By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
The Chicago Teachers Union is flexing its collective bargaining muscle again – this time raising the possibility of Chicago schools going full remote like last year.
In a new letter to the mayor and other officials, the union used concern over the Delta variant to press for more district safety measures. The union said “Maintenance of criteria and health metrics based on COVID prevalence to pause in-person instruction” was needed to ensure safety in CPS. In other words, the CTU wants hard metrics for when CPS will go full-remote again.
You can’t help but wonder what more school closures would mean for Chicago’s children. We’re not talking about falling behind in school, reduced future earnings, or impeded social development, though those issues are super critical. We’re talking about the increased potential of death by homicide.
Homicides for Chicago kids 13 and under jumped in 2020 to 22, according to a Wirepoints analysis of the Cook County Medical Examiner database. And this year‘s numbers are equally troublesome. A Chicago Sun Times recently ran the headline: “Our kids are becoming extinct’: Chicago children are being killed by guns at far faster rate than years past.”
It’s impossible for us to know whether closed schools mean more deaths for kids, but you can’t help but wonder whether the lack of normalcy is making things worse. Young children are now indiscriminately dying from violence.
The union and district leadership should know that. Since the beginning of the pandemic far more children have died from homicide than from COVID.
Since March of last year, five children aged 18 and under have died of COVID, at least three of them with comorbidities. In contrast, during that same period, 112 kids died of homicide.
Kids should be going back into school for no other reason other than that’s where they belong.
However, Chicago parents have little confidence in CPS’ latest promise to keep schools open. A recent Chalkbeat article quoted several parents that said “there was no middle ground last year” and that “CPS will just shut (in-person school) down” if COVID cases continue to rise. The CTU raising the specter of closings should only worsen their concerns.
But if there is any connection between last year’s closing and child homicides, then teachers should be as committed to keeping schools open as parents are – not finding another excuse to keep them closed.
Read more about COVID in Illinois:
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
CTU wants the pandemic to never end. It’s a form of early retirement, full pay, full benefits, no commute, do a couple useless zoom sessions a day from your cabin or hotel in between walks to the beach. We already saw that last year with that CTU broad on the beach.
you cps people are a joke!-hey jesse snarkey,theres an article about teachers unions on wire points,we all better crawl out of mommys basement and do what jesse snarkey tells us to do!-up vote teacher james and down vote everyone else!-youre all a bunch of weak individuals,yes,jesse snarkey,whatever you tell me to do!-laughable clowns!-be sure to give me 29 down votes you feckless weak kneed losers!
CTU / CPS troll army engaged.
Target therefore valid.
Right. The flak is always densest directly over the target. Bombs Away!!!!!
Winning!
I hope that Wirepoints somehow monetizes these troll down-votes. You know: Revenue. Profit. Clicks. A concept that is beyond the understanding of the dim witted parasitic CTU Jabba the Hutt slugs.
Note that “parasitic” is a four syllable word and therefore also incomprehensible to CTU members.
Agreed, driving the ad view counts on the site.
Only ads for hormone blockers
You guys are both wrong about me yet somehow have the hubris to think differently. Some people are borderline crackpots on this website, shooting from the lip with so little real knowledge its pathetic. Blaze away if it makes you feel better, but your unproven assumptions about me are as far off target as is possible.
James, I don’t think that you are a dim witted down-voting troll. Nor do I think that you are a crackpot or even CTU member. As I’ve said previously, your arguments are reasoned, thoughtful and factual. I wish that there was more such opposition comments on Wirepoints (and in the US generally). I do also think that most Illinois public sector workers do NOT deserve most of their ill-gotten pension jackpot. The public sector unions have engaged in a multi-decade criminal conspiracy with IL politicians selling votes and election time boots-on-the ground in exchange for gold plated benefits and grossly… Read more »
We’ve all been told this story or a variation of over and over again ad nausem. The sad fact is that money is needed to buy votes, and that buys politcal persuasion more than the glory of most political arguments by themselves are likely to do. Both parties throw tons of money at the person and/or party of choice. Republicans get their preferential treatment at times, and Democrats do as well on some their own issues at their own times and places. You and probably all others here castigate the Democrats, and yet other people elsewhere of a different view… Read more »
Round and round
Nothing new and no progress on the peoples coin.
We’re a dying country, run out of ideas if this mode of thinking continues to prevail.
James, I’d rather be a full fledged crackpot, than just “borderline.” That’s just insulting!
I was raised to believe that if you’re going to do something, do it well! 🙂
Heaven forbid. I can’t believe anyone on this website would be so brazen and inconsiderate as to insult another person; its inconceivable. We’re such a brotherly love, caring group!
James ..again, you have a Pavlovian reaction to any opinion not in line with yours, as noted many times before.
I’ll stop here as you’ve made my point for me, beyond all expectation.
Please consult with your downvote squad now to put me in my place.
I’ll wait here, bent over in true IL voter fashion, waiting for my further education in your truth.
God help this state, or nuke it from orbit.
Something to move beyond the current malaise your ilk has us trapped in.
Blah, blah and/or blah.
CTU is simply looking for another excuse to not work and get paid. Vouchers for all and bust CTU.
Looks like the lazy no-work vermin of CTU are busy down-voting all opposing comments. Probably the only thing these slugs have been ‘busy’ at for the past 19 months of the Wuhan Virus farce besides the bag of pork rinds on the sofa next to them.
Just take the opposite of any comments score to get the real score.
Still a valid metric.
If you want school vouchers and a better future for your family then move to Indiana.
You sound like a fear mongering democrat -it’s for the children!
The CTU cares NOTHING about the students or their parents. They are interested only in getting as much as possible for as little work. They run the school system, they know it and are demonstrating their control. What Chicago needs (and won’t get in my lifetime) is a Ronald Reagan type mayor. If non-attending teachers were fired and replaced, there would certainly be chaos for at least a year, but honestly, would it be any worse than what is happening? That union is a leech on the public school system.
Maybe, but where are they going to find 20,000 or so teachers ready, willing and chomping at the bit to teach only God knows where and at what personal risk in CPS? You MIGHT find enough bodies in 2-3 years, but many will be only marginally qualified and at least half will quit within the first half-dozen years finding it intolerable or at least not personally psychologically rewarding. So, really how will that improve things? Not much, I’d guess.
Regulatory lock in .. great plan there James.
Central planning has proven a great benefit to society this last century?
Round and round., that’s all you ever do.
Apparently you want teachers who are not officially that in the certfication “regulatory lock-in” sense as required by IL law. Wanting to be teacher isn’t sufficient to get a job as one, so if you think otherwise you are dreaming. Your personal smear campaign against me, a total stranger to you here, doesn’t give a flattering image of yourself to portray to others if your mother failed to tell you that common parental advice. You are likely an adult legally, I’d guess, even if something less psychologically. Think “persuasion” rather than “bullying” to get your way in life more often.… Read more »
Show me the test score James.
Are they increasing over time, and with respect to spend?
If not, what are the benefits of these certifications?
The multivariate correlation seems dubious, hence regulatory lock in.
Attack me all you want personally, it’s a straw man tactic that doesn’t affect me in the slightest.
But again, refute my point on test scores and academic performance.
I double dog dare you to try.
Show me your data, not just conjecture and feelings.
For reason that are not all that clear to me. I suppose you think I belong to CPS. Not so! I don’t intend to defend CPS nor attack them, so go elsewhere if you are expecting either approach. I’m simply telling you what the state law requires for a person to be a teacher in IL. Your wishing for a “miracle cure” to all that ails CPS is stupidity at the present time with all the impediments that apply that system that don’t apply in most other places. But, CPS is not alone in that most truly huge central cities… Read more »
Where’s that data?
Exactly .. your hypothesis holds no water.
Round and round James.
Regulatory lock in eventually collapses any system.
Lets see where that takes polite society in IL as we track forward.
I look forward to seeing you spin like a whirling dervish in this dystopian future.
N.B. – Your Pavlovian reaction to any challenge to your opinion on this site is laughable. Go try playing your verbal parlor games at a debate society.
You’re expressing all this vile with a few misplaced assumptions that make it all meaningless when directed toward me as your supposed villain. As I said I have no personal connection with CPS yet somehow you clearly think I’m supposed to care enough to come forth with statistics that are important to you and not at all so for me. I know how CPS “performs” the same way other citizens of metropolitan Chicago do (to include you, I’m fairly sure)—vaguely. Yet, somehow you think I’m in that inner circle and owe you various statistics showing how “well” CPS function in… Read more »
Bugger off pipsqueak
CTU trolls out, therefore I am directly over target.
Quite the contary: you need first calibrate your missiles in the right right. I’m “north” of you rather than “south” I’ve tried to tell you three times now. Quit wasting your amole supply of verbal ammo shooting at a supposed enemy you don’t know and haven’t even characterized correctly.
Keep responding here James, it makes a salient point.
That said, if you and the flunkies are here, you’re not in the real world causing damage.
Downvote away, it just drives the point home further.
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You’re living in Bizarro World.
Says the guy driving the downvote army.
Pot, meet Kettle.
For better or worse the Chicago Public School System is a baby sitting or low security prison for many of the kids in the city who would otherwise be on the streets committing crimes.
Which came first—the chicken or the egg?
That’s really why schools exist, day prisons for children the role of prison guards are replaced by “Educators”. Credentialed from exit ramp diploma factories. Educators look around and see vast swathes of Chicago don’t work! Why should they? Maybe the possibility of dumping the cops from schools? We hate you but you’d better protect us! You do for Lori!
Fire them on day one when they do not show up for work! Period.
Cut the head of the snake off- Quit paying property tax bills for CPS!
If they do not want to work in a school building, does that mean there will be a refund to taxpayers whose property taxes pay the majority of the up keep?
Lay the teachers off without pay and they will be back in the classroom in no time.
Worked when Regan did it with Traffic Controllers.
People are starting their own Christian Academies in various neighborhoods, mostly grade school – they are fed up with government schools with the Leftist indoctrination and Covidstan activism.
Teachers Unions and Tenure should be removed from schools.Teachers abilities should be measured on the success of the students, and should be rewarded for their hard work.
Hello CTU
We need remote learning option for kids who don’t want to send kids to school.
Who supports??
the cps unions are the biggest dopes on the planet,lets all do what Jesse Snarkey says,its all about self enrichment for the teachers and the teachers union but chicagoans are too stupid to see whats going on,good luck chicago,keep voting for democrats!-so glad im not in the sewer known as Chicago!-but then again,gives me ma free stuff!-what a bunch of slaves to the democrat machine°
Parents everywhere who don’t start home schooling their kids this year are bad parents, period. Putting their kids into another year of remote “learning” is child abuse. The home schooled kids I’ve known are light years ahead of their peers academically, ethically and socially. Home schooled kids can uphold their end of a conversation with an adult very well.
CPS appears to have a real enrollment problem. If it occurs, CTU will be materially impacted and also receive its share of blame. Who knows whether CTU members will grasp they are in peril.
Unfortunately they aren’t. CTU was able to get a little noticed provision signed by Pritzker that prevents CPS from closing any schools for the next 5 years, until at which point an “elected” school board comes into power.
I don’t know for sure, but I assume that they also were able to prevent any sort of downsizing of headcount in conjunction.
CTU knows what it’s doing, and Democrats here are not just beholden to them, they are subservient to them.