EXPLAINER: Why are Chicago schools, teachers union fighting?

By SOPHIA TAREEN
Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago scrapped classes for days in a confusing standoff with the teachers’ union over COVID-19 safety measures in the nation’s third-largest school district. From remote instruction to testing, both sides have been negotiating nearly a dozen complex points of a safety plan that has cast a shadow over the return to school after winter break. The fight which ended late Monday comes as other districts have had to increasingly shift online amid soaring COVID-19 cases. The issue that caused the most chaos in the roughly 350,000-student district is when and how to revert to remote learning. Others include testing and an increasingly sharp labor dispute.