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Chicago Teachers Union aims for 80 percent student COVID-19 vaccination rate
The teachers union was in the North Lawndale neighborhood, one of the hardest hit with COVID-19, knocking on doors to ramp up vaccination efforts.
CHICAGO - The Chicago Teachers Union is demanding that 80-percent of eligible students are vaccinated before in-person classes resume in the fall.
They say that this percentage would result in herd immunity for teachers and students.
However, the Chicago Public School District has not made the mandate just yet.
Lateshia Hollingsworth is a mom of three CPS students.
Two were eligible for the vaccine and got it.
"A lot of kids, don't get me wrong, are ready to go back to school, but they are scared," said Hollingsworth.
CTU says they are hearing similar comments from other parents.
The union is taking a grassroots approach to vaccinations.
On Wednesday, the union knocked on doors in the North Lawndale neighborhood encouraging students to get vaccinated.
They have also hosted vaccine clinics for families throughout the summer.
"People worry that if they go into the school and get the virus, it might not make them hospitalized as young people, but they could go back and they could kill their grandparents with it," said CTU President Jesse Sharkey.
Right now, doctors say about 50-percent of eligible Illinois children have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
About a third, they say, are fully vaccinated.