Continuing Crisis of Reopening Schools for Poor Students

Reopening of schools for the nation’s poor students of color remains a crisis in our nation’s urban areas. The overall claim from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) – “… that schools are generally safe for student attendance with the proper mitigation” – continues to be purveyed as sufficient to start in-person schooling on a broad scale.

The CDC recommendation, recognized as the gold standard for public health guidance, is the mantra of White political and corporate powerbrokers even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages from coast to coast. They assume that the proper protocols of building ventilation, small class sizes, social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, and access to disinfectants are widely available in all school settings.

But more informative field surveys reveal that, over time, the physical structures were allowed to decay as student populations of schools in many urban areas became poorer and more of color. Conversations with professional engineers contracted to rehab these schools confirm that the mitigation cavalierly suggested by the CDC cannot be done quickly or cheaply.

Thus, the ease of ventilation retrofitting that will make the schools safe for students and school staff is a hoax, or as the 45th U.S. President would say – “fake news.”

Teachers, counselors, nurses, administrators, and educational support personnel (paraprofessionals, bus drivers, custodians, building engineers, school secretaries, security guards, food service workers, etc.) are expected to fall in line behind the dictates of those with power as has been the case with essential workers such as those in the meatpacking industry where infections and deaths are skyrocketing.

In both instances, workers who refuse to report are threatened with wage sanctions, suspensions, and terminations. Teacher unions, in particular, get tagged as villains for advocating for the health and safety of their members and their students. In Chicago, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot was taking a hard line as she caters to interests of White parents and White corporate and political leaders who want the schools reopened for in-person education, yesterday.

More than half of African American and Latinx and other parents of color, whose children make up the overwhelming majority of the district’s students (except for those who have children with disabilities) are opting for remote instruction. This is also true in other large urban school districts, e.g., Milwaukee, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and a host of small- and medium-sized systems.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has drawn a line in the sand, refusing to roll over for Mayor Lightfoot, who has developed a pattern of lying to the constituencies of color who powered her to victory through a crowded primary field in her first run for political office in 2019. She promised to push for an elected school board, continue her crusade against police brutality, which is the basis of her rise to political prominence, and to be attentive to the needs of the poor.

After her election, she held on to her power to appoint the school board and the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and filled the positions with flunkies and cronies. She is assuming a “strong woman” persona much like that of her male predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, who ran roughshod over teachers and the broader community during his two terms in office until the recently deceased former CTU President, Karen Lewis, pinned his political ears to the wall in 2012.

At that time, the CTU was negotiating its contract with Mayor Emanuel, who has a serious “little man” complex and a reputation for being profane and hard charging while serving in the Clinton White House, Congress, and as President Obama’s first Chief of Staff.

In a tense meeting with Ms. Lewis, who was bargaining for more school social workers, nurses, smaller class sizes, a moratorium on school closures in Black communities, salary increases for her members, and the removal of the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Dr. Jean-Claude Brizard, who at Emanuel’s direction, was working overtime to privatize the public schools, Emanuel refused to negotiate and referred to her using the B…. word.

Subsequently, in September, weeks before the 2012 presidential election, Lewis led Chicago teachers’ on their first strike in a quarter century. Backed by students’ parents, the union set up classes in churches and other community facilities to continue instruction. After seven days, Emanuel capitulated on all demands.

Teacher unions from across the country and AFL-CIO affiliates from battleground states organized to send massive busloads of teachers and other union members to Chicago to stand in solidarity with the CTU. Then, President Obama was promoting a pro-charter school policy at the national level through his Race To The Top (RTTT) legislation.

Since teachers and other union members were key election volunteers in terms of door knocking, phone banks, political mailings, and literature drops in his campaign, Obama could not afford to have them unavailable during the last month of the race so he called Emanuel and asked him to settle the strike.

Like her predecessor, Mayor Lightfoot has revised her requirement for teachers’ return to in-person teaching demonstrating a willingness to compromise rather than to decree a mayor-centric approach. She is beginning to recognize that she can ill-afford to alienate the teacher union and its allies who are a major part of her political base.

Negotiations to revive in-person school attendance produced results that focus on the needs of teachers and students alike, including staggering student returns and speeding up and monitoring vaccinations and testing. Watching these and other conflicts over the reopening of schools throughout the nation, President Biden has also relaxed his 100 day deadline for in-person instruction.