With No School in Sight, Chicago Families Grit Their Teeth
The New York Times
While city officials clash with the teachers’ union over how to return to classrooms amid Omicron, families around Chicago reflect on the pandemic’s effects on their children.
Most public schools in Chicago were closed for a third day on Friday, with no resolution in sight to a standoff between the teachers’ union in the nation’s third-largest school district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.
Around the country, school systems are wrestling with how to go back to class amid the highly contagious Omicron variant. Most have forged ahead with in-person classes, while some have pivoted to remote instruction. But nowhere has the situation been more rancorous than in Chicago, where school for hundreds of thousands of children resumed on Monday but then stopped abruptly by Wednesday, as teachers called for more virus precautions and testing while city officials said the school year should proceed in person.
Families, racing to find child care, were also wrestling with all the uncertainties of what might be ahead. Would school go back in session — in person or remote — soon? Would this last into next week? How might such a tense fight between the Chicago Teachers Union and city officials reach a resolution?
