Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union have hammered out about 25% of a COVID-19 safety agreement with just a week to go until students return to classrooms for full-time in-person learning, the union said Monday as it called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her team to “get serious” about working out a full deal.

       “We’ve made some progress. We have. We think we’re close to an agreement on safety committees, which are the committees in each individual school that allow people to enforce building conditions to keep us safe in our schools,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said at Monday’s news conference outside Robert Fulton Elementary School in the Back of the Yards neighborhood as teachers citywide returned to their classrooms.

       “But there are a number of broader issues that have to be addressed by the mayor. Local schools cannot address a citywide metric, for example. What does that mean? It means that last year, we had a promise from the leadership of the schools and the leadership of the city about what would happen if the outbreak got worse.”

       The state is requiring all Illinois schools to resume in-person learning this fall, with limited exceptions. CPS’s Aug. 30 start comes as the highly transmissible delta variant sparks an increase in the COVID-19 cases in Chicago and around the country.

       Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, provides an update on school reopening negotiations outside Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen last week. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

       A group of Chicago aldermen and state lawmakers sent a letter to Lightfoot on Sunday outlining concerns about CPS’s reopening plans. Union vice president Stacy Davis Gates said the union and CPS are still negotiating a policy for quarantining students and staff members if someone in a classroom tests positive for the virus; metrics that would lead to a temporary shutdown of in-person learning; COVID-19 testing protocols and expansion of student vaccination programs.

       “I’m confident that we’re going to get what we need. We do get what we need because what we need is reasonable,” Davis Gates said.

       CPS administrators and representatives have emphasized that the district is prepared to welcome all students back with plans that are rooted in guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Illinois Department of Public Health and Chicago Department of Public Health. Protocols include an indoor masking policy, regardless of vaccination status, and a vaccine mandate for Chicago Board of Education employees, with limited exemptions. Negotiations between the union and CPS continue this week.

       tswartz@tribpub.com

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