RYH Statement at Press Conference 1.10.22

Hello, my name is Rousemary Vega, I am a parent organizer at RYH. 

We are here because our CPS families need to feel safe and supported during a pandemic and that is currently not the case. From the beginning, our schools have not been cleaned properly, have been severely understaffed, there is a shortage of cleaning materials - still today, not even all students have access to the transportation they need. The safety of our children has been compromised. 

The mayor claims, "the best, safest place for kids to be is in school." We are not arguing where students should be receiving an education - what we are arguing are the conditions that the children are in when receiving the education. Our schools currently are struggling to operate safely.

In the past few days, the positive cases have skyrocketed. We are at over 20% positivity and have over 5000 cases a day in Chicago. The city should be doing more in response to Omicron. That is why the federal government gave Chicago over 2 billion dollars. Where is the money? 

Where is the community and parent involvement in the decision making for those funds? Parents have been on the ground meeting, organizing and telling the city how to best use the money to serve the community. 

Last year, we held multiple town halls, teach-ins, and collaborated with organizations from across the city to form a list of demands that would serve parents, students and community called Trust, Learning and Care (T L C). Led by our Black and Brown parent leaders, hundreds of parents provided feedback on what they needed during the pandemic. We held numerous press conferences bringing parents' voices to the table. We held a rally at the Board of Education and CPS parents delivered our demands to the mayor. 

They refused to meet with us and sent us a list of responses that felt like copy and pasted press releases on what they were already doing instead of what more they could do. 

The actions by the mayor has only deepened the distrust CPS families have with the district. We demand that you work with parents on improved safety measures and include parents on how to utilize the federal rescue dollars.