“We are here to announce the good news that our children will return to personal learning this week,” Lightfoot told a news conference on Sunday.
“This agreement aims to ensure that everyone in our school communities is not safe, but also that they feel safe,” said Lightfoot, “and feel that their experiences, fears and frustrations have been heard.”
City officials and the country’s third largest school district are at odds with the teachers’ union over Covid-19’s reopening plans. Mayor Lightfoot and CPS officials, including CEO Janice Jackson, said face-to-face learning is safe with Covid-19’s mitigation strategies. But CTU kept teachers and students at risk if they returned to classes ahead of time.
After the press conference, CTU reiterated: “There is still no agreement between the Union and the Education Council. What we have is a structure that all of our members must first review and evaluate, because it is our members who are being asked to return to school buildings in the midst of a global pandemic. “
The proposed plan includes phased return
Jackson said a gradual return to personal learning would begin this week pending ratification by the union delegates’ home.
According to the proposed structure, students in the pre-K and cluster programs would return on Thursday, with teachers and elementary and high school students returning in stages in the following weeks.
The 5th grade garden team would return on February 22, Jackson said, with students returning a week later, on March 1. The sixth through eighth grade team would return on March 1st, with students returning on March 8th.
In addition to traditional Covid-19 mitigation strategies, Jackson said the team that lives in clinically vulnerable homes will receive the Covid-19 vaccine starting this week. Moving forward, the CPS will aim to vaccinate 1,500 CPS employees each week at their own vaccination sites.
The interim plan also includes agreed measures to return the entire school district to online learning, Jackson said. “We will be prepared to do this if the criteria are met during this pandemic.”
Asked by a reporter on Sunday if she was speaking too early, Lightfoot said no.
“We understand that the delegates’ house has the right to say yes or no,” she said. But officials wanted to update the parents with a preview of the plan, “with the exception that it is subject to ratification” by union delegates, she said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated teachers in priority category 1b for vaccinations; and while this means that in many states they are not yet eligible to be vaccinated, the agency’s director says that this does not mean that students cannot return safely.
CNN’s Madeline Holcombe and Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.