In our previous post, Nina told you how continuing school lockdowns have driven desperate Las Vegas kids to suicide. The source of such misery is not COVID, however. It’s the teachers unions — leftist organizations that care more about political agendas than they do the children they allegedly serve. Exhibit A: the Chicago Teachers Union, a corrupt racket if there ever was one.

But then, this is Chicago, so I guess it goes with the territory.

Chicago Public School teachers and staff were supposed to return to classrooms on January 25th, to prepare for in-person classes for elementary students starting February 1. However, the union voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to work remotely, with 71% of CTU members voting to stay home. They’re not even going to show up to fix up their classrooms without the kiddies around.

The CTU posted its victory at their website:

“CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation, but you still chose unity, solidarity and to collectively act as one.”

The union also accused the Chicago Public Schools of wanting to “sow dissent and disrupt collective union action.” CTU refuses to return to work until they say it’s safe. They also refuse to participate in simultaneous in-person and virtual teaching. CPS must also come up with acceptable health metrics. As of Sunday, those two items were not negotiable, either.

Other demands include:

• A COVID positivity rate of 3% before schools reopen;
• Regular COVID testing;
• Teachers having the option of whether or not to show up for work.

Try that last one at your place of employment. And here you thought Peter from “Office Space” was a fictitious movie character.

Oh, and one more thing: the CTU wants to reduce the amount of remote learning by one hour per day. As if kids aren’t being shortchanged enough already.

Never mind that CPS has promised health screenings, mandatory face masks, distance between desks, new HEPA air purifiers in classrooms, and access to COVID-19 tests. It’s still not safe, insists the union.

But refusing to work is nothing new for the Chicago Teachers Union. In fact, the CTU will even play the racism/sexism card to bully their opponents. In December, when the CPS presented its plan for reopening schools for some students on February 1, CTU posted this charming message at Twitter. They quickly deleted it, but you know that the Internet is forever:

Screenshot/chicagocontrarian.com. 

This wasn’t CTU’s first foray into pushing leftist garbage, either. In August, 2020, the union cheered on leftist activists who had placed a mock guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos’s home, commenting:

“We are completely frightened by, completely impressed by and completely in support of wherever this is headed.”

Ironically, the Teachers’ Pension Fund holds 45,000 shares of Amazon stock, courtesy of the teachers union. And while the CTU also trashes the leftist whipping boy “corporate greed,” its own leadership makes six-figure salaries. So where do those huge salaries come from? Union dues, of course, which the CTU invests in mutual funds. Those funds in turn invest in Fortune 500 corporations — the epitomes of corporate wealth.

Not only that, the CTU doesn’t pay any taxes.

In the words of disgraced former IL Gov. Rod Blagojevich: I’ve got this thing and it’s f**king golden. . .

One of that crew of militant leftists is Sarah Chambers, a member of CTU’s executive board and an area vice president. In other words, she’s a Working Class Hero. Truly dedicated to her special education students, too.

But she got herself into a ton of hot water.

While Chambers steadfastly opposed reopening Chicago schools, she traveled to Puerto Rico during the holiday season. Not only that, but she posted images at Instagram right before she tweeted a message to special education teachers urging them to stay home. 

The Chicago Teachers Union responded with. . . crickets.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote this about Sarah Chambers:

“To understand what’s gone wrong with big city public education — where militant teachers union bosses dictate urban school policy and politics — just look to Chicago and the saga of Sarah Chambers.

Her embarrassing story has gone worldwide. But it does have a message.

It tells public school parents who want their kids back in school, and property taxpayers, everything they need to know:

That they don’t count. And their children don’t count.”