It Could Happen Here - Chicago Public School's Pro-COVID Lockout Part 1

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

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.Chicago teachers currently aren't getting paid, you can support them individually or collectively here: https://twitter.com/Itmechr3/status/1480711797736943617?s=20 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And today it's, there's a little bit of them getting put back together, but today's mostly them falling apart and today it's it's there there's there's a little bit of them getting put back together but today's mostly them falling apart um i'm your host christopher wong with me i have lucy who is a teacher in chicago public schools and is 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 students in chicago public schools And Lucy, how are you doing? You know, it's been kind of weird, but all in all, I'm in good spirits. I think my sisters and brothers in CTU are in good spirits. So we're going to keep fighting the good fight. Hell yeah. So before we fully start to get into the teachers union and Lori 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 only politics.

Because if you read sort of like media accounts of this, like you may be sort of misled into thinking that there's like even some semblance of good faith going on here from Lori Lightfoot, and, like, I just want to, like, do a great, like, a Lori Lightfoot greatest hits reel for a second. So, Lightfoot, like, immediately after she got elected, like, the first thing she does is she starts, 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 line, and there's a SWAT team. And, you know, because again, this is what happens when you put a SWAT team on the fucking subway. They immediately shot a dude in the back for nothing. There's literally no reason they shot him in the back.

So that was like, that was like, like the first like few weeks of Lightfoot. And then during the uprising, she like, she turned the rich part of Chicago into like a medieval castle. she like she she turned the rich part of chicago into like a medieval castle like she like like raised all the drawbridges into the middle of the city so that no one could get into the central part of the city it was like it was awful and then you know then as as we sort of like there's more and more sort of bad light foot stuff uh most recently so chicago got uh a bunch of aid money from the federal government and she spent $281 million of it paying the police. Not the schools. Yeah, nope.

And CPD, like, these, again, I think I've talked about this before, but, like, 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 in a chicago police detective like and you know and this is the cpt like like there's there's two halves of cpd right there's there's like the torture cpd and then related to them but not necessarily identical is the part of the cp that's just a cartel like there was there was a thing in in uh at the beginning of the the 2010s were like it turned out that like the almost like the the huge parts of the cpd were like it turned out that like the almost like the the huge parts of the cpd were literally just a cartel they were running drugs they were just like doing shakedowns for and and like one person total like got arrested by the fbi for it and

everyone else is just still there it's great it's a it's a time so this is this is who laurie lightfoot is um she sucks like everyone hates her like her the people who should be her political allies hate her like chicago chicago got like a police reform bill and the reason it was like a very mild one but the 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 my christopher shouts at lauren lightfoot intro to this but yeah needless to say lightfoot not acting in good faith just absolutely all man villain yeah it's incredible no actually that's not fair because a lot of batman villains are kind of right

yeah yeah she's she's she's like the nightmare fusion of like batman and a batman villain like what if what if like the worst aspects of both and then made them the mayor it's it's a yeah i i've been kind of um so i i moved here uh almost a year ago from a smaller city and I did not like the mayor in my city and he he really was a big fan of like the Lori Lightfoot playbook but um I guess people weren't as politically involved there and my first week working in Chicago public schools um somebody mentioned the mayor mentioned lori and everybody kind of groaned and i 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 ahead this lady looks at me and goes we hate her i swear like if you mention her name yeah in this city people practically spit on the ground it's like it's amazing because

again like you mentioned a demon yeah it's like like chicago to talk notoriously we all hate our politicians but like lightfoot like like there were you would find rama manual supporters right like i don't know a single lawyer like outside of the schools within the schools everyone i know yeah it's like even even the cop even the cops don't like her like she just keeps she keeps funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into them and they still don't like her it's like it's incredible how do you unite the teachers union and the police union on something that's the only thing that they've ever agreed on is fuck laurie lightfoot it's it's really incredible so let laurie lightfoot'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 covet and then how they just did this stuff. And yeah, I guess like, yeah, give us some background, like what's going on right now. 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 what I do know is they were doing remote learning. And when I arrived here in March, we were fully remote. And then in the fourth marking period, so like around, like on what school, chose the online option. Like a lot of parents just were not comfortable putting their kids in. I know that there's been like a ton of talk about, you know, like the most economically disadvantaged families need the schools open. But it's kind of been the reverse. It's been the people who have more means are more interested in opening and people who 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. I think if I had to guess it, there's a lot of history behind that. Like, I mean mean first of all just can your family afford an illness like this and people living in multi-generational 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 government institutions public schools yeah and um people of color i mean for 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 yep um so we had uh i had like seven kids in one of my classes and like 10 in 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 the room all the kids in the room are on their computers too so that we can like still be like one cohesive class. It was hard and it was like kind of like mentally fatiguing, like just going back and forth like that. 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. And like as things moved on and as numbers started started going down more people started warning their kids back um and then after spring break they um well so like after spring break they let people come back and then as we moved towards summer more and more kids were coming back which it was the school i was in was um it very well. Our principal was really committed to like keeping us safe. So there was testing like once a week, somebody would come by and be like, yo, go get your COVID test. I don't know if kids were being tested, but I know teachers were.

Then summer happens. I ended up in a different school in the austin neighborhood which is a lot less advantage than the one that i had been working in and we opened back up fully in person no remote option like at all like yikes 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 two their siblings could not stay remote so at that point it's like why what's the point yeah and if you were a teacher who had a medically fragile child in the schools your kid could be remote but you couldn't so then you know how is that going to work yeah um

so then you know how is that going to work yeah 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 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. 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 CTU is asking for is we want 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 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 aren't signing up is it's

really hard like i don't know where to find it everyone's like it's in your email somewhere i've searched my email i don't know Like we get like 800 emails a day. 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, like my, my experiences with like academia and like back in like high school, like their tech stuff was like worse than corporate tech stuff, which is like astounding.

It's ridiculous. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast do you want to jump into here into lightfoot's like okay lightfoot has like invented a new kind of covid denialism which is like like she she's now turned into like a covid test denialist like she's weird it's incredible like she she actually went on this rant about how like covid testing is a quote quasi medical procedure and how you're gonna get lost like it's it's bizarre

like so this this journalist asked her about the testing because it's and i i don't know which journalist that was but i wanted to thank them so much because they i've seen a lot of the reporters are actually out there trying to keep ctu's demands in the conversation as opposed to this like whole oh lazy teachers don't want to work. Like, fuck off. We do want to be working. But so I almost thought that she had like mixed up what 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 is literally a q-tip like like you just stick it they don't even stick it that far up your nose anymore they just do the little in your nostril or like a mouth swab yeah like and i was just like i as someone who had like i like i genuinely did have a kind of bad reaction because the guy 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 does it even mean? Like, how 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 months before i had the flu and i had exactly the same kind of test they stuck in a thing up my nose it was hella uncomfortable um it took like two seconds they stuck it on a little plastic thing on my bob and said oh looks like you have the flu yeah it's i don't know where this is coming from i 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 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 bus yeah like she says something about pedro martinez like she says the teachers aren't in charge of this pedro 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 i saw i saw another thing that you tweeted about like it was uh she was like no, it's actually the mayors. And not the mayors, sorry.

It's actually the, it's the principals who are responsible for this. The principals were like, no. Yeah. CPS is kind of interesting. This can be really good or really bad depending on what school you're in. But the principals really have a lot of autonomy over their school. I've now been in two schools where that's worked out great. My principal rocks.

If she ever hears this, I hope she knows that I said that. I think she's great. Also, the principal I worked at the beginning of the school year was awful. So, but when it comes to like district wide protocols, like that's district wide. And so CPS apparently had a meeting with principals where I heard some rumors about this, too. But I also saw that letter that they had posted. The principals are, one, really frustrated because CPS isn't communicating stuff with them very effectively. And so parents will be calling like, do we have school tomorrow? And they don't know, but CTU knows and is telling

their members. So the teachers all know the like more answers than the principals do, which is obviously really embarrassing if you're supposed to be in charge. And then they were told in this meeting with CPS, school's going to be closed on Friday. Okay, school's closed on Friday. Great. Sounds good. And then Lightfoot gets on the dang news and tells everybody that it will be done on a school-by-school basis at principal's discretion, depending on if they have staff. So now all of these principals who had already told their students and families that um were closing look like they're the ones who closed it as opposed like and that's i it is rare for me to feel bad for a school principal because that's my boss you know i don't like my boss um 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 look like a monster it's so unfair welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get your podcast. Yeah, should we talk about what's been happening in the run up to the past sort of winter break and then the stuff that's happening now because it's very grim and bad. Yeah, so a lot of schools have been having COVID cases. I'm not really sure what's going on with CPS's data. It kind of seems like they're not reporting it very faithfully or accurately. Like if you look at their tracker, there'll be cases and then suddenly they'll be gone. We never really get a hard number ever. Like we'll 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 thing is like the students i think because they are either close contact or they're sick, you know, to them, it's like a break almost. Like they're not going to log in randomly. Like 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 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. So at this point now I have like a third of my class at any given moment will just not be there and it will be a different third of the class every, you know, it kind of like rolls through. So all of my students are at 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 on and all that stuff? Which I have seen some research. I'll see if I can find it after we're done. That like pointed 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. numbers of kids absent from in-person learning. So we go on break and obviously we have Omicron like sweeping through the country and we all knew that there were going to be spikes. Like we knew that and Chicago had what was, Illinois had some like astronomically high number of new COVID cases, like breaking records all over the place. CPS has had huge increases. Yesterday we had 43,984 cases in Illinois.

Wow. Like it's. That's a lot. Yeah. Like this is. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

So over break, like the last, like the, the union had been trying has been trying forever to get CPS to come in and agree to a few things. So one in February, we had a 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 surveillance testing

program in school so we can just have little bits of data to understand where are these cases. CPS doesn't want to do this. They don't want a threshold for flipping a 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. Yeah. So finally over break,

you know, it kind of came to a head, like they were still refusing to negotiate. Like one of the union delegates in my building said something about um they've been meeting they go to these meetings like you know they're like twice a week they try to get these meetings to happen and the mayor never comes and the ceo never comes like they they will either send lawyers or they don't show up and it's like jude sounded so tired and demoralized when he said that. I felt bad for him.

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 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 were still interested on having a vote. And then we had the vote and the delegates voted on if they wanted to hold an official, like, should we do an action vote? We did. It was like 70% voted yes.

There were some complaints that some people didn't get their ballots, but they did wait till they had enough yes votes to reach that two-third majority that we needed. they had enough yes votes to reach that two-third majority that we needed. So, you know, CTU has every step of the way really been making sure this is actually what we want. This isn't just like unilateral things like Lori keeps throwing that word unilateral around. It wasn't unilateral. It was like at least two-thirds of the teachers in this district said, I don't feel safe at school. There's not enough staff in the building right 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. got locked out yeah which again like i want to i want to focus on this for a second because like even a lot of people who are sympathetic to to to the teachers unions on twitter you see this a lot they'll be like the the ctu went on a strike it's like no they didn't like it's not teachers and teachers are not on strike the teachers are attempting to work from home and the school

district will not let them yeah it's it's every morning I get up at 630. 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. Thankfully, I had thought to download as much of my materials as I could prior to this onto my personal device. So I am still able to like create lesson plans i've been making some very cool social study slides i'm so sure that my students are gonna love lots of cool assignments for them to do too um but yeah like this is a lockout and laurie keeps throwing 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 yeah so yeah everyone's suing each other and saying

illegal but i know which side is right yeah yeah you know like i i am not an enormous respecter 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 frustrating in 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've seen has just been like, you know. That's going to be it for part one of this interview. Come back tomorrow for part two where we will talk more

about what's actually going on inside the schools and generally do the media's job for them because Lord knows they're not actually getting it right. You can find us on Happened Here pod on Twitter and Instagram as usual, or you can not find us. In fact, I encourage you not to find us because good lord, the internet is bad. Goodbye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Tales from the Shadow Join me, Danny Trails and step into the flames of Rife An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts