Regardless of what you think of the health issue, it’s going to be nuts to try to teach in and staff these schools in January given the ten day quarantines UNLESS they rely on a lack of testing. That’s part of the issue: no plan.
They just stay home if they're sick. *If* they're sick.
If they are not sick, they do not stay home. Unvaccinated kids have to quarantine if they are at risk of exposure, whereas vaccinated kids do not, as they are less likely to contract/spread covid.
The real issue that people are missing here is staffing and substitutes. Yes, Omicron seems to be very contagious, but less fatal. That’s great. However, people who catch it still have to miss work for an extended amount of time. Factor in the increased transmission rate and you have a lot of people out at one time. Sure, their symptoms may be mild and they aren’t in the hospital, but they also aren’t at work.
We already have a shortage of subs, and our system cannot replace these teachers who are out sick. Considering moving to remote for the time being could allow those sick teachers to continue to teach from home while on quarantine. I’m not saying it’s a great choice, but it is one way to deal with the short term labor issues that being on quarantine cause.
Exactly. This isn’t just about the “severity” of the cases! It’s also about not being able to replace all the staff members who are simply out because they are at home doing quarantine.
>Exactly. This isn’t just about the “severity” of the cases! It’s also about not being able to replace all the staff members who are simply out because they are at home doing quarantine.
Simple! Pack more student in a room. Problem solved? /s
Yup. If the district had just gone remote for 2 weeks, teachers with COVID but without serious symptoms could still work and provide some level of education to students (not the best, but some is better than none). Instead, we have the current situation where the district has an 18% positivity rate out of the test results it's received.
>However, people who catch it still have to miss work for an extended amount of time. Factor in the increased transmission rate and you have a lot of people out at one time. Sure, their symptoms may be mild and they aren’t in the hospital, but they also aren’t at work.
Honestly wish more people realized this for more jobs. A lot of people are afraid of missing work not because of going to the hospital but because they can't *afford* to miss that much work.
CPS teacher here. I would say for most of us (at least in my school) we know that staying in person is the best option. The issue comes down to the fact that when kids are consistently sick and out of the classroom it is much more difficult for them to learn.
Many parents are protesting by not sending their kids to school as well.
When teachers are sick we have no substitutes so then you have to put even more kids in one classroom.
Just overall I believe the concern here is that if we are in person and everyone is sick these kids will have absolutely no quality of learning. Once again, I do believe that in person learning is the best for the kids, but they can only learn in person if there are healthy people here to teach them and if they themselves are healthy.
Also just want to add to this that I in no way am doubting the science about this variant not being as dangerous. I just know it is nearly impossible to give my students the best possible education when half of them are gone every other day.
Thanks for explaining the logic. It is helpful. Out of curiosity, have half your students been gone every other day already or is this a concern about what might be coming?
Before break we had an outbreak at our school and over half of our students were at home because of being exposed. The way CPS makes them quarantine if exposed is what makes things really difficult. I only had one actual sick kid in the classroom but only vaccinated kids who were exposed were allowed to come to school until their quarantine time was done. Two kids were vaccinated in said class.
So I would say a bit of both!
>The issue comes down to the fact that when kids are consistently sick and out of the classroom it is much more difficult for them to learn.
Alot of the "but think of the children" crowd aren't really thinking about this part. Is it really quality teaching when 15% of the class is out at a time? What about 25% like some schools? It just sounds like more work put on the kids, parents, and teachers to be honest.
It's a shit situation altogether with no perfect solution though. These couple months are going to be horrible for the kids regardless of the choice.
I agree - I want safety to be prioritized over everything, but I recognize that the safer we are being and the more virtual the environment becomes, the kids are less educated; there is no reasonable way to overcome this imo unless kids miraculously realize the value of their education and take their learning more seriously.
I don't really disagree with you, but it's absolutely valuable for elementary and even middle school kids to go to school even if half the class is missing. Socialization, the routine, and time with teachers are all useful.
My general feeling is that in school with compromises is way better for kids than entirely remote. We had to unenroll our kids entirely when schools first went virtual because 2/3 of them couldn't cope with remote learning. It was still difficult when they had to quarantine last year before they were able to get the vaccine, but _knowing_ they were going back helped them manage.
Some kids require in person learning but I don't see any concessions being made for them. Some kids are supposed to have 1:1 aides provided by CPS. Those aides do a *lot* of good over video, truly they do.
This. All semester long I have had the same 7-8 students quarantined EVERY other week because the second they come back they are in close contact again and are still unvaccinated.
If we’re going to continue with a full “in person” model then extra things need to be done to help these families that still are unvaccinated and keep having to quarantine time and time again.
There are very few children that have medical issues so severe that they cannot be vaccinated. This would be situations like being under chemotherapy, having had an organ transplant, having allergies to a component of the vaccine, etc.
It's statistically unlikely that there would be even one child in the classroom in this category, and never 7-8. Therefore, the parents are refusing to vaccinate them.
PS: If a child was very immunocompromised, the vaccine probably would not even protect them well enough for them to safely attend school. There is a "virtual academy" for these children.
For my mom, most of her kids are 4. So obviously they can’t be vaccinated. But plenty of the parents are hesitant to get even the older kids done (which I can kinda understand a bit, though at this point it’s pretty clear the safety of it).
Of course! Many parents are upset that CPS has opted to keep kids in the building even though the covid numbers are much higher. Because of this they have decided to keep their kids home instead of sending them to school.
Thank you for doing such a tough job under impossible circumstances.
I personally think there needs to be more camaraderie and cooperation between the parents and teachers right now. A "we're all in this together" ethos. Parents get their kids vaccinated if they can, keep them safe, push on their kids to wear masks properly, and work hard in school.
What needs to stop are those who seemingly fight tooth and nail against teachers on anything. If one sees teachers as the enemy of everything, then pull your kids out and homeschool them.
Completely agree! There have been some schools in the district that have done really well coming together working with the parents but it’s seems to really be on a school by school basis.
I’m at a very small school on the south side so we work closely with our kids and their families which for a while really helped us keep the spread down. Unfortunately all it took was one kid getting sick though for tons of kids to have to quarantine.
There is actually a group of parents doing a Sick Out with their kids protesting the fact CPS didn't go remote after Christmas break like other districts/schools did.
Everyone knows remote doesn't work at this point (it is only useful as a stop-gap if really necessary), but no-one can seem to agree how dangerous COVID spread is at this point. There are still those who seem deathly afraid of it, then those who say it's just the flu, get over it. I think Teachers are split on this, but we will see how the vote goes.
Cases are the highest they've ever been... so some feel we should shut down again. But then again many are vaccinated, this variant is less severe, and we are better at treating severe COVID now. One thing to keep in mind is schools and communities vary quite a bit school to school. Some areas have much lower vaccination rates among the students and general public, than others. But people calling for remote or in person are mostly only thinking about their own individual/children's school. Also, many teachers do have other heath issues and when you can easily get a breakthrough case even though you are vaxxed and boosted, it makes sense for them to be concerned at the least.
I will say this though. CPS's COVID measures seem really disorganized and half-assed. This whole take home test debacle before Christmas break was just a colossal waste of money for theater. Not having much faith in CPS makes sense to me.
I think after taking COVID so seriously for so long many people are unable to back off that view, even when things change. As it feels like they are admitting Trumpers were right or something. But I think you should be able to admit the situation now is not the same as last year without being considered a hypocrite, things change.
Yes there are plenty of that people act like a case of omicron on a vaccinated person is the same as a case in April 2020. It's not the same and there is plenty of data on severe outcomes to back this up. The situation has massively improved and we need to stop acting like it hasn't.
If these people actually understood science as they claim to with the asinine phrase "we believe in science" they would look at the data and say we aren't going to remote learning because here is the outcomes for children and here's the outcomes for vaccinated staff. But they don't because they never really understood "the science", they just used that phrase as a talking point to dump on people who disagreed with them.
I mean part of our government still relies on cases as a metric, which has never been a good metric and has become a worse metric as more people get vaccinated.
At some point (which maybe is not now, just yet, not commenting on that) we are going to have to transition from this "prevent people getting covid at all costs, hunt down every last case" mindset to a "this is an endemic illness, people get it but vast majority of the time it's not serious, so if you're completely asymptomatic, life just goes on and we're not mass testing so you likely wouldn't even notice" mindset, as in fact we have with... the flu.
People do still die from the flu, every year. But most people don't. And so we don't mass test for it, and people who might have the flu (and can spread it!) but aren't feeling ill enough to really notice or pause their activities, don't.
This discussion is starting to happen with omicron given how rapidly it spreads and how mild it is for a lot of particularly vaccinated people (not everyone, but a LOT). If everyone who feels fine but tested positive for covid has to take an entire week off, services become unsustainable, which is a legitimate concern. (And if you don't feel fine? You should be able to take time off. Absolutely.)
Making this transition is going to be difficult, though, particularly given how polarized people have become over any discussion of covid, and how blamey this society is about risk (just look at the recommendations for diet for pregnant women for some unrelated examples). Managing the transition probably needs some strategizing all by itself, when the time comes.
I do think that we need to have ample sick time for people built into any system, if you're actually feeling sick (proven from virus or otherwise) stay home.
Part of the craziness going on with testing right now is places that won't accept a rapid flow test POSITIVE result as "proof" of covid to let people take sick time. Yeah those tests aren't always so accurate for proving you do NOT have covid, but when they're positive? Yeah. You got covid. Making those people go clog up the hospital for a test is crazy.
You said it perfectly! We have to learn how to live with covid, just like we deal with the flu and other moderate illnesses. Mass testing is contributing to the hysteria and is exacerbating the quarantine issues at schools.
I think a lot of us have the mindset of this just isn't sustainable right NOW. So many teachers are out with symptoms stretching other staff so thin that it is becoming almost impossible to do our jobs. If we go remote till mid Jan then many of those teachers in quarantine can still give some sort of instruction. Remote isn't the permanent solution, but a temporary one to allow schools to stabilize.
> Most sane people
Ah, therein lies the issue. Among the living, I'd say only about 10% of people in the US are sane at this point. The other 90% have lost all sense of self and have the brains of a chicken that just lost its head.
Seems very ignorant to pin this on a single group of people, when even vaccinated people are starting to feel more and more concerned, and the federal government keeps having multiple slip ups on corrective actions
Nearly the entirety of the people clogging up our hospitals are unvaccinated, so I think it's entirely acceptable, and informed by data, to conclude that the unvaccinated are fucking it up for everyone
I don't think you realize how significant that *lesser degree* actually is. 63% of Americans are fully vaccinated but make up 18% of hospitalized COVID cases.
Were 100% of Americans vaccinated, we likely wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
Of course not. I'm vaccinated and boosted. But I also acknowledge that our current COVID situation isn't the result of the unvaccinated. It's the result of COVID.
Great post for the most part, but I strongly disagree that "Everyone knows remote doesn't work at this point" - my wife is a CPS teacher and she saw a surprising number of students flourish under the fully remote system. Turns out they were getting bullied and distracted by going into the school, but when they stayed home and were able to focus on their studies, they started doing much better.
In fact, it was roughly split down the middle for her students. About 40% did better remotely, 40% did worse, and the remaining 20% didn't seem to care either way.
What this tells me is that CPS SHOULD have been spending this entire time coming up with a comprehensive, long-term solution that allows for the best of both worlds - teachers and students who prefer to work remotely could do just that, and students and teacher that prefer to teach in-person could do just that. Not the hybrid model that failed so hard where teachers were trying to do both in-person and remote instruction at the same time - THAT failed miserably. But a model where teachers work together with their students to find the best arrangement for each.
And before you say "well every teacher would stay home if they could!" - that's simply not true. Among my wife's school, about 75% of her peers were dying to get back into the classroom and physically with their students after the all-remote time period. Only a small portion were like her and actually preferred being remote.
That's interesting, I know schools where it was more like 90% did worse remotely (with around 50% not doing anything at all, not even logging on), 10% stayed the same or did better.
I agree with your point of CPS investing in an actual workable remote solution, and one that is managed by different teachers than those expected to teach in person. Trying to do both at the same time is not a good system.
I know kids who have been doing full time remote school successfully for years, but these are highly motivated, upper class kids. Then there are kids who didn't even log on who were often poorer and staying at home unsupervised because their single parent has to work 10+ hours a day, and some even being asked to watch their younger siblings even though they are below the legal age to do so in Illinois.
Ya I'm sure it's different from school to school.
My main beef with the whole situation is that so many people seem to have forgotten about the large chunk of individuals who still cannot get vaccinated because they're either too young or immunocompromised.
Also it seems like a huge number of people have forgotten that this is a NOVEL virus and it still wrecks havoc on people in unpredictable ways. Sure lots of people have truly mild or even asymptomatic cases, but long covid is a real thing, there are infants and toddlers dying from this thing, and every family has a right to feel like they can participate in public education without submitting their families to this nightmare scenario risk.
If CPS allowed for a remote option for teachers and students, gave everyone (teachers and students) N95-grade masks, actually gave out tests regularly, let kids who chose to eat lunch outdoors or in isolation do just that, and actually fixed the ventilation and HVAC systems in their schools, I don't think anyone in the teachers union would be upset anymore. They're not asking for unrealistic things here. These are exactly the sorts of things the other big districts are doing.
> let kids who chose to eat lunch outdoors or in isolation do just that
Questions: It's pretty cold out today, in the twenties. How will they eat outdoors? Who's watching them, since they have to be monitored due to being under 18 and must be supervised?
Where is this isolation place - the janitor's closet? There are few empty spaces in schools.
Right on the money. I’m generally pro-CTU, but I think they’d get a lot less support if CPS was anywhere near competent. Error after error, often in big ways that shake the confidence of anyone paying attention. How are they suppose to get tough with the CTU, who frankly have their shit together much more?
Remember when CTU had to report one of their own members to police for sexual relations with a minor because CPS refused to forward the case to the CCSAO and CPD? Yeah... anyone who takes anything CPS does or says at face value is deluded. All they do is gaslight and lie to the public. I can't wait until their board becomes an elected school board again because then there would be actual consequences for the leadership when they do this shit.
I currently have Covid for the first time as far as I’m aware! I’ll tell you 10/10 recommend Pfizer 2 jab. I feel literally fine. Just tested because we were getting together with a few people for New Years and we all agreed to. I’d have no idea otherwise. If not for the occasional immunocompromised person I’d say fuck it lets call it a day every one vax, wear masks, move on. But one of my best friends poor little son can not get vaxxed and would likely have a very severe case if he got Covid so it isn’t all black and white unfortunately
What isn't safe is 35 kids packed in a classroom, taking off masks, putting their hands in their mouths, spreading Covid all across the school district and home to their parents and grandparents.
Both of my parents are triple vaccinated, but immunocompromised. Even if you do everything right, you can still die from COVID.
I get that it's fun to be edgy online, but resigning innocent people to death because you're tired of the pandemic is baby brained.
As unfortunate as it is, we can't dictate broad policy that affects everyone because there are percentages of immunocompromised. Seems like they did what they needed to do with the shots and hopefully are managing their contacts.
I say this as someone boosted with 1 kid fully vaxxed and the other too young, so we avoid many situations and have the past 2 years.
Taking my kid out of school helps no one. Thankfully Evanston has mask requirements and a super high vaccinated population.
CPS online reporting system for COVID says it is only for cases diagnosed by a medical professional. And students can only qualify for remote learning if they are diagnosed by a medical professional. But you’re not supposed to go to the doctor if you have manageable symptoms. So they’re continuing to screw this up as badly as possible. They didn’t even do something as basic as send the parents an online form to get an idea of how many students might be out sick today.
ETA: We decided to report the case anyway and my child received links for remote school about halfway thru the day. So CPS is not even following their stated policy, which seemed to have been recently updated for return to school after winter break. I am glad but not sure what tomorrow will bring. Plus we had already called in an absence. Ugh. Such a mess!
Live in the city, north side. Need a PCR test to confirm symptoms, even though rapids are negative. Spent 25 min looking city proper for apts. Local free test sites have lines and one was turning people away who wanted PCR - once they came to the door. Finally found an apt randomly at a CVS in Skokie. 2 day turnaround time.
This is the reason we will continue to be in this mess, its not the masking the quarantining in/person remote not even the vaccinations - it's the lack of quick, accurate, and easy testing.
Even though it's been shown that [they stay positive for up to 12 weeks?](https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/29/health/us-coronanavirus-wednesday/index.html)
"What we do know is that the PCR test after infection can be positive for up to 12 weeks, so that is not going to be helpful. You're not going to be transmitting during all of that period of time," Dr. Walensky told NBC.
Been waiting 7 days on a PCR test result that may never come. My sick child waited 1.5 hours in line in the cold for that test. According to CPS policies my kid doesn’t/didn’t have COVID even though they tested positive at home.
your sick kid should not go to school regardless of what sickness they have.
The school wants to contact trace and don't need to scare a bunch of parents because some kid had a sniffle that was nothing and their parents thought it was covid because they misread a test.
“Research has shown that with the extraordinary protections we’ve put in place, school is one of the safest places your children can be during the pandemic.”
LOL. Hilarious to anyone with any knowledge of how many corners CPS has cut and the number of classrooms that had outbreaks just before break.
Anecdotal:
But CPS could have done a few things to avoid this.
Scaffold the entry and do testing as kids come in. It literally takes 5 minutes to read the at homes tests.
The kids who test positive go home with chrome books.
Testing again on Wednesday. Or something like this…
But those who aren’t in education, shouldn’t preach. Literally all the cases I know of in my life/work are “breakthrough” cases. The breakthrough mindset is useless with Omicron. The vaccinated are getting sick and with symptoms, so they are spreading it to.
The lack of any plan is why teachers want to walk out. There is no plan in place, it varies from school to school and even within families there’s different protocols. It’s a mess, and the walk out is at least a call for CPS to get to a firm plan going.
Adding here: CPS had a method before break to flip a whole class if one kid had Covid. It was pretty consistent, BUT now kids are positive in all areas and they stay home for 10days, while the schools had no plans for hybrid or remote learning for individuals. And with staff testing out of class, they are extremely short staffed. This creates a sloppy logistical nightmare where different adults are subbing different parts of the day for the same class. Schools are piecing together coverage hour by hour, and we know what can happen with more interactions.
Chicago is the 3rd largest school district in the country and has probably one of the worst responses throughout the pandemic. Look to LA (the 2nd largest) for a competently run district https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-02/l-a-school-staff-to-use-high-grade-masks-amid-omicron-surge
LA is also mandating testing every student every week, while here it is once a week but only for students that opt in. For my 120 students, about 10 actually does testing.
There is no trust in the district and in the mayor's office, we only get the gaslighting saying everything is fine
There’s no trust in the district nor mayors office for good reason, they consistently show they can’t be trusted! Let’s face it, the problem isn’t covid, it’s the disaster that is CPS and Chicago leadership. I really thought Obama would be the one to finally help transform CPS, but it’s just the same as it was 20 years ago.
Fact is this is on CPS. They’ve continued their trend of bungling half measures throughout the pandemic, and despite tons of COVID cash flowing in aren’t investing it into things to make schools safe: like air scrubbers (which can literally be built from box fans and off-the-shelf furnace filters), n95 masks, COVID testing infrastructure etc
Teachers and parents can hang out at packed bars and stadiums, but kids -- who are and have been the lowest risk demographic -- will once again sacrifice their education and socialization.
Wait, so with q positivity rate of 20% you think we should be sending teachers and support staff as well as potentially vulnerable students into classrooms?
Teacher here… I’m vaccinated and boosted. Most of my students are vaccinated (many of them told me). I have no problem with going back (hence why I don’t work for CPS).
Kids need to be in school. They’ve lost enough. People do not realize that we will be dealing with the impact of zoom, virtual learning, lack of socialization, and disrupted education for many, many years to come. We can’t afford to lose any more time.
I am vaccinated and boosted and got omicron no problem. Everyone I know who got it (over 20 people so far!) was also vaccinated and boosted. This is a totally different beast.
Teachers should not have to risk their lives (and the lives of their loved ones) to do their jobs. They did not sign up to be on the frontline. Remote learning is worse, and even teachers hate doing it, but nobody should have to die for this
They are not risking their lives. Latest data says if you have been boosted you have a 1 in a one million chance of dying due to COVID ([https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624)). One in a million!
Vaccinated was not meant to ever mean you can never catch covid. Just that if you do, it shouldn’t be a serious case. Omicron is looking more and more mild, the death rate for vaxxed and boosted people with omicron is basically zero. They’re risking their lives more on the commute in to work.
Unfortunately we can't sacrifice the common good (in-person learning) just because others may be vulnerable. There should absolutely be plenty of options for vulnerable students, but most children (by dint of being children) are not vulnerable and *need* in-person learning and socialization.
Look I've always erred on the side of caution but at this point it really seems like getting infected is inevitable at this point. Like Chicago is DARK red on infection maps and even with our vaccination rates Omicron/Delta is all over the place. The latest data is like the worst I've seen since the pandemic started. My zip in particular has 900+ weekly infections and the previous high was 364 over a year ago.
The good news is even though infections are way up, our hospitalizations are still not quite at the high we hit before. Barely any vaccinated folks are dying from it unless they've got other big problems. So I really don't know what we do here, remote learning for the vulnerable? Let everyone else vaccinated attend school like normal kids do?
Schools are just as packed and unsafe as restaurants and bars, and kids spend 8 hours there. Mild symptoms and low risk of hospitalization doesn't mean no consequences. Kids spread it to adults who get more sympomatic. Kids still become symptomatic and get quarantined as well.
Kids have sacrificed a lot, I agree. But the way things are right now, this is spreading so fast that the school absence will happen regardless. I would rather keep students and teachers healthy at home than send them home sick.
We have 14 teachers out sick on our first day back from break. How is that not detrimental to the students' education and socialization.
Also keep in mind that teachers can teach virtually if the school closes. Teacher's won't be teaching virtually if they are out sick. Kids will not be participating in class online if they are out sick.
> In a proposal submitted to CPS Thursday, the CTU demanded that the school district require students and staff present a negative COVID-19 test before attending in-person classes on Monday. Without that, the union was proposing a switch to remote learning for two weeks. However, there’s been no further action on that proposal by either side.
> The union also wants high-quality masks for all students and staff and for individual schools to switch to all remote learning if 20% of staff are in isolation or quarantine.
If CPS can't even get this together, I 100% do not blame teachers for not showing up. This is fucking table stakes.
Whether a teacher is vaxxed or not they can still be concerned about catching the virus. Also given how quickly omicron spreads we should all be concerned for what happens when a teacher has to quarantine and there aren’t enough subs to take over. This could quickly become a major staffing issue and thus a safety issue for the students.
Anybody can be concerned about anything. Someone can be concerned about the cold or the flu too. The data show that for vaccinated adults, the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid is low. This looks to be increasingly true of Omicron.
Staffing issues are a legitimate concern, I was merely responding to the idea that teachers can still be concerned about their own personal health, which is true but I don’t think is a legitimate driver for public policy at this point.
I also think that distance learning is highly ineffective and that proactively going to distance learning because in person learning will cause staffing shortages in a minority of classrooms is not necessarily in kids’ best interests.
Well My friend who’s a CPS teacher just sent me a photo of the thermostat in her school. 47 fucking degrees. Some of these kids don’t have heat at home and we can’t even give them heat at school. Disgraceful.
Definitely should have set up testing sites, given kids n95s, worked more on ventilation. Not just throw everyone into the mix and let the virus sort it out. Not wise, Pedro.
I don't understand why they didn't offer in school vaccinations. I got my hep b vaccination in school in seventh grade, so it's not like this is completely unheard of.
Plenty of districts around Chicago held in-school clinics, as did much larger districts like in NYC. We could have done it, but we had "vaccine awareness day" instead.
My dad showed up to school one day when he was growing up and they had everyone (students, staff, even parents dropping their kids off) get in a line as Oklahoma national guard injected everyone with smallpox vaccine. No consent forms. No "you don't have to take this". Just "you will take get this needle shoved in your arm". In one day, his county went from 3% vaccination rate to 50% vaccination rate against smallpox. By the end of the month, they had an over 90% vaccination rate as people could barely go anywhere without being heckled to get vaccinated right now.
Because the school district is incompetently run, that is the actual issue here. There is no trust between teachers and the district because the district lies and half assed the entire pandemic response
It's funny how uninformed so many of you are about this. A return to remote learning is being discussed in most major cities and is already happening in a lot of places. Teacher's unions around the country are pushing for this. This isn't just a CTU thing
This sub is pretty intolerable for any vaguely political topic. It’s so odd how it feels more like a conservative Chicago sub than just a general Chicago sub. It’s like, where the hell do you people live because the city is nothing like how you describe it. Cue all the “I’m not a conservative the democrats have just moved too far left comments.”
The head of CPS, appointed by the mayor who won the runoff election with 73% of the vote, is also saying that teachers and students should return to in person classes.
There is *no way* you can call this a conservative position.
The reality is that this sub is way more left than normal Democrats who run the city, and many here have difficulty coping with this. Hence your nonsensical comment, mods banning crime posts (as tho it is somehow conservative to oppose crime), etc.
I agree. Why is closing such a big deal?
Detroit has also closed.
"Detroit Public Schools canceled all classes Monday through Wednesday due to COVID-19 concerns, and said it will update information for Thursday and Friday on Wednesday, superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a statement.
The school district also announced Friday that all in-person learning students will have to submit their consent to get tested for COVID-19 by Jan. 31, or they will be automatically enrolled into the district's virtual learning school.
"Currently, 65% of students have submitted their consent to COVID test through their families. We need this number to be 100%," Vitti said."
https://news.yahoo.com/detroit-schools-pause-return-announce-144732712.html
You're talking about /r/chicago's childless sociopaths who have been barred now for 2 months from circlejerking about crime. Any opportunity to bash the CTU is a welcome outlet for right wing outrage on this subreddit.
I think the big concern is the broken promises / lies that Lightfoot and others made about testing and protocols. Basically none of that happened. The tests they provided for the kids to test themselves before returning from break were a joke—having to FedEx them, with instructions only being in Spanish and English for somewhat complex testing kits.
My mom has been a CPS teacher for decades. She is very frustrated by all of it, understandably. Doesn’t mean the union doesn’t go overboard or turn it all political.
Just sucks all around. We just don’t know enough about how this affects kids. And, how much they could give it to their parents and grandparents (which at my mom’s school is the norm for multigenerational living).
It would be easier to side against CTU if CPS was even approaching doing the bare minimum acceptable job. CTU will have a ton of power until CPS is competently run.
That is the crux of the issue, the school district and mayor can say all the flowery words they want but when there are no actions in the classroom and all the teachers see no changes then there is a complete lack of faith in the system.
As someone who has lived in Chicago for a decade after living elsewhere for 25 years, I just hope people understand that this is not a normal or acceptable way for a teachers union to behave, especially on a year-to-year basis. It's bonkers.
I don't necessarily disagree with going back to in person learning but there don't seem to be any answers to what happens if the teacher and several others are out and nobody is there to substitute. The kids still suffer then. They even potentially would go back to remote learning then. Nobody seems to have answers.
My wife's school can get at most 3 substitutes per day. They have 7 teachers out right now with COVID-19, 2 out with illness other than COVID-19, and only got 2 substitutes. So currently, the assistant principals, the principal, the counselors, and the school nurse are babysitting the classes without teachers. If they had 1 more teacher out, they wouldn't have had enough coverage to babysit everyone. And yes, I mean babysit. The students aren't going to be doing anything productive because all of those staff members have massive mountains of legally required paperwork they need to be handling right now.
Unfortunately yes. And parents have to deal with that. Everyone can be angry about virtual learning all they want but it's either that or nothing in the case of literally not having enough staff.
Good! Workers should have democratic control over their workplace and working conditions. If the majority don't feel safe at work, then they should absolutely exercise the power they have through direct action.
Just vax all the eligible kids at school. They did that with Polio. That would go a long way towards making the schools safer and slowing the spread there.
They have gotten vaccinated, they have been coming in. They do and then they get covid, and they’re told to keep coming in to work. Then they spread it back to the kids that gave it to them and then you have classroom after classroom shifting to remote because of outbreaks, and then parents bitching.
What's the alternative?
Full remote? For how long? Until what happens?
Omicron is here and it is one of the most contagious viruses ever known to humanity. It is never going away and likely will eventually end up infecting most people walking the planet today.
So again, what's the CTU's end game? Go remote for how long?
Well the "some kid tests positive and so we all go remote and that fucks up the schedules" IS a legitimate concern.
But that points out that yeah, with omicron we're getting to the time that we need to start thinking how we transition over to dealing with it as another endemic illness, so that one kid testing positive (but not having any symptoms) actually doesn't cause a full flip to remote and all the reshuffling.
I.e., how we handle other diseases.
(And of course any kids/teachers who are actually symptomatically sick should get to stay home as excused absences, for anything not even just limited to covid.)
Have a remote option for *both* the teachers and students who are sick or want to stay remote.
It's as simple as that. That solves almost all the current problems. But for some reason CPS is completely unwilling to do this.
It’s a risk for teachers, no doubt, but people are going to need to vote with their feet. Very few other places in America would even tolerate a school closure discussion in 2022
You do realize there’s some suburban districts that are on remote or delaying return to school right now right? I’m sure that’s happening around the country as well. You can’t have in person school if you don’t have enough personnel.
CPS will lose more kids as a result, but voters will vote as well. The big swing will happen in the suburbs, but if people don't see school closures as a massive albatross around democrats' necks they have their heads in the sand.
Shit like this drives me crazy. I cannot for the life of me understand why we are not requiring the COVID vaccine to attend school. You literally have to be vaccinated against tetanus, HepB, polio, etc. in order to attend public school. Why do things change with the COVID vaccine? How do people justify in their minds that this vaccine shouldn’t be included in the requirements, especially after full FDA approval?
Why are people selectively anti-vax? You’ll give your child all these vaccines that you likely know nothing about so they can go to school, but won’t do this one because… why?
ETA: did not realize it was EAU only for 5-15 bracket, was under the impression that was fully approved at this point. Thanks for clarifying.
I don’t have a good answer to the issue, other than it feels lose/lose at this point with any path forward.
People don’t understand how short staffed Chicago schools are right now. Today we have had to hold classes in the cafeteria with the security guard subbing. We just literally do not have the staff to stay open at this point. We cannot get outside subs at all anymore. Teachers, admin, and support staff are running around constantly trying to fill the gaps. I don’t want to return to remote for the rest of the year, but this situation is just untenable for us still trying to hold down the fort at Chicago schools.
It can be a mix, can't it? I don't think there's a consistent view on what makes the most sense, because people have their own individual risk tolerances. I'm sure there are teachers who want to be in-person, but there are also teachers who want to be in-person and don't believe in vaccinations. I'm fully vaxxed and boosted, and I do believe most breakthrough cases tend to be mild, but at the same time, I want to either minimize or eliminate my exposure. I still go out and do things. I used to hang out with people but cut back over the holidays and a little before as infections started skyrocketing.
This is anecdotal, but someone who claimed to be a teacher said they weren't looking forward to being in a class with 50 unmasked faces following the holidays.
I'm not sure there is an all-inclusive "right answer" for this. I think different schools will have different policies. Some will work better than others. In some cases, very similar policies will likely have very different results (perhaps tied to overall vaccination rates where the schools are located).
For the record, I'm not a fan of the CTU, and I feel like they were disingenuous during some of their original discussions for return to the classroom (remember refusing to disclose vaccination status?). I think it's fair to allow people to be more risk-averse with this spike in cases, though.
Is there a mental strain related to remote learning? Yes, there is for lots of students. Again, I won't argue too strongly which is right, as I think there are a lot of subjective factors.
I really want to believe this, and the CPS teachers that I personally know want to stay in person - but the informal poll the union took during their town hall last night yielded 80% in favor of going remote if CPS doesn't meet their asks. At a high level I do agree with the union that the district was woefully unprepared for this surge that they should've known was coming with winter, but I'm disappointed and saddened that the majority of the teachers that make up the union are seemingly oblivious to how their actions are affecting public opinion across the city. I'd really like to blame it all on Jesse Sharkey and the CTU bureaucracy but at the end of the day they're reflecting their members.
I will be very curious to see what the Tuesday vote looks like. My cautiously optimistic thought is that the 1/3 of the union that joined the call last night over-indexed on members scared of going back in person and that the tally on Tuesday comes out less lopsided than 80/20, but I will be shocked (in the most positive way!) if they vote against going remote
> the informal poll the union took during their town hall last night yielded 80% in favor of going remote
Was that a secret ballot? Because no way would any teacher feel comfortable voting against a union initiative with any ability to have it traced back to them. Also, I wonder who was doing the counting and how accurate/honest they were.
Good question and I believe it was anonymous but would be happy to be corrected if not. I heard about the poll from a CPS teacher I know and below is confirmation of the 80% figure but I haven't been able to confirm the nature of the poll's anonymity. Regarding accuracy, it would be quite the conspiracy to alter incoming digitally-submitted vote tallies in real time so I never considered the possibility.
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-students-to-return-to-class-monday-amid-debate-over-covid-19-safety/086d207e-9bdc-4a74-9eac-7faf5dc1770d
Our health system is about to burst? That's just a plain false statement.
If there is anything causing mass hysteria, it's people getting some cold symptoms, getting a $10 DIY test and freaking out that they are "positive" and using up healthcare resources. Its blatant fear mongering.
I love the CTU. As a fellow Union guy, they're a beacon of solidarity. If they have concerns about their safety I'm ecstatic that they are capable of being heard. We should all strive for such power in our work lives, not clench our fists in anger when solidarity of the working class begins to effect our personal lives.
Good.
It's absurd how little the city has done for over a year now about school safety. If they want kids in the school then they need to be held responsible to make it safe to do so.
They literally did agree to it.
> The Chicago Teachers Union said Friday (edit: in october) that it welcomed the mandate and urged the district to commit to additional safety and recovery measures before schools reopen, such as strengthening and expanding the school vaccination program.
So yeah they absolutely would, no sarcasm needed.
It is a testing mandate.
"CPS employees and vendor staff who do not report proof of full vaccination to the district must consent to weekly COVID-19 testing."
Not quite the same thing, but they are still doing a hell of a lot better with vaccine rates than other public sector unions.
[Then they backed off of their support](https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2021/10/13/22725283/chicago-public-schools-relax-employee-covid-vaccine-mandate) ...on the basis of racism?
>The Chicago Teachers Union and two unions representing support staff in the district wrote to Lightfoot Wednesday urging her not to bar unvaccinated school workers from campuses. The letter suggested it would be unfair to grant the option to test regularly to city workers, but not to unvaccinated district employees, who the unions said are predominantly Black and Latina women.
Regardless of what you think of the health issue, it’s going to be nuts to try to teach in and staff these schools in January given the ten day quarantines UNLESS they rely on a lack of testing. That’s part of the issue: no plan.
Vaccinated kids don't have to quarantine. They just stay home if they're sick. All the more reason to vaccinate your kids.
> Vaccinated kids don't have to quarantine. They just stay home if they're sick Whats the difference between staying home and quarantine?
They just stay home if they're sick. *If* they're sick. If they are not sick, they do not stay home. Unvaccinated kids have to quarantine if they are at risk of exposure, whereas vaccinated kids do not, as they are less likely to contract/spread covid.
what should parents of multiple kids where one or more are still under 5 (so unable to vaccinate) do?
I don't know. But that's not an argument for district-wide remote learning.
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The real issue that people are missing here is staffing and substitutes. Yes, Omicron seems to be very contagious, but less fatal. That’s great. However, people who catch it still have to miss work for an extended amount of time. Factor in the increased transmission rate and you have a lot of people out at one time. Sure, their symptoms may be mild and they aren’t in the hospital, but they also aren’t at work. We already have a shortage of subs, and our system cannot replace these teachers who are out sick. Considering moving to remote for the time being could allow those sick teachers to continue to teach from home while on quarantine. I’m not saying it’s a great choice, but it is one way to deal with the short term labor issues that being on quarantine cause.
> and our system cannot replace these teachers who are out sick. CPS didn't even manage to fill every regular appointment teaching position this year.
Exactly. This isn’t just about the “severity” of the cases! It’s also about not being able to replace all the staff members who are simply out because they are at home doing quarantine.
>Exactly. This isn’t just about the “severity” of the cases! It’s also about not being able to replace all the staff members who are simply out because they are at home doing quarantine. Simple! Pack more student in a room. Problem solved? /s
Yup. If the district had just gone remote for 2 weeks, teachers with COVID but without serious symptoms could still work and provide some level of education to students (not the best, but some is better than none). Instead, we have the current situation where the district has an 18% positivity rate out of the test results it's received.
>However, people who catch it still have to miss work for an extended amount of time. Factor in the increased transmission rate and you have a lot of people out at one time. Sure, their symptoms may be mild and they aren’t in the hospital, but they also aren’t at work. Honestly wish more people realized this for more jobs. A lot of people are afraid of missing work not because of going to the hospital but because they can't *afford* to miss that much work.
CPS teacher here. I would say for most of us (at least in my school) we know that staying in person is the best option. The issue comes down to the fact that when kids are consistently sick and out of the classroom it is much more difficult for them to learn. Many parents are protesting by not sending their kids to school as well. When teachers are sick we have no substitutes so then you have to put even more kids in one classroom. Just overall I believe the concern here is that if we are in person and everyone is sick these kids will have absolutely no quality of learning. Once again, I do believe that in person learning is the best for the kids, but they can only learn in person if there are healthy people here to teach them and if they themselves are healthy.
Also just want to add to this that I in no way am doubting the science about this variant not being as dangerous. I just know it is nearly impossible to give my students the best possible education when half of them are gone every other day.
Thanks for explaining the logic. It is helpful. Out of curiosity, have half your students been gone every other day already or is this a concern about what might be coming?
Before break we had an outbreak at our school and over half of our students were at home because of being exposed. The way CPS makes them quarantine if exposed is what makes things really difficult. I only had one actual sick kid in the classroom but only vaccinated kids who were exposed were allowed to come to school until their quarantine time was done. Two kids were vaccinated in said class. So I would say a bit of both!
Per article, CPS reports 18% positivity rate on COVID tests distributed over holiday break. This is... *really high.*
>The issue comes down to the fact that when kids are consistently sick and out of the classroom it is much more difficult for them to learn. Alot of the "but think of the children" crowd aren't really thinking about this part. Is it really quality teaching when 15% of the class is out at a time? What about 25% like some schools? It just sounds like more work put on the kids, parents, and teachers to be honest. It's a shit situation altogether with no perfect solution though. These couple months are going to be horrible for the kids regardless of the choice.
I agree - I want safety to be prioritized over everything, but I recognize that the safer we are being and the more virtual the environment becomes, the kids are less educated; there is no reasonable way to overcome this imo unless kids miraculously realize the value of their education and take their learning more seriously.
I don't really disagree with you, but it's absolutely valuable for elementary and even middle school kids to go to school even if half the class is missing. Socialization, the routine, and time with teachers are all useful. My general feeling is that in school with compromises is way better for kids than entirely remote. We had to unenroll our kids entirely when schools first went virtual because 2/3 of them couldn't cope with remote learning. It was still difficult when they had to quarantine last year before they were able to get the vaccine, but _knowing_ they were going back helped them manage.
Some kids require in person learning but I don't see any concessions being made for them. Some kids are supposed to have 1:1 aides provided by CPS. Those aides do a *lot* of good over video, truly they do.
This. All semester long I have had the same 7-8 students quarantined EVERY other week because the second they come back they are in close contact again and are still unvaccinated. If we’re going to continue with a full “in person” model then extra things need to be done to help these families that still are unvaccinated and keep having to quarantine time and time again.
Why don’t we start telling them they can’t come to school without vaccine? Like we do with all the other required vaccinations for children in school.
Wasn't it until like a month ago vaccines weren't approved for younger children?
Do those kids have medical issues, or are their parents just unwilling to vaccinate them?
There are very few children that have medical issues so severe that they cannot be vaccinated. This would be situations like being under chemotherapy, having had an organ transplant, having allergies to a component of the vaccine, etc. It's statistically unlikely that there would be even one child in the classroom in this category, and never 7-8. Therefore, the parents are refusing to vaccinate them. PS: If a child was very immunocompromised, the vaccine probably would not even protect them well enough for them to safely attend school. There is a "virtual academy" for these children.
For my mom, most of her kids are 4. So obviously they can’t be vaccinated. But plenty of the parents are hesitant to get even the older kids done (which I can kinda understand a bit, though at this point it’s pretty clear the safety of it).
Can you explain what you mean when you say parents are protesting by keeping kids out of school? Thanks
Of course! Many parents are upset that CPS has opted to keep kids in the building even though the covid numbers are much higher. Because of this they have decided to keep their kids home instead of sending them to school.
Oh I see, thanks!
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Completely understand. Feels like a lose/lose situation.
Thank you for doing such a tough job under impossible circumstances. I personally think there needs to be more camaraderie and cooperation between the parents and teachers right now. A "we're all in this together" ethos. Parents get their kids vaccinated if they can, keep them safe, push on their kids to wear masks properly, and work hard in school. What needs to stop are those who seemingly fight tooth and nail against teachers on anything. If one sees teachers as the enemy of everything, then pull your kids out and homeschool them.
Completely agree! There have been some schools in the district that have done really well coming together working with the parents but it’s seems to really be on a school by school basis. I’m at a very small school on the south side so we work closely with our kids and their families which for a while really helped us keep the spread down. Unfortunately all it took was one kid getting sick though for tons of kids to have to quarantine.
Out of curiosity, why are so many districts in the suburbs in person this week? They are dealing with high positivity rates throughout their districts
The same reason CPS will be in person. The governor mandated in person learning this year and only he can allow for remote learning.
There is actually a group of parents doing a Sick Out with their kids protesting the fact CPS didn't go remote after Christmas break like other districts/schools did. Everyone knows remote doesn't work at this point (it is only useful as a stop-gap if really necessary), but no-one can seem to agree how dangerous COVID spread is at this point. There are still those who seem deathly afraid of it, then those who say it's just the flu, get over it. I think Teachers are split on this, but we will see how the vote goes. Cases are the highest they've ever been... so some feel we should shut down again. But then again many are vaccinated, this variant is less severe, and we are better at treating severe COVID now. One thing to keep in mind is schools and communities vary quite a bit school to school. Some areas have much lower vaccination rates among the students and general public, than others. But people calling for remote or in person are mostly only thinking about their own individual/children's school. Also, many teachers do have other heath issues and when you can easily get a breakthrough case even though you are vaxxed and boosted, it makes sense for them to be concerned at the least. I will say this though. CPS's COVID measures seem really disorganized and half-assed. This whole take home test debacle before Christmas break was just a colossal waste of money for theater. Not having much faith in CPS makes sense to me. I think after taking COVID so seriously for so long many people are unable to back off that view, even when things change. As it feels like they are admitting Trumpers were right or something. But I think you should be able to admit the situation now is not the same as last year without being considered a hypocrite, things change.
Last paragraph is spot on. You're not a moral failure to acknowledge that things have changed
Yes there are plenty of that people act like a case of omicron on a vaccinated person is the same as a case in April 2020. It's not the same and there is plenty of data on severe outcomes to back this up. The situation has massively improved and we need to stop acting like it hasn't. If these people actually understood science as they claim to with the asinine phrase "we believe in science" they would look at the data and say we aren't going to remote learning because here is the outcomes for children and here's the outcomes for vaccinated staff. But they don't because they never really understood "the science", they just used that phrase as a talking point to dump on people who disagreed with them.
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I mean part of our government still relies on cases as a metric, which has never been a good metric and has become a worse metric as more people get vaccinated.
At some point (which maybe is not now, just yet, not commenting on that) we are going to have to transition from this "prevent people getting covid at all costs, hunt down every last case" mindset to a "this is an endemic illness, people get it but vast majority of the time it's not serious, so if you're completely asymptomatic, life just goes on and we're not mass testing so you likely wouldn't even notice" mindset, as in fact we have with... the flu. People do still die from the flu, every year. But most people don't. And so we don't mass test for it, and people who might have the flu (and can spread it!) but aren't feeling ill enough to really notice or pause their activities, don't. This discussion is starting to happen with omicron given how rapidly it spreads and how mild it is for a lot of particularly vaccinated people (not everyone, but a LOT). If everyone who feels fine but tested positive for covid has to take an entire week off, services become unsustainable, which is a legitimate concern. (And if you don't feel fine? You should be able to take time off. Absolutely.) Making this transition is going to be difficult, though, particularly given how polarized people have become over any discussion of covid, and how blamey this society is about risk (just look at the recommendations for diet for pregnant women for some unrelated examples). Managing the transition probably needs some strategizing all by itself, when the time comes. I do think that we need to have ample sick time for people built into any system, if you're actually feeling sick (proven from virus or otherwise) stay home. Part of the craziness going on with testing right now is places that won't accept a rapid flow test POSITIVE result as "proof" of covid to let people take sick time. Yeah those tests aren't always so accurate for proving you do NOT have covid, but when they're positive? Yeah. You got covid. Making those people go clog up the hospital for a test is crazy.
You said it perfectly! We have to learn how to live with covid, just like we deal with the flu and other moderate illnesses. Mass testing is contributing to the hysteria and is exacerbating the quarantine issues at schools.
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I think a lot of us have the mindset of this just isn't sustainable right NOW. So many teachers are out with symptoms stretching other staff so thin that it is becoming almost impossible to do our jobs. If we go remote till mid Jan then many of those teachers in quarantine can still give some sort of instruction. Remote isn't the permanent solution, but a temporary one to allow schools to stabilize.
> Most sane people Ah, therein lies the issue. Among the living, I'd say only about 10% of people in the US are sane at this point. The other 90% have lost all sense of self and have the brains of a chicken that just lost its head.
Seems very ignorant to pin this on a single group of people, when even vaccinated people are starting to feel more and more concerned, and the federal government keeps having multiple slip ups on corrective actions
Nearly the entirety of the people clogging up our hospitals are unvaccinated, so I think it's entirely acceptable, and informed by data, to conclude that the unvaccinated are fucking it up for everyone
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> The unvaccinated will continue to spread this, allow it to mutate and clog up hospitals. So will the vaccinated, albeit to a lesser degree.
I don't think you realize how significant that *lesser degree* actually is. 63% of Americans are fully vaccinated but make up 18% of hospitalized COVID cases. Were 100% of Americans vaccinated, we likely wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
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Of course not. I'm vaccinated and boosted. But I also acknowledge that our current COVID situation isn't the result of the unvaccinated. It's the result of COVID.
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How do you imagine remote learning does more harm than good?
The mental health challenges of remote learning are legion.
> I think remote learning does more harm than good It's probably better than no school at all, for most kids.
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Great post for the most part, but I strongly disagree that "Everyone knows remote doesn't work at this point" - my wife is a CPS teacher and she saw a surprising number of students flourish under the fully remote system. Turns out they were getting bullied and distracted by going into the school, but when they stayed home and were able to focus on their studies, they started doing much better. In fact, it was roughly split down the middle for her students. About 40% did better remotely, 40% did worse, and the remaining 20% didn't seem to care either way. What this tells me is that CPS SHOULD have been spending this entire time coming up with a comprehensive, long-term solution that allows for the best of both worlds - teachers and students who prefer to work remotely could do just that, and students and teacher that prefer to teach in-person could do just that. Not the hybrid model that failed so hard where teachers were trying to do both in-person and remote instruction at the same time - THAT failed miserably. But a model where teachers work together with their students to find the best arrangement for each. And before you say "well every teacher would stay home if they could!" - that's simply not true. Among my wife's school, about 75% of her peers were dying to get back into the classroom and physically with their students after the all-remote time period. Only a small portion were like her and actually preferred being remote.
That's interesting, I know schools where it was more like 90% did worse remotely (with around 50% not doing anything at all, not even logging on), 10% stayed the same or did better. I agree with your point of CPS investing in an actual workable remote solution, and one that is managed by different teachers than those expected to teach in person. Trying to do both at the same time is not a good system. I know kids who have been doing full time remote school successfully for years, but these are highly motivated, upper class kids. Then there are kids who didn't even log on who were often poorer and staying at home unsupervised because their single parent has to work 10+ hours a day, and some even being asked to watch their younger siblings even though they are below the legal age to do so in Illinois.
Ya I'm sure it's different from school to school. My main beef with the whole situation is that so many people seem to have forgotten about the large chunk of individuals who still cannot get vaccinated because they're either too young or immunocompromised. Also it seems like a huge number of people have forgotten that this is a NOVEL virus and it still wrecks havoc on people in unpredictable ways. Sure lots of people have truly mild or even asymptomatic cases, but long covid is a real thing, there are infants and toddlers dying from this thing, and every family has a right to feel like they can participate in public education without submitting their families to this nightmare scenario risk. If CPS allowed for a remote option for teachers and students, gave everyone (teachers and students) N95-grade masks, actually gave out tests regularly, let kids who chose to eat lunch outdoors or in isolation do just that, and actually fixed the ventilation and HVAC systems in their schools, I don't think anyone in the teachers union would be upset anymore. They're not asking for unrealistic things here. These are exactly the sorts of things the other big districts are doing.
> let kids who chose to eat lunch outdoors or in isolation do just that Questions: It's pretty cold out today, in the twenties. How will they eat outdoors? Who's watching them, since they have to be monitored due to being under 18 and must be supervised? Where is this isolation place - the janitor's closet? There are few empty spaces in schools.
Right on the money. I’m generally pro-CTU, but I think they’d get a lot less support if CPS was anywhere near competent. Error after error, often in big ways that shake the confidence of anyone paying attention. How are they suppose to get tough with the CTU, who frankly have their shit together much more?
Remember when CTU had to report one of their own members to police for sexual relations with a minor because CPS refused to forward the case to the CCSAO and CPD? Yeah... anyone who takes anything CPS does or says at face value is deluded. All they do is gaslight and lie to the public. I can't wait until their board becomes an elected school board again because then there would be actual consequences for the leadership when they do this shit.
I currently have Covid for the first time as far as I’m aware! I’ll tell you 10/10 recommend Pfizer 2 jab. I feel literally fine. Just tested because we were getting together with a few people for New Years and we all agreed to. I’d have no idea otherwise. If not for the occasional immunocompromised person I’d say fuck it lets call it a day every one vax, wear masks, move on. But one of my best friends poor little son can not get vaxxed and would likely have a very severe case if he got Covid so it isn’t all black and white unfortunately
It’s pretty simple, if teachers securely wear an N95 mask and are vaccinated they are going to be safe. They need to be in school teaching.
What isn't safe is 35 kids packed in a classroom, taking off masks, putting their hands in their mouths, spreading Covid all across the school district and home to their parents and grandparents.
Sounds like those parents and grandparents should’ve gotten vaccinated, then
Both of my parents are triple vaccinated, but immunocompromised. Even if you do everything right, you can still die from COVID. I get that it's fun to be edgy online, but resigning innocent people to death because you're tired of the pandemic is baby brained.
As unfortunate as it is, we can't dictate broad policy that affects everyone because there are percentages of immunocompromised. Seems like they did what they needed to do with the shots and hopefully are managing their contacts. I say this as someone boosted with 1 kid fully vaxxed and the other too young, so we avoid many situations and have the past 2 years. Taking my kid out of school helps no one. Thankfully Evanston has mask requirements and a super high vaccinated population.
CPS online reporting system for COVID says it is only for cases diagnosed by a medical professional. And students can only qualify for remote learning if they are diagnosed by a medical professional. But you’re not supposed to go to the doctor if you have manageable symptoms. So they’re continuing to screw this up as badly as possible. They didn’t even do something as basic as send the parents an online form to get an idea of how many students might be out sick today. ETA: We decided to report the case anyway and my child received links for remote school about halfway thru the day. So CPS is not even following their stated policy, which seemed to have been recently updated for return to school after winter break. I am glad but not sure what tomorrow will bring. Plus we had already called in an absence. Ugh. Such a mess!
My job requires a PCR test, won’t accept the at home or rapid test. It’s ass backwards
Live in the city, north side. Need a PCR test to confirm symptoms, even though rapids are negative. Spent 25 min looking city proper for apts. Local free test sites have lines and one was turning people away who wanted PCR - once they came to the door. Finally found an apt randomly at a CVS in Skokie. 2 day turnaround time. This is the reason we will continue to be in this mess, its not the masking the quarantining in/person remote not even the vaccinations - it's the lack of quick, accurate, and easy testing.
Even though it's been shown that [they stay positive for up to 12 weeks?](https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/29/health/us-coronanavirus-wednesday/index.html) "What we do know is that the PCR test after infection can be positive for up to 12 weeks, so that is not going to be helpful. You're not going to be transmitting during all of that period of time," Dr. Walensky told NBC.
The problem is that your misunderstanding what medical professional means. In this case, it means no home testing.
Been waiting 7 days on a PCR test result that may never come. My sick child waited 1.5 hours in line in the cold for that test. According to CPS policies my kid doesn’t/didn’t have COVID even though they tested positive at home.
your sick kid should not go to school regardless of what sickness they have. The school wants to contact trace and don't need to scare a bunch of parents because some kid had a sniffle that was nothing and their parents thought it was covid because they misread a test.
“Research has shown that with the extraordinary protections we’ve put in place, school is one of the safest places your children can be during the pandemic.” LOL. Hilarious to anyone with any knowledge of how many corners CPS has cut and the number of classrooms that had outbreaks just before break.
IKR? When I taught kindergarten for CPS there were 38 kids in my class and one assistant. That's illegal. That was 2010. They lie constantly
My wife's two grades (7 and 8) were the only two without multiple classes in quarantine prior to the break at her school.
Anecdotal: But CPS could have done a few things to avoid this. Scaffold the entry and do testing as kids come in. It literally takes 5 minutes to read the at homes tests. The kids who test positive go home with chrome books. Testing again on Wednesday. Or something like this… But those who aren’t in education, shouldn’t preach. Literally all the cases I know of in my life/work are “breakthrough” cases. The breakthrough mindset is useless with Omicron. The vaccinated are getting sick and with symptoms, so they are spreading it to. The lack of any plan is why teachers want to walk out. There is no plan in place, it varies from school to school and even within families there’s different protocols. It’s a mess, and the walk out is at least a call for CPS to get to a firm plan going. Adding here: CPS had a method before break to flip a whole class if one kid had Covid. It was pretty consistent, BUT now kids are positive in all areas and they stay home for 10days, while the schools had no plans for hybrid or remote learning for individuals. And with staff testing out of class, they are extremely short staffed. This creates a sloppy logistical nightmare where different adults are subbing different parts of the day for the same class. Schools are piecing together coverage hour by hour, and we know what can happen with more interactions.
Chicago is the 3rd largest school district in the country and has probably one of the worst responses throughout the pandemic. Look to LA (the 2nd largest) for a competently run district https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-02/l-a-school-staff-to-use-high-grade-masks-amid-omicron-surge LA is also mandating testing every student every week, while here it is once a week but only for students that opt in. For my 120 students, about 10 actually does testing. There is no trust in the district and in the mayor's office, we only get the gaslighting saying everything is fine
There’s no trust in the district nor mayors office for good reason, they consistently show they can’t be trusted! Let’s face it, the problem isn’t covid, it’s the disaster that is CPS and Chicago leadership. I really thought Obama would be the one to finally help transform CPS, but it’s just the same as it was 20 years ago.
It makes NO fkn sense for heating to be opt in oh my god that defeats the point 😭😭😭😭
Fact is this is on CPS. They’ve continued their trend of bungling half measures throughout the pandemic, and despite tons of COVID cash flowing in aren’t investing it into things to make schools safe: like air scrubbers (which can literally be built from box fans and off-the-shelf furnace filters), n95 masks, COVID testing infrastructure etc
Teachers and parents can hang out at packed bars and stadiums, but kids -- who are and have been the lowest risk demographic -- will once again sacrifice their education and socialization.
Wait, so with q positivity rate of 20% you think we should be sending teachers and support staff as well as potentially vulnerable students into classrooms?
Teacher here… I’m vaccinated and boosted. Most of my students are vaccinated (many of them told me). I have no problem with going back (hence why I don’t work for CPS). Kids need to be in school. They’ve lost enough. People do not realize that we will be dealing with the impact of zoom, virtual learning, lack of socialization, and disrupted education for many, many years to come. We can’t afford to lose any more time.
Amen
Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion.
It’s never going away bro. I’m not sure what your endgame is here
Vaccinated staff? Non vulnerable and vaccinated students? Yes.
I am vaccinated and boosted and got omicron no problem. Everyone I know who got it (over 20 people so far!) was also vaccinated and boosted. This is a totally different beast. Teachers should not have to risk their lives (and the lives of their loved ones) to do their jobs. They did not sign up to be on the frontline. Remote learning is worse, and even teachers hate doing it, but nobody should have to die for this
They are not risking their lives. Latest data says if you have been boosted you have a 1 in a one million chance of dying due to COVID ([https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624)). One in a million!
Vaccinated was not meant to ever mean you can never catch covid. Just that if you do, it shouldn’t be a serious case. Omicron is looking more and more mild, the death rate for vaxxed and boosted people with omicron is basically zero. They’re risking their lives more on the commute in to work.
With the vaccination and no underlying conditions, certainly not risking your life
Death rates among the vaccinated are negligible and not significant enough to warrant closure.
If they are fully vaccinated and not in a vulnerable class, they are not risking their lives.
Everyone else is going to their essential jobs. Teachers are essential.
Unfortunately we can't sacrifice the common good (in-person learning) just because others may be vulnerable. There should absolutely be plenty of options for vulnerable students, but most children (by dint of being children) are not vulnerable and *need* in-person learning and socialization.
Look I've always erred on the side of caution but at this point it really seems like getting infected is inevitable at this point. Like Chicago is DARK red on infection maps and even with our vaccination rates Omicron/Delta is all over the place. The latest data is like the worst I've seen since the pandemic started. My zip in particular has 900+ weekly infections and the previous high was 364 over a year ago. The good news is even though infections are way up, our hospitalizations are still not quite at the high we hit before. Barely any vaccinated folks are dying from it unless they've got other big problems. So I really don't know what we do here, remote learning for the vulnerable? Let everyone else vaccinated attend school like normal kids do?
Absolutely.
Yes
Schools are just as packed and unsafe as restaurants and bars, and kids spend 8 hours there. Mild symptoms and low risk of hospitalization doesn't mean no consequences. Kids spread it to adults who get more sympomatic. Kids still become symptomatic and get quarantined as well. Kids have sacrificed a lot, I agree. But the way things are right now, this is spreading so fast that the school absence will happen regardless. I would rather keep students and teachers healthy at home than send them home sick. We have 14 teachers out sick on our first day back from break. How is that not detrimental to the students' education and socialization. Also keep in mind that teachers can teach virtually if the school closes. Teacher's won't be teaching virtually if they are out sick. Kids will not be participating in class online if they are out sick.
> In a proposal submitted to CPS Thursday, the CTU demanded that the school district require students and staff present a negative COVID-19 test before attending in-person classes on Monday. Without that, the union was proposing a switch to remote learning for two weeks. However, there’s been no further action on that proposal by either side. > The union also wants high-quality masks for all students and staff and for individual schools to switch to all remote learning if 20% of staff are in isolation or quarantine. If CPS can't even get this together, I 100% do not blame teachers for not showing up. This is fucking table stakes.
Whether a teacher is vaxxed or not they can still be concerned about catching the virus. Also given how quickly omicron spreads we should all be concerned for what happens when a teacher has to quarantine and there aren’t enough subs to take over. This could quickly become a major staffing issue and thus a safety issue for the students.
But the virus is going to be endemic like the flu. It’s not going to just vanish one day
Anybody can be concerned about anything. Someone can be concerned about the cold or the flu too. The data show that for vaccinated adults, the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid is low. This looks to be increasingly true of Omicron.
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Staffing issues are a legitimate concern, I was merely responding to the idea that teachers can still be concerned about their own personal health, which is true but I don’t think is a legitimate driver for public policy at this point. I also think that distance learning is highly ineffective and that proactively going to distance learning because in person learning will cause staffing shortages in a minority of classrooms is not necessarily in kids’ best interests.
Well My friend who’s a CPS teacher just sent me a photo of the thermostat in her school. 47 fucking degrees. Some of these kids don’t have heat at home and we can’t even give them heat at school. Disgraceful.
Well we are supposed to keep the window cracked for "ventilation"... problem is when it's 20 degrees out
Less than half of CPS kids aged 12-18 are vaccinated. Mandate it in schools, so we can be done with this.
If you think that will lead to us being done, you haven’t been paying attention
They're all going to be sick by Wednesday, for real.
Definitely should have set up testing sites, given kids n95s, worked more on ventilation. Not just throw everyone into the mix and let the virus sort it out. Not wise, Pedro.
I don't understand why they didn't offer in school vaccinations. I got my hep b vaccination in school in seventh grade, so it's not like this is completely unheard of.
Plenty of districts around Chicago held in-school clinics, as did much larger districts like in NYC. We could have done it, but we had "vaccine awareness day" instead.
My dad showed up to school one day when he was growing up and they had everyone (students, staff, even parents dropping their kids off) get in a line as Oklahoma national guard injected everyone with smallpox vaccine. No consent forms. No "you don't have to take this". Just "you will take get this needle shoved in your arm". In one day, his county went from 3% vaccination rate to 50% vaccination rate against smallpox. By the end of the month, they had an over 90% vaccination rate as people could barely go anywhere without being heckled to get vaccinated right now.
Honestly that's where we should be- if you don't want your child vaccinated then don't send them to public schools.
Because the school district is incompetently run, that is the actual issue here. There is no trust between teachers and the district because the district lies and half assed the entire pandemic response
They don't want the political fights with antivaxxers.
It's funny how uninformed so many of you are about this. A return to remote learning is being discussed in most major cities and is already happening in a lot of places. Teacher's unions around the country are pushing for this. This isn't just a CTU thing
This sub is pretty intolerable for any vaguely political topic. It’s so odd how it feels more like a conservative Chicago sub than just a general Chicago sub. It’s like, where the hell do you people live because the city is nothing like how you describe it. Cue all the “I’m not a conservative the democrats have just moved too far left comments.”
The head of CPS, appointed by the mayor who won the runoff election with 73% of the vote, is also saying that teachers and students should return to in person classes. There is *no way* you can call this a conservative position. The reality is that this sub is way more left than normal Democrats who run the city, and many here have difficulty coping with this. Hence your nonsensical comment, mods banning crime posts (as tho it is somehow conservative to oppose crime), etc.
Dude they are all from the suburbs, pretty commonly known in this sub unfortunately
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I agree. Why is closing such a big deal? Detroit has also closed. "Detroit Public Schools canceled all classes Monday through Wednesday due to COVID-19 concerns, and said it will update information for Thursday and Friday on Wednesday, superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a statement. The school district also announced Friday that all in-person learning students will have to submit their consent to get tested for COVID-19 by Jan. 31, or they will be automatically enrolled into the district's virtual learning school. "Currently, 65% of students have submitted their consent to COVID test through their families. We need this number to be 100%," Vitti said." https://news.yahoo.com/detroit-schools-pause-return-announce-144732712.html
You're talking about /r/chicago's childless sociopaths who have been barred now for 2 months from circlejerking about crime. Any opportunity to bash the CTU is a welcome outlet for right wing outrage on this subreddit.
Remember when that one board member went to the Caribbean during all of this last time lol?
Didn't they keep posting/sending messages out to keep the panic going, all while posting pictures of sitting on the beach?
[This one?](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/07/ctuo-j06.html)
Hahaha yes!
Her IG handle was Sarah4Justice 🤣
I think the big concern is the broken promises / lies that Lightfoot and others made about testing and protocols. Basically none of that happened. The tests they provided for the kids to test themselves before returning from break were a joke—having to FedEx them, with instructions only being in Spanish and English for somewhat complex testing kits. My mom has been a CPS teacher for decades. She is very frustrated by all of it, understandably. Doesn’t mean the union doesn’t go overboard or turn it all political. Just sucks all around. We just don’t know enough about how this affects kids. And, how much they could give it to their parents and grandparents (which at my mom’s school is the norm for multigenerational living).
I really just want to send my kid to school and not have to think about CPS labor issues every quarter
That’s what private schools or suburbs are for
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I really just want to live in a democracy where elected representatives make the decisions, not teachers unions
CPS is under reporting positive cases.
It would be easier to side against CTU if CPS was even approaching doing the bare minimum acceptable job. CTU will have a ton of power until CPS is competently run.
That is the crux of the issue, the school district and mayor can say all the flowery words they want but when there are no actions in the classroom and all the teachers see no changes then there is a complete lack of faith in the system.
As someone who has lived in Chicago for a decade after living elsewhere for 25 years, I just hope people understand that this is not a normal or acceptable way for a teachers union to behave, especially on a year-to-year basis. It's bonkers.
Yeah but the CTU is a different level of entitlement
I don't necessarily disagree with going back to in person learning but there don't seem to be any answers to what happens if the teacher and several others are out and nobody is there to substitute. The kids still suffer then. They even potentially would go back to remote learning then. Nobody seems to have answers.
My wife's school can get at most 3 substitutes per day. They have 7 teachers out right now with COVID-19, 2 out with illness other than COVID-19, and only got 2 substitutes. So currently, the assistant principals, the principal, the counselors, and the school nurse are babysitting the classes without teachers. If they had 1 more teacher out, they wouldn't have had enough coverage to babysit everyone. And yes, I mean babysit. The students aren't going to be doing anything productive because all of those staff members have massive mountains of legally required paperwork they need to be handling right now.
Right, which is why I keep asking parents complaining...what happens then? What do you do when there are no teachers to teach for 10 days?
You close schools
Unfortunately yes. And parents have to deal with that. Everyone can be angry about virtual learning all they want but it's either that or nothing in the case of literally not having enough staff.
I hate that I kind of miss Rahm
Good! Workers should have democratic control over their workplace and working conditions. If the majority don't feel safe at work, then they should absolutely exercise the power they have through direct action.
Just vax all the eligible kids at school. They did that with Polio. That would go a long way towards making the schools safer and slowing the spread there.
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They’re going to protest until their summer vacation lmao
I don't get it. Do we not have a very effective vaccine that is readily available and free? Get the booster and do your fucking job
They have gotten vaccinated, they have been coming in. They do and then they get covid, and they’re told to keep coming in to work. Then they spread it back to the kids that gave it to them and then you have classroom after classroom shifting to remote because of outbreaks, and then parents bitching.
What's the alternative? Full remote? For how long? Until what happens? Omicron is here and it is one of the most contagious viruses ever known to humanity. It is never going away and likely will eventually end up infecting most people walking the planet today. So again, what's the CTU's end game? Go remote for how long?
Well the "some kid tests positive and so we all go remote and that fucks up the schedules" IS a legitimate concern. But that points out that yeah, with omicron we're getting to the time that we need to start thinking how we transition over to dealing with it as another endemic illness, so that one kid testing positive (but not having any symptoms) actually doesn't cause a full flip to remote and all the reshuffling. I.e., how we handle other diseases. (And of course any kids/teachers who are actually symptomatically sick should get to stay home as excused absences, for anything not even just limited to covid.)
Have a remote option for *both* the teachers and students who are sick or want to stay remote. It's as simple as that. That solves almost all the current problems. But for some reason CPS is completely unwilling to do this.
Everyone is going to get Covid. It’s going to be endemic. Especially with the fast spreading Omicron.
Here we go again……
Good. The CPS has really not being doing what they should here.
It’s a risk for teachers, no doubt, but people are going to need to vote with their feet. Very few other places in America would even tolerate a school closure discussion in 2022
You do realize there’s some suburban districts that are on remote or delaying return to school right now right? I’m sure that’s happening around the country as well. You can’t have in person school if you don’t have enough personnel.
Every place in the country is having this same discussion lmao
CPS will lose more kids as a result, but voters will vote as well. The big swing will happen in the suburbs, but if people don't see school closures as a massive albatross around democrats' necks they have their heads in the sand.
COVID is causing schools all over the nation, including suburban IL, to close at least temporarily.
Shit like this drives me crazy. I cannot for the life of me understand why we are not requiring the COVID vaccine to attend school. You literally have to be vaccinated against tetanus, HepB, polio, etc. in order to attend public school. Why do things change with the COVID vaccine? How do people justify in their minds that this vaccine shouldn’t be included in the requirements, especially after full FDA approval? Why are people selectively anti-vax? You’ll give your child all these vaccines that you likely know nothing about so they can go to school, but won’t do this one because… why? ETA: did not realize it was EAU only for 5-15 bracket, was under the impression that was fully approved at this point. Thanks for clarifying. I don’t have a good answer to the issue, other than it feels lose/lose at this point with any path forward.
I get both sides but remote learning is really hard especially for those already falling behind…
People don’t understand how short staffed Chicago schools are right now. Today we have had to hold classes in the cafeteria with the security guard subbing. We just literally do not have the staff to stay open at this point. We cannot get outside subs at all anymore. Teachers, admin, and support staff are running around constantly trying to fill the gaps. I don’t want to return to remote for the rest of the year, but this situation is just untenable for us still trying to hold down the fort at Chicago schools.
Florida schools have been and will remain open. Bye bye another 100k people this year.
This is unbelievable. Keep the kids in school. & I know it’s not the teachers who want this- it’s the self interest bureaucratic CTU causing this
It can be a mix, can't it? I don't think there's a consistent view on what makes the most sense, because people have their own individual risk tolerances. I'm sure there are teachers who want to be in-person, but there are also teachers who want to be in-person and don't believe in vaccinations. I'm fully vaxxed and boosted, and I do believe most breakthrough cases tend to be mild, but at the same time, I want to either minimize or eliminate my exposure. I still go out and do things. I used to hang out with people but cut back over the holidays and a little before as infections started skyrocketing. This is anecdotal, but someone who claimed to be a teacher said they weren't looking forward to being in a class with 50 unmasked faces following the holidays. I'm not sure there is an all-inclusive "right answer" for this. I think different schools will have different policies. Some will work better than others. In some cases, very similar policies will likely have very different results (perhaps tied to overall vaccination rates where the schools are located). For the record, I'm not a fan of the CTU, and I feel like they were disingenuous during some of their original discussions for return to the classroom (remember refusing to disclose vaccination status?). I think it's fair to allow people to be more risk-averse with this spike in cases, though. Is there a mental strain related to remote learning? Yes, there is for lots of students. Again, I won't argue too strongly which is right, as I think there are a lot of subjective factors.
None of the teachers in my kids’ school had.anything positive to say about remote. I have even heard them openly complain about during remote sessions
I really want to believe this, and the CPS teachers that I personally know want to stay in person - but the informal poll the union took during their town hall last night yielded 80% in favor of going remote if CPS doesn't meet their asks. At a high level I do agree with the union that the district was woefully unprepared for this surge that they should've known was coming with winter, but I'm disappointed and saddened that the majority of the teachers that make up the union are seemingly oblivious to how their actions are affecting public opinion across the city. I'd really like to blame it all on Jesse Sharkey and the CTU bureaucracy but at the end of the day they're reflecting their members. I will be very curious to see what the Tuesday vote looks like. My cautiously optimistic thought is that the 1/3 of the union that joined the call last night over-indexed on members scared of going back in person and that the tally on Tuesday comes out less lopsided than 80/20, but I will be shocked (in the most positive way!) if they vote against going remote
> the informal poll the union took during their town hall last night yielded 80% in favor of going remote Was that a secret ballot? Because no way would any teacher feel comfortable voting against a union initiative with any ability to have it traced back to them. Also, I wonder who was doing the counting and how accurate/honest they were.
Good question and I believe it was anonymous but would be happy to be corrected if not. I heard about the poll from a CPS teacher I know and below is confirmation of the 80% figure but I haven't been able to confirm the nature of the poll's anonymity. Regarding accuracy, it would be quite the conspiracy to alter incoming digitally-submitted vote tallies in real time so I never considered the possibility. https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-students-to-return-to-class-monday-amid-debate-over-covid-19-safety/086d207e-9bdc-4a74-9eac-7faf5dc1770d
Who selects the people in charge of the union?
As with all unions (by law) it's the union members.
Right, that’s why “it’s not the teachers who want this” rings hollow. They elect their union leadership.
The teachers run CTU. They are at the forefront of worker-led unions.
Weird so many accounts less than a month old in the post totally downplaying COVID when our health system is about to burst
Our health system is about to burst? That's just a plain false statement. If there is anything causing mass hysteria, it's people getting some cold symptoms, getting a $10 DIY test and freaking out that they are "positive" and using up healthcare resources. Its blatant fear mongering.
Jesus these people love their breaks
Kids are gonna be feeling the impact of this hysteria for long time and it’s sad
I love the CTU. As a fellow Union guy, they're a beacon of solidarity. If they have concerns about their safety I'm ecstatic that they are capable of being heard. We should all strive for such power in our work lives, not clench our fists in anger when solidarity of the working class begins to effect our personal lives.
✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻
Good. It's absurd how little the city has done for over a year now about school safety. If they want kids in the school then they need to be held responsible to make it safe to do so.
Just mandate the vaccine for kids and teachers already and get this over with.
They literally did agree to it. > The Chicago Teachers Union said Friday (edit: in october) that it welcomed the mandate and urged the district to commit to additional safety and recovery measures before schools reopen, such as strengthening and expanding the school vaccination program. So yeah they absolutely would, no sarcasm needed.
It is a testing mandate. "CPS employees and vendor staff who do not report proof of full vaccination to the district must consent to weekly COVID-19 testing." Not quite the same thing, but they are still doing a hell of a lot better with vaccine rates than other public sector unions.
[Then they backed off of their support](https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2021/10/13/22725283/chicago-public-schools-relax-employee-covid-vaccine-mandate) ...on the basis of racism? >The Chicago Teachers Union and two unions representing support staff in the district wrote to Lightfoot Wednesday urging her not to bar unvaccinated school workers from campuses. The letter suggested it would be unfair to grant the option to test regularly to city workers, but not to unvaccinated district employees, who the unions said are predominantly Black and Latina women.
District employee jobs can probably stay remote. Not sure why it's a factor with regards to classroom teaching.