Chicago mayor touts deal with union to reopen schools
Source: AP
By SOPHIA TAREEN
CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot touted a preliminary agreement with the teachers union over COVID-19 safety protocols on Sunday, potentially averting a strike in the nation’s third-largest school district.
Some students could return to classrooms as soon as Thursday, with the reopening of school phased-in by grade. Also, the city agreed to vaccinate 1,500 teachers and staff weekly at vaccination sites dedicated to Chicago Public Schools. The possible deal — which still requires approval from the Chicago Teachers Union —- also includes metrics that would trigger school closings when cases spike.
The union and district have been fighting for months over a plan to gradually reopen the roughly 340,000-student district, with talks breaking down in recent days on issues including vaccinations. Lightfoot and CPS officials had threatened to lock educators out of teaching systems multiple times, which the union said would lead to a strike for the second time in less than two years.
By Sunday, the first-term mayor who had been visibly agitated at recent news conferences, was smiling.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, at podium, and Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, background, announce Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021, at City Hall that a tentative agreement has been reached with the Chicago Teachers Union to reopen schools, in Chicago. The proposed deal is subject to an approval vote by CTU's House of Delegates. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/chicago-coronavirus-pandemic-strikes-lori-lightfoot-protocols-efa7a3d1d74debe5d9b8d9bf2c52b6bc
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What many don't seem to understand is that many urban schools are held in buildings that were built over a century ago. I.e., these are not "modern" suburban schools. They are old piece of junk schools with caged windows, perennially leaking roofs, boilers that are held together with altered parts because the original companies that made them don't exist anymore, no potable drinking water, and no air-conditioning other than recent (literally just a few years ago) window units. Here is a typical "public" elementary school in this city (7 different examples from around the city out of about 150 elementary schools in the district... others in the city are charter, religious, or private) -
The classrooms are often no different from a small restaurant's space or smaller (and this is very different from supermarkets or other large retailers, which are facilities that at least have high ceilings).
They are attempting to supply classrooms with window fans at the moment here. I.e., here is their solution 
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IMHO, there needs to be some kind of Defense Production Act contract to make air purifier units that use replaceable HEPA filters like this -
(does up to 450sqft - I have one of these in my living room/dining room & a Whirlpool one in my bedroom)
The Superintendent demanded that teachers of pre-K-2nd graders report today or be punished and that blew up spectacularly (a mediator is now involved so no "reporting" today). I do agree that the ones being hurt the most are the youngest because this is a period when they are literally "trained" for societal expectations of following orders and working with others. But they are just as vulnerable to the horrible conditions that have been the typical environment of far too many urban schools.
You want to talk about "infrastructure jobs"? It's odd that "new school buildings" never seem to be mentioned. 
every state had some type of "compulsory school attendance" law (that were eventually molded to fit within a SCOTUS ruling at the time). And after that, you see what amounted to a huge undertaking - the building of public schools in the largest cities and a large chunk of those buildings are still in use as schools.
The baby boom that brought about a move by many families to the suburbs resulted in another big school infrastructure boom, a number of which are being or have been replaced in those rim suburbs, while the city school buildings languish - only punctuated by a few "newer" buildings - or more commonly "additions" to the old buildings that popped up during the '50s/'60s to handle what was a similar large generation coming through from parents who remained in the cities.
That's what they did to Germantown High School here (now closed, which was an old building with a "newer wing" attached to it) -
(School construction with horses pulling the excavators)
(Germantown High completed - opened 1915)
(Recently, showing the expansion wing added in the late '50s)
(where one of my aunts attended in the late '40s) - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142690869#post7 had been declared historic (am guessing the older original part), had been purchased after the school was closed, and was supposed to be developed for multiple purposes. There have been issues brought up by neighbors in the surrounding neighborhood, who have demanded input, so we'll see how that goes.
One of the fractional few that was replaced with a new building, where the old one was finally torn down, was Edison High School here (built in 1903) -
(They had to do something because. Fire. 
)
(The school was finally replaced in 1988, the old building was demolished a few years after the fire, but even the "new" building is itself now 32 years old)
Yup, that's exactly what we would expect to happen. And with all that wood and the young age of the children (we know how easy it is to direct little kids in an emergency). These are just tragedies waiting to happen. I remember a lot of 40s and 50s buildings during the assignment.
On a side note,; I was floored when I saw the classroom geography maps in most schools still showed Yugoslavia and the USSR. This was around 2001-02. But that's a topic for another time.....
which is where my mother went to high school and had graduated in 1948 (when that building was the Philadelphia High School for Girls built in 1933) -
and the high school moved to a "new" replacement building opened in 1959, and I did end up going to high school in that "new" building, my very first "newer" building experience of my lower school education, and now that building is over 60 years old itself...
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(but the old middle school, which is also a high school itself as well, remains and still an active school)
Meanwhile one of my younger nieces has had 2 brand new schools opened in her suburban township during her almost 15 year lifetime.
then there are quite a few "seniors" who are full time teachers. That is why they are complaining. I know here in Philly, there were periods where they hired very few "new" teachers for decades and were only bringing in temps as needed to supplement the staff. And eventually they ended up with a shortage because few wanted to even go into teaching, and older teachers were retiring. They have had a hard time recruiting them now, so you have the same crew still there (who are now "seniors" ). I know a few teachers who were "brand new and/or young" when I graduated 40+ years ago and they are still there.
I know that DU is "boomer heavy" (I am a tail-end one), but many sortof skirt around being considered a "senior", even in their '70s (let alone mid-late '60s), while still working full time, and pointing at others as if they aren't "seniors" too. 
