Mayor Lightfoot Is Right, Chicago Teachers Should Be Back in the Classroom – Opinion

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I don’t ordinarily agree with the policy positions of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but I absolutely agree with her no-holds-barred reaction to the Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) hasty and haphazard decision to forgo in-person learning, again, due to the arrival of the Omicron variant.

On January 4, CTU members passed a resolution to “to return to remote education during this deadly surge in the absence of safety guarantees from the Mayor’s CPS team.”

CTU claims, “The educators of this city want to be in their classrooms with their students. We believe that our city’s classrooms are where our students should be. Regrettably, the Mayor and her CPS leadership have put the safety and vibrancy of our students and their educators in jeopardy.”

It could not possibly be more true.

The Omicron variant is, despite being more deadly than other COVID-19 strains. The vast majority of Omicron-related cases in Europe and South Africa, which have both experienced the wave, were mild to moderate cold-like symptoms.

In other words, despite CTU’s hyperbole, Omicron almost assuredly will not create a “deadly surge.” Yes, the arrival of Omicron will likely lead to more cases, but based on data from Europe and South Africa, it is unlikely to create a spike in deaths.

Perhaps Lightfoot was correct when she said CTU “is trying to politicize the pandemic, which is really incredibly sad.”

Second, evidence from our first attempt at remote learning has shown that instruction in person is superior to learning remotely.

As Mayor Lightfoot said, “We know that when we were fully remote previously, 100,000 of our kids lost contact and would disengage from the system. The failure rate in remote learning was three times higher than it used to be. We saw the trauma and social emotional harm to students across our system.”

For the 300,000 Chicago Public Schools students that attend remote learning alone, the learning losses will be severe. Numerous studies show that early 2020 students were severely affected by remote learning.

Per a recent McKinsey & Company study, “The impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year.” Unfortunately, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remote learning has been linked to a host of social-emotional problems, such as increased suicide rates in teens, according to many more studies. This is the point where a prolonged period of remote learning can cause irreversible damage to too many CPS students.

Mayor Lightfoot has been playing hardball against CTU. She is using every tool at her disposal in order to return CTU teachers into the classroom. CTU was accused of engaging in unjust labor practices. Her office filed a formal complaint on January 5.

To her credit, Lightfoot has been more than amenable to negotiating with CTU, however, she has maintained her stance that CTU’s current decision to return to remote learning is an “illegal strike.”

Nevertheless, Lightfoot succinctly summed up the matter when she said, “Enough is enough. I’m tired of the Groundhog Day appearance of everything that goes on with the Chicago Teachers Union leadership. We need partnership, we don’t need conflict right now.”

Bravo, Mayor Lightfoot.

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) A former teacher in public schools, he is now a senior editor at The Heartland Institute.