Chicago City Wire

The Chicago Public Schools district faces staffing shortcomings as it prepares for in-person learning to start in January amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nation’s third-largest public school district is trying to hire 2,000 employees in the coming weeks, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, for its response during the public health emergency. 

The positions are for part-time, seasonal workers to supervise in-person instruction if a teacher works remotely, the district posted to its job-board site. The new hires may also assist school staff, answer students’ technology questions, deliver supplies and/or equipment, contact parents or students, etc.

Chicago Public Schools faced sharp criticism from the teachers union, creating some difficulties for a district with more than 340,00 students during COVID-19. 

“CPS can try to exploit low-wage temporary workers to fill in for staff who are not willing to sacrifice their lives for their livelihoods when they must instead come to the table and bargain collaboratively to land what we need to return to our school buildings and our students safely — enforceable safety standards and real equity for Black and Brown school communities starved of equity for years before this pandemic,” Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in December. 

Half of the jobs will be a “cadre substitute” teacher who will be members of the Chicago Teachers Union and receive benefits. The other half will be part-time union workers who will make $15 an hour. 

“Staffing is a concern, I don’t want to pretend like it’s not,” Chicago Public Schools Human Resources Chief Matt Lyons said, the Sun-Times reported in December. “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.” 

The union president also said she had was previously not aware that teachers could potentially instruct from home while students were in the classroom, the Sun-Times reported. She said that it was “slightly less terrible than forcing teachers to engage in synchronous learning from unsafe buildings.”