CTU Bosses Need To Build A 'Better Relationship With The Truth'

Mark Konkol
Updated ·4 min read
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CHICAGO — By now, everybody knows the Chicago Teachers Union in-person learning boycott — also known as an “illegal strike” — was a bust.

Hardworking teachers lost four days pay in a dispute hyped by socialist union bosses plotting to take political advantage of the coronavirus crisis in the face of science, data and state law.

[COMMENTARY]

After CTU leadership accepted a deal to return to school buildings without meeting their key objectives — a district switch to remote learning and coronavirus metrics that would trigger such a shift — Mayor Lori Lightfoot downplayed an obvious victory over a political nemesis.

“No one wins when students are out," the mayor said.

CTU vice president Stacy Davis Gates, on the other hand, talked like a political candidate bashing an opponent in a late-Monday news conference.

Many news stories included the most incendiary of her comments targeting Lightfoot: "This mayor is unfit to lead this city, and she is on a one-woman kamikaze mission to destroy our public schools," she said.

But Davis Gates had harsh words for public school families, too.

“What parents don’t know is that without the school workers in the building, you don’t have anything,” she said, referring to the coronavirus “safety” pact in a preamble to comparing Lightfoot to a suicide bomber.

That’s not even close to the whole truth, of course. Public school officials have spent more than $100 million on coronavirus safety upgrades and had testing and mitigation plans in place to deal with coronavirus cases on a classroom-by-classroom and school-by-school basis.

Were there screw-ups, shortages and communication breakdowns? Of course.

The district flubbed an attempt to test 150,000 students returning from winter break. You’ve probably seen pictures of tests piled on sidewalks next to FedEx. A few schools had outbreaks in December. But 55 others, about 10 percent of 500 CPS-run schools, reported zero COVID-19 cases.

Those miscues warranted action.

But data and public health guidance show the districtwide in-person learning boycott that CTU leaders started hinting at in mid-December was an unnecessary and misguided response.

MORE ON PATCH: Chicago Teachers Walkout Following The Politics, Not The Science

It was the act of a taxpayer-funded employee union with a political agenda and a collection of campaign funds used to lobby Springfield and back candidates.

The longer the work action kept kids out of school, the clearer that became to parents, guardians and people with common sense navigating the realities of working through yet another coronavirus wave, too.

Davis Gates’ news conference monologue demanded a thank-you from CPS families.

“I’m going to speak directly to parents because I’m a parent. Thank your teachers. Thank your paraprofessionals. Because of them, they have more to go back into those school communities with,” she said.

“Beyond that, you have to ask the mayor to begin a better relationship, not just with the Chicago Teachers Union, but a better relationship with the truth. A better relationship with how you relate to her responsibility as the steward of this city. This should have never gotten this far.”

That's the one thing everybody should agree on. Even with a deal to return students to classrooms, CTU leaders struggled to admit that, rather than cooperate, they led teachers out on a de facto strike by another name.

On Monday night, Davis Gates nearly called the union’s “remote action” what it really was — a walkout. The word was on the tip of her tongue.

“We had to wal … hmm.,” she said, pausing. “We had to go on a remote action for face coverings in the middle of a pandemic. We had to go on a remote action to get more testing inside of our school communities in the middle of a pandemic. She fought us every step of the way, and she behaves as if it's a victory that we get to survive. Think about that for a minute.”

When you look back on the last week of labor unrest that blocked about 330,000 students from school buildings, Davis Gates' narrative doesn’t jibe with reality.

CPS officials offered up 200,000 N95 masks for teachers, and Lightfoot asked the union to continue to negotiate on Jan. 4 before CTU leaders pushed a vote to walk out on in-person learning without district permission.

If Davis Gates took her own advice, and built a better relationship with the truth, those N95 masks wouldn’t have cost work-a-day CTU members $2,000 (or more) in lost pay as part of an unnecessary pandemic political power play.

Think about that for a minute.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch