State Sen. and GOP candidate for governor Darren Bailey argues Chicago Public Schools teachers are in a class of their own for all the wrong reasons.
“The out-of-control CTU Local 1 is still refusing to show up and do their jobs like every other teacher in the state is already doing,” Bailey said in a post to Twitter in the days before CTU teachers finally agreed to return to the classroom for in-person learning. “That means approximately 300,000 children in Chicago Public Schools will fall further behind.”
Criticizing the district’s response to rising COVID-19 infection rates largely tied to the omicron variant, teachers refused to return to classrooms they deemed to be unsafe for five days before union members finally passed a vote to return.
Throughout the stalemate, the New York times reported, Mayor Lori Lightfoot insisted going back to the days of online schooling were unacceptable, not to mention unnecessary and that the shutdown of the country’s third-largest district amounted to an illegal work stoppage on the part of teachers.
“Nobody signs up for being a home-schooler at the last minute,” she told the outlet. “We can’t forget about how disruptive that remote process is to individual parents who have to work, who can’t afford the luxury of staying home.”
While union leaders agree in-person instruction is better, they accuse Lightfoot of bullying in her approach.
Represented by the conservative Liberty Justice Center, several district families have now filed suit in Cook County over the closures, with another 5,000 plus having signed a petition urging a return to in-person instruction.
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