Quote:I tried hard to word a decent headline but the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) makes it impossible.

The teachers will not return to the classroom with the students in January. So the cash-strapped city will hire supervisors to be in classes and at the school with the students.

This is because the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) refuses to get back to work.


The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) took advantage of the situation (what else is new?) to issue new demands and collective bargaining. They even blamed the pressure to reopen schools on sexism, misogyny, and racism.

No, it had nothing to do with education and a child’s mental health.

CPS provided mandates that many schools across the nation already instilled: mask requirement, the distance between desks, take temperatures, new air purifiers, better ventilation, etc.

It was not good enough for the CTU.

But parents wanted their children back in school, especially children with special needs. Those children have missed many therapy opportunities, causing them to lose any progress and engage in self-destruction.

The CTU’s demands have come back to bite them in the ass because CPS knows kids have to be in the classroom.

The Plan
CPS wants to hire 2,000 new employees to help out in the schools while teachers work remotely:

One of the primary responsibilities for half of the new positions will be student supervision, according to a job posting. That includes supervising “students who are learning in person if [the] classroom teacher is teaching remotely,” the posting says, raising questions about what in-person instruction will look like for students who return to classrooms and signaling that the district intends to forge ahead with reopening despite a potentially massive number of staff requests for medical leave.

The Chicago Sun-Times has a screenshot of the job posting.



CPS will hire 1,000 “cadre substitute” teachers, which means they have a license to teach. The hiring will give them benefits and they can become members of the CTU.

The other 1,000 new hires will earn $15 an hour and no benefits. These people will focus on COVID-19 compliance.

CPS described the job posting as an “operational necessity:”

Asked if the additional adults coming in contact with several groups posed a new health and safety risk, [CPS human resources chief Matt] Lyons said “this is one of those minimal risks that, it doesn’t present any additional danger in any way. It’s more an operational necessity.”

“All of the efforts we’re taking are layered mitigation risks,” Lyons said. “There’s a chance that if anyone who goes from classroom to classroom is COVID-positive, it’s possible they have close contact across pods and it would force certain different pods to shut down temporarily. But the likelihood versus the value to the school operations of that being the specific person is fairly low.”

CTU Whines and Cries
Of course, the move angered the CTU.

But the CTU will never realize this is not about them. It is about the kids:

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said the part-time job posting was the first the union heard teachers might teach remotely to students in a classroom, a proposition she called “slightly less terrible than forcing teachers to engage in synchronous learning from unsafe buildings.” She said in a statement, however, that “hiring people into a position that barely pays minimum wage, with zero health care benefits in the middle of a pandemic, seems particularly cynical.”

“CPS can try to exploit low-wage temporary workers to fill in for staff who are not willing to sacrifice their lives for their livelihoods, when they must instead come to the table and bargain collaboratively to land what we need to return to our school buildings and our students safely — enforceable safety standards and real equity for Black and Brown school communities starved of equity for years before this pandemic,” Davis Gates said.

It seems like every other school district around the country has been able to return to the classroom or at least come to a reasonable agreement.

Why can’t CTU do the same?

Why won’t teachers speak up and defy the union? When is it enough for the teachers to stop supporting the union?

Parents have spoken out about getting their children back in the classroom. They do not do this for selfish or lazy reasons. They do not have the resources to properly educate their child. Children with special needs have to have lessons with specialists.

We are losing a generation of children with these games.

We didn’t need another example of the corruption that saturates every public sector in Chicago.

Get back to work, Chicago teachers.

Link

LOL, babysitters on the taxpayer dime.

I know its Crimson's thing to post crazy stuff and make it sound absolutely terrible. But there are schools in ultra conservative Arkansas, where schools had to be open by law 5 days a week doing this exact same thing.

The setup has been going this way for months:

1. A School is forced to temproarily pivot to off site instruction for a few days due to the volume of cases within the school.

2. Parents are notified of the switch to remote learning and the length. By State law, the school is required to provide a child care option for kids with two working parents. Parents are instructed on how to accept that option if they want it

3. The schools job is to provide staffing for that child care, however most teacher contracts prohibit the schools from forcing the teachers to watch students that are not their own. (The rule was designed to guarantee teachers have a preparation period of each day, not with Covid in mind)

4. Schools are then forced to find staffing. The most common solution is Substitutes, however the number of substitute teachers willing to work nationally right now are at insanely low levels. Arkansas recently had to have the governor do a televised address begging people to agree to help in schools. The Subs that are available are almost immediately shifted to schools that are teaching in person where they are needed most.

5. With no other options in play, the district goes to the nuclear option and hires non school minimum wage staff who are willing to make a few bucks to come in and supervise students

As for Chicago's set up, I've seen worse. Not every state requires schools to provide on site care for students. Memphis city schools students have it far worse.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

(12-16-2020 11:21 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  I know its Crimson's thing to post crazy stuff and make it sound absolutely terrible. But there are schools in ultra conservative Arkansas, where schools had to be open by law 5 days a week doing this exact same thing.

The setup has been going this way for months:

1. A School is forced to temproarily pivot to off site instruction for a few days due to the volume of cases within the school.

2. Parents are notified of the switch to remote learning and the length. By State law, the school is required to provide a child care option for kids with two working parents. Parents are instructed on how to accept that option if they want it

3. The schools job is to provide staffing for that child care, however most teacher contracts prohibit the schools from forcing the teachers to watch students that are not their own. (The rule was designed to guarantee teachers have a preparation period of each day, not with Covid in mind)

4. Schools are then forced to find staffing. The most common solution is Substitutes, however the number of substitute teachers willing to work nationally right now are at insanely low levels. Arkansas recently had to have the governor do a televised address begging people to agree to help in schools. The Subs that are available are almost immediately shifted to schools that are teaching in person where they are needed most.

5. With no other options in play, the district goes to the nuclear option and hires non school minimum wage staff who are willing to make a few bucks to come in and supervise students

As for Chicago's set up, I've seen worse. Not every state requires schools to provide on site care for students. Memphis city schools students have it far worse.

Oh, it's worse than that.

In my district in Central Illinois, the parents have to pay the school district to "supervise" their kids. The students sit in the school building while the teachers are "teaching" remotely from home; some of them probably sit in their same classroom they would normally sit in.

Working parents doesn't matter; 23% of the kids are in single-parent households anyways.

I’m in the CPS system and we got an email today saying high school students will not return to the building this year. Our principal said high school will not return to in person learning until we get to phase 5. Our governor has said phase 5 is years away. What this means is high school kids could potentially be out of school for 3-5 years. How is this not insane? Even the scaredy cats who think the virus is the worst thing of all time still has to agree children being out of school for years is insane. I certainly think it is.

(12-17-2020 12:43 AM)Thewavefan Wrote:  phase 5 is years away.

What an f'ing joke... With the vaccine(s) out there we should be no more than 3-6 months away from being over this.

The dumber the kids the better in Communism. They'll become useless and lazy and do whatever the government tells them to do.

(12-17-2020 09:49 AM)Eagleaidaholic Wrote:  The dumber the kids the better in Communism. They'll become useless and lazy and do whatever the government tells them to do.

.....and most importantly, they will depend on the government for their housing, food, etc. A dependent person is much easier to control....

If we wanted to truly Make America Great Again someone would burn Chicago down a second time. That cesspool is the birthplace of most of what is wrong with this country. To save the whole you sometimes have to sacrifice a part. Chicago is that part. What a dumpster fire.

(12-17-2020 12:43 AM)Thewavefan Wrote:  I’m in the CPS system and we got an email today saying high school students will not return to the building this year. Our principal said high school will not return to in person learning until we get to phase 5. Our governor has said phase 5 is years away. What this means is high school kids could potentially be out of school for 3-5 years. How is this not insane? Even the scaredy cats who think the virus is the worst thing of all time still has to agree children being out of school for years is insane. I certainly think it is.

The reality is no school will go as far as they are saying. When Memphis shut down schools city school officials said they wouldn’t reopen until the county had 2 weeks of single digit covid cases

Than every other rival school district reopened in August and city schools lost some athletes and some of their top students to those schools

Fearing losing most of their students city schools announced they’re reopen in February

Schools like to talk a good game but they have to compete for students like everyone else

Big Brother has found the perfect tool with which to manipulate us all. Climate change failed, because it was too remote for them to stir up the level of fear required to ratchet up the necessary hysteria. But COVID has given them the perfect tool. We may never see freedom again. And as Regan said, if we lose it, there's nowhere else.