Mayor Lori Lightfoot hasn’t been doing much smiling lately. But after an absolutely miserable year or so that has raised doubts about her performance in the business community and some others, that coy little grin of her is back on her face—and with cause.
I’m talking about the agreement on a plan to begin returning kids to Chicago Public Schools classrooms. It’s good for Lightfoot. It’s good for tens of thousands of kids, many of them children of color, who just don’t learn as well remotely. And it’s good for Chicago, which can let out its collective breath that we’ve avoided another damaging teachers strike.
Congratulations, mayor.
The agreement took too long to hatch, in my opinion, and it will take too long to implement, with not even a date yet as to when high schoolers will be back in the classroom. In-person education for the most vulnerable children, kids with special needs, was tragically suspended for a couple of weeks while the deal was hammered out with the Chicago Teachers Union.
Also, the city and CPS clearly gave on some things, compromised. You have to ask if that couldn’t have occurred a while ago.
But on balance, I score this as a win for Lightfoot, because she took her time, (mostly) held her temper and gave the union time to realize that hitting the picket line in the middle of an Arctic blast, in a city where thousands and thousands of parents are giving up on CPS and moving out, was not a terribly swift idea.
Now, of course, CTU isn’t having any of this.
“This plan is not what any of us deserve,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey thundered in a letter to members. “This agreement represents where we should have started months ago, not where this has landed. That is a stain on the record of this administration.”
But that tells me Lightfoot did her job. And that was to balance the needs of teachers scared of getting COVID with the needs of families worried that their youngsters were losing irreplaceable time. To say what I’ve said before, what’s good for CTU and what’s good for Chicago are not synonymous, much as a labor union whose legal duty is to take care of its members tries to peddle that line.
Other school challenges await the mayor.
For one, she’s got to somehow persuade Gov. J.B. Pritzker to veto that pending bill allowing the CTU to strike over just about anything, like COVID-19 policies. That ship already may have sailed with the very pro-labor governor, but she has to try, and some of us will be watching to see what the governor does.
The bigger battle will be the union’s almost certain effort in the spring legislative session to create a huge, all-elected Board of Education. Passage would allow the union to try to control both halves of the bargaining table and risk repeating the experience in Los Angeles, where board elections have turned into expensive battles of special interests. It could decimate Chicago’s already stressed tax base.
Hopefully the mayor has learned some things from the reopening dispute. She’s going to need all the help she can get.
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February 11, 2021 at 02:55AM
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Lightfoot scores much-needed win on school reopening deal - Crain's Chicago Business
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