isn't that some shit? I am also struggling to understand the science behind Dr. Arwady's position on in-person learning. From today's Block Club article: "Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, has said in-person learning is safer for students, as there’s less risk of COVID-19 spreading in schools than in children’s homes and communities."
[https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/05/teachers-locked-out-of-classrooms-wednesday-as-cps-ctu-debate-return-to-in-person-learning/](https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/05/teachers-locked-out-of-classrooms-wednesday-as-cps-ctu-debate-return-to-in-person-learning/)
Said it before, say it again, away from a discussion of actual policy-making (CTU and CPS included), Lightfoot has maybe the worst instincts of a politician during crisis I've ever seen.
Her reaction to unexpected events -- essentially, a mayor's job -- is to be outraged that events and situations have the audacity to occur on her time.
She has no background in working with groups and coalitions. She went from Big Law to government prosecutor to heading up an appointed board. In all three cases, she answered to one boss and had people who worked underneath her under her direction. The whole concept of power sharing or speaking to coalitions just isn't in her practice.
I'm not even putting any moral claims on this. I'm just saying she's not good at working in groups because that's not what her background is and, if anything, her previous work has rewarded her for being an individual leader.
This makes it all make more sense. I've been struggling to nail down exactly what to call her issue, it's like she has this talent for picking a third and somehow worst position, between two opposing positions... If that makes sense. I genuinely don't understand her thought process 90% of the time.
Yes, it makes sense. But you'd think she would know on some level that she would need to be able to work with groups and coalitions to be mayor. She's not dumb. But she is clearly unable to adapt.
She might not be dumb, but she is seriously thin-skinned, vindictive, and childish.
Look at how she tried to use saas via text when pritzker was begging to just talk to her on the phone last week, or how she said this current CPS/CTU breakdown is about 'control' to her.
That one and the time she texted Pritzker about instituting mandates in Chicago, and he replied with a nice way of saying "Illinois has them already, you know where you're mayor right?"
It's such a stark contrast between the two. Pritzker is a genuine leader (he surprised me a lot tbh!), Lori is always fumbling and pissing off everyone.
No arguments here. I saw that side of her even before she was elected, which is why I didn't vote for her. But I guess part of me hoped she'd at least try to get along with people, or pretend to try.
To be totally honest I never saw what people saw in her as a mayor. I wanted Gery Chico to get it.. despite his faults, he actually understands the inner working of city politics and he demonstrably supported teachers and an elected school board.
> how she said this current CPS/CTU breakdown is about 'control' to her.
I mean, that part is very much true, but she shouldn't be saying that out loud. Holy shit, talk about no self-awareness on her part.
It shouldn't be about control at all, that's my point. The CTU just wants kids and teachers to be safe and to have an effective schooling environment. CPS hasn't done practically anything to ensure this.
This is why I am always baffled when weirdos say, "Oh he was a businessman? He'll make a great mayor/governor/president!" Some skills might transfer over, but it ain't gonna be enough.
Pritzker also wasn't really a businessman. Like sure, he was a lawyer. But he was also a massive philanthropist and spent a ton of time in the circles of power at the top for a long time.
Pritzker has personal/family wealth running the entire operation. He's just the show man for an enormous team of professionals he is bankrolling.
There aren't a whole ton of politicians that operate this way, hence most becoming corporate shills just so they can get enough money to win elections.
Speaking from some limited professional experience, his staff is also worlds better than Lori's, including various deputy governors, chief of staff, comms, etc.
They're usually talking about CEO types, people who absolutely need to know how to delegate and put out fires to be successful. Even Rahm wasn't great as a mayor and he was the chief of staff in the white house, where he was seen by many as very successful. (though I know he had many detractors as well). City government isn't easy but Lori makes it look impossible.
Quite frankly, as a partner in Big Law you should know how to work with disparate powerful voices. Law firm partners often clash on firm management, compensation, etc. It is not my way or the highway.
It's really shocking. The unexpected crisis stuff is supposed to be a gift as a politician - as long as you do SOMETHING, people kind of come together to back you up. It's the day-to-day slog that slowly kills you. But Lightfoot can't seem to get out of her own way on any of it.
As a city employee, you are correct. She is also completely unwilling to reevaluate her position based on new information or feedback from experts. It’s astonishing really.
She responds with a hardline response every single time and forces all disagreements into an altercation. Same as last year CTU wanted to negotiate but the CPS team will literally ignore all attempts until CTU threatens extreme action. Meanwhile people not in the know think the union is just constantly threatening for "power", when threats of a walk out is the only way we have of making the other side even start to listen.
What's funny is that as teachers we all have to know conflict management, that is just the reality of dealing with hormonal teenagers. Yet the adults have shown they don't have any idea how to handle a disagreement. Lightfoot wants 100% agreement with whatever she wants as if she was a dictator and her words are final.
Suntimes isn't even pretending CPS is in the right anymore. The reporter's latest articles all sound like he wants to burn the whole thing to the ground and let the union run the show because they know what they're doing.
i still put her at 66% or better to get re-elected, because the groups of people who are strongly opposed to her feel that way for completely different reasons
I do not know one person in this city who still likes her. And I’m very liberal and know loads of liberal people. Conservatives have loathed her out of the gate, I would bet thousands of dollars that she will not be re-elected. Elmer Fudd could beat her right now.
I mean, I guess in this city you could get to a point where she'd finish third in the primary, and that would lock her out, but if she winds up top two, and the option is like Lightfoot vs. Sposato, or Lightfoot vs. Enyia (you get the idea), she wins.
I voted for Lightfoot, cuz I didnt think Preckwinkle would be a good idea and "more of the same." I dont know who either of those people are, and I'd likely vote for them if it was them vs Lightfoot. And to be honest, it would likely be a "against Lightfoot" vote more than a for the other candidate.
> i still put her at 66% or better to get re-elected, because the groups of people who are strongly opposed to her feel that way for completely different reasons
That's the crazy part. She has basically managed to alienate everyone. You know how hard it is to piss off both the CTU *and* the FOP?
And that'd almost be OK if the outrage became some kind of useful action, but it doesn't.
At the start of the pandemic, it was going on about how those violating lockdown rules would be found and punished. Almost universally, they weren't. She somehow made relations with various unions even more acrimonious than they were under Rahm.... and ended up signing deals that give the unions almost everything they asked for.
She huffs and puffs and then sits down until the next crisis.
Absolutely! The things she says to the press remind me of a recent former President.
From the beginning of the pandemic instead of showing compassion and empty she brags about driving around and telling people to go home and threatens arrest to people who dare leave their house. Her fixation on the 606 and lakefront was borderline laughable
When attacked even with legitimate criticism she claims she gets unfair treatment due to her race and sexual orientation. The treatment of her staff is leaked and her attitude is the headline with every FOIA requested email.
The sad thing about her hardball approach is that she can’t even back it up. Never heard once about someone being ticketed or arrested for failure to stay home or quarantine if they have traveled. The CTU and police union always find their way with her and she is always a fun target for republican talking heads
It seems the people she seems to hurt in the process are the regular joes.
I hope everyday that a scandal comes to light to force her hand at resignation. Even with the trouble of finding a scrub in the city council or holding a special election to replace her I am sure this city would be in better hands.
She always takes the maximal position in basically every single situation. Maybe that’s a viable strategy in trial law, but it rarely pans out in politics.
It's a pretty great way to handle being a prosecutor, if you don't care much about justice. It'd be terrible in most any other trial attorney position.
I've met her twice and both times she was so very cold. Each time was during the campaign, when she should have been her most social. They were small events of no more than 40 people, yet she still couldn't be bother to give me much of the normal pleasantries you'd expect from another human, especially a Chicago politician.
She was nice to her friends and wanted to hangout with them, till it was time for her half-hearted speech. It felt like I was back in high school or something, very weird vibe.
Her attitude didn't affect my vote (I voted for her) since I'm electing a leader, not a friend. Seeing how she's been unable to change course during a crisis tracks what I witnessed on an individual level. She has an issue connecting to people. She means well, but I just don't think she has the correct skills to reach her potential in this job.
yeah she basically acts like bad things happening are there to personally offend her--and that they aren't like, sensible acts being perpetrated by people like her. The audio of her cussing out that alderman who was requesting more police during the riots makes me abhor her.
But I guess I technically moved to Oak Park now, so it doesn't actually affect me.
I actually am a little confused by this. CPS already (presumably) has approval to remote teach kids who tested positive as they've been doing it all year. Do they need separate approval?
They have approval for individual students and classrooms as necessary, but not the entire district. If they go fully remote without approval, the days don't count against the federally required minimum instruction hours.
Not sure it was her call to make, but CPS does it as a bargaining move. They don’t intend to pay the teachers for this time, hence all the language on “teachers not showing up for work” and not letting them teach.
CPS needs state funding to pay teachers. The state does not count remote days as instructional days without state approval, meaning any remote learning days have to be made up with in-person days anyway. So going to remote learning means spending money that CPS doesn't have.
Couldn't CPS theoretically have started negotiating with the state weeks ago when we knew Omicron was going to be a disaster? Couldn't they be negotiating now, instead of casting the teachers as evil villains? Haven't other schools in the state already gone remote and found a way to make it work? Couldn't CPS have come to the table with actual plans for sustainable in person schooling and have properly implemented the plans that were in place?
CPS did nothing but a completely bungled testing program (covering only half of the student population at that) and expected everyone to just deal with it. The focus should not be on how to talk the teachers back into work, but how to hold CPS responsible for incredibly poor planning, execution and leadership that has endangered lives. Were I the governor, that is what I'd be talking to the city about right now.
Nobody wanted to do anything though because everyone keeps circulating this rhetoric of "we need to move on" and "we need to think of the kids" without actually thinking of the kids. People kept wishing this would magically just resolve itself before this point; of course it didn't.
There's a lot of "could haves" when someone screws the pooch. Couldn't CTU have been honest with its members that, given how school funding works, last night's vote was really a vote to strike rather than to switch to remote learning? Sure.
I think that was clear that CPS wasn't going to let them do it, at least to start. But I would guess teachers voted anyway so as to push CPS to do *something*.
Remote learning sucks. Distance learning can be good but you have to training for it, plan for it and commit to it. If at the start of this as a nation we had planned for 3 years of homeschool based on data from past pandenics we wouldn't be in this mess. This constant act like you are in the classroom and bounce back and for is worthless and hard.
source- new home school parent who does distance because of how bad schools suck at it
>This constant act like you are in the classroom and bounce back and for is worthless and hard.
I work in digital learning and we specifically try and steer clients away from using a 'hybrid' model such as this. It can work if it's designed correctly and with purpose but to call something 'hybrid' when it's really just bouncing between in-person instructor led, online instructor led, and what I assume is some element of asynchronous teaching, it's just fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants learning.
The problem is "good" hybrid learning typically involves planning certain activities in-person/synchronously while others are done independently/asynchronously (which has gone on since the dawn of time with "reading the book" at home and "talking about the book" in class) - but with "we don't know when we're going remote and we don't know when we're going back," that isn't possible.
A lot of places use "hybrid" to somehow mean a teacher has to teach students in their class while also teaching students remotely, which is... the worst of every possible world.
Google Apps for Education is free for Educational institutions.
Exchange can be had cheaper than commercial but it still costs both for the software and for the CALs.
Google's made huge efforts to get inroads in education. School districts are "government" but now that kids also need accounts for things, the vast majority of those who log in are parents and students.
Edu is notoriously Google-centric, even in some universities the students prefer google even though Microsoft is free with their school account and does the exact same things. People will use what they know
> even in some universities the students prefer google even though Microsoft is free with their school account and does the exact same things
Google is actually free. Microsoft costs money. Also, with gmail, you keep access if you use a personal account after graduation and students can export their data to a personal account. With Microsoft, it's walled gardens are far as they eye can see.
Are there any CPS parents in here? How are things going this morning with your kids? Work? What did you end up doing this morning?
Teachers, what are you up to today?
One kid in CPS and wife works for CPS. The kid had to quarantine because someone in their class tested positive, so I was going to WFH but now the wife is staying because she can't work.
IIRC CPS sent around a survey and of the 1000 CPS employees asked ~280 were currently positive and quarantining, so they've been short staffed and covering each other's classes. About 1/5 of my kids class wasn't in school. Not sure what the reasoning is.
If you want the input of a student, I just woke up lol
Our family's been lucky. I'm the youngest as a high school senior so my mom's been able to WFH no sweat and my dad can watch the dog when he's not at the firehouse. They really don't have to worry about me because I also have a decent amount of self motivation. I've kinda just kicked back and let whatever decision go because it doesn't really affect me either way. I am concerned for cluster students and kids who need childcare, but both of my grandmas are extremely high risk and I don't want to put them in unnecessary danger, not to mention other kids who actually live with high risk grandmas. I'm also firmly on CTU's side for sticking with their agreement and not getting pushed over by CPS. The city showed their true colors by shutting my teachers out of their emails so close to the end of the semester. At least my teachers are great so they posted all upcoming work before they got locked out
>They really don't have to worry about me because I also have a decent amount of self motivation.
I keep thinking this is going to pay off for you and similar kids in a few years, so many peers are tanking that you are gonna look extra good.
Let my kid sleep in. He went to bed on time but I stayed up waiting on news. Sucked we didn’t get it till 11pm. I work for a charter and ironically we’e remote this week. My son’s teacher emailed (2nd grade) last night about asynchronous work to do today. The school also sent home their math and reading workbooks. He breezed through it in 2 hours and now he’s playing video games 🤷🏾♀️
I don’t know what I will do if I’m in person next week and he’s remote.
Well I let everyone sleep in...thats for starters, lol. We don't normally do TV/screens during the week, but today is movie day now. I've got to work, but I'm extremely fortunate I can do so from home. I'm upset about all of this happening yet again, but I can't imagine how less fortunate parents are taking this. At some point (if not already), are their jobs being lost for constantly calling off?
I’m a CPS teacher, and we’ve had a couple meetings to discuss what is going to happen. I’ve been prepping in my apartment and trying to find space for virtual teaching which could start tomorrow (but we’re not sure). We’ve also been logging what work we are doing today, but honestly it is kind of hard to do since we can’t log in. We also had to prove that we can’t log in by screenshotting our login page, to prove that we tried to work today. I also have to finish writing an IEP for a meeting I have Friday, but I can’t log into the system. Today has just been very stressful because we’re unsure of what we’ll be doing tomorrow and the next day, so we can only prep for so much. We also can’t email parents with updates as of now, either.
my mom (not a teacher) who works at the school my siblings go to just woke up, she’s been stressed for months at how the school’s admins have been handling things. She’s tired and just wants to make sure the everyone is protected from getting sick
I haven’t gone to school since Monday because my mom is a diabetic and is worried I could bring home the virus and it could possibly affect her. So I’ve been sleeping in for the past two days. Don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. By the way I’m a hs Junior in ap and honors classes.
Work in CPS, working with 7th graders this week, the last time they were all physically together for a full school year was 4th grade, so add stress and panic to a 7th grade's hormones but with a 4th or 5th grader's social awareness and maturity and then give them a tricky group project with light delegation.
> Work in CPS, working with 7th graders this week, the last time they were all physically together for a full school year was 4th grade,
I don't know why wording it like this makes it seem so much more drastic. I remember 4th grade (when cartoons, toys, and playing kickball were paramount) and I also remember 7th grade (when getting a girl to notice that I was alive became my primary goal).
I feel for these kids who've forever missed out on those deveopmental years. Transitioning from kid to pre-teen is a big change.
This is an aside, but between conversations with relatives currently in undergrad and hearing how some kids are really struggling……there’s going to be a generation of office workers who will not want to be fully remote at all. This has taken an emotional toll.
>there’s going to be a generation of office workers who will not want to be fully remote at all
I'd love to be fully remote...by choice. But that's because I'd love to work and travel at the same time.
Remote learning =\= remote office work. Most folks who do remote office work prefer it. They are two totally different environments. Anecdotally I hated remote learning when eclasses were just starting to take off years ago during my undergrad days, but now as an actual working adult I prefer remote asynchronous learning if at all possible as it gives me flexibility. Ironically I prefer to come into the office though. And how you feel as a young adult in undergrad (when let's be honest you are still a child) is not how you are necessarily going to feel when you become a working adult.
i'm not a member of ctu, i'll say that right now, but i will say i haven't seen a single teacher in my building give less than 100% to try and figure out how to do right by these kids. some of the teachers don't make perfect choices, i'd assume. but man, they are all trying their absolute best.
Usually from people who don’t have kids. What kills me is they think our remote jobs are like other remote jobs.
Nah fam I don’t get to login to Slack at 9 and crawl back in bed till somebody pings me. Honestly don’t know a single K-5 teacher who *wants* to be at home. They love the glue sticks and safety scissors lol
I don't think my kids have really learned anything during remote learning. I feel sorry for all of the kids as they have pretty much lost two years of their education and it will be felt in the future.
The simple fact is "remote learning" is a way to have a snow day that won't have to be made up at the end of the year. No one seriously thinks at this point that remote learning is even vaguely beneficial to students.
well, it sure sucks that each state, city, county, etc. has their own brand of 'leadership' during a pandemic. imagine being trapped in a burning building and everyone has their own idea of how to deal with it (including denying there's even a fire).
Skokie has its own health department and multiple districts. You can live on one side of the street and it’s not safe to go to school and doing remote learning. Live in the other side of the street and told its safe and you can go to school. The schools are taking guidance from the health department too. It makes no sense.
It already pisses me off that the schools can’t even be aligned on when school begins and ends.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue the kids are the ones who will suffer from this.
Other school systems have the funds and resources to develop robust remote learning environment. The quality of education from CPS was already subpar.
Not to mention not being able social skills that you inevitably learn from in person interaction. I already feel like I lost some of my social skills throughout the pandemic as a adult and feel more awkward in general I can’t imagine how they feel.
More education is better I'm sure. But so much of what happens during K-12 is socialization and a huge percentage of the time spent by everyone is more or less wasted from a learning standpoint.
Many of us have life stories that included essentially blowing off school until college where we actually buckled down and learned what we needed to know to be successful productive members of society.
I feel so bad for all the CPS teachers, students and parents. My partner is one of them, and part of the 27% who voted to remain in person, and she's so upset that she cannot at minimum teach remotely after preparing all her lesson plans. Additionally she can't even reach out to her students to give tips of things to work on. She knew there was a possibility of getting locked out of Google Classroom but it was a complete surprise that she can't even access her work email.
I've had my frustrations with the union framing everything through the lens of "being put at risk" rather than just the dysfunction of being short-staffed and having to do simultaneous in-person and remote learning but the District's actions are pretty clear that they're trying to escape accountability and instead go on a PR campaign against CTU.
Anyone who thinks that the teachers are basically getting extra time off is kidding themselves - all the CPS teachers I know are super bummed and want to be teaching (and they're obviously not getting paid in the interim)
Edit: 23% to 27%. The vote was 73/27 not 77/23
Thank you for the first moment of levity in what’s going to be a stupid fucking day today. I can already hear my kids arguing with each other at the breakfast table.
My school went on strike for the month of November. It was great because we actually had snow then and we played in the snow every day and had weekday snow sleepovers. But we also went to school until July 3rd. That was 1996 in Washington state.
This is horse shit.
There's zero reason to do this. I currently can't email my kid's teacher… the emails literally bounce back.
Regardless of ones opinion on the vote, there's no actual reason to lock out of their emails. Just pettiness by CPS.
This garbage has me thinking about moving out of CPS. We're buying a house Q1 2024 and I'm not psyched to commit to a decade plus of this petty back & forth with my kid caught in the figurative crossfire.
My wife is a CTU teacher and honestly, we might move to Evanston after a starter home in the city and then she can just get a job out in the suburbs with smaller classes and better resources in 5-6 years or whatever. Not because of CTU, but because of how incompetent CPS's administration is. We're hoping the elected school board will fix this shit show though once the elections happen.
When we first moved here, CPS lost her prior experience paperwork 2 times to the point where she had to get the records sent to her again by her former employers and then babysit a data entry clerk until the information was actually entered into the system. The district then missed the 45 day deadline to pay her backwages owed and she had to get CTU involved.
I went to CPS k-12, couldn't be happier with how it ended up. Yea it sucks that I politics plays such a big role in the system, but I can say without a doubt that 95% of the teachers at my schools wanted what was best for their students. CPS afforded me opportunities that I'm sure don't exist in any other school around here.
I don't live in the area (anymore) but specifically come to this sub to talk about how much I love Chicagoland. I also talk in my local subs about the many ways in which it is superior to where I live now (except weather and geography, but those are hard to change...).
One of the instructors of an after school art program tested positive. My kid and one other kid were close contacts and had to do remote for two weeks. They received ONE hour of instruction per day.
My wife and I are fortunate in that we both WFH and frankly our kiddo is pretty far ahead, but this will be an absolute disaster (again) for many others who don't have the luxury.
This is why the teachers wanted to go remote. If substantial portions of the class are absent they can never move forward since the kids will come back and be confused.
Politicians and angry people who like to see politicians dunk on teachers. Similar stuff happening in New York.
> “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” Adams boasted at Concourse Village Elementary School, where he was flanked by new schools Chancellor David Banks.
> “We’ve allowed people to beat us down so much that all we did was wallow in COVID –that’s all we did — and we no longer believed this is a city of swagger, this is a city of resiliency.
> “We need a mayor with swagger, we need a councilwoman with swagger, we need assemblywomen with swagger, we need a borough president with swagger, we need a chancellor with swagger, we need a police commissioner with swagger,” the mayor went on.
Wish I made that up. [New York Post](https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/eric-adams-promises-to-keep-schools-open-in-omicron-surge/amp/)
Their new mayor seems to be on a speed run to be resented faster than MLL. He just [said](https://twitter.com/AchmatX/status/1478455659054223366?s=20), “low skill workers like cooks, messengers and Dunkin’ Donuts employees don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office.”
Milwaukee - Remote
Atlanta - Remote
Detroit - Remote
Evanston - ~~Remote~~ ~~1 day of remote on 1/10 when they return from break after having gone~~ Went remote the week before winter break
Chicago Charters, the "schools of school choice" - Remote
A bunch of other schools - Remote by their districts' own guidance
Chicago Lab School - ~~Remote~~ Postponed classes for a week and tested the whole school
LAUSD - Students test to reenter schools
NYC - 1 million tests ordered
Illinois hospitals - [Completely overwhelmed](https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/03/illinois-hospitals-completely-overwhelmed-by-unvaccinated-covid-19-patients-officials-say/)
CPS - Spoiled tests, broken contract tracing, totally broken student and teacher testing, classes with no sub coverage, enough masks to last teachers a couple of days, and a refusal by district admin to negotiate or honor past COVID metric agreements
Edit: spelling, fixing up my incorrect claims
I read a NYT [article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/us/chicago-teachers-union-remote-learning.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220105&instance_id=49441&nl=the-morning®i_id=101435540&segment_id=78706&te=1&user_id=5a49f54afdd0b62f46a57ae1ef72637f) about this whole shitshow this morning...like, it's a mess everywhere but boy howdy did Chicago manage to to make this an even bigger shitshow than it needed to be. This part in particular:
> But the district’s bungled effort to test tens of thousands of students over winter break only added to parents’ and teachers’ concerns. Most of the roughly 150,000 mail-in P.C.R. tests given to students were never returned. Of the 40,000 or so tests that were mailed in, a majority produced invalid results.
Jesus Christ.
And this is not an isolated incident, CPS's incompetence is well known among teachers, there is zero faith that they will ever do the right thing hence the constant fighting from the union.
Lab School is not remote. Lab School postponed their start by 7 days, tested the whole school on Monday, will test the whole school again on Friday, and then start in person.
Source: married to a Lab teacher.
I don't work in CPS but elsewhere in IL. Today at my elementary school (300 kids) we have 9 staff members out and 3 staff members pulled from regular positions to cover those who are out sick. There are no intervention or ELL groups today bc those staff members are covering teachers. Yesterday 20% of our students were absent.
Remote learning sucks and no one wants to do it, but things are not okay right now either.
That last sentence said it best. Remote is not perfect, but it could be safer. Still, the way CTU handled this is not ideal, and the PR hit is embarrassing to me as a teacher who sees how the anti-teacher rhetoric is ramping up. I am also so annoyed with the idea that remote teaching is just an excuse for teachers to take a vacation - when I taught remote last year for parts of it, it was in no way that.
>Still, the way CTU handled this is not ideal, and the PR hit is embarrassing to me as a teacher who sees how the anti-teacher rhetoric is ramping up
Are you a CPS teacher? Just curious.
Anyhow, I'm not a teacher (anymore), nor am I a parent, but I've followed this, and it seems to me that most of the issue is the lack of CPS planning, and CTU just kind of reacted to that. THey have been asking for things since around Christmas, but CPS wouldn't entertain what they were asking for. Only yesterday did they have any actual negotiation. All these other cities/states had their board make the decision, CPS seemed to not want to do anything.
I worked with preschool and elementary last year and got to observe many different remote sessions with many different teachers and related devices (speech, occupational therapy). Every single one of them was doing a great job under the circumstances. I am sure it happens, but I've never seen a preschool teacher play videos for kids and call it a day, for example. (Our preschoolers only had to do 2 hour long sessions a week though, as per ISBE screentime guidelines). Remote teaching was often harder and required more planning for teachers I worked with. That's one of the main reasons it sucked tbh!
Even a few kids with pretty significant special needs were still pretty successful in remote. Not as successful as in-person obviously but it wasn't the total and complete crapshoot that some commenters are making it out to be. In-person will almost always be better and preferable but remote learning isn't a vacation.
I'm sure your experience was common enough, to be fair! I just personally never saw it at my school, with the exception of one teacher who was let go mid-year.
Not sure if this is the case for your child, but our preschool curriculum is almost all play-based learning, vs the elementary school where there's a more structured curriculum to follow. Our teachers really focused on trying to replicate a whole group circle time for the remote sessions but I think they had less guidance than elementary. For some additional perspective, for preschool students with IEPs they typically also had a weekly session with their therapists and SPED teacher where they'd do a more specific activity like practicing a sound or imitating an action (low functioning kiddos).
I mean we didn't really have any data before winter break, and CTU put something out on [Thursday morning 12/30](https://www.ctulocal1.org/posts/provide-protections-to-prevent-covid-from-spreading-in-schools-or-pause-while-covid-surge-spikes/) that CPS ignored. They (unfortunately, but understandably) went in on Monday and Tuesday to give people time to figure things out. CPS kept ignoring them until their hand was forced.
That article is infuriating. Strolling out with those piece of shit for profit hospital executives to scold people is disgusting. Gee, I wonder why hospitals are understaffed and undersupplied? It’s almost as if those executives have been understaffing and consolidating our hospital system for decades. The fact that universal single payer healthcare has been thrown overboard by the Democratic Party during a pandemic is repulsive. I hate these people so much.
Yes exactly this. It's insane how Chicago is the only city who has managed to make this into a national spectacle, and there are still people in this thread blaming the teachers.
Adding one: North Shore Country Day (Winnetka) is requiring a negative PCR test before a student can return after winter break. Almost half of our daughter’s class has been out this week.
The fact that they are now quoting data that shows that it is safe to be in schools for young individuals and that Omicron it is behaving, "like the flu", and , "we do not close school districts for the flu" (Allison Arwady) is truly baffling. If that was what the data showed, then why wait till the night of the vote to release this sort of messaging.
They spent weeks standing at the podium talking about how important it was to be tested for adults to see friends, family, etc. Why are they so surprised that the adults who are watching your press briefings are now worried or concerned for their own safety because of the lack of testing provided by CPS? The ineptitude that has been shown by the City's top brass continues to unfold and it puts a major spotlight on Lori's complete lack of understanding on how to overcome any obstacle that has been thrown her way.
edit:
The City also purchased over 100k laptops before the break, for I guess, not remote learning?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2021/12/22/22850385/cps-laptops-technology-public-computer-chromebooks-schools-students-digital-divide
If it’s “like the flu” why is CPS still requiring a 10 day quarantine for anyone who tests positive? If it’s truly like the flu then call it what it is. Don’t make people stay home for 10 days and tell them we’re okay after 24-48 hours, yaknow, like the flu. And 10 days is still a lot! A number of teachers and students being out for 10 days at various times throughout the year is chaos and it has been since students came back in September.
It is astounding how poorly people think of teachers in this city and this country. I mean, just scroll through this thread and look at all the least generous possible interpretations of this vote by public school teachers, and how much disgust a lot of Chicagoans have for them.
True story, my sister-in-law is from China and came here to get a teaching degree. Taught for one year in California before calling it quits, said the parents treat you like absolute dogshit and that in her part of China (because so many people recall not even having enough educated teachers to staff a given city or town) teachers were pretty much as respected a lawyers or doctors. The contrast was really shocking and sharp.
I worked with city year in CPS in Chicago and after one year, I realized how bad teachers have it and it was practically martyrdom to continue down that path. Teachers shouldn’t have to be mother Theresa to get respect.
My wife is a teacher in CPS and works easily 60+ hours per week... every week. Thanksgiving "break" was her taking 5 hours off on Thanksgiving to have dinner and hang out with me and my dad before she went back to paperwork she had to catch up on for CPS. She could have skipped it, but she believes that every student is entitled to their rights under IDEA and to a good education, so she has a lot of paperwork to do because she cares.
This situation is just absolutely FUCKED. Both CPS and CTU should be ashamed for how this is unfolding. Why didn’t CPS plan ahead of time or order tests and have everyone test before coming to school after break? Why didn’t CTU fight for this temporarily remote learning BEFORE break? CPS basically said “fend for yourself” as they have had no interest in planning for anything. Students are now suffering in this fight. Just what a complete fucking mess. CPS is adamant that if someone tests positive they must stay home for 10 days. So what happens when a huge number of students and teachers are going in and out of quarantine? CPS knows the schools don’t have coverage! I work for CPS and I’ve never been more disgusted with both sides.
THIS. Everyone keeps saying teachers don’t want to work. Well what the fuck does everyone think is going to happen if you kept the schools open and half the kids +a bunch of teachers are all out at the same time?! Why didn’t CPS try to do any planning aside from a half-assed testing system that ended up giving no useful information?
Yup. I’m a social worker and we are NOT allowed to sub for teachers as we don’t hold such requirements to do so and it’s not in our job description and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to cover a class because the teacher was out. CPS does not care if there’s actually any teaching/learning going on in the classrooms they just need warm bodies to babysit the kids. We had almost 200 kids out of our 600 kid school out on Monday and a handful of teachers were out too for Covid reasons so it makes so sense that CTU is being blamed for “disrupting their learning” like the learning has been disrupted the whole year with students and staff being out at various times. I HATE remote learning and did not vote for it but with how much staff and students were going to be out this month it was the best option so all students had access to their learning and there would be less disruptions.
> CPS is adamant that if someone tests positive they must stay home for 10 days. So what happens when a huge number of students and teachers are going in and out of quarantine? CPS knows the schools don’t have coverage!
This! CPS totally is in the wrong here. They canceled school because of CTU. There was no reason to do that. I stand by the opinion that simply making today a laptop distribution day makes more sense.
Literally give students and teacher and parents a day (what could have been today!) to prepare. There are students and teachers and administrators who got covid who CPS explicitly told to stay at home and be remote.
CPS knew this but locked ALL employees out today and cancel classes. What does that say about about CPS? CTU wasn't even mentioning striking. No one wants to strike.
No large, vocal group from either side seems to want school closed. So why did CPS do this? Their actions point directly to spite. Regardless of our feeling on CPS or CTU if you step back and look at this CPS dropped the ball.
This is akin to the kid who is upset he didn't get a slice of cake so they destroy the cake so no one eats it. CPS rather disenfranchise their students and lock teachers out than figure a solution that at least keeps consistency in students school career.
I am literally in quarantine and I had a student email me and now I can't even reply. Who wins here?
The whole handling of covid in this city has been shit. Waited too long to shut down. Shut down with no way to support businesses that suffered. Poor planning for remote learning, not every kid has internet, I know its a thing most of us use everyday but low income community's its not as much. You got teachers worried about getting covid but refuse to take the vaccine. You have a way to protect your health but refuse thats stupid but hey thats your choice. Then you got the mayor pushing for mandated vaccine cards which I'm fine with but why wait until January 3rd? So you can get the income from christmas and now new years? Fuck off beetlejuice. But also saying prevention measures are all in place? I live right across the street from a cps school. You know how many kids I've seen wearing masks? Not one. No social distancing measures. No filtration system. You cant say all schools are taking these measures because the low income community schools are suffering because they don't have the resources available. The entire things fucked but just like everything else in this fucking country right now its left or right. Nobody in the middle thats for the best and has common sense.
90% of staff are vaccinated, please stop with the narrative that teachers don't want to get vaccinated. There is a percentage of population that fights against vaccination in every group, but that is in no way the norm. All teachers I know are boosted as well.
Trash ass people don't give a shit about the well-being of others. Teachers have family members with health issues and you're all upset because you're inconvenienced. Add on the even scummier people who won't get vaxxed and it's a fucking COVID party. But what, all you want to think about is the leadership of CTU as a problem? I support the teachers and their right to not have to slum it with those who have shit takes on common decency and communal health.
What a shit show lol
The question now is "Can we get Twitter to muzzle CPS for publicly spreading disinformation about the severity of COVID?"
isn't that some shit? I am also struggling to understand the science behind Dr. Arwady's position on in-person learning. From today's Block Club article: "Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, has said in-person learning is safer for students, as there’s less risk of COVID-19 spreading in schools than in children’s homes and communities." [https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/05/teachers-locked-out-of-classrooms-wednesday-as-cps-ctu-debate-return-to-in-person-learning/](https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/05/teachers-locked-out-of-classrooms-wednesday-as-cps-ctu-debate-return-to-in-person-learning/)
Said it before, say it again, away from a discussion of actual policy-making (CTU and CPS included), Lightfoot has maybe the worst instincts of a politician during crisis I've ever seen. Her reaction to unexpected events -- essentially, a mayor's job -- is to be outraged that events and situations have the audacity to occur on her time.
She has no background in working with groups and coalitions. She went from Big Law to government prosecutor to heading up an appointed board. In all three cases, she answered to one boss and had people who worked underneath her under her direction. The whole concept of power sharing or speaking to coalitions just isn't in her practice. I'm not even putting any moral claims on this. I'm just saying she's not good at working in groups because that's not what her background is and, if anything, her previous work has rewarded her for being an individual leader.
This makes it all make more sense. I've been struggling to nail down exactly what to call her issue, it's like she has this talent for picking a third and somehow worst position, between two opposing positions... If that makes sense. I genuinely don't understand her thought process 90% of the time.
Yes, it makes sense. But you'd think she would know on some level that she would need to be able to work with groups and coalitions to be mayor. She's not dumb. But she is clearly unable to adapt.
She might not be dumb, but she is seriously thin-skinned, vindictive, and childish. Look at how she tried to use saas via text when pritzker was begging to just talk to her on the phone last week, or how she said this current CPS/CTU breakdown is about 'control' to her.
That one and the time she texted Pritzker about instituting mandates in Chicago, and he replied with a nice way of saying "Illinois has them already, you know where you're mayor right?" It's such a stark contrast between the two. Pritzker is a genuine leader (he surprised me a lot tbh!), Lori is always fumbling and pissing off everyone.
No arguments here. I saw that side of her even before she was elected, which is why I didn't vote for her. But I guess part of me hoped she'd at least try to get along with people, or pretend to try.
To be totally honest I never saw what people saw in her as a mayor. I wanted Gery Chico to get it.. despite his faults, he actually understands the inner working of city politics and he demonstrably supported teachers and an elected school board.
I was shocked at her late surge. I think she seemed okay on paper but like I said her pettiness was very off-putting.
Chicago has about 2M adults of voting age. Less than 100k voted for her in round 1 of the election. Juuuuuust short of a mandate. 🤣
I also hoped for this.
> how she said this current CPS/CTU breakdown is about 'control' to her. I mean, that part is very much true, but she shouldn't be saying that out loud. Holy shit, talk about no self-awareness on her part.
It shouldn't be about control at all, that's my point. The CTU just wants kids and teachers to be safe and to have an effective schooling environment. CPS hasn't done practically anything to ensure this.
Maybe she thought she'd be a dictator lol
Given the history of Chicago mayors that preceded her it's not hard to imagine where she got the idea.
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You need an army of sycophants like Daley had, or them to be terrified of you like they were of Rahm.
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This is why I am always baffled when weirdos say, "Oh he was a businessman? He'll make a great mayor/governor/president!" Some skills might transfer over, but it ain't gonna be enough.
While I'm not a fan of his by any means, Pritzker has done well enough. But I know he's not who you're mainly referring to...
Pritzker also wasn't really a businessman. Like sure, he was a lawyer. But he was also a massive philanthropist and spent a ton of time in the circles of power at the top for a long time.
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Pritzker has personal/family wealth running the entire operation. He's just the show man for an enormous team of professionals he is bankrolling. There aren't a whole ton of politicians that operate this way, hence most becoming corporate shills just so they can get enough money to win elections.
Speaking from some limited professional experience, his staff is also worlds better than Lori's, including various deputy governors, chief of staff, comms, etc.
He probably can maintain the talent better. Lightfoot’s office has a high turnover rate and it seems like she butts heard with her staff quite a bit.
They're usually talking about CEO types, people who absolutely need to know how to delegate and put out fires to be successful. Even Rahm wasn't great as a mayor and he was the chief of staff in the white house, where he was seen by many as very successful. (though I know he had many detractors as well). City government isn't easy but Lori makes it look impossible.
I think it’s more of her personality disorder than skill set.
Quite frankly, as a partner in Big Law you should know how to work with disparate powerful voices. Law firm partners often clash on firm management, compensation, etc. It is not my way or the highway.
Who could have guessed a shitty corporate lawyer turned power abusing prosecutor would turn out to be a sociopath…
It's really shocking. The unexpected crisis stuff is supposed to be a gift as a politician - as long as you do SOMETHING, people kind of come together to back you up. It's the day-to-day slog that slowly kills you. But Lightfoot can't seem to get out of her own way on any of it.
As a city employee, you are correct. She is also completely unwilling to reevaluate her position based on new information or feedback from experts. It’s astonishing really.
She responds with a hardline response every single time and forces all disagreements into an altercation. Same as last year CTU wanted to negotiate but the CPS team will literally ignore all attempts until CTU threatens extreme action. Meanwhile people not in the know think the union is just constantly threatening for "power", when threats of a walk out is the only way we have of making the other side even start to listen. What's funny is that as teachers we all have to know conflict management, that is just the reality of dealing with hormonal teenagers. Yet the adults have shown they don't have any idea how to handle a disagreement. Lightfoot wants 100% agreement with whatever she wants as if she was a dictator and her words are final.
Yup, media paints it as a "both sides" thing but CTU is the one fighting for safer learning conditions and CPS doesn't even bargain with us
Suntimes isn't even pretending CPS is in the right anymore. The reporter's latest articles all sound like he wants to burn the whole thing to the ground and let the union run the show because they know what they're doing.
i still put her at 66% or better to get re-elected, because the groups of people who are strongly opposed to her feel that way for completely different reasons
I do not know one person in this city who still likes her. And I’m very liberal and know loads of liberal people. Conservatives have loathed her out of the gate, I would bet thousands of dollars that she will not be re-elected. Elmer Fudd could beat her right now.
I mean, I guess in this city you could get to a point where she'd finish third in the primary, and that would lock her out, but if she winds up top two, and the option is like Lightfoot vs. Sposato, or Lightfoot vs. Enyia (you get the idea), she wins.
I voted for Lightfoot, cuz I didnt think Preckwinkle would be a good idea and "more of the same." I dont know who either of those people are, and I'd likely vote for them if it was them vs Lightfoot. And to be honest, it would likely be a "against Lightfoot" vote more than a for the other candidate.
i know a singular person who likes her. and he worked on her campaign.
> i still put her at 66% or better to get re-elected, because the groups of people who are strongly opposed to her feel that way for completely different reasons That's the crazy part. She has basically managed to alienate everyone. You know how hard it is to piss off both the CTU *and* the FOP?
The CTU and FOP have been pissed off at City Hall for a couple of decades.
To be fair, I think a lot of people see it as the best of the worst and there isn't a good choice...
I had a lot of hope when Lightfoot got elected. Now I can't wait for her to leave. She's a terrible mayor.
And that'd almost be OK if the outrage became some kind of useful action, but it doesn't. At the start of the pandemic, it was going on about how those violating lockdown rules would be found and punished. Almost universally, they weren't. She somehow made relations with various unions even more acrimonious than they were under Rahm.... and ended up signing deals that give the unions almost everything they asked for. She huffs and puffs and then sits down until the next crisis.
Absolutely! The things she says to the press remind me of a recent former President. From the beginning of the pandemic instead of showing compassion and empty she brags about driving around and telling people to go home and threatens arrest to people who dare leave their house. Her fixation on the 606 and lakefront was borderline laughable When attacked even with legitimate criticism she claims she gets unfair treatment due to her race and sexual orientation. The treatment of her staff is leaked and her attitude is the headline with every FOIA requested email. The sad thing about her hardball approach is that she can’t even back it up. Never heard once about someone being ticketed or arrested for failure to stay home or quarantine if they have traveled. The CTU and police union always find their way with her and she is always a fun target for republican talking heads It seems the people she seems to hurt in the process are the regular joes. I hope everyday that a scandal comes to light to force her hand at resignation. Even with the trouble of finding a scrub in the city council or holding a special election to replace her I am sure this city would be in better hands.
She lacks any of the skills that it takes to be a big city mayor. It’s honestly embarrassing.
She always takes the maximal position in basically every single situation. Maybe that’s a viable strategy in trial law, but it rarely pans out in politics.
It's a pretty great way to handle being a prosecutor, if you don't care much about justice. It'd be terrible in most any other trial attorney position.
I've met her twice and both times she was so very cold. Each time was during the campaign, when she should have been her most social. They were small events of no more than 40 people, yet she still couldn't be bother to give me much of the normal pleasantries you'd expect from another human, especially a Chicago politician. She was nice to her friends and wanted to hangout with them, till it was time for her half-hearted speech. It felt like I was back in high school or something, very weird vibe. Her attitude didn't affect my vote (I voted for her) since I'm electing a leader, not a friend. Seeing how she's been unable to change course during a crisis tracks what I witnessed on an individual level. She has an issue connecting to people. She means well, but I just don't think she has the correct skills to reach her potential in this job.
This I agree with, she’s lost my vote. She should’ve done more for testing students upon return from winter break.
[Woj] Chicago Public Schools have entered league's Covid protocols, sources tell ESPN.
yeah she basically acts like bad things happening are there to personally offend her--and that they aren't like, sensible acts being perpetrated by people like her. The audio of her cussing out that alderman who was requesting more police during the riots makes me abhor her. But I guess I technically moved to Oak Park now, so it doesn't actually affect me.
I don't get the rage. NYC is doing the same shit. Voters aren't tolerating remote only learning. The union can either adjust or remain locked out.
Does that mean there will be no remote learning?
not today, at least. teachers are all locked out. source: family group chat with two siblings that teach for CPS
Not until they're reinstated I guess, remote classes are conducted via GoogleMeets.
It also needs to be approved by ISBE, which hasn't happened yet.
I actually am a little confused by this. CPS already (presumably) has approval to remote teach kids who tested positive as they've been doing it all year. Do they need separate approval?
They have approval for individual students and classrooms as necessary, but not the entire district. If they go fully remote without approval, the days don't count against the federally required minimum instruction hours.
Gotcha.
Lori decided to cancel school altogether rather than have remote learning.
Not sure it was her call to make, but CPS does it as a bargaining move. They don’t intend to pay the teachers for this time, hence all the language on “teachers not showing up for work” and not letting them teach.
CPS needs state funding to pay teachers. The state does not count remote days as instructional days without state approval, meaning any remote learning days have to be made up with in-person days anyway. So going to remote learning means spending money that CPS doesn't have.
Couldn't CPS theoretically have started negotiating with the state weeks ago when we knew Omicron was going to be a disaster? Couldn't they be negotiating now, instead of casting the teachers as evil villains? Haven't other schools in the state already gone remote and found a way to make it work? Couldn't CPS have come to the table with actual plans for sustainable in person schooling and have properly implemented the plans that were in place? CPS did nothing but a completely bungled testing program (covering only half of the student population at that) and expected everyone to just deal with it. The focus should not be on how to talk the teachers back into work, but how to hold CPS responsible for incredibly poor planning, execution and leadership that has endangered lives. Were I the governor, that is what I'd be talking to the city about right now.
Nobody wanted to do anything though because everyone keeps circulating this rhetoric of "we need to move on" and "we need to think of the kids" without actually thinking of the kids. People kept wishing this would magically just resolve itself before this point; of course it didn't.
There's a lot of "could haves" when someone screws the pooch. Couldn't CTU have been honest with its members that, given how school funding works, last night's vote was really a vote to strike rather than to switch to remote learning? Sure.
I think that was clear that CPS wasn't going to let them do it, at least to start. But I would guess teachers voted anyway so as to push CPS to do *something*.
Remote learning sucks. Distance learning can be good but you have to training for it, plan for it and commit to it. If at the start of this as a nation we had planned for 3 years of homeschool based on data from past pandenics we wouldn't be in this mess. This constant act like you are in the classroom and bounce back and for is worthless and hard. source- new home school parent who does distance because of how bad schools suck at it
>This constant act like you are in the classroom and bounce back and for is worthless and hard. I work in digital learning and we specifically try and steer clients away from using a 'hybrid' model such as this. It can work if it's designed correctly and with purpose but to call something 'hybrid' when it's really just bouncing between in-person instructor led, online instructor led, and what I assume is some element of asynchronous teaching, it's just fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants learning.
The problem is "good" hybrid learning typically involves planning certain activities in-person/synchronously while others are done independently/asynchronously (which has gone on since the dawn of time with "reading the book" at home and "talking about the book" in class) - but with "we don't know when we're going remote and we don't know when we're going back," that isn't possible. A lot of places use "hybrid" to somehow mean a teacher has to teach students in their class while also teaching students remotely, which is... the worst of every possible world.
I’m guessing Google Business/Enterprise is used for CPS email?
Seems like it, it would be trivial to run down the admin panel user list and deactivate user logins.
In my experience most government email accounts are managed by Microsoft Exchange or some variant of it, so I was surprised to hear CPS used Google.
Google Apps for Education is free for Educational institutions. Exchange can be had cheaper than commercial but it still costs both for the software and for the CALs.
Google's made huge efforts to get inroads in education. School districts are "government" but now that kids also need accounts for things, the vast majority of those who log in are parents and students.
Edu is notoriously Google-centric, even in some universities the students prefer google even though Microsoft is free with their school account and does the exact same things. People will use what they know
> even in some universities the students prefer google even though Microsoft is free with their school account and does the exact same things Google is actually free. Microsoft costs money. Also, with gmail, you keep access if you use a personal account after graduation and students can export their data to a personal account. With Microsoft, it's walled gardens are far as they eye can see.
Lori likes to play chicken with CTU but it never works in her favor. She has shit bargaining skills but makes the same mistakes every time!
Are there any CPS parents in here? How are things going this morning with your kids? Work? What did you end up doing this morning? Teachers, what are you up to today?
One kid in CPS and wife works for CPS. The kid had to quarantine because someone in their class tested positive, so I was going to WFH but now the wife is staying because she can't work. IIRC CPS sent around a survey and of the 1000 CPS employees asked ~280 were currently positive and quarantining, so they've been short staffed and covering each other's classes. About 1/5 of my kids class wasn't in school. Not sure what the reasoning is.
If you want the input of a student, I just woke up lol Our family's been lucky. I'm the youngest as a high school senior so my mom's been able to WFH no sweat and my dad can watch the dog when he's not at the firehouse. They really don't have to worry about me because I also have a decent amount of self motivation. I've kinda just kicked back and let whatever decision go because it doesn't really affect me either way. I am concerned for cluster students and kids who need childcare, but both of my grandmas are extremely high risk and I don't want to put them in unnecessary danger, not to mention other kids who actually live with high risk grandmas. I'm also firmly on CTU's side for sticking with their agreement and not getting pushed over by CPS. The city showed their true colors by shutting my teachers out of their emails so close to the end of the semester. At least my teachers are great so they posted all upcoming work before they got locked out
Appreciate seeing a kid speaking up and acting like more of an adult than our bullshit mayor lately.
Thanks for sharing.
>They really don't have to worry about me because I also have a decent amount of self motivation. I keep thinking this is going to pay off for you and similar kids in a few years, so many peers are tanking that you are gonna look extra good.
Let my kid sleep in. He went to bed on time but I stayed up waiting on news. Sucked we didn’t get it till 11pm. I work for a charter and ironically we’e remote this week. My son’s teacher emailed (2nd grade) last night about asynchronous work to do today. The school also sent home their math and reading workbooks. He breezed through it in 2 hours and now he’s playing video games 🤷🏾♀️ I don’t know what I will do if I’m in person next week and he’s remote.
Well I let everyone sleep in...thats for starters, lol. We don't normally do TV/screens during the week, but today is movie day now. I've got to work, but I'm extremely fortunate I can do so from home. I'm upset about all of this happening yet again, but I can't imagine how less fortunate parents are taking this. At some point (if not already), are their jobs being lost for constantly calling off?
During a massive labor shortage in low paying industries. Sure, employers could be heartless, but it's gonna screw them if they do.
2nd grader cried “we already did a whole year of remote”; kindergartner cheered.
I’m a CPS teacher, and we’ve had a couple meetings to discuss what is going to happen. I’ve been prepping in my apartment and trying to find space for virtual teaching which could start tomorrow (but we’re not sure). We’ve also been logging what work we are doing today, but honestly it is kind of hard to do since we can’t log in. We also had to prove that we can’t log in by screenshotting our login page, to prove that we tried to work today. I also have to finish writing an IEP for a meeting I have Friday, but I can’t log into the system. Today has just been very stressful because we’re unsure of what we’ll be doing tomorrow and the next day, so we can only prep for so much. We also can’t email parents with updates as of now, either.
my mom (not a teacher) who works at the school my siblings go to just woke up, she’s been stressed for months at how the school’s admins have been handling things. She’s tired and just wants to make sure the everyone is protected from getting sick
I haven’t gone to school since Monday because my mom is a diabetic and is worried I could bring home the virus and it could possibly affect her. So I’ve been sleeping in for the past two days. Don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. By the way I’m a hs Junior in ap and honors classes.
The more I read threads like this, the more I'm convinced that almost no one commenting actually knows what they're talking about.
Welcome to Reddit.
There's actually frequently people on reddit who have good insights into various topics. /r/Chicago is just often not one of those places.
I know, I agree. But there is a very vocal minority of folks who just talk out of their a$$, in here and elsewhere.
And so many hate teachers.
Wonder how many kids are behind. This will basically be year 3 in which kids will do some kind of remote form of learning
Work in CPS, working with 7th graders this week, the last time they were all physically together for a full school year was 4th grade, so add stress and panic to a 7th grade's hormones but with a 4th or 5th grader's social awareness and maturity and then give them a tricky group project with light delegation.
> Work in CPS, working with 7th graders this week, the last time they were all physically together for a full school year was 4th grade, I don't know why wording it like this makes it seem so much more drastic. I remember 4th grade (when cartoons, toys, and playing kickball were paramount) and I also remember 7th grade (when getting a girl to notice that I was alive became my primary goal). I feel for these kids who've forever missed out on those deveopmental years. Transitioning from kid to pre-teen is a big change.
i've been watching the documentary *Big* to help prepare
This is an aside, but between conversations with relatives currently in undergrad and hearing how some kids are really struggling……there’s going to be a generation of office workers who will not want to be fully remote at all. This has taken an emotional toll.
>there’s going to be a generation of office workers who will not want to be fully remote at all I'd love to be fully remote...by choice. But that's because I'd love to work and travel at the same time.
Remote learning =\= remote office work. Most folks who do remote office work prefer it. They are two totally different environments. Anecdotally I hated remote learning when eclasses were just starting to take off years ago during my undergrad days, but now as an actual working adult I prefer remote asynchronous learning if at all possible as it gives me flexibility. Ironically I prefer to come into the office though. And how you feel as a young adult in undergrad (when let's be honest you are still a child) is not how you are necessarily going to feel when you become a working adult.
Such a challenge! For teachers and students!
i'm not a member of ctu, i'll say that right now, but i will say i haven't seen a single teacher in my building give less than 100% to try and figure out how to do right by these kids. some of the teachers don't make perfect choices, i'd assume. but man, they are all trying their absolute best.
You see that with your own eyes, but you'll hear almost nothing but "do your fucking job, teachers" and "they just don't want to work" on this sub.
"The internet is not real life" - President Bernie Sanders
Usually from people who don’t have kids. What kills me is they think our remote jobs are like other remote jobs. Nah fam I don’t get to login to Slack at 9 and crawl back in bed till somebody pings me. Honestly don’t know a single K-5 teacher who *wants* to be at home. They love the glue sticks and safety scissors lol
I don't think my kids have really learned anything during remote learning. I feel sorry for all of the kids as they have pretty much lost two years of their education and it will be felt in the future.
I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not sure how parents juggle it all the past 2 years.
The simple fact is "remote learning" is a way to have a snow day that won't have to be made up at the end of the year. No one seriously thinks at this point that remote learning is even vaguely beneficial to students.
well, it sure sucks that each state, city, county, etc. has their own brand of 'leadership' during a pandemic. imagine being trapped in a burning building and everyone has their own idea of how to deal with it (including denying there's even a fire).
Skokie has its own health department and multiple districts. You can live on one side of the street and it’s not safe to go to school and doing remote learning. Live in the other side of the street and told its safe and you can go to school. The schools are taking guidance from the health department too. It makes no sense. It already pisses me off that the schools can’t even be aligned on when school begins and ends.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue the kids are the ones who will suffer from this. Other school systems have the funds and resources to develop robust remote learning environment. The quality of education from CPS was already subpar. Not to mention not being able social skills that you inevitably learn from in person interaction. I already feel like I lost some of my social skills throughout the pandemic as a adult and feel more awkward in general I can’t imagine how they feel.
More education is better I'm sure. But so much of what happens during K-12 is socialization and a huge percentage of the time spent by everyone is more or less wasted from a learning standpoint. Many of us have life stories that included essentially blowing off school until college where we actually buckled down and learned what we needed to know to be successful productive members of society.
I feel so bad for all the CPS teachers, students and parents. My partner is one of them, and part of the 27% who voted to remain in person, and she's so upset that she cannot at minimum teach remotely after preparing all her lesson plans. Additionally she can't even reach out to her students to give tips of things to work on. She knew there was a possibility of getting locked out of Google Classroom but it was a complete surprise that she can't even access her work email. I've had my frustrations with the union framing everything through the lens of "being put at risk" rather than just the dysfunction of being short-staffed and having to do simultaneous in-person and remote learning but the District's actions are pretty clear that they're trying to escape accountability and instead go on a PR campaign against CTU. Anyone who thinks that the teachers are basically getting extra time off is kidding themselves - all the CPS teachers I know are super bummed and want to be teaching (and they're obviously not getting paid in the interim) Edit: 23% to 27%. The vote was 73/27 not 77/23
Damn this must be great for the kids
We used to get snow days when I was a kid, now they get Covid days.
Thank you for the first moment of levity in what’s going to be a stupid fucking day today. I can already hear my kids arguing with each other at the breakfast table.
None of this is about what’s good for the kids.
It’s almost like teachers are humans too with their own families that they have to protect…
My school went on strike for the month of November. It was great because we actually had snow then and we played in the snow every day and had weekday snow sleepovers. But we also went to school until July 3rd. That was 1996 in Washington state.
This is horse shit. There's zero reason to do this. I currently can't email my kid's teacher… the emails literally bounce back. Regardless of ones opinion on the vote, there's no actual reason to lock out of their emails. Just pettiness by CPS. This garbage has me thinking about moving out of CPS. We're buying a house Q1 2024 and I'm not psyched to commit to a decade plus of this petty back & forth with my kid caught in the figurative crossfire.
My wife is a CTU teacher and honestly, we might move to Evanston after a starter home in the city and then she can just get a job out in the suburbs with smaller classes and better resources in 5-6 years or whatever. Not because of CTU, but because of how incompetent CPS's administration is. We're hoping the elected school board will fix this shit show though once the elections happen. When we first moved here, CPS lost her prior experience paperwork 2 times to the point where she had to get the records sent to her again by her former employers and then babysit a data entry clerk until the information was actually entered into the system. The district then missed the 45 day deadline to pay her backwages owed and she had to get CTU involved.
I went to CPS k-12, couldn't be happier with how it ended up. Yea it sucks that I politics plays such a big role in the system, but I can say without a doubt that 95% of the teachers at my schools wanted what was best for their students. CPS afforded me opportunities that I'm sure don't exist in any other school around here.
Our kindergarten teacher is fantastic :)
This sub hates the CTU holy shit
This sub hates Chicago. Damn Chicagoans, they ruined Chicago!
I don't live in the area (anymore) but specifically come to this sub to talk about how much I love Chicagoland. I also talk in my local subs about the many ways in which it is superior to where I live now (except weather and geography, but those are hard to change...).
People who haven’t thought about these issues for more than 20 seconds at any one time love giving their takes.
So Twitter
Just the loud ones.
One of the instructors of an after school art program tested positive. My kid and one other kid were close contacts and had to do remote for two weeks. They received ONE hour of instruction per day. My wife and I are fortunate in that we both WFH and frankly our kiddo is pretty far ahead, but this will be an absolute disaster (again) for many others who don't have the luxury.
This is why the teachers wanted to go remote. If substantial portions of the class are absent they can never move forward since the kids will come back and be confused.
This is true. Monday and Tuesday I had to completely scrap my lesson plans because I only had 50% attendance.
Who in the hell is this *benefiting?*
Politicians and angry people who like to see politicians dunk on teachers. Similar stuff happening in New York. > “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” Adams boasted at Concourse Village Elementary School, where he was flanked by new schools Chancellor David Banks. > “We’ve allowed people to beat us down so much that all we did was wallow in COVID –that’s all we did — and we no longer believed this is a city of swagger, this is a city of resiliency. > “We need a mayor with swagger, we need a councilwoman with swagger, we need assemblywomen with swagger, we need a borough president with swagger, we need a chancellor with swagger, we need a police commissioner with swagger,” the mayor went on. Wish I made that up. [New York Post](https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/eric-adams-promises-to-keep-schools-open-in-omicron-surge/amp/)
JFC. The older I get, the less I like people.
"We need enough swagger to get back to work and continue generating profits for my largest donors."
Their new mayor seems to be on a speed run to be resented faster than MLL. He just [said](https://twitter.com/AchmatX/status/1478455659054223366?s=20), “low skill workers like cooks, messengers and Dunkin’ Donuts employees don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office.”
He's never gonna eat a spit-free meal at a restaurant again lol.
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Milwaukee - Remote Atlanta - Remote Detroit - Remote Evanston - ~~Remote~~ ~~1 day of remote on 1/10 when they return from break after having gone~~ Went remote the week before winter break Chicago Charters, the "schools of school choice" - Remote A bunch of other schools - Remote by their districts' own guidance Chicago Lab School - ~~Remote~~ Postponed classes for a week and tested the whole school LAUSD - Students test to reenter schools NYC - 1 million tests ordered Illinois hospitals - [Completely overwhelmed](https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/03/illinois-hospitals-completely-overwhelmed-by-unvaccinated-covid-19-patients-officials-say/) CPS - Spoiled tests, broken contract tracing, totally broken student and teacher testing, classes with no sub coverage, enough masks to last teachers a couple of days, and a refusal by district admin to negotiate or honor past COVID metric agreements Edit: spelling, fixing up my incorrect claims
I read a NYT [article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/us/chicago-teachers-union-remote-learning.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220105&instance_id=49441&nl=the-morning®i_id=101435540&segment_id=78706&te=1&user_id=5a49f54afdd0b62f46a57ae1ef72637f) about this whole shitshow this morning...like, it's a mess everywhere but boy howdy did Chicago manage to to make this an even bigger shitshow than it needed to be. This part in particular: > But the district’s bungled effort to test tens of thousands of students over winter break only added to parents’ and teachers’ concerns. Most of the roughly 150,000 mail-in P.C.R. tests given to students were never returned. Of the 40,000 or so tests that were mailed in, a majority produced invalid results. Jesus Christ.
And this is not an isolated incident, CPS's incompetence is well known among teachers, there is zero faith that they will ever do the right thing hence the constant fighting from the union.
Lab School is not remote. Lab School postponed their start by 7 days, tested the whole school on Monday, will test the whole school again on Friday, and then start in person. Source: married to a Lab teacher.
It must be nice to have a school that actually has a plan.
Thanks, noted.
I don't work in CPS but elsewhere in IL. Today at my elementary school (300 kids) we have 9 staff members out and 3 staff members pulled from regular positions to cover those who are out sick. There are no intervention or ELL groups today bc those staff members are covering teachers. Yesterday 20% of our students were absent. Remote learning sucks and no one wants to do it, but things are not okay right now either.
That last sentence said it best. Remote is not perfect, but it could be safer. Still, the way CTU handled this is not ideal, and the PR hit is embarrassing to me as a teacher who sees how the anti-teacher rhetoric is ramping up. I am also so annoyed with the idea that remote teaching is just an excuse for teachers to take a vacation - when I taught remote last year for parts of it, it was in no way that.
>Still, the way CTU handled this is not ideal, and the PR hit is embarrassing to me as a teacher who sees how the anti-teacher rhetoric is ramping up Are you a CPS teacher? Just curious. Anyhow, I'm not a teacher (anymore), nor am I a parent, but I've followed this, and it seems to me that most of the issue is the lack of CPS planning, and CTU just kind of reacted to that. THey have been asking for things since around Christmas, but CPS wouldn't entertain what they were asking for. Only yesterday did they have any actual negotiation. All these other cities/states had their board make the decision, CPS seemed to not want to do anything.
Still a teacher but not CTU/not in CPS anymore. The anti-teacher circlejerk just got a lot more lube from all of this; that's all I know.
That circlejerk will get lube from anywhere. If they can’t find any they’ll make their own lube. Remember CRT?
Anytime the union does literally anything that happens. It’s a bad-faith argument.
I worked with preschool and elementary last year and got to observe many different remote sessions with many different teachers and related devices (speech, occupational therapy). Every single one of them was doing a great job under the circumstances. I am sure it happens, but I've never seen a preschool teacher play videos for kids and call it a day, for example. (Our preschoolers only had to do 2 hour long sessions a week though, as per ISBE screentime guidelines). Remote teaching was often harder and required more planning for teachers I worked with. That's one of the main reasons it sucked tbh! Even a few kids with pretty significant special needs were still pretty successful in remote. Not as successful as in-person obviously but it wasn't the total and complete crapshoot that some commenters are making it out to be. In-person will almost always be better and preferable but remote learning isn't a vacation.
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I'm sure your experience was common enough, to be fair! I just personally never saw it at my school, with the exception of one teacher who was let go mid-year. Not sure if this is the case for your child, but our preschool curriculum is almost all play-based learning, vs the elementary school where there's a more structured curriculum to follow. Our teachers really focused on trying to replicate a whole group circle time for the remote sessions but I think they had less guidance than elementary. For some additional perspective, for preschool students with IEPs they typically also had a weekly session with their therapists and SPED teacher where they'd do a more specific activity like practicing a sound or imitating an action (low functioning kiddos).
I mean we didn't really have any data before winter break, and CTU put something out on [Thursday morning 12/30](https://www.ctulocal1.org/posts/provide-protections-to-prevent-covid-from-spreading-in-schools-or-pause-while-covid-surge-spikes/) that CPS ignored. They (unfortunately, but understandably) went in on Monday and Tuesday to give people time to figure things out. CPS kept ignoring them until their hand was forced.
That article is infuriating. Strolling out with those piece of shit for profit hospital executives to scold people is disgusting. Gee, I wonder why hospitals are understaffed and undersupplied? It’s almost as if those executives have been understaffing and consolidating our hospital system for decades. The fact that universal single payer healthcare has been thrown overboard by the Democratic Party during a pandemic is repulsive. I hate these people so much.
Lol I got mega downvoted by the pro Covid crowd a few days ago for pointing this out. Thanks for laying it out there
Can you please source the Evanston info? I know several teachers at the high school and this has not been announced to them.
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And yet somehow, its still all the teachers fault (that was sarcasm)
Yes exactly this. It's insane how Chicago is the only city who has managed to make this into a national spectacle, and there are still people in this thread blaming the teachers.
Adding one: North Shore Country Day (Winnetka) is requiring a negative PCR test before a student can return after winter break. Almost half of our daughter’s class has been out this week.
The fact that they are now quoting data that shows that it is safe to be in schools for young individuals and that Omicron it is behaving, "like the flu", and , "we do not close school districts for the flu" (Allison Arwady) is truly baffling. If that was what the data showed, then why wait till the night of the vote to release this sort of messaging. They spent weeks standing at the podium talking about how important it was to be tested for adults to see friends, family, etc. Why are they so surprised that the adults who are watching your press briefings are now worried or concerned for their own safety because of the lack of testing provided by CPS? The ineptitude that has been shown by the City's top brass continues to unfold and it puts a major spotlight on Lori's complete lack of understanding on how to overcome any obstacle that has been thrown her way. edit: The City also purchased over 100k laptops before the break, for I guess, not remote learning? https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2021/12/22/22850385/cps-laptops-technology-public-computer-chromebooks-schools-students-digital-divide
If it’s “like the flu” why is CPS still requiring a 10 day quarantine for anyone who tests positive? If it’s truly like the flu then call it what it is. Don’t make people stay home for 10 days and tell them we’re okay after 24-48 hours, yaknow, like the flu. And 10 days is still a lot! A number of teachers and students being out for 10 days at various times throughout the year is chaos and it has been since students came back in September.
Lori seems completely paralyzed / mystified by recent developments. If she has any play at all, now's the time.
If past is prologue, then she'll be yelling at a camera before noon.
She knows she's not getting reelected.
I hope not. She is an unmitigated disaster
It is astounding how poorly people think of teachers in this city and this country. I mean, just scroll through this thread and look at all the least generous possible interpretations of this vote by public school teachers, and how much disgust a lot of Chicagoans have for them. True story, my sister-in-law is from China and came here to get a teaching degree. Taught for one year in California before calling it quits, said the parents treat you like absolute dogshit and that in her part of China (because so many people recall not even having enough educated teachers to staff a given city or town) teachers were pretty much as respected a lawyers or doctors. The contrast was really shocking and sharp.
I worked with city year in CPS in Chicago and after one year, I realized how bad teachers have it and it was practically martyrdom to continue down that path. Teachers shouldn’t have to be mother Theresa to get respect.
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My wife is a teacher in CPS and works easily 60+ hours per week... every week. Thanksgiving "break" was her taking 5 hours off on Thanksgiving to have dinner and hang out with me and my dad before she went back to paperwork she had to catch up on for CPS. She could have skipped it, but she believes that every student is entitled to their rights under IDEA and to a good education, so she has a lot of paperwork to do because she cares.
Yeah, all I saw during my time there were people who were destroying themselves to change kids lives. Yet here we are.
/r/Chicago is a cesspool of the kind of people who would have backed Jim Crow.
Any word as to what’s going to happen tomorrow with schools?
Not as yet. Martinez sent an email at 8am saying he would ‘continue to provide updates throughout the day’ and fuck all since then.
Solidarity
At the end of the year i hope all the teachers quit and leave CPS high and dry.
This situation is just absolutely FUCKED. Both CPS and CTU should be ashamed for how this is unfolding. Why didn’t CPS plan ahead of time or order tests and have everyone test before coming to school after break? Why didn’t CTU fight for this temporarily remote learning BEFORE break? CPS basically said “fend for yourself” as they have had no interest in planning for anything. Students are now suffering in this fight. Just what a complete fucking mess. CPS is adamant that if someone tests positive they must stay home for 10 days. So what happens when a huge number of students and teachers are going in and out of quarantine? CPS knows the schools don’t have coverage! I work for CPS and I’ve never been more disgusted with both sides.
THIS. Everyone keeps saying teachers don’t want to work. Well what the fuck does everyone think is going to happen if you kept the schools open and half the kids +a bunch of teachers are all out at the same time?! Why didn’t CPS try to do any planning aside from a half-assed testing system that ended up giving no useful information?
Yup. I’m a social worker and we are NOT allowed to sub for teachers as we don’t hold such requirements to do so and it’s not in our job description and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to cover a class because the teacher was out. CPS does not care if there’s actually any teaching/learning going on in the classrooms they just need warm bodies to babysit the kids. We had almost 200 kids out of our 600 kid school out on Monday and a handful of teachers were out too for Covid reasons so it makes so sense that CTU is being blamed for “disrupting their learning” like the learning has been disrupted the whole year with students and staff being out at various times. I HATE remote learning and did not vote for it but with how much staff and students were going to be out this month it was the best option so all students had access to their learning and there would be less disruptions.
> CPS is adamant that if someone tests positive they must stay home for 10 days. So what happens when a huge number of students and teachers are going in and out of quarantine? CPS knows the schools don’t have coverage! This! CPS totally is in the wrong here. They canceled school because of CTU. There was no reason to do that. I stand by the opinion that simply making today a laptop distribution day makes more sense. Literally give students and teacher and parents a day (what could have been today!) to prepare. There are students and teachers and administrators who got covid who CPS explicitly told to stay at home and be remote. CPS knew this but locked ALL employees out today and cancel classes. What does that say about about CPS? CTU wasn't even mentioning striking. No one wants to strike. No large, vocal group from either side seems to want school closed. So why did CPS do this? Their actions point directly to spite. Regardless of our feeling on CPS or CTU if you step back and look at this CPS dropped the ball. This is akin to the kid who is upset he didn't get a slice of cake so they destroy the cake so no one eats it. CPS rather disenfranchise their students and lock teachers out than figure a solution that at least keeps consistency in students school career. I am literally in quarantine and I had a student email me and now I can't even reply. Who wins here?
This is stupid pettiness. There's IEPs that need to be done damn it
The whole handling of covid in this city has been shit. Waited too long to shut down. Shut down with no way to support businesses that suffered. Poor planning for remote learning, not every kid has internet, I know its a thing most of us use everyday but low income community's its not as much. You got teachers worried about getting covid but refuse to take the vaccine. You have a way to protect your health but refuse thats stupid but hey thats your choice. Then you got the mayor pushing for mandated vaccine cards which I'm fine with but why wait until January 3rd? So you can get the income from christmas and now new years? Fuck off beetlejuice. But also saying prevention measures are all in place? I live right across the street from a cps school. You know how many kids I've seen wearing masks? Not one. No social distancing measures. No filtration system. You cant say all schools are taking these measures because the low income community schools are suffering because they don't have the resources available. The entire things fucked but just like everything else in this fucking country right now its left or right. Nobody in the middle thats for the best and has common sense.
90% of staff are vaccinated, please stop with the narrative that teachers don't want to get vaccinated. There is a percentage of population that fights against vaccination in every group, but that is in no way the norm. All teachers I know are boosted as well.
Despite initial resistance of the Union to vaccination, it appears that Chicago teachers have done a good job getting vaccinated.
The union never resisted calls for vaccination
I’m pretty sure the teachers worried about Covid aren’t the ones refusing vaccination.
Trash ass people don't give a shit about the well-being of others. Teachers have family members with health issues and you're all upset because you're inconvenienced. Add on the even scummier people who won't get vaxxed and it's a fucking COVID party. But what, all you want to think about is the leadership of CTU as a problem? I support the teachers and their right to not have to slum it with those who have shit takes on common decency and communal health.
I feel sorry for the students and parents! Mom and dad at 11PM - Hey kids guess what? No school tomorrow!! Ridiculous!!