Adding to the growing list of states and school districts around the US and world that are smart and compassionate enough to get their kids back in school - if they aren't already there - is the Chicago Public Schools system.

Chicago Public Schools will reopen in January even if only a small fraction of students opt to return to classrooms, schools CEO Janice Jackson said late last week, and she warned that teachers without preexisting conditions who simply “don’t show up” to school buildings will be fired.

What’s more, schools officials are so convinced that reopening schools is safe, they’re now working on a plan to bring back at least some high schools during the second semester, Jackson said in an interview with the Sun-Times. The district had expected to keep older students home while elementary schools return Feb. 1 and special education programs come back next month.

“We will educate any student who wants an in-person option. There is no threshold that we have to meet,” Jackson said, adding: “If 15% of the kids ... decide that they’re gonna return at any given school, we will educate that 15% in person.

...

Teachers “don’t have a choice of opting in or out,” Jackson said, unless they submit a formal request for medical leave and are approved. Fear of contracting the coronavirus and safety concerns raised by the Chicago Teachers Union are not a legitimate excuse, she said.

“If they don’t show up to work, it will be handled the same way it’s handled in any other situation where an employee fails to come to work,” Jackson said.

Note two important things from this announcement:

1. They value the kids, and will do whatever they have to in order to get the kids back in the classroom.
2. Instead of bowing to the teachers union (as Kate Brown does continually), they are telling them that they have to be in the classroom, or risk being fired.

Of course, the teacher's union is complaining, but the district told them to deal with it.

She said the teachers union should embrace a return to the classroom, instead of pointing to a pair of surveys of parents it conducted that found most didn’t want to send their kids back.

The CTU should be “locking arms with us to call attention to this educational crisis,” she said.

Teachers who do show up to work will be required to do double duty. If a quarter of the class opts for in-person learning and the remaining 75% stays home, they’ll be asked to teach both groups simultaneously.

Jackson acknowledged there will be a “learning curve and heavy learning demands” on teachers asked to juggle both. That’s why CPS opted to give “adequate prep time” by announcing the slow reopening plan two months before it starts.

The story also notes that "distance learning" is not working, especially forthe most vulnerable students.

Like Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Jackson portrayed that decision — and the broader plan to return elementary and middle-school student in February — as a matter of racial equity.

She noted that remote learning simply doesn’t work for the youngest and most vulnerable students. Same goes for African American students who are “failing classes at a higher rate than their peers” with what she called “huge disparities” in remote learning participation.

“When we see data that is glaring — where a particular group that has been marginalized, under-supported and under-educated for decades in this country — why would we allow that to happen in a pandemic?” Jackson said.

Considering how much of a disaster Chicago has been for years (and the entire state of Illinois, too), it is very sad = and very telling - that Chicago cares about their kids than Kate Brown, Patrick Allen and Dean Sidelinger from the Oregon Health Authority, and Colt Gill from the Oregon Department of education.