Chicago teachers piled into hundreds of cars on the first Monday of August and rolled their way to City Hall.

Chicago teachers piled into hundreds of cars on the first Monday of August and rolled their way to City Hall.

COVID-19 has created an unprecedented challenge for America’s K-12 schools. As policymakers and practitioners struggle to respond, they are weighing significant uncertainty and trade-offs that arise because of education, health, and budgetary concerns. The consensus is that students learned less during the spring’s school building closures, and the learning losses were especially great for students with less access to devices, internet, quiet study areas, home and community resources and those with learning challenges.

As virus counts rise and teacher anxiety spikes, one big question is whether teachers unions will emerge as a powerful force in the school reopening debate — and whether a new wave of teacher activism could be on the horizon.

Amid the pandemic, unions and districts are renegotiating labor contracts to address long-term closures at an unprecedented rapid pace, but experts suggest collaboration may fizzle in the summer.

Few were expecting it when, in January, Bernie Sanders scored one of the early coups of the Democratic presidential primary: The Clark County Education Association, representing nearly 20,000 educators in schools around Las Vegas, gave the Vermont senator their endorsement.

When Tate Reeves stood before family, friends and lawmakers in Mississippi's ornate House chamber to take his oath of office Tuesday, he used his first speech as governor to make a promise to the state's 32,000 teachers.

This year kicked off with a teacher’s strike in the nation’s second-largest school district, and as the end of 2019 nears, teachers in the third-largest district still haven't reached an agreement with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson.