A Chicago Teachers’ Union is having a public freak-out on Twitter over mass quarantines in the Chicago Public School system. These quarantines do not come from an overwhelming number of COVID cases, but because of strict health measures. Just two positive tests caused over 400 students to be quarantined in one school. The teachers’ union, however, is making it sound like students and teachers are dropping like flies because of the coronavirus.
“We know we’ve been saying this since 2010, but CPS really is a mess right now. Educators hospitalized, double digit [sic] classrooms in individual schools quarantined. Parents and teachers are near their breaking point, and we haven’t even made it through week two,” they wrote in a multi-part tweet on Wednesday.
It isn’t surprising to see the teachers’ union fraudulently inducing panic. This is what they do. It is the teachers’ unions across this nation that have been responsible for delaying school openings for over a year. Now that the people have said “enough” and school is in session, they’re looking for a way to get out of the classrooms so they can “work” from home.
Recall that a Chicago teachers’ union boss, who advocated for school closures in the name of “safety,” was busted vacationing at a tropical resort in Puerto Rico without a mask on. These people are liars. What they really want is to be paid while they do little to no work, relying on parents to do the majority of teaching while they post assignments to Google Classroom and get even more time off than they have now. Apparently, three months off during the year isn’t enough for some public school teachers.
We know we’ve been saying this since 2010, but CPS really is a mess right now. Educators hospitalized, double digit classrooms in individual schools quarantined. Parents and teachers are near their breaking point, and we haven’t even made it through week two.
— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) September 9, 2021
Two cases at the Roscoe Village high school have led to a staggering 408 identified as close contacts. All of them are now in quarantine. The increase in the number of known infections at CPS comes as the district updated its dashboard for COVID metrics on Wednesday evening. That dashboard now shows there are currently at least 160 confirmed cases district-wide, including 89 students and 71 staff, with nearly 3,000 people in isolation as a result.
In a city with over 340,000 students, 160 cases of COVID is pretty low and should be expected. Quarantining 3,000 students is overkill. Everything about these COVID regulations is overkill. Children and teens are the least affected by COVID, with very low death rates. Since COVID is here to stay, like any other respiratory virus that makes its way around every year, we have to learn to live with it and not send everyone home in a panic every time one person gets sick. It’s absurd. The way to solve this is to back off the quarantine measures that are screwing up the school year. Four hundred kids cannot get sent home every time two kids get COVID. It’s as if the measures in place are purposefully interfering with childrens’ educations.
Meanwhile, the teachers’ unions that are supposed to be advocating for education are advocating to stop in-person schooling and continue the horrific online experiment that failed so monstrously in 2020. Schools report that over 90% of students had learning losses during that time. It’s inexcusable to go back to a system where children are being harmed. COVID poses far less risk to students than ignorance does. All available data shows that kids recover from COVID with little to no side effects. All available data also shows that children suffer their entire lives from ignorance and poor education, which leads to poverty, drug use, and crime. But don’t expect the teachers’ unions to listen to data and science. They’re too busy ginning up political controversy and blaming Mayor Lori Lightfoot so they can get a better deal for their lazy and radical teachers (we’ve all seen the videos and experienced “Zoom learning,” which is a total crock. Do better, folks.)
Lying in a pandemic has mortal consequences.
— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) September 9, 2021
It’s time that lawmakers and parents stood up to these unions and told them to either go to work and quit complaining or learn to code. If teaching has become too “dangerous” for some teachers because they are scared of getting sick, then they need to look into a new career that they can do from home—one where they have no impact on our kids’ educations. Our children have suffered enough. And as James O’Keefe recently proved, a crowd of angry parents can overcome a teachers’ union whenever they put their minds to it.
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