“I’m doing everything I can to make sure“ kids will be in school this week in Chicago, Lightfoot said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And to be clear, what the Chicago Teachers Union did was an illegal walkout. They abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families.”

Lightfoot reiterated her position that the city’s schools are safe and that children need to be in the classroom. She argued the leverage is on the side of outraged families, who are demonstrating an “unprecedented level of parent activism,” noting that 70 percent or more of Chicago’s children qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.

“This walkout by the teachers union, which is illegal, has had cascading negative ripple effects not only on the students in their learning, their social and emotional welfare, but also on the families themselves,” Lightfoot said. “It is making them have tenuous financial status because they have to work, but they also have to take care of their kids. This is an untenable situation and completely, utterly avoidable. So I’m going to be on the side of the parents fighting every single day to get our kids back in school.”