After ‘substantial progress’ was made in negotiations between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union on Monday, it was announced that teachers will not be banned from Google Suite on Monday evening and that students will be learning virtually in the near future. two days.
According to an email from CPS, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, students will learn remotely while negotiations continue, with a teacher disqualified for now.
“Today we have reached another important milestone in our efforts to personally teach our students in the Chicago Public Schools system,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS Director Dr. Janice Jackson in a statement. other outstanding issue and has made substantial progress with a framework that we hope will address the remaining issues. We advocate a 48 hour cooling-off period which will hopefully lead to a definitive resolution of all outstanding issues. ”
The news comes after a Sunday ultimatum from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said the CPS would be willing to “take action” if teachers did not report to their class on Monday.
Amid often tense negotiations, teachers had voted in January to return to distance learning, even with pre-K and cluster learning students already back in class. That vote was cast in response to the CPS’s call for teachers to return to K-8 classrooms on Jan. 25, while those students returned to those classrooms on Feb. 1.
CPS officials said over the weekend that if teachers did not return to school on Monday, they would be considered “absent without leave” and not be authorized to learn remotely until they report to their class.
“All teachers, pre-K through 8 and cluster teachers are required to report,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a news conference Sunday. “If you don’t have approved accommodation, we expect to see you in class again. Those who don’t report to work … we’ll have to take action. Let’s avoid that. “
At a virtual press conference late on Sunday, the CTU leadership said open issues are a clear vaccination process and a health measure of teachers’ concerns about the coronavirus.
“People’s lives … depend on achieving maximum safety in the midst of a pandemic,” said Stacy Davis Gates, CTU vice president.
Both sides criticized a series of social media posts earlier Sunday, with CTU officials saying Lightfoot and CPS leaders told them not to attend the negotiations unless regular union members were willing to “make major concessions.” ” to do.
In response, CPS said their negotiating team “had been told by CTU leadership that they would not be able to meet until they could develop a response to our most recent offering.”
CTU responded to that claim by criticizing Lightfoot for calling in a negative light “the” hyperdemocratic “nature of CTU” and that the union is looking to its regular members for leadership during the current deadlock.
The news comes after both sides reported the progress of the negotiations over the weekend. The two sides have debated for months the safety of teachers and students returning to classrooms amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with issues surrounding vaccinations, metrics and safety procedures all on the negotiating table.
Lightfoot maintains that the CPS plan to return to schools has been thoroughly vetted by medical experts, including the Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. as well as in pre-K and cluster learning classes that returned last month.
Lightfoot appeared on “Morning Joe” Monday to make that allegation and blame the union again.
“We’ve invested more than $ 100 million in ventilation, other safety protocols, to make sure we have masks, safety screening, temperature controls, all the things you’d expect, the CDC guidelines have told us, that we know make sense. are to reduce any problems in schools, ”she said.
“We had three weeks to safely execute our plan until the teachers’ union blew it up,” Lightfoot continued. “We’re doing everything we can to address what the teachers are telling us, but we need them to meet us halfway through. As you all know, you have to take steps in each other’s direction. There has to be a compromise.”