With a possible teachers strike looming, a group of Chicago Public Schools parents on Wednesday urged the district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot to abandon the controversial re-opening plan and stick to remote learning.
“We want them to listen to the parents,” said Bridgett White, one of about a dozen CPS parents who spoke during a virtual news conference. “The majority of CPS parents are not comfortable with sending their children back in person. They don’t trust the plan for keeping their children safe. Even the Board (of Education) meeting that is going to be held later today is going to be virtual. So why can’t our children continue to do such?”
Thousands of CPS students across the district are due back in school Monday. Staff at those schools were supposed to report to work Wednesday in preparation for the reopening. The Chicago Teachers Union told its members to work from home after the union and CPS failed to reach an agreement over reopening conditions. The union has said a strike is possible — something CPS officials have called illegal — if an agreement can’t be reached in the next few days.
Not all parents of CPS students oppose reopening schools. Last week, in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times, a group of 11 parents at Coonley Elementary on the North Side — all of them doctors — advocated for the reopening of schools, while acknowledging “there will be anxiety and things will not be perfect out of the gate.” The doctors said the data suggests “the rate of [coronavirus] cases and the rate of spread in school will be no higher that in the general population … .”
Lee Sustar, who has a son at Lane Tech College Prep High School, said Wednesday that remote learning is “extremely difficult.”
“But there is something worse, and that’s getting sick or severely ill — or even death,” Sustar said. He said his son was “presumed positive” for the coronavirus last year at a time when testing wasn’t widely available.
“It was a long and harrowing ordeal that required a follow-up with a cardiologist,” he said. “So please don’t let anyone tell you that this is not a serious risk for children and teens.”
Julie Dworkin, a parent of a seventh grader and a high school sophomore, agreed that remote learning is “far from ideal.”
“But we’ve made it this far, and now we have a vaccine that’s rolling out,” Dworkin said. “A couple more months of remote learning isn’t going to harm anyone irreparably.”
Dworkin said she initially responded to a CPS survey by saying she planned to enroll her kids for in-person learning. She changed her mind but said she’s annoyed CPS is using her initial response to tout the popularity of its reopening plan.
“CPS should be more concerned about the 81% of students who won’t be returning and should be focused on making remote learning as good as possible, instead of locking out teachers,” she said.
