Chicago Public School teachers attempting to teach students remotely on Wednesday discovered they’d been locked out of their digital classrooms, an apparent effort by city officials to prevent a return to remote education amid recent spikes in covid-19 cases among students and teachers.
The lockout followed a late-night vote by rank-and-file members of the Chicago Teachers Union to pause in-person learning, citing public health data that shows a soaring number of cases at schools across the city.
Roughly three-fourths of CTU members voted in favor of the resolution, which also accused the Chicago Board of Education of withholding data on the spread of covid-19 at schools, and of discarding protocols established early last year to combat the spread of the virus among public school community members.
Those protocols, which sunset at the end of last year, required schools to transition to remote learning if the rate of citywide infections spiked 15% higher than the week before over a period of seven days. Citing covid-19 tracking data by the City of Chicago, union officials said the city’s positivity rate is currently 74% higher than it was a week before.
“To be clear: Educators of this city want to be in buildings with their students,” the teachers union said in a statement shortly after Tuesday night’s vote. “We believe that classrooms are where our children should be. But as the results tonight show, [Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot] and her CPS team have yet to provide safety for the overwhelming majority of schools.”
CTU President Jesse Sharkey told reporters on Wednesday that the virus was “raging through the city” and that city officials had failed to deliver on “basic demands” for adequate staffing and covid-19 testing to address the health threat.
In a letter to parents, Pedro Martinez, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, framed the decision by teachers as a refusal to report to work. “We want our children back in their classroom as soon as possible,” he said, “and will continue working with the CTU to reach an agreement that addresses their concerns and that is in the best interest of all in our CPS community, especially our children.”
Some 340,000 students missed school on Wednesday, unable to attend classes in person or remotely by computer. Numerous Chicago teachers tweeted that they’d been locked out of Google Classroom, the platform used by the city to conduct remote learning.
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The lockout followed a late-night vote by rank-and-file members of the Chicago Teachers Union to pause in-person learning, citing public health data that shows a soaring number of cases at schools across the city.
Roughly three-fourths of CTU members voted in favor of the resolution, which also accused the Chicago Board of Education of withholding data on the spread of covid-19 at schools, and of discarding protocols established early last year to combat the spread of the virus among public school community members.
Those protocols, which sunset at the end of last year, required schools to transition to remote learning if the rate of citywide infections spiked 15% higher than the week before over a period of seven days. Citing covid-19 tracking data by the City of Chicago, union officials said the city’s positivity rate is currently 74% higher than it was a week before.
“To be clear: Educators of this city want to be in buildings with their students,” the teachers union said in a statement shortly after Tuesday night’s vote. “We believe that classrooms are where our children should be. But as the results tonight show, [Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot] and her CPS team have yet to provide safety for the overwhelming majority of schools.”
CTU President Jesse Sharkey told reporters on Wednesday that the virus was “raging through the city” and that city officials had failed to deliver on “basic demands” for adequate staffing and covid-19 testing to address the health threat.
In a letter to parents, Pedro Martinez, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, framed the decision by teachers as a refusal to report to work. “We want our children back in their classroom as soon as possible,” he said, “and will continue working with the CTU to reach an agreement that addresses their concerns and that is in the best interest of all in our CPS community, especially our children.”
Some 340,000 students missed school on Wednesday, unable to attend classes in person or remotely by computer. Numerous Chicago teachers tweeted that they’d been locked out of Google Classroom, the platform used by the city to conduct remote learning.
source
