On the first day of Black History Month, Mayor Lightfoot and CPS leadership will lock out 80% of predominantly Black and Brown students and families who chose remote learning because it's safe.
Yet they refuse to make any improvements to remote learning.
Remember, this is the same school district that systematically reduced special education services and lied about it. And are now under state supervision.
The same mayor and CPS leadership who fought against supports for homeless students and their families, mocked us for demanding them, and fought against a nurse, social worker and counselor in every school.
CPS leadership hasn't even read many teachers' accommodation documents, but denied them anyway, and has left people with desperately vulnerable children and family denied or in limbo.
CPS leadership claims the past few weeks of in-person instruction for pre-kindergarten and special education cluster students have been "successful" and "without incident," but their own data shows a spike in positive COVID-19 cases since Jan. 9 — among both students and staff.
While making the national media rounds again today, the mayor claimed that if anyone has an underlying health condition, they don’t have to report for in-person instruction...
... as many educators and staff woke up to emails saying their accommodations were voided.
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Chicago Public Schools is the third-largest school district in the U.S. In the past 20 years, our classrooms have lost more than 5,000 Black educators, which has had a negative impact on many school communities.
Some of the direct causes of this loss are Rahm's 50 school closings, terminations in Black and Brown schools as a result of turnarounds, and annual layoffs targeting high-need schools with predominantly Black student populations.
President Sharkey and CTU counsel spoke to Mayor Lightfoot today. The conversation was cordial. The mayor did reiterate the disappointment she expressed Friday, referring to the "hyper-democratic" nature of the CTU. But as we all know, that is what unions should be: democratic.
The mayor and the CPS CEO refer to "CTU leadership" often, but CTU leadership is the 28,000 rank-and-file teachers, PSRPs, clinicians, librarians, nurses, counselors and other educators. These are the people who run our union. We look to them for direction. That won't change.
Like our officers, staff, members, students and families they serve, and our city at large, the mayor does want to reach an agreement. And she is willing to allow the process the time that is required to come to an agreement.
So many thanks. We owe Black and Brown grassroots organizers — in every city and state that went overwhelmingly blue — a great debt. Thank you for seeing what is often unseen by operatives, pundits and party leadership.
Thank you for acknowledging the complexity of choosing survival.
Thank you to Black voters, in particular, in cities like our own, and Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, and to Brown and Indigenous voters in Arizona and Nevada. You've commited to a vision of America that our ancestors have died for, and that we have yet to realize.
The Sun-Times keeps writing these cute “if it’s good for the Archdiocese, it’s good for CPS” editorials. The mayor said herself it’s not an 🍎 to 🍎 comparison. Here’s why... chicago.suntimes.com/2020/11/5/2153…
1. Numbers
Catholic schools reopened with 34,000 students and over 2,000 teachers. There are about 350,000 students in CPS and additional 50,000 educators/staff. 400,000 people. About 15% of the city's population. We'll need more than HEPA filters and the option to open windows.
2. Class size
Archdiocese limits class sizes to 15–22 students. There are some CPS schools with class sizes of 35-45 students. Those schools are smaller than CPS schools in general, with presumably far fewer people in buildings. CPS has elementary schools with 1,500 students.
Our members been weighing in pretty clearly regarding CPS' and the mayor's plans to return students to unsafe school buildings in Nov. Remote learning isn't ideal, but it's safe as COVID cases rise, and parents, students and educators need to know they will be protected. #thread
This is feedback from many of our special education and early childhood educators...many of whom are also CPS parents. They have questions. Other parents have questions. And they all deserve the answers that will make them confident in what CPS and the mayor are mandating.
Mask wearing is a problem for students with cognitive disabilities, sensory needs, deaf and hard of hearing (mask hides visual clues), language deficits.
There's a lot wrong with the decisions CPS and the mayor make around our schools. It's hard to know where to begin sometimes. Perhaps the most glaring in this case is how this plan was hatched by district officials all by themselves. No educators, parents, students...nothing.
Tomorrow marks two weeks since an independent arbitrator ordered CPS to allow clerks, clerk assistants and tech coordinators to work remotely due to school buildings being unsafe. Since then, the district has done absolutely nothing to comply with the order except undermine it.
Illinois recorded 4,015 new coronavirus cases today, which is a single-day record. Today's 53 deaths are also the most in a day since late June. Every state surrounding Illinois is on the city's emergency coronavirus travel order.