Chicago Teachers Union leaders are reviewing Chicago Public Schools’ latest proposal to avert a labor action expected as soon as Wednesday that would see members defy district plans and refuse in-person work because of COVID-19 concerns coming out of the holidays.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez sent the last-ditch effort to meet the union halfway on some of its demands right before a City Hall news conference Tuesday morning where he said classes would be canceled Wednesday with no remote learning if the union doesn’t accept his proposal.
Martinez pleaded with the union to give his proposal a chance and asked leaders to delay a membership vote scheduled for Tuesday evening, which if it passes would upend in-person schooling once again for about 290,000 students at non-charter schools exactly 12 months after another CPS-CTU fight over pandemic safety measures left families in limbo for weeks.
“The amount of noise that’s out there right now, the amount of misinformation, we have so many people that are afraid, from parents to staff, because of the misinformation,” Martinez said. Asked specifically if he meant the CTU was spreading misinformation, he didn’t say.
Cases, positivity rate and hospitalizations in Chicago are all at or near record highs, largely because of the highly contagious Omicron variant that is causing infections to skyrocket, particularly after holiday gatherings. Breakthrough cases among the vaccinated have become more common, but the unvaccinated are several times more likely to suffer serious illness, Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said at the news conference.
Arwady said she remains confident schools are safe for in-person classes and expects the city’s Omicron wave to peak sometime this month, perhaps even in the next week or two.
But the CTU has said its members don’t feel safe due to the rapid rise in cases and a failed CPS testing plan meant to allow 150,000 students to test at home over winter break but resulted in only 11,000 usable samples.
The union has called for all staff, students, vendors and volunteers to provide a negative COVID-19 test result within 48 hours of returning to school and for the district to provide K95 or similar quality masks to all students and staff.
The CTU also wants to reinstate the health metric agreed to last year that would trigger districtwide closures. Under the metric — the citywide test positivity rate is 10% or higher and the rate has increased for the previous seven consecutive days, each day at least one-fifth higher than the week before — all CPS classes would be remote.
In his proposal Tuesday, Martinez offered to set a metric that, if met, would trigger individual schools to close rather than the district as a whole. That threshold would be tied to a certain percentage of students and staff testing positive for the virus. He also offered 200,000 K95 masks to staff but not students. And he said the daily online health screener and entrance temperature checks that were part of last year’s pandemic plan but were taken away this fall would again be options for principals to use but not required.
Martinez said the district would continue optional testing in all its schools for asymptomatic students and staff; anyone with symptoms should seek testing at a pharmacy, clinic or other medical location. But he declined to make tests a condition of in-person attendance.
The schools chief said he recognizes many families are in fear this week — which he attributed in large part to misinformation about school safety — and said some schools were half empty Monday. The district declined to release student attendance figures.
The CTU wrote in a tweet Tuesday afternoon that it was reviewing the proposal. The union didn’t say whether it would delay the vote as Martinez asked.
Check back for updates. This is a developing story.
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CPS would cancel classes Wednesday if CTU doesn’t accept district’s latest proposal, CEO says - Chicago Sun-Times
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