By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | September 9, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update
“We’ll get back to you” isn’t good enough during a global pandemic, when people, especially in our hardest hit Black and Brown communities, are still falling ill, suffering and dying.
By Chris Geovanis | September 3, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, COVID-19, Lori Lightfoot
At the bargaining table yesterday, we learned the obvious consequences of Mayor Lightfoot’s unsafe conditions. We started school on Monday with a little over 230 students in quarantine. In the last three days, we’ve seen a 400 percent increase in those numbers,...
By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | September 1, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update, COVID-19, Lori Lightfoot, sick days
After two days of classes, one thing is clear: Mayor Lightfoot and CPS had no plan for safety for our schools. Major concerns are already flooding our inboxes, all over television, and in newspapers and online. With social distancing virtually impossible, students are...
By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | August 27, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update, COVID-19, Lori Lightfoot
Hello all. Frustrating doesn’t even begin to describe our bargaining session with CPS yesterday. Ignorant and offensive are more like it. Mayor Lightfoot’s CPS team turned a simple question about background checks for a potential COVID testing vendor into a...
By CTU President Jesse Sharkey | August 24, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update, COVID-19, Jesse Sharkey, Lori Lightfoot, MOA
The mayor has touted layered mitigations as successful for our schools. Those mitigations are from the MOU we fought for last spring — she has yet to agree to them for this fall. Those strategies worked at a time when only 25% of our families returned their children to schools last winter and spring. Yet today, we have 100% of our families returning. How does this make sense?
By Jesse Sharkey | August 18, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update, COVID-19, Jesse Sharkey
Though we are not at formal impasse, the pace of negotiations is frustratingly slow, and with the first day of school bearing down on all of us, the mayor’s CPS team is refusing to agree to a robust safety plan we can sign off on.
By Jesse Sharkey | August 17, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update, COVID-19, Jesse Sharkey
The mayor’s team continues to drag its feet on critical components of the layered mitigation strategies we need to keep our members, students and school communities safe and, at this point, we are looking at returning to school buildings without a full safety agreement.
By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | August 12, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update
The Delta surge has raised concerns from the district about attendance this fall, so it’s crucial that CPS begin bargaining in earnest over our proposals, and become partners in landing a safety agreement before the start of classes on August 30.
By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | August 10, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Bargaining Update
CPS proposes to offer testing to all adult teachers and staff but not to all students. Limited student testing would be triggered by the citywide transmission rate and, except for sports, only offered to unvaccinated students.
By Jesse Sharkey, CTU President | August 4, 2021 | News
File under: Bargaining, Collective Bargaining, Open bargaining
Merely surviving the COVID-19 pandemic is not enough. CPS needs to earn the trust and confidence of families across the city.
