Chicago Teachers Union Loves the Lockdowns

Chicago Teachers Union Loves the Lockdowns

Chicago Teachers Union Loves the Lockdowns

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:

Chicago teachers union

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.”

One of those closed Chicago schools held a virtual meeting with parents last week, in which parents described their children’s anguish. One boy had “full-blown meltdowns” which required psychiatric care. Another account told of a once socially-outgoing daughter who has become more introverted and rages with frustration.

But while Chicago’s public schools have remained closed this school year, Catholic schools have been open. Moreover, a group of Chicago health officials tracked how well Chicago’s Catholic schools have fared during the pandemic. Their conclusion? The Catholic schools are doing quite well with COVID, thank-you-very-much. Of the 91 schools the officials tracked — including 19,500 students and 2,750 teachers and staff — only 59 cases were found in 31 schools. That results in a COVID “attack rate” of 0.2 percent for students and 0.5 percent for adults. These rates are lower than in the general public, in fact, which is 0.4 percent of school age children and 0.7 percent of working-age adults.

As a result, the Chicago Department of Public Health has endorsed reopening the public schools. The Chicago Teachers Union — not so much. One of its delegates said:

“I don’t know how you compare people who attend Catholic schools with the general population of the city of Chicago. Even one child getting sick is a problem because they can bring it home.”

What about even one child developing severe depression or committing suicide? Isn’t that a problem, too? Apparently not for the CTU. Because teachers union leadership cares more about political power than their students. And the Chicago Teachers Union is the trashiest of that bad lot.

 

Featured image: Chicago Teachers Union rally. Charles Edward Miller/Wikimedia Commons/cropped/CC BY-SA 2.0. 

Written by

Kim is a pint-sized patriot who packs some big contradictions. She is a Baby Boomer who never became a hippie, an active Republican who first registered as a Democrat (okay, it was to help a sorority sister's father in his run for sheriff), and a devout Lutheran who practices yoga. Growing up in small-town Indiana, now living in the Kansas City metro, Kim is a conservative Midwestern gal whose heart is also in the Seattle area, where her eldest daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live. Kim is a working speech pathologist who left school system employment behind to subcontract to an agency, and has never looked back. She describes her conservatism as falling in the mold of Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles. Don't know what they are? Google them!

9 Comments
  • John Wilson says:

    Check out Jesse Sharkey for entertainment. He’s a classic red diaper baby unhappy happy warrior for the people. He’s a total hardass against the children they should be serving. IMO.

  • GWB says:

    A COVID positivity rate of 3% before schools reopen
    Dang, it’s gonna be a long time before you get that high of a rate among elementary school students…….

  • Cameron says:

    Oh look! It’s the Purple People Beaters!

    So if they aren’t going to do their jobs, why should we pay for them any longer?

  • Elizabeth says:

    The whole, teachers and going back to school issue just really frustrates me. I worked in childcare up until September and then moved to a childcare referral agency. Seeing teachers gripe and then juxtaposing that with watching what daycare providers are going through is absolutely heartbreaking. The same day that I witnessed the news cover a teachers story about how they wanted paid time off amongst other things, I took a call from a director who was desperate for cleaning supplies and PPE. Public schools get a weekly call with the state’s medical advisor while daycares went months without revised guidelines. The teachers are demanding that they get the vaccine first yet they have already said that there won’t be enough time to get kids back in school, so why should we prioritize them over people who have no choice but to go to work in person? On top of that the stories that I have heard about what is happening with remote learning is appalling.

    • GWB says:

      You forgot NY wanting to re-purpose the schools as … daycare. Because all those kids out of school need somewhere to go. Evidently the virus won’t touch kids that aren’t learning, but will ravage the ones that are. (Which, if it were the case, would mean our kids are absolutely protected in most public schools in America during the normal school day….)

  • GWb says:

    Never mind that CPS has promised health screenings, mandatory face masks, putting distance between desks, new HEPA air purifiers in classrooms, and access to COVID-19 tests.
    Dear Lord in Heaven! Has it mutated into Mutaba virus?
    All this for something that has a lethality rate for almost all demographics below the seasonal flu. And almost 0% spread among and from children.

    These people are afraid of dying and afraid of truly living. A pathetic lot, and not who should be teaching our children.

  • John in Indy says:

    You won’t see it anymore, it’s gone now, but SecondCityCop noted that the City had just given these b*stards a ? 17% raise over a five year new contract , while Chicago Police have been without a contract for 3+years.
    Coming soon to a state you live in.
    John in Indy

  • […] to know why schools are only JUST NOW reopening in Chicago? Because the union loves the lockdown and safety […]

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