Yesterday, I wrote that unions should not take the blame – or at least not as much as some would assign them – for school districts going virtual. It is likely that many parents would also prefer not to have in-person schooling as the Omicron COVID-19 variant runs through their communities. Last night, the Chicago Teachers Union – arguably the most infamous of teacher unions if you are not a union fan – voted to stay out of classrooms until the district hit several safety markers.

Surely this is union power run amok?

In one sense, yes: No union should dictate how education will look for everyone, and that is essentially what the CTU is doing. But peek a bit below the surface, and the union may only have the political capital to do this because its resistance to in-person schooling is in sync with a majority of parents. The union won’t face a popular backlash because what it wants is popular.

Like yesterday’s post, I could not find polling of Chicago parents taken during Omicron. But a NORC survey from June 2021, a month of very low COVID-19 cases in Cook County and nationwide, found that “only 4 in 10 parents said that they would prefer fully in-person learning over hybrid or fully-remote options for the 2021–2022 school year.” If 6 in 10 Chicago parents wanted at least some virtual education then, parental desire for it is almost certainly higher with Omicron today.

In light of this, it is misleading to put most emphasis on unions for schools not being open under Omicron. Lots of Chicago families have fears when it comes to in-person education, and likely support what the union is calling for. That is a different scenario from unions strong-arming policies against the popular will, which is often the message one could get from coverage of unions and closures. Indeed, the district would also be imposing on families, and imposition is what should most concern us.

The opposite of imposition is freedom to choose – money following children to options families select – which teacher unions have long opposed. As I wrote yesterday, for fighting that the unions deserve scorn. But when it comes to dealing with COVID-19, unions are far from alone in fearing in-person instruction. They may even be aligned with a majority of parents, and that is an important part of the Omicron closures story.