This past fall, Cristina Sandoval’s two children had a smooth transition back to school after a summer that felt more normal than the last.
“Everything was fine,” Sandoval said of the beginning of the school year.
But with November’s steady uptick in COVID-19 cases morphing into a steep, exponential spike in December, chaos and uncertainty have returned for Chicago Public Schools families, evoking, for some, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like many parents, Sandoval, who lives in Little Village with her third and fourth grade children, spent Tuesday waiting to hear whether they would go to school on Wednesday amid negotiations between the school district and Chicago Teachers Union over a safety agreement for in-person classes.
Although CPS classes officially resumed Monday following winter break, CTU has renewed pressure for expanded COVID-19 safety measures amid the current surge — mirroring the struggles that took place a year ago as CPS first sought to reopen schools after the pandemic shutdown of spring 2020. Tuesday evening, teachers union members were voting on whether to refuse to return for in-person classes Wednesday, with CPS saying it would cancel Wednesday classes, sports and other activities if the CTU measure prevailed.
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As the issue remained unsettled late Tuesday afternoon — and appeared poised for a possible late-night resolution — many parents began making backup plans in case Wednesday classes were canceled.
“I would have to leave them at Grandma’s house,” Sandoval said.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, left, and the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, Dr. Allison Arwady, give updates on COVID-19 in CPS Tuesday. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
Sources said CTU’s House of Delegates, its 600-member governing body, voted by a wide margin Tuesday evening in favor of a resolution for members to teach remotely starting Wednesday and continuing until Jan. 18, barring a drop in the rate of COVID-19 cases in Chicago or a resolution with CPS.
The delegates’ endorsement moved the measure to the union 25,000 rank-and-file members, who were due to vote by electronic ballot later Tuesday evening.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot late Tuesday angrily blasted the union for threatening another walkout that could shut schools down, saying the science backs children being in school with proper mitigation.
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“I have to tell you, it feels like Groundhog Day, that we are here again,” Lightfoot said in reference to past strife with the CTU, including the 2019 teachers strike and then several rounds of thwarted school reopening attempts last year.
CPS parents interviewed by the Tribune expressed a range of opinions about CPS’ latest coronavirus crisis, with some adamant that in-person school classes must continue and others saying schools should take a pause and go remote until the omicron surge ends. Some pandemic-weary parents just wished the district had better plans in place to deal with safety concerns and fluctuating virus numbers.
By Tuesday afternoon, Amy Johnson, a Rogers Park mother of CPS students, was resigned to taking Wednesday off work to supervise her younger children.
“I was a lot more patient at the beginning of COVID,” Johnson said. “I think we’ve had a lot of time to plan for contingencies. I know we can’t predict what the variants will do with certainty, but there are things the school district could do to lessen the disruption to families.”
Sandoval said she wishes the district had decided to hold school remotely for the first couple of weeks after winter break due to the rising omicron cases, which would have given parents time to prepare.
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Some parents, though, were concerned about the social and academic impact of another prolonged period of remote learning.
Children “need the interaction with their peers,” said Vanessa Chavez, the mother of three CPS middle schoolers. “To have the rug pulled out from under them again, it’s got the potential to be catastrophic.”
Jennifer Lister’s two high school children were visibly excited to go back to school buildings last spring on a hybrid schedule.
“You can see the the positive attitude; you can see the refreshing looks on their faces,” Lister said, “because it was a little bit of normal. … Going remote again now is going to take everybody back to all that sadness from two years ago.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Valencia Reasnover, who lives in South Shore with her two children and niece, all CPS students, just watched her daughter battle a difficult case of COVID-19 that she thinks was contracted at school. She believes classes should be remote until coronavirus numbers fall, and she has not sent her children back to school yet after break.
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“It’s scary because seeing your 14-year-old’s chest constantly hurting, stomach hurting, and to be able to do nothing for her, it was sad in its own way,” Reasnover said.
She doubts her children’s schools are properly sanitized and cleaned. She also feels for the teachers, who may worry about exposure for themselves or family members who may be vulnerable to the disease, even if vaccinated.
CTU and CPS have been negotiating for months for a safety agreement for this school year. In a proposal submitted last week, CTU called for students and staff members to provide a negative COVID-19 test result before entering buildings Monday after their two-week winter break. Short of that, the union asked the district to go virtual for two weeks so additional safety measures could be put in place.
The union said daily health questionnaires should be reinstated; KF94, KN95, or N95 masks should be distributed to all staff members and students; a school should shift to remote learning if 20% or more of the staff is in isolation or quarantine or when a school safety committee says a transition is warranted because of infection rates or noncompliance with protocols, among other demands.
CPS officials have said 200,000 KN95 masks for teachers and staff members are being distributed districtwide. Indoor mask-wearing has been required since the start of school, while in-school weekly testing has been mandatory for unvaccinated staff members and optional for students. The testing program has experienced capacity issues from the start, and a winter break testing initiative flopped.
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