I'm of two minds about this because I know how hard this is for teachers. I'm in education. Lots of friends are teachers in NYC/New England.
Schools and municipalities should be doing the most they can to make sure that schools are a safe place for students and teachers. I don't know Chicago well enough to know whether they've done the bare minimum. I suspect not, as the teachers seem genuinely afraid, and I have compassion for that.
But I also think that teachers have access to vaccines, with a booster Omicron isn't as scary as previous versions of Covid, we have access to masks and we KNOW what mitigates this thing. If Chicago schools haven't had updates to their ventilation, that's the government's issue. Every student and teacher should be provided with a great mask to wear. Education should be the number one priority of the government right now. Making it safe for students and educators alike. And unions should be fighting for that.
In NYC we are not testing enough. I have friends who work at inner city public schools here, and it's a shit show there. They are exhausted and they've only been back three days since the holidays so far. The city isn't doing enough, and what they are doing is disorganized. I believe her school's principal should be able to independently go virtual for a week or two to sort out the mess, without the whole system resorting to that. (We need to allow individual schools to act right now due to their circumstances.)
Chicago, like I said, is a different story than NYC for many reasons. We are imperfect, but our union is NOT fighting being back in person. And our case count is insane. I think in Chicago, the unions may lose the sympathy of the parents. They aren't driving the story...
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