WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Monday entered the Chicago Teachers ‘Union standoff with City Hall over the reopening of schools, indicating support for teachers’ concerns about the safety of COVID-19 after, as the Sun-Times learned , White House officials were informed of the standoff by Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Teachers, I know they want to work,” said Biden when asked about CTU by a reporter at a news conference after an event about American industry. “They just want to work in a safe environment and as safe as we can rationally, and we can do that.”
To the question, “should teachers go back to school,” said Biden, “we must make school classrooms safe and secure for students, teachers and the help that is in the schools that maintain these facilities.”
Biden made no direct reference to Chicago in his response, nor to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, whose main critics are the politically powerful CTU.
People need to be convinced and comfortable that “a school is safe and secure for everyone,” said Biden. Among the keys to the reopening of schools is the presence of widespread testing and functioning ventilation systems, he said – two points of contention between Chicago Public Schools officials and CTU in recent months.
The president added: “We should be able to open all schools, from kindergarten through eighth grade, if we actually administer these tests, and we will have the additional advantage that I must add, to put millions of people back to work. “
CTU is the local affiliate of AFT Weingarten.
“The White House is really concerned about reopening and very concerned about doing it the right way,” Weingarten told the Sun-Times. “And I felt it was my moral obligation to inform the White House this weekend, which I did.”
Weingarten said she informed senior Biden officials “what was going on in Chicago, from my perspective” and was “very pleased” with her comments on Monday.
“People know that personal learning is very important, but they want to be safe,” she said. On whether Biden was taking sides, Weingarten said the president “is on the side of science, trying to control the pandemic and trying to open schools safely. I think that’s what he’s on the side of. “
With Biden as president, the teachers’ unions have a table seat at the White House with two allies – Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, a union member who teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College.
After Biden spoke, both Chicago officials and CTU leaders found points of agreement in their comments.
The school district shared a video of the president’s response on their social media accounts, commenting: “We couldn’t agree more. The district invested> $ 100 million to ensure the health and safety of our community. “
Union members, however, said they were encouraged to hear Biden’s views on the situation. CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said Biden “is not taking sides”, but “prioritizing the safety of all stakeholders in all cities in all states in this country”.
Lightfoot: ‘Every confidence that we will do something’
Negotiations continued on Monday between the union and school officials with a set deadline for Wednesday set to reach an agreement or otherwise risk an interruption of classes. CTU voted over the weekend to refuse personal work until an agreement is reached, a move the city has said it will see as a strike.
“We had a lot of very productive conversations with the CTU people,” said Lightfoot at a news conference on Monday, after receiving a dose of the coronavirus vaccine – and before Biden was asked about the CTU. “They were literally bargaining every day of the weekend. Last week, every day. And we’ll stay at the table until we can … solve the remaining problems.
“In partnership with CTU, if we come together in good faith, I have every confidence that we will do something that obviously protects its members, but also gives families the option, if it is good for them, to be able to send their children back to face-to-face learning, ”she said.
CTU President Jesse Sharkey told reporters at night that negotiations are “going slowly because there are some difficult parts to this”.
The union is pushing for members who have clinically vulnerable relatives at home to receive accommodations for remote work and for teachers to be forced to return to classrooms only after receiving the vaccination. CTU is also calling for more employee and student tests and a public health metric that would determine when schools should reopen or close.
Biden has made addressing the pandemic – and reopening schools and revitalizing the economy – a key part of his 100-day agenda and 100 million vaccinations.
On Thursday, his first full day in office, Biden signed an executive order on the reopening of schools, stating that his policy is “to provide support to help create the conditions for safe and face-to-face learning as quickly as possible; ensure high quality instruction and the delivery of essential services frequently received by students and young children at school, higher education institutions, child care providers and Head Start programs; mitigate the learning loss caused by the pandemic; and address the educational disparities and inequities that the pandemic has created and exacerbated. “
The powerful national teachers’ unions, allied with the Democrats, are a crucial part of Biden’s base. Last Thursday, the day after the inauguration, Jill Biden held a virtual event with 11,000 teachers: Weingarten and the president of the National Education Association, Becky Pringle, were with the first lady at the White House.