After a weeklong standoff, Chicago Public Schools resumed in-person learning after a proposal was approved by the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates.

The Chicago Teachers Union tweeted Monday night, "The Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates has voted tonight to suspend the Union's remote work action while rank-and-file membership votes on the proposed agreement." The move comes after 63% of the delegates agreed to send the proposal to its members for approval.

The city’s mayor Lori Lightfoot also shared news of the agreement Monday night in which she explained that teachers would return to work on Tuesday in order to prepare for students to return to school buildings for in-person learning Wednesday. Lightfoot shared through a tweet, “After a productive day at the bargaining table, I am pleased to report, CTU will end their work stoppage. CPS put a great proposal on the table that both bargaining teams discussed in detail today. We will be able to get our children back in the classroom on Wednesday.”

As part of the tentative agreement, the Union’s House of Delegates will approve a set of conditions regarding how an individual school would return to remote learning. This pivot would be determined by the number of absent staff members, students’ absences because of quarantine or isolation, as well as the community COVID-19 transmission levels.

While the details of the agreement are yet to be fully disclosed, there are reports from a local news outlet, The Sun-Times, that CPS has agreed to close down a school building and shift to remote learning “if 30 percent or more of its teachers are absent for two consecutive days because of positive cases or quarantines, and if substitutes can’t get the absences under 25 percent. A school would also close if 40 percent of its students were quarantined.”

The Union’s Chief of Staff Jen Johnson shared that "This agreement moves toward what they have been asking for for a long time even if it doesn't get all the way that we think we should have." As part of the agreement terms, Johnson explains that schools throughout the county will ramp up their testing efforts and that testing will increase to include 10% of students getting tested each week in each school.

Additionally, Johnson shares that the school district will also work toward providing school staff with KN-95 masks.

During a late-night news conference, Mayor Lightfoot praised the efforts that led to the end of the standoff. While she heavily criticized the standoff during the four days that kept over 340,000 students out of school, she shared her approval of the tentative agreement last night.

She explained, "Some will ask who won and who lost. No one wins when our students are out of the place where they can learn the best and where they're safest. After being out of school for four days in a row, I'm sure many students will be excited to get back in the classroom with their teachers and peers. And their parents and guardians can now breathe a much-deserved sigh of relief."

During the days of the standoff, Lightfoot adamantly expressed that the Union’s decision to protest in-person learning was an “illegal walkout.” Lightfoot shared on NBC’s Meet the Press, “They abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families.”

The walkout led to the frustration of many parents who struggled with remote learning or were unable to provide adequate childcare after such a sudden shift.

The teachers union’s walkout went as far as prompting a group of Chicago parents to sue the union for refusing to return to in-person learning. The Liberty Justice Center represented the parents in the federal lawsuit and detailed that “CTU’s resolution calling members to not show up for work in-person is a strike regardless of what CTU calls it and violates both the collective bargaining agreement with CPS and Illinois law.”

Lightfoot shares that with this new agreement, parents can expect in-person classes to resume through the rest of the year and until the end of summer school.

“I’m hopeful that this is the end, at least for this school year,” Lightfoot expressed. “I’m hopeful that we will have a stable, uneventful rest of the school year.”