The Chicago Teachers’ Union has reached a provisional agreement with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reopen the city’s schools for face-to-face classes, the mayor announced on Sunday.
If finalized, the agreement will avoid a strike that threatened to interrupt student education in the country’s third largest school district.
Under the agreement, pre-kindergarten students and some special education students would return to classrooms on Thursday. Kindergarten employees through fifth grade would return on February 22, and students in those grades would return on March 1. Staff in the sixth through eighth grade classrooms would return on March 1st and students on March 8th.
The deal must be approved by the union’s elected governing body, the Chamber of Delegates, the mayor said. The expectation is that the union leadership will meet with its base on Sunday afternoon, and then the Chamber of Delegates will meet, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the union did not want the agreement made public before that members had a chance to see it.
The Chicago Tribune reported the deal on Sunday morning. Shortly after, the union posted on Twitter: “We still don’t have an agreement with the Chicago Public Schools. The mayor and her team made an offer to our members last night, which deserves further analysis. We will continue our democratic process of general review throughout the day before any agreement is reached. “
Mayor Lightfoot and the union are fighting one of the most intense battles for reopening anywhere in the country. The mayor argued that the city’s most vulnerable students needed the opportunity to return to classes in person, while the union condemned the city’s reopening plan as unsafe.
A similar struggle is taking place in Philadelphia, where teachers from preschool to second grade are due to report to school buildings on Monday to prepare for the students’ return on February 22. The teachers’ union told its members to continue working remotely, saying it was not yet safe to return to school buildings.
Mrs. Lightfoot said on Sunday that the battle with the union in Chicago was bitter. She said she heard parents who felt they were being held hostage and that their voices were muffled. She tried to put the vitriol in the past.
“My friends in Chicago, we need to move on and heal,” she said.