Lightfoot: Coverage of Teachers’ Union ‘Saber-Rattling’ Ignores ‘Devastating’ Impact of Closures, We Will Keep Kids in School

On Monday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said the coverage of the “saber-rattling by teachers’ union leadership” has ignored “the devastating effect that remote learning had on our children and on their families.” And that “we know our schools are safe, our schools are not the source of significant spread” and we need to keep kids in school.

Lightfoot stated, “[R]egarding schools, let me say this, one of the things that doesn’t get reported on in coverage of saber-rattling by teachers’ union leadership is the devastating effect that remote learning had on our children and on their families. We know that learning loss was profound. We know that there were huge gaps in achievement. We know that the mental health and trauma issues of our students [were] real. And we know that it was devastating for families, particularly those families where the parents couldn’t afford not to work. So, this is — there’s a lot of different component parts that go into it, but fundamentally, we know our schools are safe, our schools are not the source of significant spread. The issue is community spread. But we need to keep our kids in schools, which is what we’re going to do in Chicago.”

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