What Did Teachers' Unions Do with Billions of Tax Dollars?

Katie Pavlich | January 05, 2022 12:30 PM

Overnight, the Chicago Teachers Union voted to engage in an illegal strike and declared they would not be returning to classrooms for in-person learning.

The action will end when one of the following conditions is met: The current surge in cases substantially subsides, or the mayor's team at CPS signs an agreement establishing conditions for return that are voted on and approved by the the CTU House of Delegates.
— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) January 5, 2022

The move comes shortly after American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten declared that while she believes schools should be open, the risks of the pandemic are ongoing and schools need ventilation, masking, etc.

There are very real logistical decisions schools are making. We know kids do better in person,but the spike is real. We need adequate staff & the safety measures in place including testing, masking ventilation. There is a lot of stress https://t.co/lTjojuCvob
— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) January 3, 2022

But in three separate federal relief packages, schools received more than $200 billion to implement virus mitigation measures. Chicago alone received $2 billion.

"Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress appropriated nearly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding for K–12 schools. Passed in three waves, each significantly more generous than the last, ESSER is by far the largest federal infusion ever provided to K–12 schools—more than 11 times annual Title I spending and almost five times as large as total federal K–12 spending in 2019–20. (Combined with Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funds, allocated along- side ESSER, emergency education funding approached $200 billion.)," analysis from the American Enterprise Institute shows.