Tuesday, Chicago public school teachers said hell no.
Chicago teachers voted to refuse in-person work and switch to remote learning until Covid cases substantially decline or the teachers’ union approves school safety protocols. The blowback was fast and furious. Mayor Lightfoot threated to withhold their pay and tried guilt-tripping the teachers (who risk their and their families’ health) by accusing them of harming children’s safety, education, and nutrition.
People responding to Lightfoot’s tweets say Lightfoot’s own daughter attends a private school that switched to distance learning after the holiday break.
But the bars are open!
And then there was this ripper from a Chicago Department of Public Health commissioner:
“When I think of a big city that is open right now, in what world would we close something essential like in-person education when we have seen negative effects, when our bars are open.”
If Covid is OK for drunks and partiers, then it’s OK for kids and teachers. More wisdom from the professional/managerial class working from home offices like millionaire hospital administrators have been doing for two years while their ERs turned into MASH units.
No plans but full steam ahead
At the national level, Joe Biden, state governors, and federal and state agencies pressured schools across the country to reopen.
And open they did—with missing, sick teachers, bus drivers, support staff, and substitutes. With massive testing shortages (after two years of Covid, the feds still can’t get free tests available everywhere). And with millions of kids in classrooms wearing useless cloth masks (after two years, the feds can’t provide free N95s). What could go wrong?
To counter the predictable omicron debacle while keeping workers on the job generating profit, Delta Airlines directed the CDC to reduce workers’ Covid-positive isolation time from 10 days to 5. (Flight attendants union president Sara Nelson sent a “strongly worded” letter to the CDC but with no threat of labor action.) The CDC said yes sir to Delta, and the nation’s schools districts jumped on board too.
In the face of massive testing shortages in every state, some districts are trying the CDC’s latest test-to-stay plan, which is supposed to keep schools open as kids get infected. Under the guidelines, exposed unvaccinated kids can remain in school if they “adhere to CDC quarantine guidance outside of the K-12 school setting and are tested in school.”
Tested with what? Schools don’t have a steady supply of tests or the staff to administer them. Test-to-stay is physically impossible in school districts with staff and resource constraints—that means pretty much all but the wealthiest ones.
Minneapolis public schools reopened with over 280 teachers out, but the school administration is determined to stay open. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, like the flight attendants, also didn’t call for labor action, although union president Greta Callahan described the school staffing situation:
“It’s a disaster. It’s utter chaos.”
From another part of the country, a teacher says:
“It feels like walking into a trap…”
Chicago Public Schools Testing Train Wreck
Chicago Public Schools tried to test all its students before reopening. One report says that 70% of the PCR tests distributed to CPS students came back invalid and another 18% were positive.
Fedex box overflowing with Chicago Public School student Covid tests, CBS News, Chicago, January 2, 2022
25,000 test kits couldn’t be processed within the required window because of Fedex shipping delays due to staff shortages and weather. Schools reopened anyway, and students were back in class with no tests—until the teachers weighed in. (What management genius picked a mail-in test strategy when winter weather and sick pilots pretty much ensure failure?)
Vax, vax, vax—the feds’ one-trick pony
Tuesday, while Chicago teachers voted, Biden gave another press briefing on Covid preparedness where he yet again hectored the public about vaccinations and boosters, hyped not-yet-available treatment pills, and cited the money given to states in the American Rescue Plan, which apparently solved all school districts’ problems of testing, staffing, and building ventilation. (Infuriating aside: One source says Merck is charging $700 for a per-patient pill regimen that costs $17.74 to produce. The federal government is buying 20 million treatment courses from Pfizer for $530 per course—no information on the actual cost to produce each one. Profiteering?)
And, as always, Biden blamed the unvaxxed for taking up hospital beds and causing death and destruction to everyone. After two years of Covid, the unvaxxed are dug in and not listening, which makes them the perfect scapegoat for every pandemic system failure and death.
Anything to avoid calling out profiteering, healthcare grifting, incompetence, hospital unpreparedness, and years of hospital closures, bed reductions, and short staffing. Anything to avoid mentioning that a pandemic has been predicted for decades. Or that both global and federal health agencies wrote detailed pandemic preparedness and response plans that Western governments ignored (too many to link). Or that the US profit-based healthcare system didn’t do a damn thing because pandemic preparation would have cut into profits.
The business class: Keep the economy open at all costs [to workers]
While politicians, media pundits, and the business class bloviate about kids’ education and mental health, the business press tells who’s really calling the shots and why. The business class needs parents in the workforce to keep profits flowing.
Bloomberg, Dec. 29, 2021.
