Could CPS Mask Mandate Fight Signal Demise Of CTU Leadership?

CHICAGO — All around the country, politicians, public health officials in blue and red states, and the federal government have moved to make schools mask-optional in places where coronavirus cases steadily decline.

In what appears to be an act of desperation, the Chicago Teachers Union’s lame-duck president, Jesse Sharkey, has launched a fight to maintain mask mandates in city schools as rank-and-file union members divide themselves in factions aimed at taking over union leadership in June.

In a grievance filed with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board, Sharkey asserts pseudoscience that neither jibes with public health recommendations nor considers current coronavirus metrics that show the risk of community spread is low — in an attempt to prevent Chicago Public Schools officials from allowing parents to decide if their kids should wear masks in classrooms starting Monday.

“There is considerable evidence that the Covid virus spreads easily in school settings, especially if the individuals in those settings are not masked,” the union’s grievance states, without offering a source to back up the claim that plenty of studies refute, including a trio of findings highlighted by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy.

CTU leaders, however, claim in their labor grievance that “the presence of unvaccinated CPS students without masks poses a serious health and safety risk to CPS employees, who must daily interact and are close contacts with CPS students. The presence of unmasked CPS employees also poses a serious health risk to other CPS employees and students.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagrees. The agency recommends universal masking in public settings, including schools, “only in areas at high risk of serious illness or strained health-care resources.”

Chicago is not one of those areas, according to the CDC.

That apparently doesn’t matter to Sharkey and union vice president Stacy Davis Gates, who is running to replace him as CTU boss.

For them, securing the mask mandate was a symbol of their might.

They were the masterminds behind the January walkout, a work action that pilfered more than $33 million from the paychecks of about 21,500 CTU members — about $1,672.65 each — who participated in what City Hall called an "illegal strike."

And even when coronavirus omicron variant cases remained at high rates back then, some CTU members complained that the work stoppage that resulted in a safety pact with CPS wasn’t worth the lost pay.

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Since the January walkout, the CTU has become a union divided.

Two caucuses have gone public with plans to challenge Davis Gates and CORE — Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators — in the June elections.

That’s a sign that plenty of CTU members believe Sharkey and Davis Gates overplayed their hand by going all-in on the January in-person learning walkout.

They celebrated when CPS kept its mask mandate in place despite a downstate court ruling that eliminated the statewide mask mandate at schools, as if that move was proof of a union victory.

And now — in the face of a looming lawsuit to force CPS to end the mask mandate amid the low risk of COVID-19 community spread in Chicago — the school district’s decision to drop the mask mandate based on coronavirus metrics and without negotiating changes to the CTU’s safety pact has further exposed weakness in the union’s leadership.

Sharkey and his leadership team are battling to convince members that their strategy to skip last-minute negotiations in favor of the costly and ill-advised in-person learning walkout resulted in a mask mandate that’s still relevant during the current state of the coronavirus pandemic.

CPS students, teachers and staff aren’t required to wear masks in bars, restaurants and grocery stores.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that the mask mandate they negotiated for classrooms is the key to keeping people safe because the CTU negotiated a mask mandate during a spike in cases that is now behind us.

Everyone should realize by now that the coronavirus crisis ebbs and flows.

While some people remain wary about the virus's return, few people can deny that, at least in Chicago, coronavirus cases have declined, and there's a low risk for community spread.

Sometimes, visceral fear prevents people from accepting that reality.

For CTU leadership — no matter how they try to mask it — that doesn't seem to be the case.

Fear of losing political power seems to stand in the way.

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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