CTU Covid Politics? Raise Teachers Pay Or Pay Piper?

Do the math if not science: CDC now recommends elementary schools stay open, despite Covid’s spreading, yet Chicago Public Schools were closed due to balking teachers’ union, despite receiving a projected $2.8B in federal Covid funding...while a child health crisis rages.

The Chicago Tribune had noted last summer that the state’s GOP accused the state’s Democrats of “commandeering billions in federal relief for their own political purposes. Well, maybe it was political “pork” as charged or maybe money well spent on reopening the schools safely. Whatever. Fast forward to last week as Fox & other MSM reported on the class room shut down, federal funding or no. Apparently Uncle Sam’s largess wasn’t enough to satisfy the teachers. According to the Illinois Board of Education, Chicago Public Schools were to get $2.79B in federal coronavirus funding from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. CPS says it has spent up to $56M on Covid safety measures and additional sums on “education materials, transportation, meals for students and more,” but that doesn’t likely add up to $2.79B. (In Chicago, money does tend to mysteriously disappear form government agencies as fast as evidence from the police warehouse in a mafia hit prosecution.)

Meanwhile, the "old school" Chicago Teachers Union, always worried about getting its slice of the federal largess pie, voted to switch to remote learning because of “increased coronavirus cases in the area” and assured they go back to in-person learning when either coronavirus cases “substantially subside” or the city signs an agreement on “conditions of return” (aka another pay raise)?

Davd Soul