CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Chicago Public Schools are planning to hire 2,000 employees to help out when students return to classrooms, and the Chicago Teachers Union is expressing criticism.
The new employees, according to the job listing, would have a number of duties, including supervising “students who are learning in person if [the] classroom teacher is teaching remotely.”
The Sun Times reported this is a preemptive effort, taking into account what’s expected to be a massive number teacher requests to stay home because of health concerns.
“Staffing is a concern, I don’t want to pretend like it’s not,” CPS human resources chief Matt Lyons said in an interview with the Sun-Times. “But I’m confident about where we are right now and that we’ll be able to provide a good learning experience for those who come in person.”
Some principals have reported between one quarter and one half of their employees are requesting they not be back in classrooms.
Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said the job posting was the first the union heard teachers might teach remotely to students in a classroom, a proposition she called “slightly less terrible than forcing teachers to engage in synchronous learning from unsafe buildings.”
However, she said, “hiring people into a position that barely pays minimum wage, with zero health care benefits in the middle of a pandemic, seems particularly cynical.”
Related
Half of the new jobs will be so-called “cadre substitute” teachers, and will become members of the Chicago Teachers Union, who are licensed educators and will work in schools to assist in classrooms where potentially thousands of the district’s 22,000 teachers may be taking medical leave or needing other accommodations, the Sun-Times reported. Those positions are temporary, but receive benefits.
The other 1,000 new positions will be part-time, non-union workers who will make $15 per hour, won’t be given healthcare, and will have a variety of responsibilities at schools that, along with student supervision, could include monitoring social distancing and masking, shuttling supplies and equipment around the school, and conducting health screenings at the entrance.
Related
Lyons said the part-time miscellaneous positions already exist at some schools, and that CPS is “not hiring non-union employees to do union jobs. We know better, that’s not what we’re attempting to do.”
About two to four new positions are slated to go to every school that’s set to reopen in the new year.
Unlike usual city employee jobs, none of the new positions require Chicago residency.