Teachers union vs. public schools over virus protections

The Chicago Teachers Union's vote to not return to in-class instruction — and to teach only if allowed to do so remotely — comes with the union's usual we're-not-the-problem spin: Teachers aren't walking out, CTU says, they just don't want to work in classrooms they say aren't healthy.

The truth, without the union's brand of varnish: CTU has convinced its teachers to authorize an illegal strike. A strike that, if allowed to happen, will continue to damage the education of thousands of Chicago Public Schools students, particularly minority children who risk falling even further behind.

The union's window dressing surrounding the vote was engineered to deceive. Though bound by a five-year contract that gave them lucrative raises, teachers voted to not return to work, and plainly put, that's a strike. It's a walkout that would come after more than 300 days of compromised education in the form of online learning, a walkout that reminds the city of the disregard the union showed to its students and parents in the fall of 2019 when teachers struck for 14 days, even though they had a generous offer on the table.

CTU's existing contract includes a no-strike clause, "and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board has ruled a strike of this nature would be illegal," CPS Chief Talent Officer Matt Lyons said in an email to teachers. "The decision by the union to remain out of schools and deny families access to in-person school is a decision to strike."

After the vote was announced over the weekend, CPS flinched. District officials had required teachers to show up to their classrooms Monday to prepare for reopening. Now, they're moving that start date to Wednesday to give both sides more time to resolve the standoff. "We now agree on far more than we disagree, but our discussions are ongoing, and additional time is needed to reach a resolution," CPS CEO Janice Jackson and district Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade told parents in an email.

On Feb. 1, K-8 CPS students are supposed to begin a hybrid format that divides the week between in-class instruction and remote learning. Teachers need to return to schools to prepare for that start date. If the two sides can hammer out an agreement soon, crisis averted. If not, it's clear who suffers — Chicago's children.

We're not surprised at all by CTU's strike threat. But lawmakers in Springfield might be.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, sponsored a bill earlier this month that expands items over which the union can bargain with CPS, and therefore what it can strike over. In explaining the bill to his colleagues, Cunningham said he and Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, had met with CTU leaders who reassured them teachers are bound by their existing no-strike language in the contract.

So the union assured Cunningham and Harmon their contract with CPS bars them from striking, and then they took steps to strike anyway. That's CTU doublespeak on full display.

For weeks, union leaders have been saying CPS has shut them out of the process of forging a reopening plan. Yet CPS spokesman Emily Bolton says the district has had more than 60 negotiating sessions with CTU leaders about a safe reopening of schools. The union says reopening schools would be safe only when Chicago achieves a citywide positivity rate of 3% or less. In reality, it would be hard to find any public health official at the federal, state or local level who has ever suggested that standard.

The district's plan can't eliminate the risk of Covid-19, but it minimizes it. All K-8 students, teachers and staff will be required to wear masks in schools at all times. Regular testing will be available to all teachers and staff. Strict cleaning procedures will be used at all schools. High schoolers will continue remote learning only. And the district's metric for reopening, the point in which confirmed cases double at a rate of every 18 days or more, now stands at 126 days.

On Friday, Jackson announced that the district expects to get Covid19 vaccines by mid-February and begin vaccinations of teachers and other staff at that point, though the process will take some time.

Will CTU still throw up roadblocks, even if its teachers are among the first in line to get vaccinated? Based on the history, most likely.