I’m a Chicago teacher, which right now makes me a person working a job that people outside the profession—and outside of Chicago—seem to want to talk about. I, like my partner and more than 27,000 other Chicago educators, was locked out of our schools for four days by the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot.
I’m also a Chicago parent whose white-passing, Asian-American five-year-old attends the same school where I teach, in which more than 90 percent of the students are low income and 97 percent are non-white. For the last few weeks, she has not been able to attend school in person due to, at first, unsafe conditions within the school, and then due to Chicago Mayor Lightfoot denying her access to her school’s electronic devices while locking out her teacher, who tested positive prior to returning from winter break. We have not yet decided if it is safe enough within the schools for her to return.
We chose our school, Telpochcalli, because of its Mexican cultural focus, its dual-language program with an emphasis on the arts, and its capacity to accommodate students with disabilities. We love the community and its history of struggle for equity and justice.
We also knew that we would face things that wealthier, whiter families in the city did not.
We also knew that we would face things that wealthier, whiter families in the city did not—the community was a former EPA Superfund site, with air pollution and extensive lead poisoning of its drinking water, and gang- and police-related violence. Public neighborhood schools in our community have also been chronically underfunded and overmanaged, especially under Chicago’s previous mayor, Rahm Emanuel.
My partner and I believe that our child should experience the inequity of our society and learn to fight against it so that she—along with her classmates—has what she needs to survive, thrive, and grow.
That’s why, as parents and educators, our decision to work remotely and teach our classes from home was quite easy despite the hardship that accompanied it. We have both experienced chronic illness over the last couple of years, so money is tight, and because Lightfoot ended up closing the schools entirely, the resultant week with zero income has certainly not helped the situation.
But seeing the conditions in Chicago public schools during the Omicron outbreak, we did not feel like we could continue to send our child to school or risk exposing her to COVID through my presence in the school.
Lacking child care, I had to stay home with my daughter and another student the first day after winter break with proper masking, testing, and distancing during lunch. On Tuesday, I returned to school while another parent watched my child.
Many classes had large numbers of absences—44 percent of my class was out, some with COVID. The “care room” for students who showed COVID symptoms was so full that proper distancing wasn’t possible.
Students are enthusiastically masked, but no students I saw had N-95, KN-95, or similar masks that address the spread of Omicron. The on-site testing team hired by the mayor only comes on Wednesdays and has lost my daughter’s information three times.
Seeing other educators and parents reacting to the same realities, my partner and I emphatically joined with other teachers of the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, to press our demands for safer schools.
For four days, we engaged in a work action in which we refused to show up for in-person classes. Lightfoot, in response, claimed our decision was an “illegal walkout,” and that, in protesting for adequate protections against COVID, we had “abandoned” our students and their families. She proceeded to lock us out, in violation of both our existing agreement and the current contract’s ban on all lockouts of any kind.
While we were prepared to remain out of buildings until January 18 or the end of the current surge, an agreement between CTU and Lightfoot was struck on January 10, with in person classes resuming two days later. Though Lightfoot approved some of our demands, such as more testing and a promise to close a school whenever a severe outbreak occurs, it only provides a “modicum of safety,” as CTU’s vice president Stacy Davis Gates put it. Furthermore, many of the “concessions” on the part of the mayor represent issues that we already had written commitments that the mayor has failed to follow through on.
Before the final vote on the agreement was held on January 12, many educators took to social media to organize a “NO” vote in the hopes of pushing back for a safer agreement. On our first day back in the buildings to prepare, we had already seen violations of the promises outlined in the new agreement. But the question remains, how can we take this power further so that we don’t have to beg our city leadership for resources for our students to access basic human rights?
When the mayor locked us out on the previous Wednesday, our union jumped into action to include parents, students, and educators into the process of vetting our demands. The process for generating our proposal isn't new. The CTU is led by a group that grew within the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, a union electoral party that was started by a dozen classroom educators and based around the principles of collaboration and fighting for the needs of the communities we serve.
In communication with families, students, medical professionals, and union membership, we tweaked the initial demands to put together a final safe proposal. We aimed to get as close to Lightfoot’s position as possible while not compromising on measures to prevent more suffering and death in our communities.
The demands that we settled on are relatively simple:
Switch to remote instruction until city COVID metrics drop from record levels to the levels that CTU and the Mayor’s team agreed upon last year.
Stocking enough on-site masks that are effective against Omicron for all students and educators.
Thresholds for switching either the district or individual schools back to remote in the case of later severe COVID waves.
On-site testing that monitors the spread of COVID to make it possible to do point #3 if necessary, including testing staff before a return to the school building.
A fast process for resolving future disputes so that students, educators and families aren’t hurt while an extended legal process plays out.
The plan was taken to the CTU executive board, a larger group of around forty members, 100 percent of whose voting members are elected by union members. Every single one of us is an active educator. After a vibrant discussion, the proposal was passed with a consensus by the group.
Once the vote was concluded, it was sent to the “House of Delegates,” a group of elected leaders representing all of the schools in Chicago. At this stage, the proposal could have been altered and voted on again by any of the elected members of the body, yet it passed with more than 93 percent of the body in support.
I’ve worked for over a decade on growing the community-oriented democratic process in Chicago Public Schools and our communities.
The members of the elected CTU leadership, whose kids are some of the kids locked out by Lightfoot, then held a press conference to share the proposal with the media and, more importantly, families of the city.
I’ve worked for over a decade on growing the community-oriented democratic process in Chicago Public Schools and our communities. I have stood with and been taught by people who have decades more experience in this struggle. I was brimming with hope and pride as I watched this whole process unfold.
This is exactly how education should be determined (except for, if it was up to me, a student union would co-draft the proposal, something Chicago Public Schools has often punished students for trying to organize).
Soon after our demands passed, Lightfoot responded with a tweet:
“@CTULocal1 leadership, you’re not listening. The best, safest place for kids to be is in school. Students need to be back in person as soon as possible. That’s what parents want. That’s what the science supports. We will not relent.”
In examining the demands further, I can’t help but observe how modest they are. The first four are basically items that the Mayor and CTU had already agreed on and only resurfaced as issues due to the Mayor’s team’s inability to keep their promises. The fifth is just a way to ensure that if the Mayor’s team fails to keep their promises, again, students and families won’t have to wait as long for a resolution.
The hope I felt after we submitted our proposal had been crushed by Lightfoot’s inflexibility. And I was deeply demoralized to have plans for my child and my students’ safety dashed in a split second by a mayor who only has this power because the State of Illinois created a completely separate and unequal school code for our district that prevents families of color from choosing our school district leadership. This did not improve when the agreement passed the general membership—receiving just 55.5 percent of the vote despite a heavy endorsement and push for the agreement from the internal leadership of the union.
In settling for this agreement with mild concessions, I felt embittered. Walking into the buildings this Wednesday, it only got worse as I happily reconnected with students but also noticed the cloth and counterfeit masks and constant coughing and sneezing.
In many buildings, students and parents report that students are clustered in the auditorium in close proximity receiving the very remote instruction for COVID-positive educators that the mayor claimed to lock us out to prevent. As such, I do not see how this is significantly safer than they were a week ago when we decided to take the work action to teach remotely.
Our struggle is the struggle of so many of us during COVID.
Students agree, as hundreds and thousands around the country have walked out of school because of what they see as dangerous conditions while others have turned to the media to tell their stories of horrific learning conditions.
Still, I feel even more strongly now that our struggle is the struggle of so many of us during COVID.
We are faced with a society that has devalued life to the degree that nearly a million of people in the United Statea have died from COVID and so many more are experiencing lasting symptoms, not knowing when or if they will end. Not only have we allowed this to happen, but people who question it or attempt to take action to address these avoidable tragedies are vilified as “selfish” or “hysterical.”
Like all of the families in our district, we are living, breathing human beings. Whether school buildings are opened or closed, we each work to raise, love, and teach our children and protect them while doing so.