Chicago Public School's Pro-COVID Lockout Part 1

We talk to Lucy, a teacher and rank and file Chicago Teachers Union member about Chicago Public Schools' lockout against the teachers union and the union's struggle to protect kids from COVID by working remotely.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about things
falling apart, and today it's it's there, there's there's a
little bit and I'm getting put back together, but today
is mostly them falling apart. I'm your host, Christopher Wong.
With me, I have Lucy who is a teacher in
Chicago public schools and as part of the Teachers Union,
and today we're going to be talking about just the
absolute shit show that is being inflicted on teachers and

(00:30):
students in public schools. And Lucy, how how are you?
How are you doing? Um? You know, it's it's been
kind of weird, but all in all, I'm in good spirits.
I think my sisters and brothers and c to you
are in good spirits. So we're going to keep fighting
the good fight. Yeah. So, before before we fully start

(00:51):
to get into the teachers Union and Lord Lightfoot's fuckery,
I want to sort of get a bit of context
for people who don't live in Chicago or just don't
know much about the only politics because LORI, like you know,
if if you read sort of like media accounts of this,
like you, you, you you may be sort of misled
into into thinking that there's like even some semblance of

(01:13):
good faith going on here from Lord Lightfoot, and like
I just I just want to like do a great
like a Lord Lightfoot Greatest hits real for a second.
So Lightfoot like immediately after she got elected, like the
like the first thing she does is she she's she
literally she's like, Okay, there's too much crime on the subway.
We're gonna put swat teams on them. And so you know,
you just be on the red lighte and there's a
wat team and you know, because again this is what

(01:35):
happens when you put a swat team on the fucking subway.
They immediately shot a dude in the back for nothing,
you just literally no reason. They shot him in the back. Um.
So that that was like that was like like the
first like few weeks of Lightfoot. And then during the uprising,
she like she she turned the rich party of Chicago
and she's like a medieval castle like she like like

(01:56):
like raised all the drawbridges into the middle of the
city so that no one could get into central part
of the city. It was like awful. And then you
know then as as as we sort of like there
there's more and more sort of bad lightfoot stuff. Most recently,
so Chicago got a bunch of aid money from the
federal government and she spent two and one million dollars

(02:16):
of it paying the police, not the schools. Yeah, nope.
And CPD like these Again, I think I talked about
this before, but like when when the CIA was like
our initial torturing program failed, where do we go to
like find people who know how to torture? They brought
into Chicago Police Detective like and you know, and and

(02:37):
this is the the CPD, Like like like there's there's two
half a CPD. Right, there's there's like the torture CPD.
And then related to them but not necessarily identical is
the part of the CPD that's just a cartel. Like there,
there's there's a thing in in at the beginning of
the tens were like it turned out that like the
almost like the huge parts of the CPD were literally
just a cartel. They're running drugs. They were just like

(02:59):
doing shakedown for and and like one person total, like
you got arrested by the FBI for and everyone else
is just still there. It's great, it's a it's a
time so that this is this is who Lorrie Lightfoot is, um,
she sucks. Like everyone hates her like like her. The
people who should be her political allies hate her. Like
Chicago Chargo got like a police reform bill, and the
reason it was like a very mild one. But the

(03:20):
reason it happened was just that, like like the like
the Alderman passed it out of just pure spite because
of how much they don't like Lightfoot. So this is
this is the this has been My Christopher shouts that
Lord Lightfoot intruded this. But yeah, Needles is say, Lightfoot
not acting in good faith, just absolutely batman villain. Yeah,

(03:42):
it's incredible. No, actually that's not fair because a lot
of Batman villains are kind of right. Yeah, yeah, she she's, she's, she's.
She's like the nightmare refusion of like Batman and a
Batman villain, Like what if what if you like the
worst aspects of both and made them The Mayor's Yeah,

(04:04):
I've been kind of Um so I moved here almost
a year ago from a smaller city, and I did
not like the mayor in my city, and he really
was a big fan of like the Lory light Foot playbook.
But um, I guess people weren't as politically involved there,

(04:25):
and my first week working in Chicago Public schools UM,
somebody mentioned the mayor mentioned Laurie, and everybody kind of groaned,
and I was like, oh, you don't like her, you
don't like your mayor, And I mean I knew they didn't,
but I was just kind of testing the waters. And
this lady looks at me and goes, we hate her.

(04:48):
I swear, like, if you mentioned her name in this city,
people practically spit on the ground. It's like, it's amazing
because like you mentioned a demon. Yeah, it's like like
Chicago to cogunitoriously, we all hate our politicians. But like Lightfoot,
like like that there were you would find rama Manuel
supporters right, Like I don't know a single lord like

(05:11):
outside of the schools, within the schools, everyone I know.
It's like even even the even the cops don't like her,
Like she keeps she keeps funneling hundreds of billions of
dollars into them, and they still don't like her. It's like,
it's incredible. Do you unite the teachers union and the
police union one something that's the only thing that they've
ever agreed on is fuck Lory Lightfoot it's really incredible.

(05:35):
So life, whatoot's latest scheme? Um, yeah, do you want
to explain? I guess go back a little bit in
in into the history of sort of how how Chicago
and Chicago Public schools have kind of been responding to
COVID and then how they just did this stuff, and yeah,

(05:57):
I guess, like, yeah, give us a background, like what's
going on. Well, I'm going to preface with two things. One,
I am fairly new here, so I don't know all
of the details. And two, I really want to emphasize
that I'm just here talking for myself. I don't represent
CTU in any way. This is just I wanted to
talk about my feelings on things. So, UM, what I

(06:21):
do know is they were doing remote learning, and when
I arrived here in March, we were fully remote and UM.
Then in the fourth marketing period, so like around like
after spring break, UM, we moved to a hybrid model.
So we had parents and kids could like choose if

(06:45):
they wanted to stay online or if they wanted to
be in person. UM. I think like sixty percent or
more depending on what school UM chose the online option.
Like a lot of parents just were not comfortable putting
their kids in UM. I know that there's been like
a ton of talk about UM, you know, like the

(07:08):
most economically disadvantaged families need the schools open, But it's
kind of been the reverse. It's been the people who
have UM more means are more interested in opening, and
people who UH are less well off are a little
more resistant to it. I mean, that's not the same
across the board. I don't want to generalize too much,
but that's been what I've seen UM. I think, if

(07:31):
I had to guess it, there's a lot of history
behind that, Like UM. I mean, first of all, just
can your family afford an illness like this? And people
living in multi general generational households. And I think something
that CPS and our government in general really fail to
acknowledge is just how how much mistrust there is between

(07:56):
government institutions, public schools, and UM people of color and
for a good reason. You know, they have been repeatedly
just screwed over by these institutions. And I can absolutely
understand why they might not trust a school district that says, hey,
we'll keep your kids safe, because they weren't doing it
before the pandemic. UM. So we had I had like

(08:19):
seven kids in one of my classes and like ten
and another and then the rest of them were online.
And I'm like sitting at a computer teaching to the
kids online and to the kids in their room. All
the kids in the room are on their computers too,
so that we can like still be like one cohesive class. UM.
It was hard, and it was like kind of like
mentally fatiguing, like just going back and forth like that.

(08:42):
But you know, we made it work. I was kind
of I was really proud of us, Like we made
it work. We made it happen. We stayed in contact
with the families and the kids constantly UM and like
as things moved on and as numbers started going down,
more people started warning their kids back UM. And then
after spring they UM well, so like after springbreak they

(09:04):
let people come back. And then as we moved towards
on our more and more kids were coming back. Which
it was the school I was in was UM handling
it very well. Our principle was really committed to like
keeping us safe. So there was UM testing. Like once
a week somebody would come bay and be like, yo,
go get your COVID test. UM. I don't know if

(09:25):
kids were being tested, but I know teachers were. UM.
Then summer happens. I ended up in a different school
in the Austin neighborhood, which is um a lot less
advantage than the one that I had been working in,
and we open back up fully in person no remote

(09:45):
option like at all, like if UM. The only people
who could get remote were kids that were deemed medically fragile,
but they had to one submit like tons of paperwork
to prove that and to their siblings could not stay removed.
So at that point, it's like, why, what's the point?
And if you were a teacher who had a medically

(10:06):
fragile child in the schools, your kid could be remote,
but you couldn't, So then you know, how is that
going to work? UM? And I found in the school
where I was. You know, this is the issue with
Chicago and with you know, most of the country is
some schools have more resources than others. And the school

(10:26):
I didn't know where to get tested. Nobody like told me.
I think there was some kind of testing program, not sure,
definitely nothing for students. UM. I've since moved to a
high school that has more resources, but still I have
not been able to figure out where the heck to
get testing, which has been one of the biggest things
that uh CTU is asking for is we want um

(10:49):
opt out testing instead of opt in testing, so you
would automatically be registered to test, and if you didn't
want to test, then you would have to opt out,
which would end up with far more people getting tested
and make it a lot easier, because I mean a
big part of why people are in signing up is
it's really hard, like I don't know where to find

(11:09):
it that everyone's like it's in your emails somewhere. I've
searched my email. I don't know, Like we get like
emails a day, like yeah, and it's yeah, Like you know,
I think anyone anyone who remembers what being in a
school is like those they have, I mean, just the
absolute worst bureaucratic stuff, Like it's it's it's it's like honestly,
like it's like my experiences with like academia and like

(11:32):
even back in the high school, like their tech stuff
was like worse than corporate sex stuff, which is like
astounding mm hmm, it's it's ridiculous. Do you want to

(11:53):
jump into here into Lightfoot's like okay, Lightfoot has like
invented a new kind of COVID denialism, which she's like
she she's now turned into like a COVID test nihilist,
like it's incredible, like she she she has. She went
on this rant about how like COVID testing is a
quote quasi medical procedure and how you're gonna get lost,

(12:15):
like it's it's bizarre. So this this journalist asked her
about the testing because and I don't know which journalist
that was, but I want to thank them so much
because they have seen a lot of the reporters are
actually out there trying to keep c t US demands
in the conversation as opposed to this like whole oh
lazy teachers don't want to work like off, we do

(12:37):
want to be working. Um. But so I almost thought
that she had like mixed up with this person said,
and thought that they were talking about vaccines. But even so,
like stop it, stop, just stop doing that. But who
is having a reaction to a COVID test. It's like
literally a cute tip, like like you just sticking. They

(13:01):
don't even stick it that far up your nose anymore.
They just do a little in your nostril or like
a mouth swat. Yeah. Like actually like as someone who
had like like I genuinely did have a kind of
bad reaction because I jabbed it up really far and
like I was like sneezing a lot afterwards. But it's like, oh, no,
you sneezed a little bit, Like what what does it

(13:22):
even mean? Like not like I feel like people are
acting like this test is like this weird new technology
it is. It isn't Like right before the pandemic, like
a couple of months before I had the flu and
I had exactly the same kind of test. They stunned
a thing up my nose. It was hella uncomfortable. Um
it took like two seconds. They stuck it on a

(13:44):
little plastic thing. I'm a bob and said, oh, looks
like you have the flu. Yeah, it's I don't know
where this is coming from. I think it's just she
is not a very charismatic person, and she's not someone
who does well under pressure. And right now she's back

(14:06):
into a corner and she's acting out and it's been
kind of wild, like I've seen she's she's also throwing
other people around her under the pots. Yeah, like she
says something about Pedro Martinez, like she says, the teachers
aren't in charge of this. Padre Martinez is in charge.
She's the CEO. And I'm like, okay, so you're being
this is setting him up to take the blame on this.

(14:31):
Everything that you tweeted about like it was she was like, no, no,
it's actually the Mayor's and nothing. Sorry, it's it's actually
the Uh, it's the principles. The principles were like no, yeah,
So CPS is kind of interesting. Um, this can be
really good or really bad, depending on what's school you're in,
but the principles really have a lot of autonomy over

(14:56):
their school. Um. I've now been in two schools where
that's worked out great. My principal rocks. Um, if she
ever hears this, I hope she knows that I said that.
I think she's great. Um. Also, the principle I worked
at the beginning of school year was awful. Um. So,
but when it comes to like district wide protocols, like

(15:17):
that's district wide and so CPS apparently had a meeting
with principles where um, I heard some rumors about this too,
but I also saw that letter that they had posted. Um,
the principles are one really frustrated because CPS isn't communicating
stuff with them very effectively, and so parents will be

(15:37):
calling like do we have school tomorrow? And they don't know,
but CTU knows, and it's telling their members. So the
teachers all know the like more answers than the principles do,
which is obviously really embarrassing if you're supposed to be
in charge. Um. And then there they were told in
this meeting with CPS, school's gonna be closed on Friday. Okay,

(15:59):
school's closed on ready, Great, sounds good. And then Lightfoot
gets on the dang news and tells everybody that it
will be done on a school by school pap basis
at principles discretion, depending on if they have staff. So
now all of these principles who had already told their
students and families that, um, we're closing, look like they're

(16:21):
the ones who closed it as opposed. Like and that's
it is rare for me to feel bad for a
school principle, because that's that's my boss. You know, I
don't us, but I feel bad for them right now.
Oh my god, Like you're just trying to like make
sure that people have the information they need in a
timely manner, and this lady is up here making you

(16:43):
look like a monster. It's so unfair. Yeah, should we
talk about what's been happening up to the pastor of
winter break and then the stuff that's happening now, because

(17:04):
it's very grim and bad. Yeah. So a lot of
schools have been having COVID cases. Um, there's I'm not
really sure what's going on with cps IS data. It
kind of seems like they're not reporting it very faithfully
or accurately. Like if you look at their tracker, they'll
be cases and then suddenly they'll be gone. Um. We

(17:26):
never really get a hard number ever. Like will be
like if you have a student in your class who
has been quarantined and we all know what it is,
but they don't say it. They'll be like, um, you know, uh,
Johnny will be out for the next x amount of
time due to health reasons. Please let him join via
Google Meet And they never do. That's the other annoying

(17:49):
thing is like the students, I think because they are
either close contact or they're sick, um, you know, to them,
it's like a a break almost like they're not going
to log in randomly, Like it's it's just with I
think with kids, like once it stops being consistent and
it's like back and forth all the time, it becomes

(18:10):
very difficult for them to stay motivated because they're out
of their routine. Like I I sometimes hate it when
people say this, but it is kind of true. Kids
kind of thrive on routine. Um. So at this point
now I have like a third of my class at
any given moment will just not be there and it

(18:30):
will be different third of the class every you know,
it kind of like rolls through. So all of my
students are like different points in the curriculum. It's hard
to like know what to teach each day because I
don't know who needs what. It's hard to reach out
to the kids that are at home and make sure
that they get what they need because I'm so busy
trying to catch these kids up and move these kids

(18:52):
on and all that stuff, um, which I have seen
some research. I'll see if I can find it, um
after we're done. The like pointing out that like remote
learning isn't the worst thing that can happen. The worst
thing that can happen is just flipping back and forth
all the time and having huge numbers of kids absent
from in person learning. UM So we go on break

(19:17):
and obviously we have o macron like sweeping through the country,
and we all knew that they were going to be spikes,
Like we knew that in Chicago had what was if
Illinois had some like astronomically high number of new COVID
cases like breaking records all over the place. UM CPS
has had huge increases. Yesterday we had forty three four

(19:43):
cases in Illinois. It's that's a lot, like yeah, but yeah,
so overbreak like the last like, the Union had been
trying has been trying forever to get CPS to come
in and agree to UM a few things. So one

(20:05):
in February we had a um an agreement that schools
would flip to remote if they reached a certain threshold.
That agreement has expired and CPS has refused to come
to the bargaining table and negotiate a new one. They're
just like, no, we don't need it. We also have
been trying to get them to do the opt out
testing and a like surveillance testing programing in school so

(20:28):
we can kind of just have little bits of data
to understand like where are these cases. CPS doesn't want
to do this. They don't want a threshold for flipping
to remote because then they would have to flip to remote,
and they don't want the surveillance testing because then they
would have to flip to remote, and they just don't
want to flip to remote. Um. So finally over break,

(20:49):
you know, it kind of came to a head, like
they were still refusing to negotiate, like, um, one of
the union delegates in my building said something about, um,
they've been meeting by to these meetings, like you know,
like twice a week. They try to get these meetings
to happen, and the mayor never comes and the CEO
never comes, like they will either send lawyers or they

(21:09):
don't show up. And it's like, dude sounded so tired
into moralize when he said that, I felt bad for him. Um,
but yeah, So we voted that we were going to
go in on Monday and Tuesday meet with our safety committees,
get a feel for what's going on in school, and
then we are going to have a vote on Tuesday

(21:34):
night as to whether or not we will do a
remote work action on Wednesday. And I know a lot
of people have been like trying to make it sound
like this was very sudden, but it absolutely wasn't. Like
we had a vote about whether or not we were
interested in doing this, and then we had a vote
on whether we're still interested on having a vote, and
then we had the vote, and the delicates voted on

(21:55):
if they wanted to hold an official like should we
do an act and vote? We did. Um, it was
like seventy voted yes. Um. There were some complaints that
some people didn't get their ballots, but they did wait
till they had enough yes votes to preach that to
third majority that we needed. So, you know, c TU

(22:17):
has every step of the way really been making sure, um,
this is actually what we want. This isn't just like
unilateral things like Lorie keeps throwing that work unilateral around.
It wasn't unilateral. It was like, at least two there's
the teachers in this district said I don't feel safe
at school. There's not enough staff in the building right

(22:38):
now to even teach half my kids. A third of
my kids are out. This isn't working. So yeah, so
we voted that we're going to stay home and work
remotely and then we got locked out. Yeah, which again
like and I want to almost refocus on this for
a second because even a lot of people who are
sympathetic to to to the re unions on Twitter, you

(23:00):
see this a lot, they'll they'll be like the CTU
went on strike. It's like, no, they didn't like teachers
and teachers are not on strike. The teachers are attempting
to work from home and school district will not let them. Yeah,
it's it's every morning I get up at six thirty,
I make my coffee, and I sit down and I
try to log in, and I know I won't be
able to, but I do it anyway. Um. Thankfully, I

(23:23):
had thought to download as much of my materials as
I could prior to this, only my personal device, so
I am still able to create lesson lands, been making
some very cool social study slides. I'm I'm so sure
that my students are gonna love lots of cool assignments
for them to do. To um. But yeah, like, this

(23:46):
is a lockout. And Glory keeps starting this word like
illegal work stoppage around. It's not a work stoppage. We
are actively working. She has illegally. It is in our contract.
That she can't lock us out, and she did so.
So at everyone's doing each other and saying illegal. But
I know which side is right? Yeah, yeah, you know.

(24:07):
I I am not an en normal perspector of the law,
but like this is this is both. This is one
of the rare occasions where the thing that is happening
is both illegal and also just wrong. The reporting on
this just has not gotten the actual fundamental thing which
is happening here, which is a lockout. And it's enormously

(24:27):
frustrating a lot of ways because you know, and i'd
say this, okay, so like local media reporting has been
a lot better, but any like any national coverage has
just I've seen it's just been like, yeah, it's gonna
be it. For part one of this interview, come back
tomorrow for part two, when we will talk more about
what's actually going on inside the schools and you know,
generally do the media's job for them, because lord knows

(24:49):
they're not actually getting it right. You can find us
that happened here pod on Twitter and Instagram as usual,
or you cannot find us. In fact, I encourage you
not to find us, because good Lord, the internet is bad. Goodbye.
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(25:10):
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