The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are attempting to implement an unsafe and premature reopening of the school system. Fortunately, they are meeting substantial push-back from the militant Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

The CPS planned a phased reopening of the schools. On January 3, Pre-Kindergarten and Special Education teachers were to return to school. Their 6,500 students were supposed to return on January 11. Monday, January 25, is supposed to be the return day for K-8 teachers, with their 71,000 students returning on the first of next month. High School will remain remote.

A reader from outside of Chicago might think, “If they’re reopening the schools, Covid must be going down there.” However, this is certainly not the case. The city’s positivity rate is 9.6%. There have been 4,361 deaths and 218,015 recorded Covid cases in “the city that works.”  Covid has certainly not been overcome here. Deciding that now would be a really good time to re-open the school system defies all logic. In a surreal twist to this story, while boosting school reopening,  Mayor Lori Lightfoot extended the  city stay-at-home order until January 22. Predictably, the Mayor engaged in some verbal gymnastics to explain why extending the order was consistent with school reopening.

The most probable explanation for Lightfoot’s rush to reopen the school system is class vindictiveness towards the CTU. Lightfoot feels, correctly, that she was bested by the CTU in the 2019 strike. The CTU had the moral high ground in the strike with its approach of “our working conditions are your children’s learning conditions.” The union’s stance won them broad public sympathy during the strike. The big business consensus was that Lightfoot failed her first big test as Mayor. This embarrassment led Lightfoot to seek a class revenge against the union.

Our non-Chicago reader might also be thinking, “If the School Board’s going to reopen the schools, they must have made them clean and safe.” Again, that’s not the case. Following the January 3 return, educators submitted evidence of the lack of masks and PPE, empty hand sanitizer dispensers, debris-filled hallways, and brown water in the sinks. Many classrooms are lacking the necessary HEPA air filters or the filters are too weak for the size of the room they are  in. At Lowell Elementary School, staff in filter-less rooms were asked to sign a liability waiver preventing action against the school for endangering their health. Hardly a ringing vote of confidence by management in the district’s health conditions! The schools are definitely not safe and clean.

The city’s attention has been focused on McCutcheon Elementary in Uptown. Here a Covid cluster has developed with two workers testing positive with the transmission likely to have been in the school. This has led to a chaotic situation where the principal and vice-principal are in quarantine and there is only one functioning teacher in the school building.

Chicago teachers have pushed back against this situation. On Monday, January 3 about 40% of teachers did not feel that it was safe for them to return inside the buildings. This number only declined by about 5% in the course of the week.

Many of the non-returning teachers worked from home. A good number took part in a series of successful and creative events. Defying bitter cold, they set up workstations in front of their schools. Under parkas and blankets, they did their work outside. One such event at Brentano School got widespread and sympathetic media coverage. On January 11, the union held early morning press conferences at locations such as Davis Elementary in Brighton Park, a neighborhood that has a 16% Covid positivity rate. Teachers also engaged in outside work-ins as they did the previous week. Two union events have particularly captured attention. Teachers had another outdoor “work-in” outside the home of Board President Migueldel Valle in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood. The union also organized a lively car caravan starting from Union Park last Friday.

 The CPS has said that it will dock teachers who do not report to work. About 100 teachers are in this category at the moment. The board has also spoken of applying progressive discipline. Disciplinary threats are not the Board’s only tactic. They have also been engaging in a full court press public relations campaign. CEO Janice Jackson has been making the media rounds. The CPS seemed to have decided to use Jordan Elementary in Rogers Park as their floor sample for reopening. So far, the PR campaign has not had its desired effect as the reopening continues to be unpopular in the city.

The CTU has made clear that it supports a reopening of the schools the moment they are safe for students and teachers. The union has called for serious negotiations on matters such as extending the school year and making reopening voluntary until teachers have received the first dose of the vaccine. CTU Vice- President Stacey Davis Gates was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying, “I am growing weary of this expectation that our union has to go on strike in order to get a safe reopening plan.”

The situation is further complicated by a potentially very positive development that has just taken place. The Illinois Senate voted to repeal Section 4.5 of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. This repeal has already been approved by the House so it now goes to Governor Pritzker’s desk for signature.

Why is this so important? Section 4.5 was a strong piece of anti-union legislation that forbade the CTU from bargaining over any issue other than wages and benefits. Traditionally, teachers bargain over a wide range of other issues such as class size, evaluation procedures, and working conditions. These types of issues are designated by Section 4.5 as permissive, not mandatory subjects of bargaining. This means that the union is forbidden from striking over them and that management may unilaterally implement their proposals on all matters except wages and benefits.

 Any doubt that this measure was designed specifically to weaken the CTU can be removed by reading the bizarre language of the Section. The law makes clear that it only applies to “collective bargaining between an educational employer whose territorial boundaries are coterminous with those of a city having a population in excess of 500,000 and an exclusive representative of its employees.” No prizes for guessing that Chicago is the only city in Illinois that fits this description!

The possible repeal of the section is especially important because of what happened at the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board(IELRB) in December. The IELRB turned down a CTU  request for an injunction to stop the opening of the schools. The Board cited 4.5 as their reason for doing so, as they argued it did not see school reopening as a mandatory subject of bargaining. The Senate vote means this ruling could now be challenged.

Lightfoot has spoken, in the past, against Section 4.5. She has changed her tune when faced with the possibility that it might actually be repealed. She said, “Both CPS and CTU leadership need to come to the table in good faith. The General Assembly’s elimination of Section 4.5 at this critical juncture will irreparably change that dynamic.” This is ruling class speak for it will strengthen the position of the union.  Lightfoot’s alternative proposal hardly seems likely to be a winner. She proposes that the Section could be repealed but only after the union’s 2024 contract has been settled.

For socialists, the present situation in the Chicago schools is clear cut. The union is fighting for both its members and their students. This is a fight that is in the interests of the whole working class. It deserves our full and total support.