CPS CEO Janice Jackson said those who continue to ignore their orders will face progressive discipline, but that it’s in nobody’s interest to fire teachers.
About 40% of Chicago Public Schools teachers and staff who were expected to report to schools Monday for the first time during the pandemic didn’t show up for in-person work, officials said Tuesday, accusing the Chicago Teachers Union of pressuring its members to defy the district’s orders.
I love unions.
If our frontline healthcare workers aren't all vaccinated yet, we shouldn't be vaccinating teachers yet.
The US needs to treat covid like the crisis that it is and act to save the most lives. And there's no way a teacher, especially one with younger students, can keep them distanced and wearing masks unless the class sizes are like 8 students. Smaller class sizes would be great, teachers unions have been pushing for that for years, but the district will just plead austerity.
These are the same things concern trolls claim every time a teacher's union takes any kind of serious action. Teachers shouldn't be risking their lives because their society fucked up this pandemic.
Well then let’s make the class sizes smaller. As I said with money these things can be fixed, and teachers really should be next in line for vaccine along with the super old. After you make as many inroads with HCWs as possible do teachers. Hell, if there are vaccines about to go bad because some HCWs don’t want them give them next to teachers.
As I said I’m not saying just throw people back in school. Ventilation, masks, testing, vaccines and testing all need to happen. But it needs to happen fucking soon because this is impacting working class kids the most. Try spending time with a kindergartner or 3rd grader with special needs and see how well they are learning (hint they fucking aren’t). Society needs to figure something out really fucking quick or we are in for a lot more problems than just COVID
Reducing class sizes requires hiring more teachers. Tripling the number of hired teachers would be wonderful, but there's no way they could find so many half decent teachers within a few months. Of course it's impacting working class kids the most, every bad outcome from covid is impacting working class people the most. That's no excuse to sacrifice the lives of teachers. In reality, the steps necessary to actually protect teachers sufficiently would not happen.
I mean ok they may not happen but the Union needs to demand them. That way they can say ok here are x, y, z things we want to have happen and then if the district doesn’t meet them that’s on the district and society. Just saying we aren’t going back is driving wedge in class solidarity