The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not been communicating well enough with educators, teachers unions say, as COVID-19 hospitalizations hit records in the country.

The safety of American public schools, which educate over 50 million kids, has become a hotly contested issue, pitting teachers' unions worried about the disease's spread in sometimes underfunded, antiquated buildings against local and state officials who want to keep schools open.

Following the National School Boards Association letter sent to the White House comparing parents to domestic terrorists, the nation’s largest teachers union sent a letter to social media companies encouraging them to crack down on “propaganda” surrounding Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other education concerns raised by parents.

A proposal for Chicago Public Schools to resume in-person classes Wednesday has been approved by the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates following a contentious weeklong standoff.

The delegates also voted Monday night to suspend the union’s work action that saw teachers refuse to give their lessons in person, prompting the cancellation of the last four school days. There will be no Tuesday classes though teachers will report to schools for planning.

Chicago Public Schools could resume in-person classes this week after Chicago Teachers Union leaders agreed to a new set of COVID-19 protocols. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday that teachers would return to campuses on Tuesday with in-person instruction restarting Wednesday.

The agreement still needs to be approved by the full union, but the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates voted to suspend the online learning plan they launched last week as rank-and-file membership votes. The tentative agreement comes after four days of canceled classes.

Classes are set to resume Wednesday at Chicago schools as leaders of the city’s teachers union on Monday night approved a plan with the district over COVID-19 protections.

The two sides had been locked in a bitter fight that canceled classes for four days in the nation’s third-largest district.

Details weren’t immediately disclosed on the deal, which still requires approval from the union’s full 25,000 members.

Millions of American kids will head back to classrooms in the coming days -- just after new pediatric Covid-19 hospitalizations reached an all-time high.

And that has many parents wondering what's safe as the Omicron variant sweeps the country.

"We fear that it's going to get a lot worse, between getting together for the holidays and then getting back to school," said Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer at Texas Children's Pediatrics & Texas Children's Urgent Care in Houston.

Some cities and school districts are taking aggressive new measures.

Months after Delta threatened the fall back-to-school ritual, COVID-19 is again complicating kids' return to the classroom.

Why it matters: While government officials worked to convince school administrators and parents over the last several days that kids could safely get back to in-person learning after the holidays, the reality on the ground amid the spread of Omicron is much more complicated.

Watch out, COVID-19, Eric Adams says he’s bringing “swagger” back.

On Day 3 of his mayoralty, Adams declared Monday that he’s bringing to the Big Apple a “swagger” that was “missing” during the COVID-19 pandemic’s doldrums under predecessor Bill de Blasio. 

“When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” Adams boasted at Concourse Village Elementary School, where he was flanked by new schools Chancellor David Banks. 

In a shocking report, Abigail Shrier, the author of the best-selling book “Irreversible Damage,” revealed that at a late October meeting at a conference of California’s largest teacher’s union, the California Teachers Association (CTA), documents show teachers were encouraged to recruit students into LGBT clubs, urging them to “have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation.” One teacher reportedly chortled, “We’re going to do just a little mind-trick on our sixth graders.”

The performative politics of mask mandates have produced some weird moments during the pandemic. Now, they've even managed to get a prominent teachers union boss to argue in favor of school choice.