The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has made putting a nurse in every school, every day, a pillar of their contract fight. With a strike deadline tomorrow, October 17, Chicago Public School’s (CPS) negotiating team has yet to propose, in writing, the number of nurses they will agree to staff schools with. This despite the fact that newly elected Mayor Lori Lightfoot had made written campaign promises about this. While a candidate, point five on the first page of her Plan to Transform CPS stated, “Schools are staffed with full time nurses, social workers and librarians.”

It was not until after 94 percent of CTU participants voted yes to a strike that CPS even responded in a comprehensive manner to the proposals made back in January. Missing from CPS’s proposal was any concrete numbers. At an October 7 press conference, the president of Lightfoot’s handpicked and unelected Chicago Board of Education, Miguel del Valle, explained their lack of written commitment: “we will staff more nurses, more case managers and social workers . . . but we need flexibility.”

To a nurse, the world “flexibility” is a slap in the face, because we know that’s the same reason given when we are forced to care for a seventh or eighth patient. Nurses often suffer in silence because, as a “caring professional,” there is no alternative but to get the work done as best we can. This same thing has been happening in Chicago schools for years. But with this contract, the CTU has drawn a line in the sand.