Photo / Kathy Powers
CHICAGO —Mass struggles by parents, educators, and students to close schools took center stage in a global fight to stop the pandemic this week. Across the United States, there were student and teacher walkouts in Chicago, Boston, Baton Rouge, Oakland, Seattle, and Portland. In France, over 75 percent of educators took part in a strike that closed half of all schools. In Germany and Canada, students and teachers are waging the same fight.
In the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), there is not enough staff present to teach, so students are warehoused in auditoriums and study halls with inadequate social distancing. The schools are overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and dirty. Parents reported that some schools do not even have the basic essentials like soap for washing hands. With insufficient supplies, some schools closed their restrooms. Rather than the usual opt-out of mandated testing, in Chicago parents must opt into testing. Few of them have opted in, and of those, COVID testing is inadequate and spotty. COVID spread is primed in Chicago public schools.
On January 4, Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) members voted 77 percent in favor of going fully remote until effective COVID mitigation protections were approved by the members and enacted. Eight days later, 56 percent of CTU members ratified an agreement to return to in-person teaching. During this period, CPS locked the teachers out of their online teaching accounts, so nobody could receive instruction.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot insisted that the schools were safe and that CTU acted against the students’ interests. Meanwhile, alarming rates of hospitalized children expanded exponentially. The Illinois Department of Public Health data showed that schools were the likely source of over 30 percent of COVID exposures, more than any other source.
The movement can organize to follow the students out of the schools, out of crowded workplaces, and lock down safely at home for at least 14 days. The pro-business justification for allowing COVID to spread rampantly must end. Walkouts and strikes could be prepared to close all congregate gatherings as part of a zero-COVID strategy. The shutdown of all nonessential production with full wages paid to all workers, a comprehensive program of public health measures, and care for the sick will stamp out the coronavirus.
Not Our Babies
Dedicated to the ChiRads and all the students who walked out of CPS on 1/14/2022
It’s finally back to school.
We’ve been holed up and
Buried our dead. Forever bound
By COVID surges.
Liefoot prepared her testimony
The schools are safe, as she
Installed unopenable windows
At a Rogers Park high school.
Go back to school the blame-and-shame
Mayor decreed, “The schools are safe,”
With unvaccinated teachers and students,
No soap, supplies, and knock-off HEPA filters.
She decried, “Expect some casualties,”
It’s because of the teachers.
The bully mayor ordered
In-person learning will prevail.
I care about your education –
The nervy CTU demands remote learning.
I hold hostage your laptops.
Remotely lock out disobedient teachers.
I’ve been perfectly clear:
The schools are the safest.
Homes are the spreader culprits,
Not our Aramark-cleaned schools.
We sickened and died from COVID.
We no longer hear false school bells:
Not us, our babies, or our parents!
WE WALK OUT.
#LoriLockout2022
— By Kathy Powers
Kathy Powers is a lifetime Chicagoan. At 50, Kathy speaks out as the voice of the people. She became a revolutionary activist whose lifelong fight raises unheard voices. She is the Health Care Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board.
