SCHOOLS REOPEN — AND TEACHERS FIGHT FOR THEIR LIVES…Their Students, And The Future Of Public Education.
As schools begin to reopen, within teacher unions around the country, teachers have been coming together to discuss the risks they’re willing to take — both to protect public health in the short term, and to protect public education in the long run.
The starting place for the unions, noted Stacy Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, is that the push to reopen schools as if they could wish the pandemic away, whether it was coming from President Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos or from Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot, “was wrong and dangerous.” With safety as their first concern, the CTU organized through its delegates, held tele-town halls, talked with community groups it has been allied with since its landmark 2012 strike, held car caravans, and ultimately announced a strike vote.
Within hours of the announcement that the union would vote on a strike, another announcement came: Chicago schools would open virtually, not in person.
In New York City, rank and file teachers in the United Federation of Teachers who are organizing with the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) caucus had already planned a sick-out in March that pressed the district to close down. The UFT responded to the continued pressure for in-person reopening by calling strike preparation meetings. New York’s Taylor Law makes public sector strikes technically illegal, but the UFT’s president Michael Mulgrew told reporters, “If we feel that a school is not safe we are prepared to CONTINUE READING: Schools Reopen — And Teachers Fight For Their Lives... - PopularResistance.Org