learning disabilities trying to work a computer when they needed someone in the room to help.
“When I see that, what comes to me, is a question of equity,” Lightfoot said.
Jackson also questioned the intentions behind a letter now signed by 36 aldermen imploring the district to reconsider its reopening plan. She noted there have been private and parochial schools operating in every ward of the city since the fall.
“Why the concern now? Do they care more about the lives of CPS teachers than the Catholic school teachers that have been going to school since August?” she said. “I think that it’s important to challenge the double standard that I think that people are placing on the district. I also think it’s important to challenge the hypocrisy from some of them who have children who have been going to schools … but yet they’re making decisions or influencing the decisions of other people.”
Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, responded to Jackson’s criticism that aldermen are raising issues at the last minute, noting she asked for a hearing in November.
“Janet is playing games,” Taylor said.
Jackson and Lightfoot both spoke hours after the head of a group representing principals likened their actions to those of a petulant child.
“The biggest obstacle to reopening is the management of CPS because they failed to meet the standard set by teachers and principals for our support of a reopening plan,” said Troy LaRaviere, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.
He claimed there’s been a lack of transparency by the school district, a history of deceptive practices that have undercut trust and a refusal to hear from stakeholders while creating a reopening plan while spinning “its message” to the media.
He also challenged Jackson to provide modeling purportedly showing that the district will have enough teachers returning to in-person instruction for the number of students who plan to do the same.
School officials have not provided the information even after the union submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests. LaRaviere said he was finally given districtwide staffing levels that do nothing to address whether an individual school will have enough teachers.
“I would love for them to prove me wrong, all they have to do is release the models,” he said. “Would you trust your life and your children’s lives with people who would be that deceptive?”
CTU President Jesse Sharkey said in discussions with about 2,400 rank-andfile members, about 69% of those who returned Monday felt conditions were not adequate.
In classrooms of about 1,000 or 1,200 square feet, some members said they found air purifiers meant to clean rooms half that size. “I do believe that the district’s claims around safety lack credibility,” Sharkey said.
Asked about reports from inside some schools about issues such as missing air purifiers Monday morning, Chief Operating Officer Arnie Rivera said he didn’t have a number but that the district has been working with principals. Air purifiers have been delivered for every classroom that reopened, and if a classroom needs two air purifiers, they will be provided, he said.
CPS is doing even more than Catholic and parochial schools to mitigate the virus, though measures taken at those schools have followed recommendations and appeared to work, said Dr. Marielle Fricchione, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with the Chicago Department of Public Health.
“We know that masks and mitigation strategies work. … We saw schools functioning and being safer than the community even when we were in moderate and high incidence in the fall,” Fricchione said, summarizing a paper she and CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady both worked on that recently published on a public health journal’s website.
The paper examined city schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago system, which began the school year with nearly 20,000 students and 2,750 staff members inperson, though the demographics of Catholic school students vary significantly from public schools.
Researchers found a “lower attack rate,” which is similar to an infection rate, for students and staff at schools than for the city itself. They also found that most clusters within a single school involved siblings and cases reported by schools were most often tied to other settings such as family and sports gatherings. The paper acknowledges limited applicability to high schools, but supports CPS in reopening “when the operational burden imposed by the second wave has subsided.”
“Rather than defining a specific test positivity or case rate threshold, CDPH has continued to support in-person education for schools that can maintain strict mitigation strategies amid increased operational burden,” according to the paper.
The paper suggested that case doubling time, the metric CPS is currently prioritizing in reopening decisions, can be a proxy for a stabilizing local outbreak.
“There is not an evidence-based public health metric that can tell a local school department when to reopen,” Fricchione said.