Biden voices support for Chicago teachers union fighting against order to return to classrooms Print this article
President Biden acknowledged the concerns of the Chicago Teachers Union in its fight against the Windy City’s plan to restart in-person learning.
“The teachers, I know they want to work,” Biden said on Monday when he was asked about the CTU by a reporter, according to the
Chicago Sun-Times. “They just want to work in a safe environment, and as safe as we can rationally make it, and we can do that.”
The union recently voted to remain working from home due to concerns over the coronavirus, which defies the Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plans.
Open schools. Close indoor dining.
When to keep schools open, and how to do so, has been an issue plaguing the response by the United States to the pandemic since its beginning. President Biden vowed to “teach our children in safe schools” in his inaugural address.
On Tuesday, federal health officials weighed in with a call for returning children to the nation’s classrooms as soon as possible, saying the “preponderance of available evidence” indicates that in-person instruction can be carried out safely as long as mask-wearing and social distancing are maintained.
But local officials also must be willing to impose limits on other settings like indoor dining, bars or poorly ventilated gyms in order to keep infection rates low in the community at large, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in the journal JAMA and in a follow-up interview.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten discusses the standoff in Chicago after union teachers voted against resuming in-person learning.
American Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten said Tuesday that Chicago educators are battling both the coronavirus pandemic and fear as an impasse continues over resuming in-person learning in America s third-largest city. We re fighting a pandemic and now we re fighting fear, Weingarten told The Faulkner Focus. And what we re trying to do as a union is get the safety measures in place, I m on the phone constantly with Chicago, in trying to actually have that kind of plan so that we can address both the pandemic and the fear.
Updated 1/27/2021 10:45 AM
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Computer science teacher Suzy Lebo saw covid-19 dangers frequently in her Indiana high school: classes with about 30 students sitting less than 18 inches apart. Students crowding teachers in hallways. Students and staff members taking off their masks around others.
I m concerned, said Lebo, who teaches at Avon High School in the Indianapolis suburbs. We re not controlling the virus in our county. We re not controlling it in our state. And we re not controlling it in our schools.
President Joe Biden s covid response proposes $130 billion to improve school safety, offers federal guidance for making schools safer and improves workplace protections to safeguard teachers and other workers from covid.