Chalkbeat

Chicago Public Schools wants ideas for how to improve outcomes for Black students

2024-03-12T21:27:04+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will host a series of meetings over the next two weeks to hear about how it can improve the school experience for Black students.

The first of eight meetings is taking place at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Uplift Community High School in Uptown.

The public meetings are part of the district’s new Black Student Success Working Group, which CPS created in the fall to provide district leaders with recommendations for its upcoming “Black Student Success Plan.” That blueprint will then be folded into the district’s overall five-year strategic plan, which is expected to be finalized this summer.

CPS, like other districts across the nation, has long reported academic disparities between Black students and their peers, who make up 35% of the school system. In Chicago, 79.7% of Black students graduated on time last year, a rate that has gradually improved but is still behind the graduation rate for all other racial groups, according to district data. And 12.6% of Black students dropped out last year, the highest percentage for any racial group.

“We’re meeting as a working group because historically and today, Black students are situated furthest from opportunity,” said Fatima Cooke, CPS’s chief of equity, engagement and strategy.

“There is so much more work that still needs to be done to create those holistic systems that foster environments where Black students are empowered, that they feel seen, and that they have a sense of belonging.

The working group is made up of more than 60 members, including parents, students, educators, district employees and other community members, according to a CPS press release. The group has been meeting since December and has also convened focus groups of students, families, and staff, Cooke said.

While the working group has already drafted some recommendations that that focus on academics, the members don’t want to present those ideas to the community yet because they want “authentic” input, said Ayanna Clark, a CPS parent who is a member of the working group and also serves as assistant chief of staff to the City Council’s education committee under Ald. Jeanette Taylor.

“We don’t want to go into a space where we’re once again telling people what to think and giving them a set of options and telling them to choose from the set of options,” Clark said.

State legislation that paves the way for Chicago’s first elected school board creates a “Black Student Achievement Committee in response to advocacy from longtime community advocates. Cooke said this work “is parallel to that” and won’t “impede” a committee.

The district working group is focused on three priorities. These are Black students’ daily school experience; “adult capacity and continuous learning,” which focuses on workforce diversity and professional development to ensure teachers are meeting student needs; and how community organizations can support Black students’ needs that “can’t be met by the school-based budget,” said Christopher Shelton, a former science teacher who now works for the district’s central office and is helping to facilitate the group.

The group has also discussed ideas to better support Black students, including providing teachers with more professional development; focusing on conflict resolution practices; diversifying the teacher workforce; and to “leverage corporate, government, and community partnerships to bridge resource gap,” according to a presentation posted on the district’s website.

‘Focusing on what the students need’

The group’s first meeting in December included a history of how city policies have impacted Black families and students. Some of the topics that members highlighted during that meeting were the Great Migration, the practice of redlining that drove racial segregation, and the closing of 50 schools — most of which were majority Black schools — under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The group also reviewed data on academic disparities. At the beginning of this school year, 62% of Black students in grades kindergarten to second grade were behind one grade level in reading, while 66% were behind in math, according to iReady data presented to the group at the December meeting. That’s higher than most other racial groups except for Hispanic students, who are behind in both subjects at the same rates, and the 76% of Haiwaiian or Pacific Islander students who were behind in math.

Chicago’s Black students are the least likely to earn early college credit, which can help offset college costs. And outside of academics, the group looked at data showing that Black girls received more than 7 out of every 100 out-of-school suspensions last school year, while Black boys received more than 10 — the highest rates for any racial group, which grew from 2022.

One bright spot that the group has heard about: Over the past six years, more Black eighth graders have enrolled at schools that offer algebra.

Then there are factors that can place an additional burden on Black students outside school buildings. For example, roughly 20% of Black students travel six or more miles to school compared with 11% of all students.

District officials have previously highlighted how students should not have to leave their neighborhoods to attend a school that fits their needs. In December, the Board of Education made waves when it announced that, as part of the creation of that strategic blueprint, it was planning to rethink the district’s school choice system and invest more in neighborhood schools. That system includes schools that require an application, including charters, magnets, selective enrollment schools, and gifted programs.

Jahnae Roberts, a junior at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts and a member of the working group, said she hears the need for more support around mental health and social emotional learning for Black students. Her peers have also shared with her that they don’t feel some teachers know how to work with or teach them.

The working group is “focusing on what the students need, not just education-wise, but what are they receiving at school that they might not receive at home to make it a better place for them?” Jahnae said.

The working group and the ensuing community meetings are one component of the district’s development of a new five-year strategic plan. The district hosted meetings over improving school facilities, and it will have more community meetings around the broader strategic plan.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Board of Education votes to remove police officers from schools

2024-02-23T03:12:51+00:00

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During a meeting in which tempers flared and community members argued over the merits of school police, Chicago’s Board of Education voted Thursday to eliminate all school police officers by the next academic year and create a new “holistic” school safety policy.

The board approved a resolution that directs Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to draft a school safety policy by June 27 that explicitly bans school resource officers, or SROs, from campuses. These officers are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but the district covers their salaries.

The district’s new school safety policy must instead emphasize more “holistic” approaches to student discipline, such as restorative justice practices, the resolution said. Such practices, which focus on conflict resolution instead of punishment, have replaced sworn officers in some schools over the past few years. The resolution approved Thursday will directly impact the 39 high schools that currently have a total of 57 SROs.

The board’s decision — which drew dozens of public speakers, including 20 elected officials — addresses a yearslong grassroots movement that has pushed the district to remove SROs from school campuses. Advocates instead want the district to spend more money on social workers, mental health resources, and practices focusing on conflict resolution. A recent study found that schools implementing restorative justice practices saw drops in student arrests. Students also reported feeling more safe.

But the decision drew significant pushback as well, including from several city aldermen, who argued that schools in their communities feel safer when officers are on campus.

At one point during Thursday’s meeting, former school board member and community activist Dwayne Truss sparred with audience members over his criticism of the board’s decision — causing advocates to chant “SROs, we want you out.” Truss was on the board when it decided to let Local School Councils vote on whether to keep their officers. He argued that was the most “democratic” solution at the time and still is today.

Truss, who is Black, accused the Board of Education of “telling Black folks, ‘We know what’s best for you.’”

In defending the board’s decision, Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said it was fulfilling a 2020 promise from the previous board, which committed to phasing SROs out of schools. The board’s goal is to reduce disparities among those who are disciplined at school, she said. Calls to police disproportionately involve students with disabilities and Black students, who are also disproportionately suspended, compared to their peers, according to the resolution.

The board has discussed the policy change for several months with the district and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, Todd-Breland said, noting that it’s “about more than just SROs.”

“This is a shift, and this shift to a model of holistic safety is really necessary for all of our schools, not just schools that currently have SROs,” Todd-Breland said. “Continuing the district’s progress in moving from a more punitive approach to a holistic, healing centered approach is evidence-based work.”

Board member Rudy Lozano Jr. said the district will still rely on the Chicago Police Department to help with arrival and dismissal and to respond to emergencies. In response to criticism about pulling power away from LSCs, board member Tanya D. Woods said state law requires the district to “deal with discipline disparities.”

Makayla Acevedo, a junior at Hyde Park Academy and a member of Southside Together Organizing for Power, or STOP, said officers at her school don’t stop the many fights that break out. She wants to see the funding for SRO salaries go toward more career programming at her school, such as for nursing training, as well as restorative justice programming.

“I just feel like we just really need those funds, to invest all of that money to get the programs in order for all students … to be successful in life and reach their dreams,” Acevedo said.

The district has spent nearly $4 million on “alternative safety interventions,” such as restorative justice, at 14 schools where SROs have already been removed, according to the resolution.

After the meeting, Martinez said, “We actually have not paid for any of these services for CPD for the last three years. We weren’t even going to pay for this year.” A district spokesperson later confirmed that although money was allocated, no payments have been made to the police department since 2020, when schools went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longstanding tensions come to a head

The movement to remove SROs grew in 2019, when the Chicago Police Department was placed under a federal consent decree. The next year, after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep SROs.

But the resolution has exposed long-simmering tensions.

At Thursday’s meeting, arguments erupted between Truss and audience members from organizations that have long pushed for the district to remove SROs. Those organizations include Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Good Kids Mad City, and STOP.

As they yelled at each other, the board called a brief recess and cleared the room for several minutes.

Truss cited recent shootings outside three Chicago schools that left four students dead, and argued that some communities may feel the need to keep police at schools in order to feel safe. That sentiment was echoed by several other speakers.

“The fact is that Black folks are tired of getting disrespected by folks who don’t live in our community,” said Truss.

Ald. Monique Scott, whose 24th Ward represents North Lawndale on the West Side, said the decision needs to be made by local communities. Scott’s brother and predecessor, Michael Scott Jr., replaced Truss on the school board in 2022 and served until the end of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term last summer.

“Every school doesn’t have to have them, but some schools need them and I think that it should be based on the LSC to determine that,” Scott said.

The district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, charged with advising the Board of Education, “overwhelmingly” approved a resolution Feb. 12 that called for leaving decisions about campus police to LSCs, according to Froy Jimenez, a member of the advisory board and a teacher at John Hancock College Preparatory High School.

The advisory board members were concerned that stripping LSCs of that power chips away their right to make decisions about their schools, Jimenez said. Jimenez noted that his own LSC voted to get rid of the school’s campus police. However, Jimenez said he represents a part of the city “where some schools would want to have [them].”

The board’s decision was celebrated by several advocacy organizations that have rallied for years to stop staffing police in schools, as well as the City Council’s progressive caucus. Several speakers asked the district to spend more money on social workers and boost restorative justice.

Kennedy Bartley, executive director of United Working Families, a progressive political organization, credited Thursday’s vote to the years of advocacy from students and educators, which “built enough political power to elect a mayor with a mandate for transformative change.”

The Chicago Teachers Union, which also supports the change, has submitted a request with the district to bargain over the new school safety policy, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter told the board Thursday. Potter said the union wants several things to be considered in the new policy, including more “trauma supports” and training on restorative practices.

Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s school board wants to remove police from all schools starting next school year

2024-02-20T19:32:03+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education wants to remove police officers from schools starting next school year, according to a resolution included in the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting.

The resolution directs CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to come up with a new policy by June 27 that would introduce a “holistic approach to school safety” at district schools, such as implementing restorative justice practices, which focus on resolving a conflict instead of punishment.

That policy “must make explicit that the use of [school resource officers] within District schools will end by the start of the 2024-2025 school year,” the resolution said. (Find the resolution on page 15 of your PDF reader.)

The resolution nods to the district’s shift in student discipline to more restorative practices, which has led to “significant progress” in reducing suspensions. However, the resolution notes that disparities in suspension rates are disproportionately higher for students with disabilities and Black students, compared to their Hispanic and white peers.

Most CPS schools don’t have school resource officers who, unlike security guards, are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but are stationed in schools full-time. If passed, the resolution would directly impact 39 schools – all high schools – that have a total of 57 officers on campus, according to the resolution and district officials. Fourteen schools voted to remove a total of 28 officers and instead received a total of $3.9 million for “alternative safety interventions,” including for restorative justice and social service coordinators, the resolution said. CPS also employs more than 1,400 security guards at schools, according to staffing data from the end of December 2023.

Schools that have voted to keep their officers have cited a variety of reasons for doing so, including that in some cases, school resource officers have strong relationships with students. Opponents of police on campus argue that the presence of officers can lead to more punitive student discipline and can leave children feeling unsafe.

Last month, Nadig Newspapers and WBEZ reported that the board was planning to remove Chicago Police Department officers from schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson later confirmed to WBEZ that he’s in support of such a plan.

The resolution, which the board is slated to vote on Thursday, represents Johnson’s hand-picked school board’s clearest statements on removing police officers from Chicago schools. As a mayoral candidate, Johnson had said police officers “have no place in schools,” WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reported. However, last year, he told the outlet he would leave the decision up to LSCs.

The resolution said the district would continue to partner with the Chicago Police Department, but district officials did not immediately explain what that relationship would look like.

Having police stationed inside Chicago schools came under scrutiny in 2019 as part of the police department’s federal consent decree. In 2020, amid protests and the racial reckoning that swept the country after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, Chicago schools began voting one-by-one on whether or not to keep their school resource officers.

Driven by similar issues, Denver Public Schools removed police from schools in 2020 and 2021, but its work to implement a new school safety policy, as Chicago’s board is seeking, was derailed by the pandemic. The Denver school board reversed its decision last June after a shooting inside a high school.

In 2022, the Chicago school board reduced its contract with the police department from more than $30 million to roughly $10 million and allocated money for schools to implement alternatives to police, such as restorative justice counselors. The contract was renewed last summer for $10.3 million and about $4 million to improve school climate was separately allocated to schools that had removed their officers.

Research from the University of Chicago released last fall found an improvement in student engagement and a decline in suspensions at schools that had implemented restorative practices in recent years.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment climbs as more migrant families arrive

2024-02-08T23:43:51+00:00

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More than 5,700 newly arrived immigrant students have enrolled in Chicago Public Schools since the beginning of the school year, district officials said Thursday.

Preliminary school enrollment data updated daily on the city data portal and analyzed by Chalkbeat shows overall enrollment increased by 4,500 students since the official count on the 20th day of school in September. After more than a decade of decline, CPS saw its enrollment stabilize this school year.

“The number is fluid and evolving,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said Thursday. “Our principals and teachers and school communities have been incredibly welcoming to the students and their families.”

His comments came during a virtual press conference about a new volunteer coordination effort launched by the City of Chicago aimed at supporting migrant families. It also comes after city officials once again delayed its plan to enforce a 60-day shelter stay limit on migrant families.

Publicly available data does not reveal how many CPS students are migrants or how many are living in city shelters. District officials said they do not collect information about the immigration status of students or their families “to support the City of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance.”

Preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicates nearly 7,000 more students have been identified as English language learners since the end of September, when the district officially counted enrollment. English language learners can include both newly arrived immigrants, as well as students already living in Chicago.

Last school year, English language learners made up about one-fifth of all students; a decade ago, these students made up roughly 16% of CPS.

Last month, educators, union officials, and some local lawmakers raised concerns about schools without enough bilingual staff and other resources struggling to meet those students’ language and mental health needs.

District officials said Thursday that just under 6% of schools are lacking teachers with necessary ESL or bilingual credentials. Karime Asaf, the district’s chief of language and cultural education, said officials are prioritizing those roughly 30 schools — which officials did not identify — “for any kind of services or resources.”

Asaf said schools are working to get more teachers certified to teach English learners. District officials said they’ve allocated a total of $8 million to schools that saw increases in English learners since the 20th day of school.

Martinez said around 600 teachers are currently working toward getting bilingual or English as a Second Language endorsements.

Martinez said currently 7,200 teachers have these qualifications, up from about 5,100 teachers in 2018. However, bilingual staffing can vary by school, and often support staff, such as social workers, are not bilingual. CPS does provide a 24/7 language interpretation hotline that schools can call to get assistance communicating with families, but some parents have said they’ve struggled to communicate with schools or understand their school options when it’s time to move.

Students who are homeless — those in shelters, living doubled up somewhere, or living in a public place — have a right to remain at their school even if they move out of the school’s boundary and are entitled to transportation provided by the district, such as free CTA passes. By state law, if a school enrolls 20 or more students who speak a language other than English, the school must set up a bilingual education program with qualified staff. Asaf said this is “a multi-year process.”

“Generally, the challenge we have is when families just walk up to our buildings and we always tell our schools: Enroll the families. And then we have a process to work with those families to make sure we find the nearest program,” Martinez said.

The district also has bi-weekly meetings with staff at the city’s largest temporary shelters that are housing migrants, to “make sure that our families understand that there’s always a way to connect with the Chicago Public Schools … to make sure all their questions are answered,” Asaf said. She added that most school leaders attend these meetings.

Martinez said CPS is planning to hire newcomer adults who have received work authorization for “critical needs” at schools, including as custodians, as well as positions in transportation, nutrition, and classroom support.

Many of Chicago’s migrant families have been searching for work but need authorization to obtain jobs legally. Axios reported that about 1,000 newcomers have received work permits as of late January, four months after the federal government expanded eligibility to nearly half a million immigrants from Venezuela, where political and economic turmoil has pushed many residents to leave.

“We were proactive working with the city to say, since we know we have these families who are looking for jobs, we have many openings,” Martinez told reporters on Thursday. “We are now just trying to make it easier for our families to be able to apply for these different jobs.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org. Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s pre-K expansion fueled by federal COVID recovery money

2024-01-29T23:23:50+00:00

Public preschool has been a lifeline for Kristen Larson.

Larson and her husband couldn’t afford private day care for both their daughters, who are 4 and 1. So last fall, when Larson was able to get a preschool seat just four blocks from their Bridgeport home for her 4-year-old, she was relieved.

Without that, she said, “I probably would have had to quit my job.”

Thousands of Chicago parents like Larson depend on the district’s free public preschool program, which has been expanding over the past five years. This year, the district has 16,062 full-day seats for 4-year-olds and another 7,300 half-day seats for both 3- and 4-year-olds, a spokesperson said. That expansion was possible in part because of tens of millions of dollars in temporary federal COVID relief money, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request.

But the federal relief funds will run out next school year, raising a critical question: How will the district continue funding universal preschool?

Since July 1, 2020, Chicago Public Schools had spent close to $700 million on pre-K programs through the end of last school year, including new summer initiatives and programs for children under the age of 3, according to district budget records. It has budgeted another $262.7 million for this fiscal year, which covers the current school year. Of all of that funding, COVID relief dollars have so far covered about 14% of those costs, or $137 million, most of which went toward employee salaries, according to expense data obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request.

Chicago is slated to receive a total $2.8 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, dollars which districts could use broadly to help students and schools recover from the pandemic, and had spent $2.4 billion as of mid-November. The district has used the bulk of the money to fund existing costs, such as employee salaries. It has also launched new programs, such as TutorCorps, expanded summer school, and purchased new technology.

CPS officials said it used federal dollars to help expand pre-K — and sustain it — because it didn’t have enough state funding to do so, and creating more seats was a district priority.

Studies have found that kids who attended preschool are more likely to have higher test scores, were less likely to be disciplined, have better employment outcomes, and are less likely to be involved with crime.

CPS has steadily reduced its reliance on COVID relief dollars for pre-K over the past four years, increasing spending of district dollars on early childhood programs by $6 million this year, officials said. And observers are expecting the state to increase funding for early childhood education. Last week the Illinois State Board of Education proposed a budget that would increase the state’s Early Childhood Block Grant – which helps cover the district’s pre-K program – by $75 million.

But as federal funds dry up, the district is grappling with how to avoid cuts while also plugging a projected $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That includes figuring out how to cover the cost of pre-K with local or more state dollars.

Asked if the district is considering cutting pre-K seats or laying off teachers in order to save money, district officials said they were not ready to comment on that. But neither is their first choice; the district is pushing the state for more money.

“Chicago Public Schools is committed to ensuring that every 4-year-old in Chicago has the opportunity to attend free preschool to develop valuable academic and social-emotional skills and experiences,” said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for the district, in a statement.

Preschool expansion plan predates pandemic

In 2018, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to open a pre-K seat for every 4-year-old in Chicago before announcing he would not seek a third term. It would mean big shifts for the city’s preschool system, which included a mix of half- and full-day programs at public schools and in community-based programs that served 3- and 4-year-olds.

Emanuel’s promise was picked up by his successor, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who set a goal to make pre-K for 4-year-olds universal by this year.

Since 2019, CPS has added 1,950 new preschool spots, district officials said.

But even as the district has expanded pre-K, enrollment has been fluctuating amid the COVID pandemic and as Chicago continues to see birth rates decline.

Enrollment initially grew – from 12,900 4-year-olds in the 2018-19 school year to 14,300 the fall before the pandemic – and then plummeted by 34%, to about 9,500 students in the 2020-21 school year.

This school year, just over 13,000 4-year-olds were in pre-K at CPS schools.

The district has reached universal demand in nearly all Chicago communities, said Leslie McKinily, the district’s chief of early childhood education.

As of September, when the district officially counted enrollment, 75% of all pre-K seats were filled, according to the district. That has grown to 81% as of last week, McKinily said. The district’s goal is 85% because officials want to have spots available for new families throughout the year, McKinily said.

CPS does not have plans to open more pre-K spots, but McKinily’s team is looking to see where they need to “right-size.” For example, she said, the city has not met the demand for pre-K seats in the North Side neighborhood of West Ridge. But there are other parts of the city where pre-K seats are going unfilled.

“We’re really thinking about right now, do we have our programs in the right spaces? And how do we ensure that the programming meets the needs of the community?” McKinily said.

Chicago shrinks reliance on federal COVID dollars for pre-K

Over the past four years, pre-K instruction accounted for the third largest use of the district’s COVID relief dollars, behind reducing class sizes for grades K-3 and spending on administrative costs related to federal relief funding, according to the data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Nearly all of the spending of COVID relief dollars on pre-K – about $130 million – went towards employee salaries, pensions, and benefits, according to the data. When looking at all expenses related to pre-K, including separate line items for pre-K students with disabilities, the district spent a total $137 million in the relief funds.

Pre-K programs in Chicago are mostly funded through state dollars as part of Illinois’ Early Childhood Block Grant. The program is also funded by some local taxpayer dollars and other federal money unrelated to COVID relief funding.

District officials said a portion of the federal COVID recovery money went toward early childhood programs outside of the regular school day, including a new summer program called Preview to Pre-K.

A spokesperson provided an additional breakdown of budget figures to show how much was being spent directly on daily preschool instruction during the school year. It showed the district spent nearly $590 million from the fall of 2020 through the 2022-23 school year and about 13% came from ESSER dollars, according to CPS. In that time period, state funding grew by just $3 million.

The data show the district has cut down on its use of ESSER funding in that time period while boosting local dollars.

Theresa Hawley, executive director of the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity at Northern Illinois University who previously worked on early childhood education initiatives in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration, said Chicago officials assumed “with decent enough reason” before the pandemic that the state would pump more money into the block grant and allow them to continue opening more pre-K seats.

Pritzker is a longtime champion of early childhood education and has promised to make universal preschool more accessible across Illinois.

But in 2020, the pandemic put “a wrench in that plan” when Pritzker decided not to increase block grant funding, Hawley said. Illinois, as well as state governments across the country, worried about how the public health crisis would impact local resources as the economy slowed down.

When the federal government sent billions of COVID relief dollars to school districts, CPS decided to spend a chunk of its share to expand pre-K in absence of more state dollars, district officials said. Officials continued to invest in expansion efforts even after enrollment dropped in 2020.

“We did monitor and adjust our enrollment expansion throughout the pandemic,” McKinily said.

Still, district officials said that pre-K expansion was one of several priorities that “couldn’t wait.” The federal dollars have also helped CPS pay for existing pre-K costs, staving off budget deficits.

As the district used federal funds on pre-K in recent years, one Logan Square mother enrolled both of her sons in preschool at their neighborhood school. The program saved the family from shelling out tens of thousands of dollars in day care costs, said the mother, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding because of concerns over immigration status.

She’s currently seeing pre-K’s impact on her younger son, who is 4. For example, he used to try to snatch toys from his older brother because he couldn’t wait to play with them. But after learning how to take turns in pre-K, her son now says to his brother, “When you’re done, can I play with it?”

The mother was surprised to learn that the district used emergency funding toward pre-K. But she thinks it was the right decision.

“They have to allocate money to keep the program going,” she said, saying she is concerned about what will happen if the district can’t find extra money.

“Day care is very expensive in Chicago, and I see how important it is to have early childhood education,” she said. “And if it’s only available to people who can afford to send your child to fee-based preschool, then it’s not equitable to children.”

What lies ahead for pre-K?

Fiscal watchdogs have warned districts against using temporary federal dollars for a program they want to keep permanently, such as pre-K. Doing so can result in painful cuts that can affect children and families, so such spending decisions should come alongside lots of planning for the future, said Joe Ferguson, Chicago’s former inspector general who is now the executive director of Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

“Obviously, no one’s going to say pre-K education [or] early childhood support is not an important priority,” Ferguson said. “But if it’s an important priority, then the work should have been done already – certainly needs to be done now – to identify where the revenue stream is going to come [from] to maintain it.”

Chicago isn’t alone. In New York City, former Mayor Bill de Blasio used COVID relief funds to expand his signature universal pre-K program for 3-year-olds without a plan for how to pay for those seats once the federal funds ran out. His successor, Mayor Eric Adams, halted the program’s expansion and recently proposed slashing $170 million in early childhood programming, which includes preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has signaled an opposite approach, saying on the campaign trail that he wanted “child care for all” and would lobby Pritzker to increase early childhood education funding.

Last year, Pritzker proposed a four-year plan that aims to expand early childhood.

The state increased the Early Childhood Block Grant this year by $75 million, of which nearly $28 million went straight to Chicago Public Schools, as required by state law. Pritzker has not yet proposed a budget for next fiscal year, but the Illinois State Board of Education is proposing another $75 million increase.

District officials have said that more state funding for K-12 would also help. CPS, like other districts, is on a ramp toward “adequate” state funding and is $1.4 billion short of that goal, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

Elliot Regenstein, partner at law firm Foresight Law and Policy and an advocate for early childhood education who helped launch the state’s Preschool for All program under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said maintaining pre-K funding in the future depends on leadership.

“To some degree, all of those sustainability plans are just a hope and a guess that when the one-time funding runs out, that whoever is in charge at that moment will make decisions that carry on the momentum of those one-time funds,” Regenstein said.

He said Chicago’s decision to invest in pre-K, even with temporary dollars, is backed by research that shows it’s beneficial for children.

“The pandemic has had an impact on all children,” Regenstein said. “I think it’s great that CPS looked at its data and said ….we can’t ignore the kids who haven’t even entered kindergarten yet and we believe that if we invest in those kids it will help set them on a positive trajectory.”

Larson, the mother from Bridgeport, agreed. She said much of her daughter’s first years were during the pandemic and in social isolation. Pre-K has helped her make new friends, on top of learning about letters and numbers.

“Sometimes you need to be investing in a program to make it a program that you want people to send their children to,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Many of Chicago’s migrant students may be entitled to bus service. But are schools telling them?

2024-01-19T19:06:28+00:00

After six months in a downtown shelter, Daniela and her 11-year-old son, Luis, faced a dilemma: The city had given them until Feb. 1 to find another place to live, which would mean moving farther away from the school the fifth grader was attending.

The family, which migrated to Chicago from Venezuela, secured an apartment in South Shore with the help of Catholic Charities. Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms in this story out of privacy concerns for the interviewed families.

But their new apartment is more than 13 miles south of Luis’ school, Ogden International School of Chicago’s Jenner campus — which could mean an hour-plus commute by public transit for Luis and his mother, who had planned to look for a job.

Daniela’s predicament is one many parents could face as Chicago enforces a new rule requiring migrant families to leave shelters after 60 days. She is one of about 3,000 migrants who arrived between January and July 31 of last year and began receiving 60-day eviction notices in early December 2023, according to a press release from City Hall. If families haven’t secured permanent housing, they must get back in line for a spot at a city shelter.

But many migrant families in shelters might not know the rights their children have to district-provided transportation — or even that they can remain in the same school despite moving — if schools are not informing them, or there’s no one to help translate conversations between school staff and families.

Every school has a liaison for homeless students who is supposed to inform homeless families of their rights, a district spokesperson said. Those liaisons, along with principals and staff with the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education, tell newcomer families how to apply for transportation services, the district said. Each school also posts a list of homeless students’ rights in English and Spanish near the main office, the district said.

Until Daniela spoke with a Chalkbeat reporter, she didn’t know that the federal McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act allows homeless students to stay in the same school even if they move, such as to another shelter, and requires school districts to provide transportation. It also allows students such as Luis, who have found permanent housing, to stay at the same school until the end of the school year. No one at the school had told her, she said.

In fact, federal law says that districts “shall presume” that keeping homeless students in their original school is in their best interest unless that’s against their parents’ or guardians’ wishes.

After publication of this story, CPS provided Chalkbeat additional details about how schools are informing families of their rights under the law. They said every newly arrived family gets an enrollment packet, both in English and Spanish, that includes information about the rights of homeless students, according to the district.

Staff at the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education also help these families fill out an application for homeless students, which “provides families with the first opportunity to review the process and ask questions,” the district said. Schools have a 24/7 translation line that staff can use to communicate with families who don’t speak English. CPS said it fulfills its legal obligation to provide transportation to homeless students by providing them with CTA cards.

The goal of the federal law is to provide stability for homeless students. One 2015 study found that New York City students who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent, and of those students, those who were also homeless were more likely to repeat the same grade.

Daniela also didn’t know Chicago Public Schools allows parents of younger homeless students like Luis to apply for yellow bus service if they can’t accompany their child on the commute. Or that CPS policy requires schools to inform families who are homeless of their transportation rights and options.

“We’re not, as a district, transporting any newcomers,” said Kimberly Jones, CPS’s director of transportation, in late November during an interview with WGN. On Tuesday, a district spokesperson said the transportation department does not see students’ immigration status, but still called Jones’ statement accurate, in that she’s unable to identify any students on bus routes based on their immigration status.

But district officials have indicated they are tracking immigration status internally. At a City Council Education Committee meeting in late November, a district official testified that CPS had enrolled at least 4,000 migrant students.

This year the district is exclusively busing students with disabilities and homeless students due to a driver shortage and as it’s under state watch to shorten commutes for students with disabilities. District officials have said migrant students are largely homeless, meaning they’re living in shelter, doubled up with others, or in public places.

Of the roughly 8,700 students the district is currently busing, just 128 are homeless, the district said. Another nearly 4,000 students who would typically qualify for transportation this year are receiving stipends, with just 18 of them homeless.

The school did give Daniela and her son free CTA cards for the school commute to and from their shelter, a service it is providing as part of its legal obligation to provide homeless students with transportation. But, “they did not provide the option for yellow bus service,” she said.

Ogden-Jenner did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment. The district also declined to comment specifically on Daniela’s experience.

Schools must inform families of their rights, advocates say

CPS policy also allows families of young children who are homeless to apply for “hardship” transportation, which provides yellow bus service for children who are in kindergarten through sixth grade. Caregivers must fill out paperwork to prove they have a conflict that does not allow them to assist their child in getting to school. Examples of “hardship” include work, job training, schooling of their own, a conflict with shelter rules, court orders, or another “good cause,” according to CPS’ website.

The 60-day shelter rule is “going to require families to move more often, and it makes it more challenging to get to the school of origin and stay stable in their school of origin,” said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “If they are eligible for hardship transportation, they should be getting it.”

“The onus isn’t on the family who is newly arrived to Chicago to figure out what services might be available for transportation,” Nix-Hodes said.

School liaisons for homeless students often have other duties in schools, which may make it difficult for them to keep homeless families adequately informed, Nix-Hodes said.

In addition to informing families of their rights, the liaisons should also help families figure out if they’re eligible for bus service and with filling out any required paperwork, Nix-Hodes said.

Other families are in the dark about transportation rights

Edgar, a friend of Daniela’s who is also getting ready to move from shelter, also did not know he could apply for bus service so that his 8-year-old daughter could travel without him from their new home to her current school, Ogden Elementary.

Edgar is moving from the same shelter as Daniela to the same South Shore apartment building with his family. When he informed Ogden about their upcoming move, staff offered to find a school close to his new home — but they didn’t mention that he could apply for bus service to help get her to Ogden, he said.

Daniela's son, Luis, left, poses with Edgar's daughter, right, on Wed., Jan. 3, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

After learning the information from a Chalkbeat reporter, he went back to Ogden to ask about bus service. The school confirmed that service was available but “these are things that take time to approve,” Edgar explained in Spanish.

Instead, with Ogden’s help, he plans to enroll his daughter at a school that’s a 12-minute walk from their new home. While his daughter is OK with leaving Ogden, she’s sad about leaving her English class, he said. Ogden did not return a request for comment, and CPS didn’t respond to questions about Edgar’s experience.

Schools shouldn’t encourage homeless families to “move schools when their living situation changes,” Nix-Hodes said.

The law allows homeless students to stay in their same school because school stability is good for children’s academic performance and social-emotional health, especially when they’re coming to the United States from another country, Nix-Hodes said.

Gwen McElhattan, a social worker with nonprofit Chicago Help Initiative, which provides meals, clothing, and other services to homeless families, has received questions from many migrant parents on how to enroll their child in school. The city has created a “welcome center” for migrants at Roberto Clemente High School, which is supposed to help families with school enrollment and other resources. But McElhattan said that many people don’t know it exists — and doesn’t sense that many designated people are informing families of how to navigate school enrollment.

“They don’t know about it because they’re migrants — they don’t always know everything that’s happening,” said McElhattan, adding that their primary concerns are food and shelter. “They’re just trying to survive. They have children – they’re just trying to keep going.”

Luis, Daniela’s son, said he likes his teachers at Ogden-Jenner and he’s made some friends. But he’s had a tough time understanding lessons because there’s often no one who can help translate, he said. Because of the language barrier, there are days that he doesn’t want to go to school, his mother said.

Still, Daniela would prefer to keep her son enrolled at Ogden-Jenner if she can get busing because she senses it’s a good school. By state standards, it is: The school earned the Illinois State Board of Education’s second-highest rating for academic performance.

Daniela has not yet talked with the school about what happens next or what her options are.

It’s difficult to communicate with staff, she said. “En la escuela allí no hablan español” — At the school, they don’t speak Spanish.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

How many out-of-school, out-of-work youth did Chicago reengage last school year?

2024-01-10T11:00:00+00:00

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About 1 in 5 of roughly 2,300 out-of-school, out-of-work youth contacted to participate in a new reengagement program in Chicago took part during the first year, according to a new policy brief from the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

In Chicago, roughly 45,000 teens and young adults are disconnected from school and work. With $18 million from the state, the city launched Back to Our Future in May 2022 to reach 1,000 young people ages 14 to 21 in 15 neighborhoods on the South and West sides. Data indicates fewer than 500 have participated so far.

The findings released today illustrate how difficult it is to reconnect with these young people — often referred to as “opportunity youth” — once they’ve disengaged.

“If it was easy, somebody would have already done it,” said Jadine Chou, chief safety and security officer at Chicago Public Schools. “We knew going into this that it was going to be really hard.”

The Back to Our Future program is a partnership between the Crime Lab, Chicago Public Schools, and the three community organizations tasked with doing the on-the-ground reengagement: Breakthrough, UCAN, and Youth Advocate Programs (YAP), Inc.

Kim Smith, director of programs for the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Education Lab, said the low uptake is not entirely surprising. Back to Our Future is “a very ambitious program” to reach young people that have not been “served well by status quo services,” she said.

“This group of young people are not just going to kind of show up after a phone call,” Smith said. “There is an incredible need to tailor programming, to tailor services, even to tailor outreach strategies.”

The 12-week Back to Our Future program costs roughly $18,000 per young person to run. It includes 20 hours a week of mentoring, mental health services, job training, credit recovery to earn a CPS diploma or GED programming, and a stipend for youth participants.

However, the policy brief found many teens did not engage for the full 20 hours of programming each week. On average, participants attended nearly seven hours each week.

The policy brief analyzed referral and participation data, but was not a full evaluation of the program.

Chou said the district has a database of former students who left school before earning their diploma that they have used and shared with partner organizations in order to track down students. But often phone numbers and home addresses are no longer current or they have left Chicago. A lot of them have also aged out and would not be eligible for Back to Our Future.

“Once you do reach them, you have to really build trust,” Chou added.

She said the district is also learning a lot from the young people in Back to Our Future about how to prevent disconnection before it happens.

“They all have very important information, very important experiences that they are very happy to share,” she said, “which then I bring back to (colleagues at) CPS and say, ‘How can we work on this so that we essentially stem these young people from leaving us in the first place?’”

Chou highlighted school transfers as a signal for a student eventually dropping out.

“Once they do that transfer, that is so disruptive and destabilizing to their experience and to their sense of well-being because now they have to make new friends, now they have to navigate a new path to school,” she said. “And so, if possible, how do we support them in place?”

Smith said prevention is important so the numbers of out-of-school, out-of-work youth do not grow.

“At the point where a young person has not attended their school for 6, 12, 18 months, something has gone really wrong,” Smith said. “But it’s not ever too late, in our opinion, to try to re-engage young people and get them back on a good track.”

The brief only looked at data through May 2023. According to Chou, 346 young people are currently participating in Back to Our Future and outreach continues every day. She said 103 youth have successfully completed the program and of those, 32 earned their high school diplomas and 71 are re-enrolled in school.

“They would not have been able to do that without this program,” Chou said.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Five majority-Black Chicago schools earned ‘exemplary’ status. Two principals consider why.

2024-01-04T11:00:00+00:00

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As part of a lesson on persuasive writing, fourth and fifth grade students at Edgar Allan Poe Classical Elementary School recently presented arguments in a classroom mock trial about intrusive coyote populations.

A Poe parent, who is an actual judge, rendered the verdict.

Five miles away, at Kate Starr Kellogg Elementary School, a class engaged in a similar lesson by writing persuasive letters to their principal to suggest improvements to the school. Kellogg principal Cory Overstreet proudly showed off the letters and visited the classroom to share his response.

Poe is a selective enrollment school in Pullman with a strong reputation in the city and Kellogg is an overcrowded neighborhood school in Beverly that was on the brink of closure about seven years ago. But the two South Side schools have a lot in common.

Both have majority-Black student populations, both are small (with approximately 250 students in grades K through 8), and this year both were among only five majority-Black Chicago schools designated as “Exemplary” by the Illinois State Board of Education.

The state designations have taken on new importance now that Chicago Public Schools has officially discontinued its own rating system in April 2023 after pausing it during the pandemic. In eliminating the system, officials called it “a punitive, myopic single-rating indicator.”

State data show Black students are significantly less likely to be enrolled in “Exemplary” schools across Illinois. Of the 369 schools statewide that earned the “Exemplary” designation, just seven have majority-Black student populations — five in Chicago and two outside of CPS.

Every year since 2018, as stipulated by federal law, ISBE evaluates every public school in the state then sorts them into five categories based on the results – Exemplary, Commendable, Targeted, Comprehensive, and Intensive. Schools in the bottom three categories get additional funding to improve.

“Exemplary” schools are the top 10% of all schools in the state based on overall performance. Growth and proficiency in math and reading scores, proficiency in science, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism are the major indicators that determine a school’s designation, according to an ISBE statement.

This year 42 of Chicago’s 634 schools earned “Exemplary” status. Thirty are majority white, majority Asian American, or integrated.

Kellogg is the only majority-Black neighborhood school in CPS to earn the designation.

The other four “Exemplary” majority-Black schools – Poe Classical, Bronzeville Classical, McDade Classical, and Franklin Elementary Fine Arts Center – are either selective enrollment or magnet schools.

State officials said the disparity is tied to broader inequities.

“Statewide, education systems, which are deeply interconnected with broader state and local systems, are producing lower rates of growth, the lowest rates of proficiency, the lowest graduation rates, and the highest chronic absenteeism for the state’s Black students,” read a statement from ISBE. “Schools with high percentages of students of color are also more likely to experience teacher vacancies and higher teacher and principal turnover.”

Although 2023 is the first year Kellogg has earned “Exemplary” status from ISBE, the school was ranked as a Level 1+, the best possible designation, under CPS’s now-discontinued School Quality Ratings Policy.

CPS’s new accountability policy, called Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency, “considers both inputs, such as student daily learning experiences or adult capacity and continuous learning, and outputs, such as student growth to proficiency, among many other indicators,” according to a CPS statement.

It is set to be published in the fall of 2024 and adopts the state’s designations in lieu of level ratings.

In other words, the ISBE designations are the accountability system Chicago families and the public now have for scrutinizing how well a school is doing.

So what makes majority-Black schools like Kellogg and Poe exceptional?

Overstreet cites Kellogg’s high number of long-serving teachers and the school’s focus on social and emotional learning, an educational method that helps students develop things like relationship skills, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making.

He also credits Kellogg’s Personalized Learning curriculum through which educators create education plans according to the strengths and needs of individual students. Kellogg partnered with LEAP Innovations to adopt the curriculum before the district formalized its own Personalized Learning department in 2014.

But, he knows that many schools could cite similar strategies.

“I’ve worked in majority not-white schools pretty much my whole career, and I can tell you that in all the schools, including Kellogg, the teachers are working their tails off,” said Overstreet. “So I can’t really say why Kellogg is the only one.”

The thing he guesses might tip the scales? The parents, says Overstreet.

That’s something else Poe and Kellogg have in common. Principals and parents at both schools agree that parent involvement — and the socioeconomic privilege of the communities they serve that allows parents to be involved — might be the secret ingredient that sets them apart.

“I think we have a higher percentage of students or parents who are aware of what’s necessary to give their students the best advantages for success in school, and they stay with us throughout,” said Poe principal Eric Dockery.

Whether in the form of a parent and professional judge presiding over arguments for a lesson on persuasive writing at Poe or parents at Kellogg organizing to save the school from closure and demanding capital improvements, when parents get involved, they “extend learning,” said Dockery.

Kellogg Elementary in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood on the South Side nearly closed in 2017 to relieve overcrowding at a nearby elementary. But parents rallied to save the school.

How the #SaveKellogg movement created a parent community

When Kellogg parent Kenya Mercer learned her son’s school was designated as “Exemplary” this year, she was not surprised.

“They have excellent test scores, the eighth graders are going to great high schools within the city,” said Mercer, who is an active member of the PTA at Kellogg, a neighborhood school in Beverly on Chicago’s far southside.

Mercer chose Kellogg for her children over selective enrollment schools where they had gotten offers.

“It’s a phenomenal, great school,” she said.

Despite its long-running strong academic performance, Kellogg has endured some hardships over the years.

Even with Kellogg’s Level 1+ rating in the old CPS system, rumors that misrepresent the school’s academic record still persist.

“There’s just this belief that if a school is Black it’s not going to be as good,” said Overstreet. “I think you get that anywhere – Beverly, Morgan Park, anywhere in the city, anywhere in the state.”

In 2016, 19th ward Ald. Matt O’Shea and State Sen. Bill Cunningham proposed a plan to alleviate crowding at one of the ward’s schools by merging Kellogg, which had seen a dip in enrollment at the time, with another nearby neighborhood school, Elizabeth H. Sutherland Elementary. Under the plan, Keller Regional Gifted Center would have moved into Kellogg’s building and Keller’s building would go to then-overcrowded Mount Greenwood Elementary, a majority white school at the edge of the city limits.

Kellogg parents saw this as an attempt to close Kellogg and replace the neighborhood school with Keller, a school that enrolls students based on test scores rather than neighborhood boundaries.

So they fought back. They organized along with other ward schools and community members and conducted a march through the ward, Kellogg alumni showed up at meetings about the proposal and spoke out against the plan, and parents and students spoke at Board of Education meetings. Some of those speaking out raised concerns that there may be a racist component to the plan, since Kellogg, the only majority-Black school associated with the plan, would be the school being closed.

The movement made headlines and eventually the plan was killed and Kellogg was saved. Mt. Greenwood received a new annex in 2017, the third addition at the regularly overcrowded school since 2011.

But the energy from the #SaveKellogg movement was still crackling. Parents who had organized together were in more communication than ever and felt empowered to demand more for their school, said Kellogg parent Emily Lambert who was a Local School Council member at the time.

“I do think that the #SaveKellogg experience did kind of reinvigorate [the school] after a lull,” said Lambert. “And did lead to a very strong group of parents who were very committed.”

Today, Kellogg is officially designated as “overcrowded” by CPS, according to the 2023 CPS Facilities Master Plan.

Cory Overstreet has served as Kellogg’s principal since 2016.

Along with principal Overstreet, that contingent of parents pushed for several capital improvements at Kellogg, including an addition to make more space at the 80-year-old school, where there is no kitchen and the small gymnasium serves as gym, auditorium, and cafeteria, as well as occasionally a voting center and during the pandemic a care room for sick kids. The stage in the gymnasium is currently used for storage.

The community gained several smaller improvements for the school worth about $2.4 million but no addition to the building. The mobile unit that had been built twenty years prior, however, was upgraded.

Today, Kellogg has an average class size of 30, according to ISBE. Some parents have expressed frustration about the situation.

Parent Kenya Mercer says because of the strong communication between parents, staff, and even students, she’s not too concerned about the overcrowding affecting student learning.

“The biggest thing is this community piece,” she said. “Everybody is holding each other accountable including our kids holding each other and their peers accountable and their teachers.”

She’s hopeful that the “Exemplary” designation will help the Kellogg community advocate for physical improvements and more enrichment programs for the school.

Students line up in the hallway at Edgar Allan Poe Classical School in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood on the South Side as Principal Eric Dockery talks with them as they walk by.

Selective enrollment doesn’t mean it’s ‘Easy Street’

The first thing Poe Principal Eric Dockery noted about the school’s ISBE “Exemplary” designation, is that a lot of other great schools “get left out.”

“It’s such a big range for commendable and such a small range for exemplary,” he said, pointing to a chart showing the distribution of the five ISBE designations on his computer monitor. “Whenever you take the 10% of something, you’re going to exclude some.”

As a selective enrollment school and a National Blue Ribbon School, a distinction by the U.S. Board of Education recognizing high-performing based on academic performance and closing education gaps, Poe is no stranger to the upper echelon.

Dockery, who previously worked at a school in Englewood that was among the 50 CPS schools that closed in 2013, understands that as a selective enrollment school, Poe is more likely to draw families who are familiar with the selective enrollment process and parents who have higher levels of education themselves and are more financially capable of being involved in their children’s schools.

This, he said, is likely part of the reason some of the broader educational inequities that Black students tend to face across the state seem to be largely erased for Poe’s 87% Black student population.

Although Kellogg must guarantee a seat for any student within its neighborhood boundaries, the school’s boundaries are in the Beverly neighborhood, where the median household income is approximately $113,000, according to the 2017-2021 American Community Survey five-year estimates. Still, 39% of Kellogg’s student population is low-income, according to state data.

Families who apply to Poe, said Dockery, are often doing many of the things that help prepare their kids for academically advanced paths – taking them to museums, reading to them every day, enrolling them in preschool programs and enrichment activities – and they probably have the money to do so.

That explains part of Poe’s success, but it’s not the whole picture, he said.

“Just because we’re selective enrollment, that doesn’t mean that it’s just Easy Street and we don’t have to do any work,” he said.

While CPS has always been supportive of Poe, Dockery said, the school isn’t swimming in mountains of money. According to state data, 37% of Poe’s students come from low-income families.

“We’re too poor to be rich and too rich to be poor. So we don’t get Federal Title I [status]. We’re not that poor, but we’re not rich enough that our parents could just write a check and give us everything that we want.”

Poe Classical, a selective enrollment elementary school in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood, is led by Principal Eric Dockery and Assistant Principal Ashley Jackson.

According to the school’s own assessments of student readiness when they enter the school in kindergarten, Dockery said, not every student is coming in ready to tackle Poe’s curriculum despite being screened through the selective enrollment process.

But because Poe has a relatively low rate of students leaving the school, once Poe has a student in its grasp, the school holds tight, getting to know them, working with their particular strengths, and strengthening them in areas where they need support.

It’s part of their Personalized Learning curriculum, which, like Kellogg, Poe adopted before CPS developed their own Personalized Learning department. The curriculum customizes an education plan for each individual student according to their strengths, needs, and interests.

On top of that, Poe offers a large number of enrichment activities, has a small student-to-teacher ratio, and a low rate of turnover among faculty and students. Principal Dockery has been at the school for almost a decade, and is very hands-on with families.

“If anything he probably overcommunicates,” said Poe parent and PTA member Maricha Matthews.

“We’re a small school and what I think makes us special is our family environment and knowing every student and them having teachers that have been with you from kindergarten all the way up,” said Dockery.

As dean of students at a high school in the Bremen Community High School District 228 in Chicago’s South Suburbs, Matthews has a term for the secret ingredient to a school’s success. She calls it the trifecta – when students, parents, and faculty work together to make a school successful – and Poe has it, she says.

“They’ve always had the trifecta, they’ve always had caring administrators. Educators have gone above and beyond, and they’ve always made the parents feel like we were stakeholders in curricular decisions, like we’ve always had a seat at the table,” she said.

Matthews was actually living in Beverly when she first began researching schools for her children, and though it was not her zoned school, she said, Kellogg is known for its strong parent community, one that gets things done.

As CPS refocuses its priorities on neighborhood schools, according to the Board of Education’s recent resolution, Matthews hopes it will see parents as a resource and a necessary part of the equation.

“It’s free to get parents involved,” she said. “So that’s a resource that we have to invest back into our neighborhood schools.”

Although Poe is a selective enrollment school, Dockery and Assistant Principal Ashley Jackson are actively working on engaging neighborhood families as part of continued efforts to expand some of Poe’s offerings to more students (the school expanded from a K-6 to a K-8 program in 2021).

The majority of Poe’s students come from the South Side, including many from the 19th ward where Kellogg is located, but only a handful of students actually live in Pullman, where Poe is located and where families are lower income, with a median household income of approximately $53,000.

Jackson said she often has to explain the selective enrollment process to neighborhood parents who come to the school asking to enroll their kids.

Instead of waiting for neighborhood families to come to them, she and Dockery are reaching out to local day cares and opening Poe’s facilities to community groups for events in hopes of connecting with more neighborhood families.

“Since 1905, we were a neighborhood school serving the students in the Pullman area working in the Pullman factory. So I don’t want to lose that,” said Dockery. “We don’t want to be that school that’s across the street or a block down that you can’t go to.”

How do families use Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories.

2023-12-20T22:53:13+00:00

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One mother in West Pullman on Chicago’s South Side sends her daughter to a charter school even though there are two neighborhood schools down the street.

Up in Albany Park, a mother is for the first time confident in her daughter’s neighborhood school after two decades of sending her older children to magnet and test-in programs.

A high school student attends one of the district’s most coveted high schools — but wants the city to undo the system she used to get there.

There’s a lot that goes into how families choose a school in Chicago.

Last week, the city’s school board made waves by announcing they want to move away from that system of choice and build up neighborhood schools, especially in areas that have lacked investment from the city. The board passed a resolution last week stating its intent, but does not call to close any schools or change specific admissions policies.

Originally established to help desegregate schools, the system has recently earned a reputation for stressing out students, who are competing for seats at a limited number of sought-after schools, many of which are segregated by race and income.

Despite that, students have increasingly chosen schools they’re not zoned for. Last school year, 56% of students attended their zoned neighborhood school, or roughly 20 percentage points fewer than in the 2002-03 school year. A quarter of students attended their zoned high school last year, compared to 46% 20 years ago.

The district also won a federal grant in October that they will use to collect community feedback on how they can make neighborhood schools more attractive. In the grant application, Chicago Public Schools said its goal was to reduce the percentage of families attending school outside of their regions by 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

How much the district will try to change the city’s school choice system will depend on feedback from the community, board members said. Already, a mix of reactions have emerged. Some community groups praised the board’s support of neighborhood schools. But former CPS CEO Janice Jackson wrote in an op-ed to the Chicago Sun-Times that moving away from school choice would ultimately hurt Black and Hispanic children.

“Trying to do anything in a district that large is going to take a long time if you’re going to do it right,” said Jack Schneider, a professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst who studies education policy. “It’s going to turn quite slowly and particularly so if your effort is rooted in engaging communities and really listening to them and trying to respond to what you’re hearing.”

Chalkbeat asked readers for their thoughts on school choice and got nearly 80 responses from families across the city about how they’ve navigated the system. We spoke to some of those families to understand how — and why — they chose their schools.

From left to right: Tiffany Harvey walks her dog, Mila, alongside her daughters Isabel Harvey, 21, and Amalia Harvey, 10, as they walk to Haugan Elementary School in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Amalia is a fourth grader at Haugan Elementary School.

Preschool sells mom of four on neighborhood school

About 20 years ago, when Tiffany Harvey was deciding where to send her firstborn to school, she kept hearing that aside from some gifted and magnet programs, Chicago’s schools were “terrible.”

Harvey applied to magnet schools and had her son tested for gifted programs. She also toured a kindergarten classroom at the neighborhood school, Haugan Elementary, a couple blocks away from their Albany Park home. But at the time, Haugan didn’t have before- or after-care programs to accommodate her work schedule, while magnet and gifted programs came with busing. And Haugan’s test scores seemed low to her, she said.

“I honestly felt like I was a bad parent if I didn’t explore all the options and find the best option,” she said.

Over the next two decades, Harvey would send her first three children to magnet, gifted and selective enrollment schools outside their neighborhood.

A few years ago, that changed.

In search of preschool for her fourth child, Harvey applied for the district’s full-day pre-K program and saw that Haugan had seats. She didn’t want to pay for preschool again, and after so many years in Albany Park, she wanted to invest in her neighborhood school as someone who was better-off than some of her neighbors. Her daughter got a seat at Haugan, where 89% of students come from low-income families.

Some research shows public pre-K programs can “attract a more integrated group of families” to schools, while some districts notice families flee after preschool, said Halley Potter, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, who has studied school segregation.

Harvey, who had low expectations, found Haugan was “phenomenal,” she said. Her daughter’s teacher was creative and kind. There was a good combination of play-based learning and introduction to academics. Her daughter was meeting kids from all kinds of families. The next year, she enrolled her daughter in a nearby lottery dual-language program, but they missed Haugan. Her daughter returned for second grade and is now in fourth grade.

“We never looked back,” Harvey said.

Harvey supports families having the ability to choose a school for their child. However, she wishes more parents would realize that schools can’t be measured by test scores alone, and more-advantaged children, like hers, can flourish alongside peers who are different from them. It’s also easier for parents to get involved at schools that are nearby, she said.

As district leaders consider how to invigorate neighborhood schools, they should add more services, such as pre-K programs or after care, as ways to draw in more families, she said.

“I don’t know what the right balance is,” Harvey said. “I do want our neighborhood schools to be celebrated and promoted and have the resources they need, where parents don’t feel like they have to drive across town to find a better option.”

A mom who chose a charter school

Charity Parker lives a couple of blocks away from two neighborhood schools in West Pullman. But her daughter, Aikira, attends a Chicago International Charter Schools, or CICS, campus that’s a roughly 15-minute walk from their home.

Parker, who attended Catholic and charter schools growing up in Chicago, said the neighborhood schools close to her — Curtis and Haley — are “poorly funded” and don’t have good test scores. At both neighborhood schools and Aikira’s charter school, more than 90% of students are from low-income families. But CICS is designated as “commendable” by the state, the second- highest designation out of five. Haley and Curtis have lower designations.

Charity Parker, left, and her daughter Aikira Parker, 8, right, smile as they pose for a portrait together outside of CICS Prairie Chicago International Charter School, where Aikira is a second grader, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023.

Aikira is learning more advanced topics than other neighborhood kids Parker knows, she said. She placed fifth in the school’s science fair for a solar panel project, Parker noted.

“An 8-year-old doing engineering work — I’m not getting that at my local CPS school,” she said.

Another selling point for Parker, who is Black, is that about one-third of Aikira’s peers are Hispanic, so she’s exposed “to another culture besides her own.” At Curtis and Haley, more than 90% of students are Black, which is common in Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods.

Parker said all parents should have the right to choose where their children go to school, and the district should never mandate attending neighborhood schools. While Parker loves some things about CICS, she has some issues with the school.

Aikira “loved” kindergarten at CICS, but the next year, Parker had some disagreements with Aikira’s first -grade teacher over coursework. This year, Parker has some concerns about behavior issues in Aikira’s classroom and has considered transferring her out.

But other charters are far away, and she doesn’t have a car. Private school is too expensive.

So, she’ll stay at CICS, she said.

“I’ll admit there are some things about my daughter’s school that rub me the wrong way, but the education is awesome,” Parker said.

Dad sought out selective schools for his son

Since kindergarten, Clyde Smith’s son, Kadin, has exclusively attended selective public schools located 5 to 6 miles south of their Bronzeville home.

Kadin tested into McDade Classical School, a selective enrollment elementary school in Chatham. Then, he tested again in sixth grade and got a seat at an accelerated middle school program located inside Lindblom Math and Science Academy, a selective enrollment high school in West Englewood. Kadin, 16, is now a sophomore at Lindblom.

The stressful nature of admissions never felt “unhealthy,” Smith said. His son has always been surrounded by peers who aimed for similar programs, so he was used to the competition.

“It’s always been in the air,” Smith said. “It’s almost like asking a fish, ‘How’s the water?’”

Kadin Smith, left, stands with his father, Clyde Smith, at their Bronzeville home.

A simpler option might have been to attend his neighborhood school where he’s guaranteed a seat: Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts. District officials closed Dyett in 2015, but the school was revived in 2016 after protests and a hunger strike that Mayor Brandon Johnson participated in as an activist.

The district hosted a press conference in October at Dyett about the school’s rising graduation rates, and officials noted that the school’s 86% graduation rate had surpassed the citywide average.

Smith said he “understood the activism” that brought back Dyett, but it wasn’t enough to win him over.

“The test scores, the classes offered, the colleges they get accepted into overall, to me, doesn’t lay proof that that’s the strongest academic environment like some of these selective enrollment schools are,” Smith said.

Smith complimented the district’s desire to boost neighborhood schools, adding that segregation and “racial inequities” have left many schools under-resourced. Neighborhood schools need “strong teachers,” challenging courses, and more internship opportunities, he said.

Paul Hill, an architect of the idea that districts should create a mix of school options for parents, said the district could risk driving away parents like Smith.

“If the district is really serious about working hard on the neighborhood schools and trying to figure out what would keep people in them… that’s responsible,” said Hill, the founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education. “On the other hand, if they really attack the schools of choice that probably will drive down enrollment.”

Smith agrees. After all, if Kadin didn’t get into a selective enrollment high school, he and his wife would have sent him to private school.

Mom is daunted by high school admissions

Laura Irons loves Logan Square and their neighborhood school, where her 7-year-old daughter is in first grade. But the thought of choosing a high school is so daunting, the family is considering leaving Chicago by the time their daughter finishes eighth grade.

Irons’ daughter passed up a seat at a magnet school to attend her zoned school, Brentano Math and Science Academy, because the family liked walking to school and didn’t want their daughter to lose friends.

“Being nearby the school, I think, has tremendous social-emotional benefits,” Irons said.

For the future, her family would consider the neighborhood high school. But other parents tell Irons it’s dangerous, with lots of fights and nearby shootings. Irons doesn’t know whether to believe them.

Laura Irons, far right, poses for a photo with her husband and two children at the Logan Square Blue Line stop.

Irons worries about the impact of the competitive application process on her daughter. Through friends and community Facebook groups, Irons hears about kids being “so tremendously stressed out” by the application process. She hates that some schools are considered good or bad without any clarity about why.

“I don’t like [the idea of] making such a big decision at such a young age,” Irons said. “It feels like the college process, which is hard already in itself.”

Even though Irons and her husband love city life, they’re leaning toward leaving unless there is more clarity and transparency around how the choice system works, she said. And she doesn’t know where to find accurate information.

“I do value choice in certain situations so I’m not anti-choice,” Irons said. “I think the system that we have, though — to sound so cliche — it’s just a broken, very opaque system. I wonder if kids would even be stressed if the parents weren’t so stressed.”

Selective enrollment student sees problems with the system

One of Tess Lacy’s earliest memories of discussing school choice was in fourth grade. Her physical education teacher told her class, “I want you to go to good high schools,” Tess recalled.

Comments like that were common throughout Tess’s elementary and middle school years. Teachers talked often about applying to sought-after high schools. Many of her friends felt they’d fail their parents if they didn’t get into those schools. While her own parents didn’t care where she went, the stress around Tess conditioned her to focus on selective enrollment schools, she said.

Tess Lacy poses for a portrait in front of George B. Swift Elementary School, which she used to attend, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Lacy is currently a sophomore at Jones College Prep.

She took the High School Admissions Test and got into her top-ranking: Jones College Prep in the South Loop.

Now, three years later, Tess wants to see the selective enrollment system abolished.

Selective enrollment schools tend to have more resources, not just from the district, but also from families who can fundraise, sometimes millions of dollars, Tess noted.

“If you intentionally, institutionally, structurally create schools that have more resources, parents with more resources will send their kids there,” Tess said. “I feel like a lot of people are able to realize that’s not normal, but there’s a lot of people who would rather forget about the tens of thousands of students who don’t have that privilege.”

Tess doesn’t regret attending Jones, where she finally feels accepted as a transgender young woman and has made friends from all over the city. She enjoys doing technical work for the school’s drama department.

But her decision to attend Jones now feels like it was influenced by everyone around her. She regrets not ranking Edgewater’s Senn High School higher. Senn was not her zoned high school, but is a neighborhood school closer to home that has a good arts program — one of Tess’s interests.

She would encourage eighth grade students to “really, truly think about what they as a student want.”

“Now I look back, and I see how my decision was so not my own decision,” Tess said.

Correction: This story orignally stated that McDade Classical School was a gifted program. McDade is another type of selective enrollment elementary school in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools leaders want to move away from school choice

2023-12-12T18:45:13+00:00

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Chicago school leaders want to move away from the district’s system of school choice — in which families apply to a myriad of charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run programs — according to a resolution the Board of Education will vote on this week.

The move puts in motion Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to reinvigorate Chicago Public Schools’ neighborhood schools. On the campaign trail, Johnson likened the city’s school choice system to a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces competition for resources and ultimately harms schools, particularly those where students are zoned based on their address.

District leaders’ goals include ensuring “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” the resolution, which was released Tuesday, said.

The board wants to pursue that policy goal — and several others — as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, Board President Jianan Shi, and Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland declined to specify changes or say how far they want to move away from the choice system. That’s because they want to collect community feedback on how far the district should go, which would be outlined in a final five-year strategic plan this summer, they said.

The board is expected to vote Thursday on the resolution, which doesn’t create or get rid of any policies; rather, it formalizes and publicizes the district’s goals.

The district wants to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” the resolution says.

This marks the first time the board has formally stated it wants to move away from selective admissions and enrollment policies. It says the school choice system, as it exists today, “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Some selective enrollment and magnet schools lack the diversity of the city, enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students, while others remain largely segregated by race and class.

Martinez said it is painful to hear of students traveling far distances to attend school, or when parents ask if they should get their 4-year-old child tested for gifted programs. He said he can “scream as loud as I can” about all that he believes neighborhood schools can offer to families versus highly sought-after magnet or selective enrollment schools — but “it’s not going to be enough.”

“We see this as an opportunity to, again, build trust, because I want to keep calling that out — that is a huge challenge for us,” Martinez said.

Any number of big changes could be on the horizon, Todd-Breland said.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed, so the admissions and enrollment policy is on the table as something that through this process of engagement, likely there will be some changes to it,” Todd-Breland said.

Todd-Breland and Shi said they’ve heard many pleas from the community to overhaul the choice system. The board’s goal to move away from school choice is framed in the resolution as a response to the district’s ongoing challenges, such as budget deficits and academic disparities between students citywide and Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, those who are homeless, and children learning English as a new language.

District leaders imagine prioritizing neighborhood schools to receive more resources and programming. Martinez said universal preschool is one example of an initiative that can draw families into a school.

The system of school choice in Chicago grew over many decades.

Data shows around 56% of elementary school students attended their zoned neighborhood school last school year and 23% of high school students did. Twenty years ago, during the 2002-03 school year, 74% of students attended their zoned elementary school and 46% of high schoolers did.

Many of the district’s most popular magnet and selective schools were created in the 1980s and 90s under a court-ordered federal desegregation consent decree that officially ended in 2009. In the 2000s, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley opened 100 new schools under an initiative known as Renaissance 2010. Most of those schools did not have neighborhood attendance boundaries and many were charter schools run by third-parties.

The expansion of school options also contributed to the mass closure or shakeup of nearly 200 schools, including 50 schools in 2013. Enrollment has further declined since then, but under state law, the district cannot close schools until 2025. Officials would not say if the five-year plan would eventually include closing schools and emphasized their plans to engage communities.

However, Todd-Breland did signal that the board might move to close charter schools.

“If you are a privately-managed school, taking public dollars from our taxpayers that would otherwise go to the other schools that we know need to be invested in because they haven’t [been] for years, and you are not performing at a level that we find to be a high quality educational experience for young people, then why do you continue to exist in this system?” she said.

Nearly half of the charter schools authorized by the Chicago Board of Education are up for renewal this year and dozens more will be next year. If a charter is not renewed, it most likely would close, though operators can appeal to the state.

The previous administration, under the leadership of former CPS CEO Janice Jackson, also tried to reinvigorate underenrolled neighborhood schools. In 2018, the district offered additional funding for specialty programs to local schools looking to attract more students.

Though the current system has long been criticized for stressing out students and families as they compete for spots at the most sought-after schools, many families value having options outside of their assigned neighborhood school. Student admissions to gifted programs rely on a test, while admissions to selective enrollment high schools are based in part on the High School Admissions Test and previous school performance.

The board’s policy priorities come less than a year before Chicago will for the first time elect school board members. State law currently says 10 members will be elected and the mayor is to appoint another 11. That shift is one reason the board is focused on getting a lot of community feedback on their vision, so new board members “understand this is the direction that the district is moving in,” Shi said.

Political shifts, such as this transition to an elected school board, could upend what the current board wants to do, said Jack Schneider, an education policy expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“The last thing you want is to put all of this effort into something like promoting neighborhood public schools and then have a massive change in the composition of the board that then leads to a 180 in priorities,” Schneider said.

The resolution also highlights several other policy goals under the district’s next strategic plan, including creating more community schools over the next five years. These schools provide wraparound services to students and families, another priority for Johnson. It also includes adding staff, ensuring culturally relevant, anti-racist lessons for students and similarly framed professional development for educators, and prioritizing collecting feedback from students and the community.

The board also wants to ask the community’s help in creating plans for “previously closed and currently ‘underutilized’ schools,” the resolution says.

Read the full resolution on page 21 of the board’s agenda posted online.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

After court order, Chicago Public Schools extends contract with Urban Prep charter schools

2023-12-14T22:36:49+00:00

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Forced by a court order, the Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to extend charter school contracts run by embattled Urban Prep Charter Academy.

The board approved an extension until June 2024 for the network’s Bronzeville and Englewood campuses.

The extension comes more than a year after the board voted not to renew the contracts, with plans to take over those schools. The board’s decision was based on allegations that Urban Prep mismanaged finances and failed to comply with special education laws, as well as allegations that the school’s founder, Tim King, sexually abused a now-former student. King has denied those allegations.

Urban Prep appealed the board’s decision to state education officials, who sided with CPS. The charter network then filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that their agreement couldn’t be revoked because of the state’s moratorium on closing schools until 2025. In July, the court ruled in Urban Prep’s favor.

“That is why we are here — to be in compliance with the court’s order even as it may be contrary to previous actions by the board,” Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said last week at a meeting to review the board’s agenda.

CPS has appealed the court’s decision.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who currently appoints the school board, is critical of the charter sector, but he has also stressed that he doesn’t oppose charter schools. The board recently passed a resolution signaling that it wants to boost neighborhood schools and move away from the district’s school choice system, which families use to apply to magnets, charters, and test-in schools and other programs.

Several teachers and families from other charter networks have pleaded with the board to renew their contracts over the past several months, including on Thursday. Christian Feaman, director of district advocacy for Illinois Network of Charter Schools, suggested the board’s new resolution attempts to “claw back the basic rights” of school choice for “Black and brown families.”

The resolution — which doesn’t create or get rid of any current policies or schools — isn’t intended to signal a closing of all charter schools, Todd-Breland said Thursday. Rather, the board wants to “hold charters accountable to the promise that was made at their founding,” she said.

The Urban Prep agreement approved Thursday comes with more than a dozen conditions, including cooperation in district investigations and complying with financial oversight. Those conditions are generally the same that Urban Prep has had to follow in the past, most of which Urban Prep has not attempted to comply with, said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management, last week.

In remarks to the board Thursday, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer at Urban Prep, said the district is spreading “lies and propaganda” about the charter failing to meet nearly all the requirements CPS has asked of it. Lacewell said Urban Prep has complied with eight of ten previous conditions and submitted evidence to the district.

Separately, a few public speakers raised concerns about the board’s resolution, specifically saying the board shouldn’t be moving to close any selective enrollment or gifted schools. Todd-Breland emphasized that there is no current plan to close any schools.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is tapping principal Joshua Long to lead its special education department

2023-12-11T20:31:00+00:00

Joshua Long, currently the principal of Southside Occupational Academy High School, has been selected to lead Chicago Public Schools’ beleaguered special education department, according to district officials.

The department — known as the Office of Diverse Learners Supports and Services — serves nearly 52,000 students with disabilities and has been without a chief since June. That’s when Stephanie Jones stepped down amid fallout from Chicago’s violations related to the use of restraint and timeout of students. The department has also struggled in recent years to ensure students with disabilities are getting services they’re legally entitled to under federal law.

Long sent a letter to families whose children attend Southside this morning announcing “with mixed emotions” that he accepted the role and would start after winter break, pending confirmation by the school board this Thursday.

“I am excited to continue working for students with disabilities and look forward to new opportunities to engage with all stakeholders as we move to positively impact each student’s experience in every school,” he wrote.

Ben Felton, chief talent officer at Chicago Public Schools, said the district used an external search firm and input from city officials, local advocates, educators, and other staff in its search for a new department head.

“We approached this differently than we had in the past given how critical this role is to CPS and how deeply invested many of our stakeholders are in special education and in this position,” said Felton.

Representatives from Access Living, the city’s Office of People with Disabilities, district principals, the Dyslexia Collaborative, and the Chicago Teachers Union were among the community groups that had a conversation with finalists and provided feedback, Felton said.

CEO Pedro Martinez made the final recommendation; the school board, which meets on Thursday, must approve the appointment.

Long would be inheriting a department beset with problems. The district is under state watch on multiple issues, including providing timely transportation to students with disabilities and for how it physically restrains students in the classroom.

Long has been the principal of Southside since 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2019, he won the prestigious statewide Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Leadership.

Joshua Long, second from left, speaks with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in Sept., 2023 in Chicago, Ill.

Before that, Long worked in various positions, including as a speech pathologist in a dozen schools, he told Chalkbeat in 2019. At the time, when Chalkbeat asked Long how the district should help students with disabilities, Long said he saw classes that “were not being run effectively” and weren’t “as rigorous” as other schools he’d been in. With that in mind, Long said “that the biggest thing is establishing equity for all students no matter which school or neighborhood they are in.”

Some district leaders have known Long for years. Board of Education member Mary Fahey Hughes, a longtime advocate for students with disabilities, sent her son to Southside. During a school visit with Mayor Brandon Johnson in September, Hughes praised the school and its model, which is designed to help those with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world.

“The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at,” she told Chalkbeat at the time.

Long was a proponent of changing the timeline for when students with disabilities could transition out of public schools. Previously, under state law, some students with disabilities could receive services until the day before their 22nd birthday. In 2021, state law changed to allow students who turn 22 during the school year to remain eligible for services through the end of that year.

Long has also advocated for improving funding and availability of services for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities once they graduate from CPS. In an interview with Chalkbeat during the September school visit with Johnson, Long said the state has a yearslong waiting list for people with more challenging disabilities who want to access state-funded adult services, such as for community-based living or day services, that are meant to provide people with more independence. One of his former students accessed such services eight years after she graduated from Southside, he said.

“Our students do best through routine and through daily interactions,” Long said. “Now, she sat home for eight years and likely lost a lot of skills that she learned here with us.”

Long’s appointment comes after the district leaders signaled this fall that they were interested in expanding the school model Long oversaw. Southside is one of a handful of so-called specialty schools that focus on teaching students with intellectual and developmental disabilities about work and life skills. Southside, for example, has classes that teach students how to work in retail, food service, and auto mechanics. Unlike most schools, the district assigns students to these schools.

The district is under state watch regarding multiple issues for how it supports students with disabilities. Last year, the state launched a corrective action plan requiring the district to cap bus commute times for students with disabilities to 60 minutes each way. About 3,000 students with disabilities exceeded that limit at the start of last school year, according to the district.

Under state watch, those travel times have vastly improved this year, after the district decided to stop busing general education students, largely those in magnet and selective enrollment programs. In September, the state launched a new corrective action plan to ensure the district is providing transportation to all students of disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, call for bus service.

This spring, documents obtained by Chalkbeat revealed the district had been under state watch for failing to follow state law on physical restraint and timeout for students. The state board said that Chicago was not notifying parents of incidents, staff and faculty were not trained in how to properly restrain and seclude students, and untrained staff were using outlawed methods of restraint.

The state board named Jones for failing in her role as a designated official to look into restraint and timeout incidents. In that role, she was required to maintain copies of incidents, be notified of incidents that occurred during the school day, and receive documents of physical restraint and timeout incidents that went on for a long time.

Prior to Jones’s time as chair, the district’s department responsible for supporting students with disabilities had been in trouble with the state before. A 2017 investigation WBEZ found Chicago Public Schools secretly overhauled the special education department in 2016, resulting in students losing access to vital services. The State Board of Education placed the district under a corrective action plan in 2018, which lasted until 2022. During the 2022-23 school year, the state placed Chicago under a general supervision plan to continue to watch how the district handles special education services.

Now, Long could play a key role in ensuring that the department is delivering services to students with disabilities, monitoring physical restraint and timeout incidents, and helping students catch up after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted education.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

New data shows hundreds of Chicago Public Schools bus routes with fewer than 10 students

2023-12-07T20:36:30+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn.

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Four months after Chicago Public Schools significantly cut back bus service to meet the needs of children with disabilities, new data indicates hundreds of routes are carrying fewer than 10 students.

New data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago details more than 1,000 bus routes for 7,350 students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, require transportation services. It offers a glimpse into how the district is attempting to shorten bus travel times for these students, as required by the state under a corrective action plan issued last year.

The bus routes included in the data are carrying students to 540 different schools.

The data was captured on Oct. 23 and filed by CPS with the state just before Thanksgiving, as part of the corrective action plan. It outlines the number of students with IEPs per route, their schools, pick-up times, and the third-party company that operates each route.

However, the data does not include students who have 504 plans — another type of legal document for students with disabilities — or homeless students, who are also entitled to transportation. District officials said the routes may include those students. One week before the data was captured, the district said it had routed a total of 8,105 students.

Chalkbeat’s analysis of the route data for 7,350 students with IEPs found:

There are an average 6.9 students with IEPs per route
785 of the more than 1,000 routes have 10 or fewer children with IEPs
59 routes — or 5.4% — transport one child with an IEP
The maximum number of students with an IEP per route is 26

The data does not clarify what sized buses travel on each route, how many routes include adult paraprofessionals who are assigned to assist students who have IEPs, how many other children who do not have IEPs might ride on the route, or how many empty seats there are on each bus route.

The new information raises questions about how students with IEPs are assigned to schools — often far from where they live — rather than provided services at schools in their communities. It also comes as parents of students whose bus service was cut earlier this year continue to put pressure on the district to provide transportation to their students, most of whom attend magnet and selective enrollment schools.

District officials continue to cite a national bus driver shortage as the core reason for its transportation troubles. CPS currently has 715 of the roughly 1,300 drivers it needs, officials said.

“This is an evolving non-stagnant situation with new requests and availability,” a district spokesperson said in an email.

Advocates for students with disabilities cautioned that the data does not necessarily mean there’s room on school buses for more students. Students with disabilities are legally owed transportation under federal law, and adding general education students to their existing routes “muddies the waters” of those legal rights, said Miriam Bhimani, a CPS parent and advocate whose complaint placed the district under state watch regarding transportation rights for students with IEPs.

CPS has struggled to provide bus transportation

The scope of busing provided by CPS has contracted significantly in recent years. As recently as 2019, the district budgeted $120 million to bus nearly 20,000 students, according to budget documents. This fiscal year, the district planned to budget $146 million as it pared down the number of students it was serving.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, CPS has been struggling to provide reliable bus transportation. Last year, about 3,000 CPS students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour. The state put the district under corrective action last year to reduce ride times to less than an hour, which Illinois requires districts to “make every effort” to do.

In July, officials announced CPS would only bus students with disabilities and those who are homeless — groups legally entitled to transportation — and offered CTA passes to about 5,500 general education students and their parents. They also offered families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover their own transportation costs.

In October, district officials said about 8,100 students, most of whom have IEPs, were routed for busing to and from school. Another 3,948 families of students with disabilities opted to take the monthly reimbursements, CPS officials told the state in a letter dated Nov. 17.

Chicago is not alone in struggling with a shortage of bus drivers. U-46, Illinois’s second largest school district, has also experienced a driver shortage affecting students with disabilities, the Courier-News reported last month, but a U-46 spokesperson said it is currently providing busing to about 22,000 students.

After reiterating its bus driver shortage, CPS officials wrote in the Nov. 17 letter that it “paused providing transportation to families of general education students in magnet or selective enrollment programs” this year “in an effort to ensure” all students whose IEPs require transportation “are routed in a timely manner, and every effort is made to prevent students from riding longer than sixty minutes.”

After bus service was cut for general education students, district officials reported in late September a vast improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, with 47 children on rides longer than an hour. But those travel times have since worsened: As of last week, 116 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour, according to a CPS presentation to City Council members.

As recently as last week, district officials cast doubt on whether they would offer transportation to general education students.

But families of general education students in magnet and selective enrollment programs continue to show up at Chicago school board meetings to advocate for busing.

At a Wednesday meeting, a student from Kenwood Academic Academic Center said he and his brother used to take the bus to school together. This year, however, his brother takes a paratransit vehicle that doesn’t have other students on it and “wishes he wasn’t alone in the car.”

That student directed a question to transportation officials and board members at the meeting: “Why are they not routing as many students as possible into empty seats?”

But it’s not that simple, according to some advocates for students with disabilities. Adding many more students to existing routes could again worsen travel times for some students with disabilities, who have a federally protected right to transportation.

Adding students to routes isn’t simple

Advocates for students with disabilities said the data from October raises questions about how students with disabilities are assigned to schools — sometimes far outside their communities. Some of these children, advocates noted, are traveling far distances to therapeutic day schools, which provide more specialized instruction.

An example is Soaring Eagle Academy in suburban Lombard, located roughly 21 miles west of the downtown, where eight CPS students arrive each morning using three different bus routes, the data shows.

Terri Smith-Roback, a CPS parent who co-filed complaints with the state regarding transportation rights for students with disabilities, said she’s worried about long and “inefficient” rides for students traveling to therapeutic day schools. She’s heard from parents of these children who are riding the bus more than two hours each way and knows of one instance where a large yellow bus was transporting six kids to one of the schools.

District officials said some routes have fewer students “due to distance, medical equipment, and/or required bus aides that will require less students in the vehicle.” They also said that many routes use smaller vehicles, which have less space than a traditional yellow school bus.

About one-third of the more than 1000 routes detailed in the data are paratransit, which are usually smaller vehicles that provide individualized routes for students with disabilities, district officials told the state in a letter obtained by Chalkbeat.

Bhimani said the data highlights a larger problem with how the district assigns students with disabilities to schools. All students have the right to attend their assigned neighborhood school. But students with disabilities are often assigned to schools outside of their communities that the district believes can better serve their needs, as laid out in their IEPs, Bhimani said.

“The student assignment decision we’re making in the district is to say students with disabilities are actually not owed services at their zoned school, and we will place them wherever we think those services should be offered inside the district,” Bhimani said.

Instead, Bhimani said, the district should create more services for students in schools closer to where they live so that they don’t have to travel far.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Not every Chicago school offers algebra in middle school. CPS is working to change that.

2023-11-30T19:15:00+00:00

Every school day at 10:30 a.m., two dozen middle schoolers shuffle into a classroom at Warren Elementary on Chicago’s far south side. One by one, they boot up a Chromebook at their desks.

Fourteen miles north, another nine students log in from their classroom at STEM Magnet Academy just west of downtown.

They are all taking the same course: Middle School Algebra with Raluca Borbath, who teaches virtually.

On a recent November morning, Borbath shared her screen to begin Lesson 13: Introduction to Two-Variable Inequalities. The students, who log in through Google Meet, dove into a problem about making bracelets with two different kinds of beads — one kind cost $1 and the other cost $2.

The class spent the next hour solving and graphing: 2x+y ≥ 10.

Classes like Borbath’s, in which middle school students learn algebra partly online, have been critical to Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to reduce long-standing inequities in access to the course, which is seen as a gateway to better high schools, better colleges, and ultimately, better careers.

Put simply: Mastering algebra in middle school can give kids an advantage for the rest of their educational trajectory. But in Chicago, access to the course before high school has long been inequitable.

Schools without algebra in the middle grades have been largely located in predominantly Black and lower income neighborhoods on the south and west sides. For students who do take algebra in eighth grade, state data shows white and Asian American students in Chicago Public Schools are more than twice as likely to pass than Black and Latino students.

But the district says it is trying to address the inequity and has found some success.

In addition to the Virtual Academy, which was created during the COVID-19 pandemic and has offered middle school algebra for the past two years, the district also partners with three local universities to get more middle school teachers certified to teach the course.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat shows:

Over the last decade, the number of CPS elementary and middle schools offering algebra grew from 209 to 366.
The number of middle grade teachers with algebra credentials increased in the past two years from 428 to 489.
A decade ago, roughly 10% of the city’s eighth graders took the district’s Algebra Exit Exam. Last May, nearly 25% did.
There are still 85 district-run schools and 35 charters where no students took the Algebra Exit Exam last year.

Other cities have tried expanding middle school algebra with varying success. In New York City, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio promised in 2015 to get algebra in every middle school and saw rates of students taking and passing the course go up. But that district’s focus has shifted back to improving freshmen algebra. Similarly, the state of California recently considered recommending all eighth graders take algebra, but decided to leave the decision to local school districts.

Corey Morrison, director of mathematics at Chicago Public Schools, said the district is focused on equity, not a one-size-fits-all approach.

“It’s algebra choice for all,” Morrison said. “We want to get to a place where every eighth grader has a choice and can choose – as much as an eighth grader can without their parents making them.”

Algebra skills ‘build from the bottom up’

Algebra has long been a core requirement for high school freshmen in Chicago and the rest of the country. But for decades, it’s also been offered to advanced middle school students. Those who took it early would be on a fast track to taking calculus senior year, giving them a leg up on college applications and a strong foundation once enrolled in university.

“If you’re spending three years on your mandatory classes, you only have one more year to look for AP classes, or dual credit classes, or anything else that you want to do,” said Borbath, the teacher of the hybrid class. By taking algebra early, students are able to free up their high school schedules.

But in Chicago, data shows stark disparities in who has historically had access to algebra in middle school. Chalkbeat Chicago obtained and analyzed the number of students who took and passed the district’s Algebra Exit Exam. The two-hour test, taken at the end of each school year, consists of 34 multiple choice questions and six short answer problems. Students who pass can move on to geometry.

Ten years ago, roughly 200 of the district’s 500-plus schools serving middle schoolers had students who took the exam. Now, more than 350 do.

At Warren, no students took the district’s Algebra Exit Exam in 2018, data shows.

The small school sits in the heart of Chicago’s Pill Hill neighborhood, a South Side enclave once home to many doctors and pharmacists who lived in the spacious homes down the street from the nearby hospital. It serves 271 students; 99% are Black and 80% come from low-income families.

STEM Magnet Academy, which shares a section of Borbath’s algebra class with Warren, is in the city’s more affluent West Loop and serves 403 students; 38% are Black, 34% are Asian American, 18% are Latino, and 6% are white. About 43% come from low-income families. In 2018, 14 students at STEM Magnet took the Algebra Exit Exam and 7 passed. But no students have taken it since then.

Borbath also teaches a morning section of algebra to middle school students at three other predominantly Black south and west side schools — Daley, Sumner, and Brown — all of which had no students taking the Algebra Exit Exam as recently as 2019, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Morrison said the pandemic was terrible in a lot of ways, but the way the district is using the Virtual Academy to close gaps in access to algebra is a “silver lining.”

Students at Brentano Elementary in Logan Square work on graphing equations during an algebra class.

At Brentano Elementary in Logan Square, no students were taking the Algebra Exit Exam in 2018, district data show. Seth Lavin became principal nine years ago and said adding the course took time and planning.

“The wrong way to do this is just to change your eighth grade course and say, ‘Now we do algebra,’” Lavin said. “The right way to do it is to build from the bottom up so that the kids can be ready for it.”

Lavin said Brentano teachers led the effort to rework how math was taught in order to offer the course.

“This required, for us, changing what sixth graders were doing, and then changing what seventh graders were doing before, eventually, we could change what eighth graders were doing,” Lavin said.

Now, all eighth graders take algebra in school, Lavin said. And starting last year, Brentano started offering a before-school algebra course to any interested seventh grader.

Lavin said he’s able to pay one of Brentano’s teachers to teach the early morning algebra using federal COVID recovery money. Once that money runs out, the offering could be at risk.

Staffing middle school algebra can be a complicated equation

There are logistical and budget hurdles to overcome in order to offer algebra to middle schoolers, Lavin said.

“A teacher in your building has to have an algebra certification, or a high school math endorsement,” he said. “That requires some groundwork.”

Teacher Martin Lenthe teaches algebra to seventh grade students at Brentano Elementary before the regular school day begins.

Chicago Public Schools launched an effort 20 years ago, known as the Chicago Algebra Initiative, to boost the number of middle school students taking algebra. In partnership with three local universities, the school board pays tuition for up to 90 middle school teachers to earn a credential to teach algebra each year.

Morrison, with the district, said the goal is to eventually have at least one certified teacher in every school, but the math hasn’t always worked out.

“How do you pull a handful of kids out to give them a robust algebra course when there’s only one eighth grade teacher?” Morrison said.

For the past couple of years, the Virtual Academy has been able to step in to serve those schools.

Last school year, 777 middle schoolers across 120 schools took the virtual course and this school year, the number climbed to 1,140 middle school students across 142 schools, according to the district. Roughly 300 take the class during the school day and 800 take it before or after school.

Morrison said the virtual courses are also showing teachers and administrators that offering in-person algebra is possible.

“It changes the mindset of teachers and administrators,” he said. “There are enough students in your school, in your community, where we can work towards putting an in-person course in your building, because that’s the ultimate goal.”

District data obtained by Chalkbeat shows that 489 teachers working at 287 schools have an active credential to teach algebra to middle school students. That’s up slightly from 2020 when 428 teachers at 248 schools had them. A district spokesperson said data on algebra credentials was not available prior to 2020.

Warren is hoping to offer in-person algebra next school year. Veteran teacher Tracey Kidd is working toward getting credentialed through the University of Chicago as part of the Chicago Algebra Initiative. Last school year, she was the teacher in the room where middle schoolers logged into virtual algebra.

“It’s kind of hard to do (algebra) virtually sometimes, because kids, they wander off a little,” she said. “But if you’re in the room with them, then they’re gonna focus more, and they get that one on one attention from you.”

Kidd currently teaches intermediate math and knows many students are ready to handle the rigor of algebra.

Younger students get a jump start in algebra

In Sandra Shorter’s classroom at Warren, a group of sixth grade students are starting pre-algebra with the goal of taking algebra next school year as seventh graders.

“We’re doing ratios, unit rates, and then we’re gonna graph them and write them as equations,” Shorter explained.

A classroom wall at Warren Elementary helps middle schoolers at all levels prepare for success in algebra.

Morrison, with the district, said algebra is not just for certain students who want to be scientists or engineers. It teaches important skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking.

“Math is for everybody. But do you need to get on the accelerated track in eighth grade? Not necessarily,” Morrison said. “Do you still need to learn algebra? Yes.”

Algebra is a graduation requirement in CPS, but the stakes for taking it before high school can feel high.

Last week, 13- and 14-year-olds across Chicago found out their scores on the district’s High School Admissions Test — a one-hour exam that partly determines whether they can go to the city’s top high schools. Though the content of the test is not public, many parents and students say taking algebra in middle school gives students a leg up.

“It will help us with a test to get into high school,” said Brentano student Liam Dolik. “That is something that’s so huge in eighth graders’ life, especially in Chicago. It’s not the best but we have to do it so we might as well prepare for it.”

Teacher Martin Lenthe helps a seventh grade student with algebra at Brentano Elementary before the regular school day begins.

Dolik is one of nearly 30 seventh graders who come to school at 7:45 a.m. every weekday to take algebra. They spread out across nine tables as the morning sun streams through the towering windows in classroom 306.

Lavin said all seventh graders were offered the option to take algebra before school, and about half of them decided to do it. But Lavin wrestles with whether the morning section for seventh graders is creating a new inequity.

“Sometimes there’s this temptation to go ahead instead of going deeper,” Lavin said. “At the same time, our kids are in the CPS reality where everybody’s trying to figure out how to get as high a score as they can in the high school admissions test.”

At the end of the day, Brentano is still a neighborhood public school in a diverse neighborhood, offering advanced math to everybody, Lavin said. “That’s increasing equity in the district.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago district official says adding busing this year will be tough as driver shortage persists

2023-11-29T03:16:15+00:00

Chicago Public Schools officials expressed doubt Tuesday that they will be able to provide busing to general education students for the rest of this school year.

“It’s very difficult to make a pivot within midyear to be able to add transportation now,” Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, said during a hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Education and Child Development.

Mayfield’s comments come as the school district is still working to shorten bus rides for more than 100 students with disabilities to comply with state law.

In response to questions from aldermen about the state of student transportation, district officials cited a shortage of drivers as the core reason they’ve limited bus service so far this year to students with disabilities whose individualized education programs require transportation and those who are living in temporary housing. Both groups are legally entitled to receive bus rides to school.

About 5,500 general education students who were previously eligible for bus transportation were not offered busing this year — mostly those who attend magnet and selective-enrollment schools. The district is instead offering those families CTA passes, including a companion pass for a parent or guardian. Many parents have complained about the change, with some saying it’s hard to meet their work obligations and get their kids to school. It has led some families to transfer children out of their schools.

The district had already announced that it wouldn’t be able to expand busing to general education students for the rest of this semester. Officials have promised an update on transportation in December, before the new semester begins.

As of mid-October, the district said it had created bus routes for about 8,100 students, mostly children with disabilities.

Mayfield told aldermen that the district has now hired 715 drivers, compared with about 680 in July — meaning it has 54% of the drivers it needs. That’s only a small increase, he said, even though the district has held dozens of hiring fairs and worked with its bus vendors to increase hourly driver pay rates by $5 since last year.

“We just haven’t seen much traction with being able to build that pipeline back for drivers,” he said.

Officials added that the number of students with disabilities has grown by about 20% from last year, and the district is regularly receiving new transportation requests.

Chicago Public Schools has been under state watch since last November for failing to get students with disabilities on bus rides shorter than an hour each way. Last year, the district reported that 3,000 students were on rides longer than an hour, with 365 on rides lasting more than 90 minutes each way.

This year, with transportation for general-education students sharply limited, the district has touted an improvement in travel times for students with disabilities. As of Monday, 116 students with disabilities were commuting more than an hour to school, according to Mayfield’s presentation. That is, however, an increase from August, when 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than one hour.

The state opened another investigation in September after advocates and parents complained that students with disabilities whose individualized education programs include transportation are being denied their federal right to a “free appropriate public education.”

The complaint alleges “widespread … delays and denials” across CPS and an “unnecessary administrative burden,” because families have to request transportation even after they’ve already been deemed eligible, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Chalkbeat.

Looking ahead to next year, Mayfield said the district will be discussing various strategies to make bus transportation “more efficient.” The options could include creating regional bus pickup sites and adjusting school start and dismissal times. He emphasized that those decisions would be made in collaboration with unions.

“Candidly, there will be some decisions that will need to be made, because we’re not seeing that driver population come back,” Mayfield said.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As Chicago’s shelter rule for migrant families takes effect, here are three student rights to know

2023-11-27T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago educators and advocates are concerned about how Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new 60-day limit for shelter stays for migrant families will impact attendance and stability for migrant students.

The new rule comes as the city has struggled to house migrants. More than 22,000 have arrived from the Southern border since August 2022, many fleeing economic and political upheaval in Central and South American countries. City and state officials have promised to boost efforts to help families get resettled and find more permanent housing, a commitment that comes just as a state-operated rental assistance program will no longer apply to newly arrived immigrants who are entering shelters, Block Club Chicago reported.

About 50 families have already received the notices, and another 3,000 will get them on Dec. 4.

Advocates said losing shelter could mean more absences among migrant students who are homeless — formally known as students living in temporary living situations. That designation includes children in shelter, living doubled up with another family, or living in a public place. As of Oct. 31, average attendance rates this school year for homeless students are 5 percentage points lower than their peers with permanent housing, according to Chicago Public Schools data shared with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

School stability is related to academic success. A 2015 study that examined New York City students found that children who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent or miss at least 10% of their school days. Chronically absent students who were also homeless were three times more likely to repeat the same grade than homeless students who missed fewer than five days of school, the report found.

“We’re talking about kids who have been around for two months, who have gotten into a routine, maybe made some friends, have some sense of control finally, where they can get two hot meals a day — we’re talking about sending those families back to the bus landing spot,” said Gabriel Paez, a bilingual teacher on the West Side, of the mayor’s new rule.

Sixty days is a “very short time” to find housing, especially for newcomers with language barriers who are dealing with asylum cases or have not been authorized to work yet, said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

If families don’t have permanent housing lined up, they can return to the “landing zone” — the downtown area where most buses first drop off newcomers — and can request a new shelter placement. Families can stay in their shelter under “extenuating circumstances,” such as a medical issue, if there is extreme cold, or if they’ve obtained a lease with a move-in date that starts later than when they must leave shelter, the mayor’s office said.

A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment. In a statement, a district spokesperson said it is working with the city and schools to “ensure new arrival students, who are nearly all considered Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), can get access to a Pre-K-12 education within our system that offers the appropriate services, including English Learner services.”

Homeless children have certain rights enshrined in federal law aimed at maintaining stability for them at school, including the ability to stay at the school where they’ve been attending.

Here are three education rights that families living in temporary housing should know about as the city’s new shelter rule takes effect:

Homeless students have the right to stay in the same school

Students living in temporary shelters who have enrolled in the local school or a nearby one are entitled to stay at the same school even if they’re forced to leave the shelter after 60 days.

This is true for any student who becomes homeless. Federal law protects their right to remain in their so-called “origin school.”

Just as any other Chicago Public Schools student, homeless students can enroll in the local neighborhood school in their new community by simply walking in. Also like any other student, they can apply to selective or magnet schools, but the deadline to apply for these schools for next academic year has passed.

Migrant students may also be referred by other city agencies, such as the Department of Family and Support Services, to receive enrollment help from the district’s central office, including at the city’s Pilot Welcome Center at Clemente High School on the West Side.

In that case, the district will enroll students based on where they live, the students’ needs — such as English language services — and “existing capacity and resources at the school.” If there are space issues at a school, the district “can assist with an alternate school assignment,” a spokesperson said.

Once 20 or more students with the same native language enroll at a school, state law requires they launch a Transitional Bilingual Education program. Such programs require instruction in both English and the native language, such as Spanish.

The district has budgeted $15 million to hire more bilingual teachers, dual-language program coordinators, and “other resources to support English learners,” a spokesperson said.

Homeless students have the right to transportation

Homeless students also have the right to receive transportation to school even if they move. And, according to CPS guidelines, their school must inform the student and a parent about transportation services. If a student finds permanent housing, they are still entitled to transportation until the end of the school year.

According to CPS guidelines, homeless students in need of transportation must receive a CTA card within three days of requesting one. Children in preschool through sixth grade can receive an additional card so that a parent can accompany them on public transit.

Students in those grades can also apply for school bus service if a caregiver can’t accompany them to school because the parent has work or education conflicts, a mental or physical disability, or the shelter won’t allow parents to leave during the hours of dropoff and pickup.

Citing a driver shortage, the district this year has limited school bus service to students with disabilities and those who are homeless. As of October, 113 homeless students qualified for busing, but it’s unclear how many of them opted instead for a financial reimbursement.

Homeless students don’t need paperwork to enroll

Schools must enroll students who are homeless even if they don’t have records normally needed to enroll, such as immunization or previous school records, proof of guardianship, or proof of residence, according to the district.

Families fleeing domestic violence or political turmoil may not have grabbed important documents, Nix-Hodes said.

It’s up to the school to “sensitively” identify that a family seeking enrollment is homeless without violating their privacy, Nix-Hodes added.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

What do you think of Chicago’s school choice system? Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

2023-11-20T20:13:53+00:00

Chicago’s system that allows families to apply for magnet and selective enrollment schools — often outside their neighborhoods — traces back decades. It was initially seen as a tool for desegregation.

But, in recent years, many of those schools have since been criticized for enrolling a larger share of white and Asian American students, even though those students make up a minority of the district, compared to their Black and Hispanic peers.

In addition, the emergence of charter schools in the late 1990s presented families with options outside of their local district-run school.

More recently, officials have seen Chicago’s school choice system as a way to offer families more choices, allowing them to enroll their children in a school they like, instead of being tied to a neighborhood school that may not have the resources they’re seeking.

Still, the admissions process, accessed through an application called GoCPS, has built a reputation for being confusing, cumbersome, and stressful.

Since his election earlier this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson has expressed a desire to boost investments into neighborhood schools, so families don’t feel like they need to leave their communities to get a good education for their children.

We want to know from Chicago Public Schools families: What has been your experience with the city’s school choice system? Tell us here or in the short survey below. (We will not use your answers or your name in our reporting without your permission.)

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Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago students who enrolled in ‘safety’ colleges were more likely to drop out, study finds

2023-11-16T23:31:00+00:00

Imagine the following scenario: A high school senior in Chicago has a 3.5 GPA and a score of 1200 on the SATs. They’ve been accepted to highly selective Princeton University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and a local city college.

Which school might they choose?

More often than not, a student in that situation will lean toward the school that’s an “undermatch,” meaning a school with lower grades and SAT scores in its admissions criteria and where average scores of incoming freshman were lower than what the student earned, according to a new study by the Inclusive Economy Lab at the University of Chicago. And that could make them more likely to drop out.

Researchers looked at Chicago Public Schools’ class of 2018 using a variety of data points, including district data and other sources. Of the students who attended college, 62% had enrolled in an undermatch school.

Students at an undermatch school were more likely to drop out: 69% of such students made it to the second year of college, while the same was true for 77% of students at a “match” or “overmatch” school — with criteria that called for the same or higher grades and SAT scores and where average scores of incoming freshman matched or were higher than the student had earned, according to the study.

Staying and earning a college degree can lead to an overall healthier life, according to a review of literature by Healthy People 2030, a federal government-led project that tracks health data. A college education can mean better salary-earning potential and better access to quality housing.

Students who enrolled at an undermatch were more likely to be English language learners, students with disabilities, those who are homeless, as well as white and Hispanic students. Students who didn’t fill out or complete their federal financial aid forms also more often chose an undermatch school. Students at these schools, however, were less likely to be Black or Asian American.

The financial cost of college was a big reason students have leaned toward schools that are an undermatch, in lieu of attending more selective schools or out-of-state choices, researchers found in interviews with students who currently attend City Colleges of Chicago. Students said it’s cheaper to attend a two-year city college or a local, less selective four-year school, and they don’t want to incur any debt, said Shantá Robinson, senior research director at Inclusive Economy Lab.

“We always say young people should think about these things and they are,” Robinson said, “and on the other hand, because financial fit is the first thing they’re looking at, other things that are critically important to young people — thriving in higher education institutions and persisting and graduating — are being overlooked.”

The study also found:

81% of the class of 2018 had intended to go to college, but only 57% enrolled in college within one year of graduation. Just 43% returned to college for a second academic year.
Students with higher GPAs and test scores were more likely to submit more college applications to schools that were a match.
At colleges where net out-of-pocket cost was estimated to be $6,000 annually or less, 62% of students persisted to the second year. That persistence rate grew at pricier colleges: 89% of students stayed at schools where the net cost was estimated at more than $20,000.
Students at match and overmatch schools enrolled in schools that cost an average of roughly $1,200 less a year compared to other schools they also applied to. But for students at undermatch schools, that difference was an average of nearly $3,500 – which researchers said is one sign that cost was a factor for where these students ended up enrolling.

A recent study found that more Chicago Public Schools students are pursuing college, with far more earning certificates from two-year colleges.

CPS provides college and career competency lessons through its Skyline curriculum for grades 6-12, said Mary Ann Fergus, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Schools also encourage students to earn early college credentials — which about half of the class of 2023 did — which Fergus noted can help reduce the cost of college.

The researchers at the Inclusive Economy Lab at the University of Chicago found that overall the more selective the school, the more likely students would stick around. But at every type of school, including two-year colleges, those who were undermatching were less likely to stay.

Even though cost seemed to be a driving factor for where students enrolled, researchers found that students at colleges with higher net out-of-pocket costs were more likely to stay for their second year. Researchers don’t know why but guessed that pricier schools might have more resources on campus to support students’ needs, such as in academics.

An inclusive culture may also be a big factor in keeping students in college, the study suggests. For example, about 78% of Black students who attended a historically Black college or university, or HBCU, made it to their second year of college, compared to 67.3% of Black students who attended non-HBCUs. The New York Times found last year that several HBCUs are seeing their schools become top choices for more Black students. However, the same was not true for Hispanic students attending Hispanic-serving institutions, or HSIs. About 85% of these students persisted to their second year of college at non-HSIs, compared to about 68% of Hispanic students at HSIs.

The study’s authors made several recommendations, including teaching students at an earlier age about their options for college so that they can make a financial plan, such as applying for scholarships earlier on or understanding how to fill out a FAFSA form. Having that conversation “when your child gets an award letter” is too late, Robinson said, especially if the conversation is that the family does not have enough money to contribute.

“That’s not to offer a sense of pessimism to these young people. It is a level-setting,” Robinson said, noting that families need to look ahead to the final year of high school. “It is a very real world, ‘This is what we’re working with as a family. Now how can we move past this? How can we work together to make sure you get where you want to be by senior year?’”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

2023-10-13T18:14:26+00:00

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Mónica Meléndez spent the first half of the last school year driving her three kids at least an hour each way to Inter-American Magnet School in Lake View.

She felt she had no choice after the district said it would not provide transportation at the beginning of the year for two of her children.

By the time all her kids got bus service in the second semester, Meléndez was exhausted — especially on days she spent another hour driving to work.

So shortly after Chicago Public Schools announced this summer that it wouldn’t provide busing to about 5,500 eligible general education students, largely those in gifted and magnet programs, Meléndez and her husband pulled their two youngest children out of the school. It was a wrenching decision: The Spanish dual language school felt perfect for the couple, who are originally from Puerto Rico and want their children to be bilingual.

Meléndez recalls telling her husband: “Sweetie, I can’t do this anymore.” Their oldest, a seventh grader, now takes a CTA bus two hours each way.

The family’s decision illustrates one way Chicago’s school bus crisis could impact enrollment and the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the city’s magnet and gifted programs. Many of these schools were created under a federal desegregation consent decree, but have been criticized for lacking diversity and enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students since federal oversight ended in 2009. As working-class families find it difficult or impossible to take their children far distances to school, the absence of a transportation option could segregate the schools even more.

Parents at Inter-American are looking for solutions, as other gifted and magnet programs have also sought their own alternatives to the lack of busing.

Inter-American is already seeing the impact and some families have left.

“I would be really worried about what this change would mean for the demographics for these schools and for the goals of magnet schools in Chicago more generally,” said Halley Potter, an expert on school integration policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Parents share transportation challenges

Citing a severe driver shortage, Chicago Public Schools announced in late July that it would limit bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are homeless, both groups which are legally required to receive transportation. The district is currently under state watch to make sure it’s meeting those legal requirements.

The district said it has pursued several solutions to hire more drivers, including boosting driver pay rates by $2 – to $22 to $27 an hour – and hosting hiring fairs. But as of late last month, the district still had only half the number of drivers on hand and announced that busing would not be extended to more families for the rest of the semester. The district offered CTA cards to the 5,500 children who lost busing, but as of late last month, just about 1,600 took that option.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Samantha Hart said the district is “acutely aware” of the challenges families are facing with longer commutes.

“We are committed to continuing to work with our vendors, City partners and our families to identify solutions and ensure every eligible student has safe, secure, and reliable transportation to and from school,” Hart said.

The transportation crisis has already had a small impact on enrollment at Inter-American, where nearly half of the school’s 641 students come from low-income families. Fifty-three families were eligible for transportation at the school. As of Oct. 2, six children have transferred out of the school due to the lack of transportation, according to the district.

At least two more children transferred out after Oct. 2 because of transportation issues, said Maria Ugarte, chair of Inter-American’s Local School Council. Ugarte has also heard from many parents who are considering leaving, and she wonders how lack of busing will impact next year’s enrollment.

At a meeting last month with the school’s principal, one parent said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the commute to school. A mother shared that her commute involves taking the CTA with her three children, including a 2-year-old, every morning and evening— and doing that daily is becoming stressful.

Alexis Luna, who lives in Belmont Cragin, splits dropoff and pickup responsibilities for her third grade daughter with the girl’s father. But her daughter may have to miss school on days that the girl’s father is out of town for work, since Luna’s work schedule is inflexible and she can’t take days off.

Luna “lost everything” when her business closed during the pandemic, so she cannot afford to miss work or quit. She said she is struggling to pay for the increased gas costs.

For Rocio Meza, the lack of transportation means she can’t search for a job this year as she handles the hourlong pickup and dropoff each way at Inter-American for her 12-year-old daughter. She’s also responsible for driving her older son with disabilities to doctor’s appointments on some mornings, which sometimes makes one of the children late.

She and her husband have discussed transferring their daughter out of Inter-American – two other schools are within a few blocks of their house – but the family loves the school.

”Do I really want to do this and give up the education and experience she’s getting at Inter-American to go to another school?” Meza said.

Some attempts to find solutions at the school level haven’t come to fruition.

The school’s principal, Juan Carlos Zayas, launched a voluntary task force with parents to look for ways to ease the transportation issue. Ideas included a rideshare app and hiring a bus company on their own, according to recordings of the meetings. Both options would likely be too costly for parents, task force members said. For example, one parent found a company that would charge $158 per child this month — if the bus was full with just a couple of stops.

The district granted the school $157,000 in funding to host before- and after-school programs to accommodate more flexible pickup and dropoff times. The principal recently surveyed families for their interest and expects programming to start Oct. 23, a district spokesperson said.

Last month, Luna tried to distribute a survey to arrange carpooling for interested parents. The survey asked for information such as where their child’s old bus stop was and how many children they had. Zayas emailed Luna and several other parents that the “attempt to collect personal information” was a “clear violation” of district policy and that it was circulated to teachers without his knowledge.

District officials pointed to a CPS policy that prevents anyone from circulating ads, subscription lists, meeting invitations, books, maps, articles, or other political or commercial materials among school employees or students without approval from the principal or other district officials.

Still, some parents are trying to figure out carpool arrangements, Luna said.

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

During CPS board meetings, parents at magnet and gifted programs have said they are worried that the lack of transportation will most greatly impact children whose parents don’t have flexible work schedules to take young children on lengthy transit commutes or the money and time to drive them. That could force less-resourced families to transfer out of magnet programs or gifted programs or choose not to apply for them for next school year.

Once seen as a solution to the city’s segregated schools, the city’s magnet, gifted, and selective enrollment programs have been criticized for failing to achieve their diversity goals. A 2019 WBEZ analysis found that just 20% of these schools met the definition of racial diversity embedded in a now-lifted court order for Chicago to integrate its schools.

CPS uses a lottery for enrollment in magnet programs like Inter-American. Seats are offered based on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood a student lives in. Sometimes priority is given to siblings or to students living close to the school.

Inter-American lacks racial diversity — 85% of its students this year are Hispanic, and 10% are white, according to district data. However, the school is more socioeconomically diverse, with 47% of its students coming from low-income families, still far below the district’s average of about 71%.

During one of the task force meetings, one parent expressed concern that working-class families would leave, and more local families from the surrounding affluent Lake View neighborhood would get seats — changing the face of the school.

At the same time, less transportation for magnet and gifted families could mean more students enrolling in their neighborhood schools. Bolstering neighborhood schools is a priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After pulling her daughter and son out of Inter-American, Meléndez enrolled them in her local neighborhood school, Canty Elementary. There, about half of the students are Hispanic, 44% are white, and about 2% are each Black and Asian American. Just over 43% come from low-income households.

Her daughters like the school so far, Meléndez said. Canty, which is not a dual-language school like Inter-American, is just a five-minute drive away from home. But the outcome of their story is likely not the norm: In a city as segregated as Chicago, more integrated neighborhood schools like Canty are a rarity.

Potter, from The Century Foundation, said Chicago Public Schools has done “really important work” in finding ways to spur diversity in selective and magnet schools. The district’s lotteries that try to enroll students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often result in more racial diversity, too, she said.

But, Potter said, “without transportation support, a lot of that can fall apart.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Rising share of Chicago Public Schools graduates are pursuing college, study finds

2023-10-12T18:25:42+00:00

A rising share of Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in college in recent years, and far more are earning degrees or certificates at two-year colleges.

That’s according to a study released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To & Through Project, which tracks college enrollment. Additionally, the study found that more Chicago students than ever are projected to pursue and complete college over the next decade.

The study’s findings run counter to national trends of sagging college enrollment during the pandemic; nationwide enrollment in two- and four-year colleges fell by .6% from 2021 to 2022, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Many young people across the nation are questioning whether higher education is worth the cost, said Jenny Nagaoka, one of the study’s authors and deputy director of the Consortium on School Research.

Higher education is “tremendously expensive, student debt is a huge issue [and] ultimately for a lot of students they’re unclear if the payoffs will be there,” Nagaoka said. “But CPS students are still going to college. They’re still seeing there’s value in it.”

Research shows that a college education can lead to better salary-earning potential, provide better access to high-quality housing, and contribute to better overall health, according to a review of literature by Healthy People 2030, a federal government-led project that tracks health data.

“We are hearing so much discouraging news about achievement in our schools right now, and this is not to say that’s not real, but I think it’s really important to note that at the same time, we’re actually also seeing increases in attainment,” Nagaoka said.

The study used a measure called the Post-Secondary Attainment Index, or PAI, to project college enrollment and completion based on current high school graduation and college enrollment and completion rates. Researchers calculated graduation rates slightly differently from the district, which is why they’ve come up with an 84-percent graduation rate for 2022 versus 82.9% reported by CPS. (The authors emphasized that the index is not meant to be a prediction; rather, it is a “starting place” to understand how to improve current patterns.)

This year the index is 30%, meaning that if CPS graduation and college enrollment and completion rates remained the same over the next decade, 30 out of 100 current ninth graders would earn a college credential by the time they are 25, researchers project. That is a 2.4 percentage point increase over last year and the highest rate on record since researchers began calculating this index in 2013. At that time, the index was 23%.

This year’s ninth graders were in middle school when the pandemic shuttered school buildings.

Nagaoka said they’re “cautiously optimistic” that these trends won’t reverse in the future, since this year’s record-setting data reflects students who were in high school and college during the pandemic.

But the study also found significant racial disparities within the data. For example, 66% percent of Asian American women would earn a college credential over the next decade according to the PAI, but just 13.6% of Black men would do the same.

During an event Thursday announcing the study’s findings, CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova acknowledged that the district has more to do to close racial disparities.

“With these groups, especially at the high school level, we’ve learned that one of the most impactful ways we can provide support is by establishing partnerships that will provide mentorship and guidance to the students throughout their high school experience,” she said.

The researchers also studied college enrollment data from 2022 and college completion data from 2021, based on data that was available. Some highlights included:

60.8% of CPS students who graduated in 2022 immediately enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges, 1.5 percentage points higher than the class of 2021.
There are stark racial disparities in who pursued college upon graduation in 2022. For example, nearly 80% of white women immediately enrolled in college upon graduation, while just 45% of Black male students did the same.
Just over 53% of English learners immediately pursued college after graduating last year, compared with 68% of former English learners.
For the class of 2015, nearly 56% of students who immediately enrolled in a four-year college and roughly one-third of students who immediately enrolled in a two-year college eventually earned a bachelor’s or associate degree, or earned a certificate by 2021.
For those who did not immediately enroll in college in 2015, roughly 3% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. Another 5% completed an associate degree or certificate. While those rates are on the rise, they are 1.7 percentage points smaller than similar completion rates for the class of 2009.
The percentage of students who earned some sort of college credential after enrolling in four-year schools dipped by .6% between the graduating classes of 2014 and 2015.

Chkoumbova attributed the gains to various efforts across district schools to keep students interested in school and prepared for the future, including more career and technical education and dual-credit programs. She also pointed to the district’s work on how it disciplines students. Rather than suspending students, schools are using restorative practices to keep them connected and in class.

A district spokesperson pointed to a host of other programs, such as a new pilot initiative that aims to re-engage young people who are no longer in school or working. The spokesperson also pointed to efforts to get students interested in college and staying there. That includes the Direct Admissions Initiative, which tells seniors whether they can get into a select list of colleges, and another program that provides students with support and mentorship in the two years after they graduate from high school.

Nagaoka also highlighted the increase of 5.6 percentage points in the two-year college completion rate for class of 2015 graduates, the largest increase by far over at least the past six years.

That increase, researchers and Chkoumbova noted, coincides with the onset of Chicago’s STAR Scholarship, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced in the fall of 2014 and offers free tuition to City Colleges for any CPS student with at least a 3.0 grade point average by high school graduation.

Chicago’s college enrollment rates beat national figures for high-poverty schools by about 11 percentage points, researchers found. Nagaoka attributed this in part to efforts by counselors, nonprofits, and others who work in schools to ensure students know about their college options.

More specifically, CPS requires students to create a post-secondary plan, or “evidence of a plan for life beyond high school,” in order to graduate from high school. That requirement forces students to have a conversation about what’s next, she said.

Ninety-seven percent of seniors in the class of 2022 submitted a post-secondary plan, a district spokesperson said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

At six Illinois college campuses, advocates seek to create ‘comfort’ for foster care peers

2023-10-02T10:00:00+00:00

Grace Ward spent four years in foster care before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. On campus, 200 miles south of her hometown of Rockford, she felt alone.

Before Ward entered care, she had missed three years of school and had briefly lived in homeless shelters with her mother. In her foster home, she was expected to prioritize chores over homework, babysit younger children, and call the police if a child was having a mental breakdown, she said.

A few months before coming to the university, she had a violent disagreement that involved her foster parent, leading Ward to end that relationship and head to school without knowing anyone well on campus.

“You kind of have to figure out and navigate for yourself now,” Ward said. “How do you find comfort in your life?”

Now a junior studying animal sciences, Ward has taken up a new role: peer advocate for youth on campus who have experienced foster care. The new gig, she hopes, will create the support system for others that she craved as a freshman.

Ward has joined the state’s new Youth in Care - College Advocate Program, or Y-CAP, which pairs peer advocates like Ward with other college students who have experienced foster care. The goal is for the advocates to check-in regularly with their mentees, help them navigate college life, and ultimately create a support system they’re missing.

A 2021 study found that of Illinois youth in foster care who turned 17 between 2012 and 2018, 86% enrolled in community college. Of those, just 8% graduated, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Students told researchers that they felt alone, largely weren’t aware of financial aid options, and that they needed more specialized attention.

As for what would help them, some interviewees said they wanted someone to help monitor their academic progress. Others said they wanted a support group, the study said.

“Young people with a background in foster care on college campuses are not getting the supports they need to be successful,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall at University of Chicago who co-authored the study and helped the state create the advocate program.

The state’s Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, launched the $200,000 program this year after its youth advisory board signaled that college-bound foster youth needed more support on campus, said Chevelle Bailey, deputy director of DCFS’s office of education and transition services. Some colleges have similar mentorship programs, but “there’s no consistency” across all Illinois campuses, Bailey said.

The program has launched one year after a new state law went into effect requiring each Illinois college to have a liaison that is charged with connecting students who are in foster care or are homeless with resources and assistance.

Department officials want colleges to be more “foster-friendly,” Bailey said, noting that foster youth need extra support in a new environment like college. These youth are at higher risk of dropping out of school, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In Chicago, which houses the most foster youth of any jurisdiction, 40% graduated on time from the city’s public schools last year, compared with 83% of all CPS students, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

DCFS contracted with Foster Progress — an advocacy organization for foster youth that runs its own high school mentorship program — to oversee YCAP on six college campuses this year. That includes University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Harold Washington College, and Kishwaukee College.

“One reason we started small is to make sure we do this right and not take on too much we can’t handle,” Kim Peck, DCFS’ downstate education and transition services administrator.

Nearly 20,000 Illinois children were in foster care as of last month, according to DCFS data. These youth have likely experienced abuse or neglect that led them into the system, and often cycle through multiple foster homes before they age out of care at 21.

So far, Foster Progress has hired three advocates on Ward’s campus, and they’ve identified four mentees, said LT Officer-McIntosh, program manager for Foster Progress. She’s expecting to hire a total of 10 peer advocates, who are paid $15 an hour, to support up to 100 mentees across all the campuses.

There are three parts to the mentor-mentee relationship, Officer-McIntosh said.

Advocates are supposed to hold regular check-ins, where they’ll track goals for what the mentee would like out of the experience and will also navigate college questions and deadlines, such as for financial aid.

Peer advocates and mentees will also pick a short group training they want, such as on resume building, and volunteer together so that they feel more rooted in the surrounding community.

Beyond this framework, program leaders want peer advocates and their mentees to figure out a support system that works best for them.

“Our goal with YCAP is to not tell them, ‘This is how you build community from our perspective,’” Officer-McIntosh said. “It needs to be rooted in the things that they identify, that they want out of a campus community and the experience in YCAP.”

Ward wants to help mentees with whatever they need to grow, whether that means being “a shoulder to lean on” or just instructions for how to do laundry.

Sometimes when she walks around campus, Ward thinks about how different her life is now. She wants her mentees to similarly feel like they have a “safe space” that doesn’t involve talking about required paperwork or upcoming court dates, if they don’t want to.

“It’s not something to be like, ‘You’re a foster youth,’ Ward said. “It is something to be like, ‘You have gone through challenges in your life; this is a time to ease those challenges, so you don’t constantly struggle and feel like you’re struggling.’”

Correction: Oct. 2, 2023: A previous version of this story said a 2021 study was conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago. The study was conducted by researchers at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago parents, advocates call for transparency in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s school board picks

2023-06-16T19:26:03+00:00

A group of Chicago parents and advocacy organizations are urging the mayor’s office to keep the public better informed about upcoming appointments to the city’s Board of Education.

In a Wednesday letter, the advocates, who are primarily focused on education and disability justice, asked the mayor’s office to do an open call for members, increase transparency around the qualifications for selection, and outline the administration’s goals for the composition of the school board. Along with the letter, the group also asked to meet with the mayor.

Four of seven current school board terms are set to expire on June 30, but Mayor Brandon Johnson could replace all of them like his predecessors did. He will be the last mayor to appoint members of the school board before Chicagoans get the chance to vote for their school board members.

In 2024, the board will expand from seven to 21 people — a much larger school governing body compared to other major cities — with the mayor appointing the school board president and 10 of those seats. By 2027, the board will be fully-elected.

Until then, said Miriam Bhimani, Johnson should live up to his campaign promise to “stand for the people.”

“Standing for the people means that you need to trust and respect the deep reservoirs of experience and knowledge that families have in a city, and you do that by being transparent,” said Bhimani, a researcher for one of the letter’s signees, FOIA Bakery, which focuses on transparency.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said that “As a Chicago Public Schools parent and former educator who fought for an elected representative school board, Mayor Johnson is a partner to many of these individuals and organizations seeking education justice. He sees them, he hears them, and he will ensure that appointments to the Chicago Board of Education reflect the principles they value.”

While on the campaign trail, Johnson told Chalkbeat that in the transition to an elected board, “We need candidates who are deeply invested and knowledgeable from the communities served to have a fair chance to win races to influence the education of their children.”

In a press conference last week, Chalkbeat also asked Johnson when he planned to appoint school board members.

“We’re going through a process now where we are reviewing those who are currently on the board, and those who ultimately align with our vision,” Johnson said. He also said his deputy mayor for education Jen Johnson is working with him on appointing school board members.

Advocates say they want that vision to be more clearly defined and communicated to the public. Bhimani said the administration has stayed “opaque” about the process so far.

“What does the CPS board do and why do they do it? We really need the answer to that question from this administration,” Bhimani said. “What are the metrics of success and who are they doing it for? Are they there for the taxpayers? Are they there for children in the system?”

The letter sent Wednesday listed priorities for experience and expertise that board members should have, including in bilingual education, undocumented students, unhoused students, students who are incarcerated, and students with disabilities.

Terri Smith, a parent advocate who has a daughter with hearing loss, said she wants board members who have expertise and personal experience with students with disabilities.

“Unless you consciously decide how you want to comprise the board, then all you’re doing is hunting and pecking for solutions to things and hoping that you come up with the right one,” said Smith, who signed the letter. “Even if you do research, it’s still taking more time than it should if you had a content expert right there on the board.”

Cassie Creswell, director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, also stressed experience with students with disabilities as a priority. She said that’s especially important after a state investigation found Chicago Public Schools did not fully train staff on use of restraint and seclusion, which put students with disabilities particularly at risk. An April letter from the Illinois State Board of Education outlined violations, including untrained staff using outlawed methods of restraint.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that top district and Board of Education leadership has been “transparent about the need for improved systems, strategies, and services” to support students with disabilities, and that the district will “remain committed” to working with ISBE, parents and advocacy groups to develop improvements.

Creswell said that before the transition to elections, the appointed school board must be prepared to address this issue.

“There is a backlog of things to deal with that are extremely urgent right now – the district’s recognition status with the state being at stake because of unresolved special education issues that involve literally life and death matters for children,” Creswell said. “These board appointments, that’s who we’re legally putting in charge of addressing this, so it really matters.”

Creswell said transparency in the appointment process is not only crucial for the upcoming vacancies but for the transition to a hybrid and then fully elected board. She wants meetings to be more accessible. Currently, the board meets during weekday working hours in the Loop, which Creswell said prevents many people from attending.

Smith also said this is a time to set precedents.

“When elections happen, we want people to feel that it’s important to come forward and say ‘I’m electable because I bring this to the table, not just because I’m rah rah or I have a political affiliation.”

Max Lubbers is an intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org

Chicago wants schools to adopt a new $135 million curriculum. It is getting high marks and pushback.

2023-03-31T11:00:00+00:00

When Andrew Avila landed his first teaching job at Chicago’s Bronzeville Classical Elementary in 2021, he got to work creating lesson plans for his students, who would be returning to in-person learning amid the pandemic.

The newly minted science teacher had access to Skyline, a new online curriculum created by Chicago Public Schools. It offered a wealth of materials and ideas connecting science to his students’ experiences. A lesson on thermal energy, for example, explained how air conditioner units increase summertime temperatures in Chicago.

Chicago teacher Andrew Avila, who uses Skyline at Bronzeville Classical Elementary, has occasionally felt overwhelmed by the volume of resources on the platform.

But at times, Avila felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of lessons and other materials, housed on a digital platform that could be tough to navigate.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m drinking water from a firehose because there are so many resources I can turn to,” Avila said.

CPS is betting big that Skyline — the unprecedented $135 million trove of lessons in math, reading, science, social studies, and other subjects — will help students bounce back from COVID’s profound academic damage.

The curriculum remains voluntary for schools, but the district has started pressing campuses that have not yet adopted Skyline to prove they have other quality curriculums in place.

An analysis by Chalkbeat and WBEZ found that roughly half of the district’s campuses report using Skyline for at least two subjects, with the highest adoption rates at schools that serve predominantly low-income Black students. In other words, Skyline is shaping the learning of tens of thousands of students, including some of Chicago’s most vulnerable, amid a high-stakes pandemic recovery.

District leaders say that by ensuring students get lessons that reflect their grade levels, Skyline helps teachers speed up learning rather than constantly backtracking to material students should have learned earlier. Some educators praise Skyline for offering rich resources that help novice educators such as Avila hit the ground running and seasoned ones rejuvenate their teaching.

But others say the curriculum is not ready for prime time. A wonky digital platform can make it hard for teachers to navigate a slew of lessons and assignments that many say can be overwhelming. In some subjects, student materials include dense blocks of text with few visuals that can especially challenge struggling learners.

The district says it is continually strengthening the curriculum — created in-house with help from several curriculum companies — with input from educators and students, including recent improvements to the online platform. Still, some educators remain wary of a centralized curriculum in a district that has traditionally given teachers leeway to design their own lessons.

Getting the Skyline rollout right is enormously important, say curriculum experts such as David Steiner at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education. He notes that many teachers are routinely pulling materials off the web, acting “like DJs for playlists of instructional materials” — a task that’s unfair to lay on overworked educators and one that leaves students’ education to chance.

“In this moment of fragility and uncertainty, we need to reduce the zone of ‘anything goes’ and chaos, and, ‘This is my unique curriculum and my unique classroom,’” he said.

How a uniquely Chicago curriculum originated

In Chicago, wealthier schools have often been able to buy quality learning resources while low-income campuses made do with cobbled-together or outdated materials and books.

Former Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson saw a solution: a curriculum bank filled with high-quality lessons in every subject. She said it could tackle massive disparities in academic achievement across the city’s 500-some district-run campuses. What’s more, by developing it in-house, experts could tie in Chicago’s history and present day, making it more engaging for students.

The district enlisted five companies to help develop and implement the lessons and built-in assessments, with input from some Chicago teachers. It came to draw heavily on federal COVID-19 relief dollars to foot the six-year, $135 million bill. Ultimately, Skyline — and the technology it relies on — became some of the priciest items the district bought from outside vendors with pandemic recovery dollars.

Chicago formally launched Skyline in the summer of 2021, a couple of weeks before Jackson stepped down.

Javee Hernandez teaches her sixth grade students social studies using the new Skyline curriculum at Bronzeville Classical Elementary School.

That summer, Javee Hernandez — a veteran social studies teacher at Bronzeville Classical whose classroom is across the hall from Avila’s — joined principal Nicole Spicer and other school leaders in deciding whether to adopt the new curriculum. Bronzeville Classical, a test-in school on the South Side where students learn a grade ahead of their age, had opened just a few years earlier, in 2018.

The administration felt the school’s math and reading coursework was strong, but social studies and science could benefit from a revamp. Enter Skyline.

“This was a free, high-quality, rigorous option,” said Spicer. “Skyline became a resource that really was a no-brainer for us.”

The district has offered schools like Bronzeville a slew of incentives to opt into Skyline: free books and math supplies, dollars to spend on science lab equipment, expanded access to technology. But even as Bronzeville has embraced Skyline, other schools have been more cautious.

Schools skipping Skyline must defend their choice

One elementary school principal who left the district last year said she was asked to make a case that her school’s English language arts curriculum passed muster.

She and her teachers largely agreed the school would benefit from adopting Skyline in the later grades; after two years of pandemic schooling, educators felt drained and ready for a break from the labor-intensive process of designing lessons from scratch. But in the earlier grades, the principal compiled test scores and other data to argue that her teachers should be allowed to continue using their own lessons. The district agreed.

“They don’t come out and say, ‘You have to do it,’” the principal said. “But if you can’t prove your school is using a high-quality curriculum, then the pressure is on to adopt Skyline.”

Chalkbeat and WBEZ are not naming several school leaders who did not have district permission to speak with the media; the former principal asked to remain anonymous to avoid burning bridges with the district.

A high school principal said she asked most of her teachers to take last school year to “tinker” with Skyline and do the extensive professional development the district offers. But she has mandated it for a few teachers who did not have robust lesson plans and struggled in the classroom.

This year, the district asked schools to evaluate their curriculums across the board against a district rubric that defined what made for a quality curriculum and recently shared results with principals: Roughly 20% of campuses do not have quality curriculums in reading, math, or social studies, and about 10% do not have one in science.

Mary Beck, the district’s head of teaching and learning, said the district is now working with those campuses to make a plan.

“If you don’t have a high-quality curriculum, what’s your plan to get to a high-quality curriculum?” she said. “Skyline is obviously the example, but not the only example.”

The number of schools adopting Skyline is growing each year. As of January, as many as 432 schools were using the curriculum for at least one subject, roughly 83% of all district schools.

In elementary schools, the English curriculum is the most popular and math is the least (not including world languages, which are not offered by all campuses).

Majority Black schools have adopted the curriculum at the highest rates. Campuses that serve mostly white students — only about two dozen districtwide — have been slowest to embrace Skyline, Chalkbeat and WBEZ found.

In Chicago, 432 schools have adopted Skyline for at least one subject, with majority Black schools using the curriculum at the highest rates.

Skyline adoption has also been slower at high schools, though some high-needs South and West side campuses were early adopters across all subjects.

A couple of principals told Chalkbeat and WBEZ they opted in mostly just to get the free resources from the district.

The high school principal said her school adopted Skyline in all subjects, but buy-in varies.

On one end of the spectrum, science teachers at her school really like the curriculum, which draws heavily on the well-respected curriculum called Amplify Science, and have rolled it out faithfully.

On the other end, English teachers dabbled but ultimately returned mostly to lessons they had developed previously. Social science teachers found the materials too challenging for struggling readers; some are picking and choosing parts to incorporate.

Some teachers struggle to navigate Skyline

Caprice Phillips-Mitchell, the chair of the Chicago Teachers Union elementary steering committee and a kindergarten teacher at Fort Dearborn Elementary School on the South Side, said she hears from a number of teachers who are unhappy with Skyline. And this school year, she experienced some of the problems herself.

Phillips-Mitchell said parts of the Skyline curriculum are too challenging for students or require prior knowledge teachers need to fill in. Because online lessons and assignments are not “user friendly,” teachers say they are printing out the lessons and making copies. Sometimes when teachers try to go back to a lesson, it is gone and replaced with something new.

She said her school was told it must adopt Skyline. That meant she had to stop using an English language arts curriculum she and other teachers liked. Phillips-Mitchell says she believes schools serving low-income students of color are facing more pressure to adopt Skyline.

“Why give anyone a curriculum that’s not really ready to be rolled out?” she said. “Do you do it in some of these Black and brown communities that may not have such a voice?”

The Chicago Teachers Union applauds the district’s effort to create a curriculum bank. But chief of staff Jen Johnson said it is problematic that some teachers are being told that it’s mandatory, while district leaders insist it is not.

“The unevenness of implementation means that teachers are experiencing dramatically different messages,” she said. “We do not support this being some kind of citywide mandated curriculum that takes away important teacher autonomy.”

Johnson said staff need more planning time to consider and digest a new curriculum in order to buy into it and implement it well. She often hears about problems with the online interface or mistakes in the materials. For example, one social studies lesson somehow omitted an entire state.

Teachers and educators across the district interviewed by Chalkbeat and WBEZ echoed the concerns about the platform and what many said is an overwhelming amount of resources. The platform is designed by a company named SAFARI Montage.

The former elementary school principal said she understands the good intention of offering teachers a wealth of resources to choose from, but “Skyline is overly packed with lessons. It’s really too much information for teachers.”

A couple of educators told Chalkbeat and WBEZ that because the Skyline platform was frustrating to use, they instead accessed math materials directly on the website for Illustrative Math, the curriculum that the district adapted for Skyline — essentially defeating the purpose of having a district math curriculum.

A current West Side elementary principal said his teachers largely moved away from using the Skyline reading curriculum in the early grades — with his blessing — because of some of these frustrations. His school sprang for a different early literacy curriculum this year.

Other educators say some of the materials for students have dense text and few engaging visuals. Much of the curriculum is translated into Spanish, but there are questions about how well-suited the lessons are for English language learners. And some teachers say it can be too challenging to make the lessons accessible for students reading below grade level, especially at the high school level.

Bronzeville Classical Principal Nicole Spicer believes that Skyline has made her teachers’ jobs easier and made lessons more engaging for students.

At Bronzeville Classical, teachers and Spicer, the principal, say they can relate to some of these concerns. But they also feel strongly the district has been listening and making helpful changes — and overall, Skyline has enriched their teaching and made their work easier.

Earlier this winter, sixth graders in Hernandez’s classroom learned about how rugged mountain geography influenced the early engineering of the ancient Inca people. She took the Skyline lesson on the topic and made it her own, creating engaging slides with stunning images of the Andes mountains.

Skyline, Hernandez says, has helped her cut down significantly on the time she used to spend on nights and weekends looking for lesson materials online.

Later, students explored design and engineering by the Spartans and ancient Greeks — culminating in a discussion of how these long-gone cultures influence design in present-day Chicago, such as its Soldier Field.

“They’re able to make that connection with the past and the present, which is really neat,” Hernandez said.

Javee Hernandez’s adoption of Skyline has saved her time on curriculum development over nights and weekends.

Beck, the teaching and learning head, says the digital curriculum was designed to be revised and improved quickly in response to teacher and student feedback. District leaders meet regularly with a steering committee of 120 teachers to get ongoing feedback. Beck said the district worked with SAFARI Montage to improve the platform and revamped some courses and units. It’s now focusing on upgrading materials meant for students.

Isabella Kelly, a member of a districtwide student advisory group, said fellow students had both positive feedback and suggestions for improving Skyline during a focus group on the science and French curriculums she hosted last spring.

Kelly, an Ogden High senior and student leader with the group Mikva Challenge, said students found the lessons engaging and loved the opportunities to collaborate on projects and work in small groups. But they also sometimes struggled navigating the online platform.

“The biggest challenge they faced was learning along with their teachers,” she said. “They wanted a little more assistance.”

Skyline is a key tool for academic recovery, district leaders say

In a recent webinar, district leaders reminded principals that rolling out a new curriculum is a heavy, time-consuming lift, and urged them not to get discouraged by the “growing pains,” as Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova put it.

By keeping lessons and assignments squarely on grade levels, the curriculum can play a key part in COVID academic recovery, officials have said. It’s encouraging teachers to avoid constantly reteaching material from earlier grades — an approach shown to hamper academic catchup. That’s challenging work, Beck acknowledged, but the schools can layer other support, such as a specialized program for struggling readers called Wilson.

Beck said Chicago has worked with a group of curriculum experts to continually evaluate Skyline and better understand its impact on student outcomes, but that’s still a work in progress. The University of Chicago is studying whether the curriculum is paying off in early literacy improvements.

Steiner, at Johns Hopkins, says he is generally skeptical of the enormous energy and expense that go into creating an in-house curriculum in all subjects given the quality of off-the-shelf curriculums — especially if the district makes it voluntary. But he said rallying around a strong curriculum, particularly the collaborative work of teachers adopting it as grade level or subject matter teams, can be powerful for urban districts such as Chicago.

Some educators say that in a district where top leadership has been in flux for years and initiatives come and go, they are reluctant to buy into Skyline in a big way.

But Chkoumbova said the district knows adoption is a “long and hard process for schools,” and Skyline is here to stay.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.

How one Chicago school social worker is grappling with COVID’s toll on students

2022-12-09T12:00:00+00:00

Inside a staff bathroom at Piccolo Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side, Mary Difino wiped away tears and tried to catch her breath. It had been a long day in another stressful week.

A spate of fights and a string of cyberbullying incidents among students two months into the school year had taken a toll on Difino — the school’s only social worker.

In the last six years, she has juggled caseloads across two separate schools, participated in an 11-day teachers strike, and navigated a pandemic that upended schools for 18 months.

Still, Difino had harbored hopes that COVID-related disruptions had passed, and things might be getting back to normal. After all, this was supposed to be the year Chicago Public Schools — and its 322,000 students and 39,300 staff — recovered from the upheaval of the pandemic. This would be “one of the strongest years ever” in the district’s history, CEO Pedro Martinez said on the first day of school this fall.

At first, Difino felt that might be the case. Even her students described school as “more chill” with “less drama.”

But she soon realized her students’ trauma was deep-rooted.

Students were behind academically. Behavior problems were going up. Staff shortages at the school that serves Latino and Black students continued to stretch an already depleted workforce.

It felt, Difino said, “just as hard as last year.”

She was maneuvering between crises and helping the behavior team come up with school-wide plans to address some of the fighting and bullying. Plus, she still had to keep up with her regular caseload and small group counseling sessions.

Difino’s job as a school social worker is like “four jobs combined into one,” she says. She’s also responsible for supporting students with disabilities — and managing the paperwork that goes with their Individualized Education Programs or 504 plans — which includes doing diagnostic assessments and meeting with parents and other school staff.

In the bathroom, Difino took another deep breath, then headed back to her office. There she tidied up and fixed her desk. She grabbed her soccer bag from that morning’s Piccolo girls soccer team practice and a binder full of drills and activities. Her role as coach for second, third, and fourth grade students is a reprieve from her frenetic duties during school hours.

She thought about what was needed to calm the fights and help her students: a restorative justice coordinator, smaller class sizes, perhaps another social worker.

But as Difino left for home that night, that wish list seemed far away — and she just felt exhausted.

Chicago doubles number of school social workers

The week before students returned to Piccolo in August, Difino recruited her boyfriend to help set up her office.

They adjusted furniture, arranged plants, and decorated the walls with posters plastered with encouraging phrases such as “We rise by lifting others” and “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

It would be Difino’s second year full-time at Piccolo, rather than bouncing between two separate schools. It is something she and other social workers in the district have long wanted: to be able to settle in and focus on one group of students in one community.

Mary Difino has advocated for smaller classes sizes, more staff, more programming, and affordable housing for student in Chicago Public Schools.

Difino often felt misunderstood as a young person, and gravitated to social work after years of working with at-risk students. She wanted to help kids who might not have the words to say what they’re feeling or what they need. Kids having a rough time at home. Kids needing a little extra support.

“I just thought it was purely wonderful there is a job that existed purely for those students,” she said.

When Difinio started her career in 2018, Chicago Public Schools had 337 social workers. Now, there are 618.

Until 2019-20, Difino juggled a caseload of about 100 students across two West Side elementary schools — Piccolo and Chalmers. It was, she says, a nearly impossible task.

That, in part, motivated Difinio to become more involved with the Chicago Teachers Union.

In her second year with the district, teachers went on strike for 11 days — and ended up winning provisions to increase the number of social workers and other key school staff. Under the contract between the district and the teachers union, every school must have a social worker by 2024.

Difino remembers the 2019 strike as a huge win, but it came at the cost of being villainized by some media and members of the public.

Federal COVID relief funds have since helped the district bolster its social and emotional staffing. Nationally, some school districts have struggled to hire these positions. In Chicago, 28 social worker positions remained unfilled district wide as of last month, according to the district staffing data.

The doubling of social workers in the district means there’s now one for roughly every 520 students — a huge improvement, but still short of what’s recommended by the National Association of Social Workers.

That organization says schools should staff one social worker for every 250 students. At schools where students are experiencing high levels of trauma, the recommended ratio falls to one social worker for every 50 students.

Even though Difino’s caseload has gone down, she still feels stretched — many days having to quickly pivot from one-on-one meetings with a student or small group sessions to deal with the fallout of a fight or another crisis. It often disrupts a consistent schedule for students in her caseload, she said.

Amid the pandemic that exacerbated pre-existing traumas and disparities, she questioned the district’s way of allocating funds for school social worker staffing positions, especially on the South and West sides — communities that were hard hit by COVID and experience higher levels of gun violence and disinvestment.

Social workers are assigned to schools based on the number of students with special education needs, population, and size. The district said it prioritized schools with the greatest needs.

Currently, every school has a social worker assigned to it. But they’re not all full-time. Only 392 schools have at least one full-time social worker, according to the district.

Federal funds also helped hire additional support, including counselors. According to Chicago Public Schools, 117 schools now have two counselors.

The district said in an emailed statement that it also aims to meet the social-emotional learning needs of students through additional crisis support, programs with wraparound services such as Choose to Change and Back to Our Future, and partnerships for supplemental mental health support with community groups and hospitals such as Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.

But Difino wasn’t thinking about abstracts and funding philosophies when she set up her classroom.

School social worker Mary Difino spent the week leading up to the new academic year decorating her room to create a calm, welcoming space for students.

She recalled students disoriented by unpredictable quarantines, countless fights, and behavioral problems. And she remembered accompanying a few students to the hospital and frequently staying long after dismissal to manage family crises.

“The lack of consistency was really hard” for students, their families and school staff, Difino said. “Last year, we had to learn all over how to be in school, with new routines, and precautions.”

The previous 18 months of remote and hybrid instruction presented other challenges for social workers trying to address very specific goals for students with Individualized Education Programs.

Instead of focusing on school work or academic and social goals, students often preferred to talk about the impacts of quarantines and remote learning. They just wanted someone to listen, she remembered.

On the first school day in late August, Difino arrived 40 minutes before the bell to put the final touches to her room. She greeted students in the halls and walked some kids to class while others stopped by her room to check whether they would be meeting this year.

She left campus that day feeling that this would be a more manageable year than the two years that preceded it.

That sense of optimism would not last long.

Student mental health needs multiply

The return to school has been shaping up as another challenging year across the nation, said Christy McCoy, the president of the School Social Work Association of America.

“The residual impact of the last couple of years with the pandemic, all the disruptions in schools, the increase of racialized violence — and community violence,” left lingering trauma that has sparked behavioral issues among students, McCoy said.

Some students are exhibiting more aggressive external behavior including bullying and fighting in middle schools and high schools, and internal behaviors with some children struggling to focus and pay attention in class, she added.

“We have youth that are really struggling with engaging and knowing how to do school again,” McCoy said. “When you think of all the gaps of learning that have happened in the last couple of years, youth are really struggling.”

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it had prioritized mental health, social-emotional learning, and support services amid the pandemic that “had a disproportionate impact on our communities of color.”

“We recognize that our students continue to struggle with the impact of the pandemic as well as ongoing trauma in their lives,” the district said in an email.

Jackie King-Papadopoulos, another social worker with the district, put it more simply: At this moment, every school has high needs.

“I think that every student that is in Chicago Public Schools, every teacher, every adult that is in Chicago Public Schools is adjusting to life in this pseudo-post-pandemic world,” said King-Papadopoulos, who works at Morton School of Excellence in East Garfield Park.

Last year, King-Papadopoulos started the year at an elementary school in Austin before she was transferred to another school in Uptown. Amid higher expectations, teachers were trying to help students catch up academically while also dealing with challenging behavioral concerns, she recalled.

“Whenever you have that much of a struggle with academics, the social and emotional part is going to really be impacted as well,” King-Papadopoulos noted.

The pandemic has had a varied impact on students. The youngest children are learning to be around other kids, while middle school children are relearning how to be in a classroom, she said. Others are just not coming to school at all, adding to the social worker’s concerns about chronic absenteeism.

At Morton, King-Papadopoulos noted there is still some carryover of fighting among middle school students, but she has heard from teachers and staff that the students who struggled the most with disruptive behavior last year are doing much better this year.

“I think that everybody has made some positive strides in terms of how they’re coping with things,” King-Papadopoulos said. “I do think that everybody’s kind of breathing a sigh of relief that’s so far this year, feels about as normal as they think that it possibly can.”

King-Papadopoulos has been able to meet her caseload, handle new referrals, hold small group interventions, visit classrooms, support teachers, and is part of the behavioral health team.

But it is sometimes a juggling act, she acknowledged. “I also feel like everybody feels like the situation is very tenuous.”

Social workers confront fights, bullying, paperwork

At Piccolo Elementary, the honeymoon phase of the new school year quickly ended.

Difino scrambled to respond to big fights and bullying. She zagged between mediating conflict resolution and connecting parents with resources. She accompanied a student experiencing a mental health crisis to the emergency room.

And the physical fights didn’t let up — some even involved family members during school dismissal. In mid-September, there were four brawls in one day, involving about 16 students, she recalled.

It took an “all-hands-on-deck” approach — by Difino, the principal, school counselor, and other Piccolo staff — to untangle which students were involved, come up with potential restorative approaches and consequences, work out a safety plan, and fill out paperwork to document the fights.

“I don’t think any of us will really understand the effect that quarantine and COVID had on us,” she said later, “but I think that behaviors become habits really quick.”

On days like that, Difino said, school social workers are forced to make tough decisions of whether to scrap some responsibilities to handle a crisis or not respond to a crisis within 24 hours as required.

Piccolo Elementary school leaders, students, and community leaders gathered in mid-October to cut the ribbon on a new playground for students at the Humboldt Park campus.

In Difino’s five years at Piccolo, she has seen the school add more programming for students before, during, and after school. She credited the principal with bringing in six community partners to do art therapy, sports programs, and providing supplemental counseling, as well as implementing initiatives that center the voice of students.

On paper, Difino’s school is considered adequately staffed by district standards. According to district staffing data, Piccolo has a dean of students, a school counselor, at-risk student coordinator, and a few security staff. It also partners with Becoming a Man, or BAM, to offer counseling and social emotional services to Latino and Black boys.

Still, Difino said it still doesn’t feel like enough to address the persistent behavioral concerns.

“There’s just not enough manpower in the building to do all of that when there is such a high frequency of fights and police-involved incidents — on top of your regular responsibilities,” she said. She advocates for smaller class sizes, more staff to help mediate conflicts, and more affordable housing for students and their families.

“It’s like every school is seen as a spreadsheet,” she said, “not as humans with unique needs, or communities with unique needs.”

On one early December day, as the school year trundled to winter break, Difino pivoted from helping a student in crisis for a few hours to meeting with a mother and her child for an annual IEP assessment. For about an hour, they discussed the previous year’s goals and made new objectives for the rest of the year.

Difino spent the next few hours in her office, filling out forms and writing up paperwork.

Piccolo students are grappling with so much outside of the school walls — too many guns, not enough food, no stable places to call home, said Difino. Those pressures often translate into classroom disruptions or academic struggles.

“When kids have big behaviors, it’s really easy to not see them as a kid anymore,” Difino said. “Usually when they have difficult behaviors, they don’t have the words to say what they’re feeling or going through.”

After the holidays, she hopes to get back to a consistent schedule for her small groups and build on the progress she is seeing in her students.

She envisions tailoring activities around their specific needs and interests. Maybe talking about basketball. Or incorporating play-based learning with Legos.

She still believes in what she does and, she says, no matter the obstacles — the lack of support from the district, the cascading responsibilities — she will find a way to do her job.

Purely for the students.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Youth-led Chicago initiative gets $10 million grant to expand its reach

2022-10-11T11:00:00+00:00

For years, Bezaleia “Bezzy” Reed watched her brother Caleb advocate for racial and social justice issues such as removing police from schools and curbing gun violence.

His life was cut short when he was shot in July 2020, and about a year later, Bezzy joined Communities United to honor her brother, who had been a youth leader at the grassroots organization. Reed, a senior at the alternative Chicago public school Pathways in Education, worked alongside other youth to help tackle mental health issues in her West Side community. The activism helped her heal from her brother’s death.

Now, thanks to a $10 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the racial justice organization will be able to help thousands more Black and Latino youth in partnership with the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.

Communities United, which formed in 2000, and the Lurie hospital will use the money to expand a youth-led initiative that helps young people heal through skills building and activism such as leadership training, healing circles, and community outreach.

The grant comes at a time when communities of color are grappling with racial inequities and trauma exacerbated by the pandemic.

Healing Through Justice: A Community-led Breakthrough Strategy for Healing Centered Communities will be expanding its efforts to help 3,000 Chicago youth develop leadership skills so they can advocate for changes at their schools or in city government, said Laqueanda Reneau, a Communities United youth organizer. As part of the eight-year initiative, Communities United and the hospital will also work with health providers to update their mental health strategies based on a decade of research with input from Black and Latino youth.

The two organizations also have worked toward removing police from schools, changing Illinois’ zero tolerance expulsion policies, and refocusing school disciplinary policies toward more restorative practices.

Helping youth heal by taking action

From losing family members to COVID-19 to losing friends to gun violence, young people are carrying a lot of trauma, Reneau said.

“This is how we should be engaging our young people,” she said of the program. “This is how we should be engaging our youth in a way that allows them to make informed decisions in a way that supports them and leads them ultimately to healing that we all need.”

“This approach to trauma really offers youth in the community an alternative to other forms of expression,” said Dr. John Walkup, chair of the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Lurie Children’s and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“There is a draw in many of the communities in which we work toward gang life or other kinds of alternatives for being powerful and strong. But this really provides a positive and powerful alternative to those other ways that youth try to dig their way out of the trauma they’ve experienced.”

Young people channel pain into activism

In the summer 2020, Marques Watts reached out to Communities United after losing his brother Derrion Umba Ortiz and friend Caleb Reed. Watts, who attends the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recalled feeling helpless over the lack of mental health resources and wanted to ensure other young people didn’t struggle to find those supports.

The 19-year-old said Communities United programs help him cope by being around other young people dealing with the same thing.

Communities United “showed me my voice matters in society and just how much I can really impact my city,” Watts said.

Like Watts, Reed said Communities United has allowed her to heal and grow mentally and emotionally during a challenging period. Most importantly, she feels heard. She’s hopeful the grant will allow the organization to help more youth dealing with trauma and fighting for change.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to continue the work we have been doing,” she said. “It’s a sign we are doing a great job and that we should keep going.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago food bank supplies free lunches for children during the summer

2022-07-13T22:24:01+00:00

On the ground floor of a 23-story apartment building in Uptown, Carol Dunbar and Tammie Dennis make sure 30 sets of little hands are washed.

It’s lunchtime at the child care center inside the 303-unit Lakeside Square Apartments. Today’s menu: a barbecue chicken sandwich, corn, honeydew melon, and milk.

Asha Ali, 9, boasts she’s on a list of good eaters, much to the surprise of her mother, Meryem Ali. Asha and her other daughter, Amal, 7, don’t always finish their food at home, Ali said, but they rave about lunches at the center. Vegetables are Asha’s favorite.

The meals served at the summer program inside the apartment building come from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, a 40-year-old food bank that’s partnering with more than 150 local organizations this summer to distribute lunches to children who rely on free or reduced lunch during the school year.

The Food Depository is one of several programs providing meals for Chicago children this summer – at a time when food insecurity in Chicago and other large cities such as New York has been worsened by the pandemic.

According to data analysis by Diane Schanzenbach, Northwestern University labor economist and a board member at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Black and Latino families in the Chicago area are disproportionately affected by food insecurity, with 32% of Black households with children and 28% of Latino households with children reporting food insecurity compared to 16% of white households.

The problem is amplified during the summer when school is out.

Chicago Public Schools estimated that about 70% of students qualified for free or reduced lunches last school year. The school district also distributes free breakfasts and lunches to all children in the city through its LunchStop summer meals program. The program, which runs until Aug. 12, gives parents the option of picking up meal kits to bring home.

LunchStop operates at 75 locations throughout the city. The sites are chosen based on ZIP codes with low food access, high poverty rates, high participation in previous summers, and schools with existing indoor summer programs, according to CPS.

But not all parents can make it to the Food Depository distribution sites or CPS locations to pick up meals.

The Food Depository encourages families with need to go to Rise & Shine Illinois’ website to find locations for all summer meal sites in their area.

At Lakeside Square in Uptown, April Taylor said she appreciates that the child care center in her building provides her daughter with fun, educational programming and healthy meals. Her daughter, Janelle, 8, has regularly attended the summer and after-school programs for three years.

“During COVID, we had this inflation and everything with the food,” Taylor said. “It really is a big help for all of the parents.”

Dunbar, the community services coordinator for Lakeside Square Apartments, said she used to have to drive all the way to the south side to pick up food for the program, but now it’s delivered.

There can be challenges when welcoming new children to the program.

Many families who live in the building are from countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, and Vietnam, and not all parents are comfortable with English, Dunbar and Dennis said. Sometimes children are also hesitant to try the lunches when they start attending the summer program. Dunbar and Dennis make sure to explain what is in the meals and ask the children to sample the food, they said.

Meseret Alemu said the program helps her daughter, Sharon, 10, with English and supplements her daughter’s education. Sharon enjoys the meals, which help her family if they don’t have food at home or her parents are busy during the day.

Melissa Ly, 15, lives in the building and helps out when she’s not working or at school. She didn’t always have food at home when she was younger, Ly says, but she always knew she could go downstairs and get a meal.

Eileen Pomeroy is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Eileen at epomeroy@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago aims to revamp its admissions policy for selective enrollment schools

2022-03-10T23:33:26+00:00

Chicago Public Schools plans to change its highly competitive selective enrollment school admissions to make the process more equitable for low-income students.

Under a recently unveiled proposal, the district could do away with its ranking system for the highly sought-after schools — a change it would roll out for the 2023-2024 academic year.

The effort is meant to provide more opportunities for low-income students from under-resourced communities to enroll at the district’s selective enrollment elementary and high schools, which offer rigorous curriculums and are among the highest-ranked schools in the state and in some cases in the country.

“When we look at enrollment patterns at these schools, we see that communities with fewer resources are underrepresented,” CEO Pedro Martinez said in a video discussing the proposed changes.

Advocates have long called for changes to the selective enrollment process, arguing that it shuts out talented students whose families might lack the resources and know-how to navigate the high-stakes applications.

They say the pandemic has added pressure and uncertainty to an already intense – and sometimes demoralizing – process for students and their families. Some have argued the district must open up the process at a time when COVID’s disruption has only widened disparities based on race and family income.

About 30% of seats at selective enrollment schools are currently awarded strictly based on a student’s test scores and grades in seventh grade. Those seats have predominantly gone to affluent, white, and Asian American students, even though Latino and Black students make up a majority of the district’s student body, according to the district.

Of those seats, the vast majority — about 85% of elementary schools and 73% of high schools — go to families in the more affluent tiers, the district said.

The remaining 70% of seats are divided among four socioeconomic tiers. The district factors in where in the city students live in addition to their academic achievement. Students from community areas with the lowest median family income, homeownership rates, and education levels get priority in admissions.

Chicago Public Schools has more than 15,700 students enrolled at selective enrollment high schools.

Under the proposal, the district is asking for the board to reconsider the process and has recommended two options:

Remove the 30% rank and distribute all seats equally among students in communities that fall into four socioeconomic tiers under the district’s system.
Continue the 30% seats for the highest-scoring students regardless of socioeconomic status, but steer more of the remaining seats to students from the most disadvantaged areas in the city.

“With equity as a core value, our district feels strongly about adjusting this process,” said Sherly Chavarria, chief of teaching and learning, in the same video to parents.

CPS officials are seeking feedback from parents as they consider changes to the selection process. The district has created a website to gather feedback and provide additional information to parents, students, and teachers to determine how it moves forward, and whether to formally propose changes to the Board of Education.

“Improving the selective process for our selective enrollment schools is a big step forward toward helping every student reach their potential,” Martinez said in a video, “ ensuring that every CPS student in every neighborhood receives a world-class education and creating a more equitable district for all our families.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago comes closer to solving school bus woes six months into school year

2022-02-23T22:58:36+00:00

After wrestling with transportation woes for six months, Chicago Public Schools said it has finally met its obligation to provide bus services to students with disabilities amid ongoing bus driver shortages, but 1,000 general education students are still waiting for routing assignments.

The district said Wednesday that it is prioritizing students who require transportation under federal law — and is now planning to make transportation policy changes to ensure those students are at the front of the line for the upcoming school year.

During Wednesday’s meeting, CEO Pedro Martinez said 715 students with disabilities who were previously without bus service during the last board meeting had been routed, and the district was now transporting about 10,000 students with disabilities.

“I know this has been a struggle with the national shortage of drivers,” Martinez said. “I’m glad we are at this point.”

The district was planning ahead and would make changes to its transportation policy for next school year, Martinez said. The district’s goal is to provide services to all students but would prioritize medically fragile students, students with Individualized Education Programs, those with temporary housing, and low-income students should the driver shortage persist, Martinez said.

However, some students still remain without bus service halfway into the school year, one school board member noted at Wednesday’s board of education meeting.

Board member Lucino Sotelo lauded the transportation team for “making progress” to provide bus service for students with disabilities. Still, Sotelo acknowledged there remained “many unserved” students with temporary housing, or low-income students..

In a statement following the board meeting, Chicago Public Schools noted that transportation requests fluctuate throughout the year as students’ needs change. Since the last board meeting, the district had received 427 new transportation requests from students with disabilities, but 170 of those students had already been assigned a pick-up route.

The district currently has 17 active transportation requests for students with temporary housing and about 1,000 general education students waiting for a routing assignment.

“Like many other school districts across the country, CPS continues to adapt amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” Chicago Public Schools said in a statement. “The District continues to work tirelessly to provide transportation to students amid a national driver shortage.’

Last month, the Board of Education adopted a resolution that would shift bus service away from selective enrollment schools and magnet schools by March 7 if the district was unable to meet legal obligations to provide services to students with Individualized Education Programs, medically fragile students, and students in temporary housing.

Chicago Public Schools annually provides transportation to about 12,754 students, of which 56% are students with disabilities. Students with disabilities have transportation written into their IEP, a legally binding document that outlines services they receive. The requirement is backed by federal law.

Since the start of the school year, Chicago, along with districts nationwide, had been plagued by school bus driver shortages, leaving thousands of students without a dependable ride to school. The district struggled for months to make headway.

CPS started the school year with 500 bus drivers instead of the 1,2000 required to meet student transportation needs.

Since the fall, the district’s transportation department has been teaming up with taxi firms and a company called RideAlong, which specializes in providing rides to children, in order to make up for the bus driver shortages. The district has also offered to reimburse families who opt to find alternative transportation for their child.

During Wednesday’s board meeting, Martinez called the school year a “learning process” and said he hoped to work with his transportation team to see how the district could leverage different modes of transportation in the future to meet the needs of its students with disabilities and other vulnerable students.

The district plans to go through a formal policy change over the next two to three months and gather feedback from families before proposing changes to the Board of Education, Martinez said.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago could reroute buses from more schools to help its most vulnerable students

2022-01-27T02:05:19+00:00

For months, Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide transportation for students with disabilities and those in temporary housing. Now, the district could end up tackling the problem by shifting bus service away from selective enrollment schools and magnet schools that draw students from all over the city.

Under a resolution adopted Wednesday by the Board of Education, the district would “reroute some or all students as necessary” at magnet, selective enrollment, and other option schools and use those buses for students with Individualized Education Programs, medically fragile students, and students in temporary housing who haven’t yet received reliable transportation.

The resolution would go into effect at the end of February if the issue remains unresolved. The district would need to provide services to students with disabilities no later than March 7, with services continuing through the end of the 2021-2022 school year.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said the resolution set a timeline to ensure transportation for students with the highest needs.

A similar resolution proposed in September would have prioritized special education and children experiencing homelessness over magnet students, but it was not made public after a meeting with Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office, Todd-Breland said.

“We continue to put off this difficult decision, and that’s where we find ourselves today,” she said. “I want to be clear, no one is taking this lightly or cavalierly.”

In responding to Todd-Breland, a spokesperson for the mayor said Lightfood had repeatedly said that “providing transportation for all CPS students is an urgent priority.”

“The Interim CEO of CPS at that time had shared possible solutions for busing students, however the Mayor’s Office was never presented with a formal resolution,” the spokesperson said in an email statement.

Chicago Public Schools annually provides transportation to about 12,754 students of which 56% are students with disabilities. Students with disabilities have transportation written into their Individualized Education Programs, a legally binding document that outlines services they receive. The requirement is backed by federal law.

Since the start of the school year, Chicago, along with districts nationwide, has been plagued by school bus driver shortages, leaving thousands of students without a dependable ride to school.

The district made headway chipping away at the number of students without reliable rides to school since the start of the school year. Still, 631 students with disabilities, or medically fragile students are still without reliable transportation — compared to about 2,335 in October.

An additional 300 transportation requests for students with disabilities have come in since September, officials said.

The national driver shortage has strained the district’s transportation services. The district started the school year with 500 bus drivers instead of the 1,200 required to meet student transportation needs.

District officials said they are working to continue hiring bus drivers and finding other modes of transportation to fill the needs, and avoid disrupting service to general education students.

Kimberly Jones, the district’s transportation chief, said CPS is in the process of hiring more bus drivers and expected to be able to provide transportation to all the students before the Feb. 28 deadline.

The district has names of more than 200 applicants, with more than 100 going through background checks, Jones said. Twenty-three drivers have been cleared and have started transporting students, she added.

But board vice president Sendhil Revuluri questioned whether the district could reach its staffing targets by February, given that it hadn’t been able to solve the problem across the past five months.

Both Jones and CEO Pedro Martinez said they were confident they would meet the deadline, and would discuss at the next meeting if it isn’t looking like progress is being made.

In the meantime, Martinez said the district is already looking ahead into the next school year to start planning how to leverage different modes of transportation to meet the needs of its students with disabilities and other vulnerable students.

As part of the resolution, the district will also provide financial assistance to parents of all general education students affected by the suspension of bus routes, with $1,000 upfront and $500 a month beginning in March 2022 through the end of the school year.

The resolution would also require the district to update board members every month starting Feb. 23 of compensatory education meetings held for students with IEPs who receive transportation but did not have a route as of the first day of the 2021-2022 school year.

Since the fall, the district’s transportation department has been teaming up with taxi firms and a company called RideAlong, which specializes in providing rides to children, in order to make up for the bus driver shortages. The district has also offered to reimburse families who have opted to find alternative transportation for their child.

Still, in its resolution, the Chicago Board of Education acknowledged it was not meeting transportation needs.

Todd-Breland said the district needed to act now to address the transportation problem, rather than continuing to kick the problem down the road.

We need to make a decision “to do right by our most vulnerable students,” she said.

Board member Luisiana Meléndez said she fully supported the resolution but hoped it wouldn’t need to be implemented because the issue will be solved before the deadline.

“This is not an easy choice,” Meléndez said, but she acknowledged the board had an ethical, moral, and legal obligation to prioritize vulnerable students.

In October, parents told Chalkbeat Chicago the district had canceled bus routes for their children with little notice, leaving them with few alternatives to get their child to school.

The bus problems have been an ongoing issue for some families, who have been “significantly impacted by a lack of transportation,” said Barb Cohen, policy analyst for Legal Council for Health Justice.

While many families have found resolution after filing complaints with the Illinois State Board of Education against the district for violating state law, there are still a considerable number of parents without reliable transportation, Cohen said.

“We have a number of families where the students missed months of school,” Cohen said. In that time, students with IEPs have missed critical services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, and social work services, she said.

“They’re particularly hurt by the inability to get through the school door,” Cohen said.

Cohen endorsed the shift of the district’s transportation policy, stating the priority needed to be “students who have a legal right to transportation.”

Still, Cohen questioned why the district was waiting over a month before the policy would take effect.

Rachel Shapiro, managing attorney for Equip for Equality, echoed Cohen’s concerns over waiting another month to shift the policy to provide transportation to which these students are legally entitled.

“What will change between now and Feb. 28 to make the situation any different?” Shapiro said.

In reviewing the resolution, Shapiro said it was concerning why the district had not been prioritizing these students to begin with.

“Certainly students who are homeless and students with disabilities have a legal entitlement,” Shapiro said. “They should be at the front of the line.”

Chicago students walk out of South Side school over racial slurs: ‘We will not be silenced’

2021-12-14T20:16:28+00:00

A dozen students trickled out the front doors of Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy at 10:45 a.m. Monday. Before long, the group swelled to about 50 students chanting in unison: “We will not be silenced.”

Some Black students at the Ashburn campus say that, for years, they have notified teachers, administrators, and security guards that students are using racial slurs on campus. Those concerns have largely been ignored or dismissed as a joke, they said.

The walkout served as a way to call attention to what students said was a culture of unchecked racism at the school, which is 61% Latino and 37% Black, with 2% of students identifying with other races, said senior Kendall Canteberry, one of the organizers of the walkout.

The student protest came amid increasing national scrutiny over the way conversations on race are handled in classrooms and schools. It also comes six months after the district said it was working to build an anti-bias culture at its campuses but has not fully detailed its plans.

In addition to saying they have endured racial slurs from other students, Black students alleged they have been targeted by some teachers who kicked them out of class or called security on them, Canteberry said. The student said a number of Black teachers have left the school over the past four years.

According to state report card data, Goode has had some turnover over the last few years, which was in line with districtwide numbers.

In 2018, 131 students at Goode received out-of-school suspensions. Black students accounted for 68% of the suspensions, compared with 24% for Latino students, according to a ProPublica analysis of disciplinary data collected by the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.

Goode STEM Principal Armando Rodriguez deferred questions to Chicago Public Schools. Chicago Public Schools didn’t respond to specific questions from Chalkbeat but shared a letter sent Tuesday morning to parents and students at the school. The district did not respond to specific allegations made by students.

In the letter, Chicago Public Schools acknowledged the student-led effort aimed at “creating equitable learning conditions” for students and staff, “especially students of color and students from other marginalized backgrounds.”

“We recognize and appreciate the students and staff at Goode who are working to bring attention to these issues, and we are committed to working with the Goode community to address students’ concerns and work toward a common goal of creating a safe and equitable school community,” the district wrote in the letter.

Monday’s nearly 20-minute walkout comes amid mounting frustrations of inaction from administration to address the persistent complaints, Canteberry said.

“Regardless of how many times we report it, nothing has changed,” the 17-year-old senior said. “They always say the same thing: ‘Changes will be made soon.’”

“We are tired of the racism,” he said, “tired of how we are being treated as students.”

Another student organizer, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said the walkout was aimed at calling out “prejudice and racism” at the school.

In the letter to the Goode parents, Chicago Public Schools said it planned to establish a Student Voice Committee, develop a social-emotional learning plan, and co-design a racial healing plan at the school. The district also plans to host community meetings to help develop goals around cultural responsiveness, anti-racism, and anti-bias at Goode.

Chicago Public Schools has been actively encouraging conversations about race in its classrooms.

Following the Breonna Taylor shooting death by police, Janice Jackson, CPS’s former CEO, sent a citywide letter encouraging school communities to have “honest and productive conversations about racial justice and our role in fighting systemic racism.”

The walkout comes on the heels of a district announcement earlier this year that Chicago intended to build a system to report incidents of racism and bias. The program Transforming Bias-Based Harm aims to focus on non-disciplinary solutions and school-level training for students and staff to recognize implicit bias and microaggressions.

Under the plan, the district would also investigate more serious instances of racism.

The district announced the system after students at some selective enrollment high schools began using social media to document alleged incidents of racism at their schools, which they said included racial slurs, bullying, and racial profiling by school security officers.

District officials previously said students and families are able to start reporting incidents of perceived bias on the CPS website or by emailing civilrights@cps.edu.

Tina Curry, a teacher and former equity coach at Sarah E. Goode, said issues at the school stem from “bias that goes unchecked.”

“It doesn’t start as racism,” Curry said. “When bias goes unchecked, it can turn into discrimination and racism. That’s been the problem here.”

Curry used to teach an activism unit in her class during which Black students shared experiences of being barred from using the restroom or being locked out of class after the bell, as well as experiencing racism at the school.

Black students have said they see their peers being treated differently, Curry said, describing instances where Black students would be singled out and disciplined differently.

Curry said these disciplinary practices targeting Black students were going “unchecked” at the school and “our children are the ones who are suffering, especially our Black children, especially our Black girls.”

“They are punished more harshly for the same offense than their Latino peers,” Curry said. “And Black students see this.”

Students started petitions and surveys and raised concerns with administration but nothing has changed, Curry said.

In response, administrators canceled the activism program for the semester and later reinstated it after student pushback, Curry said.

Curry said the initial move to remove the activism program was part of a larger culture problem and microaggressions at the school that are forcing Black teachers to leave.

During school dismissal on Monday, a senior student, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said she heard stories of peers experiencing racism from other students. She didn’t participate in the morning walkout because administrators told students there would be consequences.

Black and Latino students and Black teachers have been dealing with racism at the school for years, but students didn’t know how to move forward with their frustrations, Canteberry said.

Had the pandemic not happened, Canteberry feels as though the issue would have come to a head much earlier.

Canteberry and other organizers plan on continuing to host meetings to make sure the racism they’ve experienced gets addressed not just for current students but for students who will attend the school in the future.

“We hope that this protest and this walkout finally changes things — changes the racism — and have our voices be heard,” Canteberry said. “I really hope we can really sit down and change things for students and staff to be happy.”

After early hardships, this Chicago PE teacher relishes being a role model

2021-11-23T12:00:00+00:00

Hector Rodriguez knew a return to in-person instruction would come with some challenges for many students, especially after 18 months of remote learning.

Before students walked into his class in late August, the James Ward Elementary physical education teacher made it his mission to create a safe and comforting environment after an extended period of uncertainty.

“I’m focused on making teaching fun again — bringing that joy back to in-person learning for our students,” Rodriguez said.

A few months into the school year, he is incorporating social-emotional learning into his physical education classes. Some of those activities include having students lead classmates in their favorite family dance like the Macarena or Cha Cha. Activities like these, Rodriguez says, allow students to share and be “creative and express themselves.” They “help improve the classroom climate and create a safe learning space.” Rodriguez has also been working with Cubs-affiliated charities to introduce baseball to students who have never played the sport. In 2019, Rodriguez received a Cubs Jr. All Stars physical education award for his work with the organization’s spring training program at the Chinatown school.

Rodriguez recently talked to Chalkbeat about being back in school, how his upbringing shaped him as a teacher, and the importance of being an educator of color.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are you doing to meet your students’ needs following two disrupted school years and the trauma COVID brought with it?

This year, I’m focusing more on the social-emotional aspects of teaching. I want to create a safe space while also facilitating different team-building activities during and after school.

We have a running club and soccer program at James Ward school. I have a few students that are my leaders, my captains. They help with some of the leadership responsibilities, including taking attendance, leading warm-ups, and leading some of the planned activities. It’s really been helpful for social-emotional learning and development. The physical activity, combined with the kids interacting and socializing again, really helps them in other aspects of school learning.

What is something happening in the community right now that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

We are putting a big focus on equality and diversity. I think there are huge disparities in the community when it comes to equity. For example, the vaccination rates, food deserts, and things of that nature.

So when students come in here, we try to make sure that everyone has a voice, that everyone has an equal opportunity. And that’s a huge component of what we do here at our school. That means we make sure our students are being fed or get a snack during after-school programs. We teach them the golden rule: treat others how you want to be treated.

We also are creating a safe space for non-binary students to express themselves here. We want to offer that safe space for all of our students.

How has your own school experience impacted the way you teach today?

I grew up in Humboldt Park. My parents were immigrants who came from Mexico searching for a better life for their family. My father instilled in me a strong work ethic. He worked for a company painting homes, and my mother was a homemaker raising five children. We lived a humble life. We were very low-income. We lived in government housing.

My mom lost a battle to breast cancer when I was young. That experience really opened my eyes. I became somewhat troubled, but I had a lot of caring teachers in my life who really took time to genuinely show love, support, and mentorship. Here I am now because of some of those teachers. Being a Latino male teacher has allowed me to be a role model, of sorts, to some of my students. Just my presence as a male, Latino, minority in my position, allows them to feel like they can also achieve and do something great.

On top of teaching at James Ward, you coach Cubs Jr. All Stars during the school year and in the summer. What is that experience like?

Most kids love sports. I think sports are a great way to get them connected to one another and with the surrounding community. The Cubs baseball charities allow us to introduce baseball to our Bridgeport and Chinatown communities. Approximately 70% of our student population is of Asian American descent, and most of them have never seen or played a game of baseball. Some of our students have never swung a bat, wore a baseball glove, or played catch.

Cubs charities provide equipment, the curriculum, and professional development. They allow teachers, like myself, to collaborate and see what works, what doesn’t, and how to make it better. There is also a data component to have a skills-based assessment and make sure students are learning, and we’re meeting our objectives.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

During a Zoom call, former Cubs coach Joe Maddon, who led the Cubs to the World Series, told me something very simple. He said: ‘Hector, it begins when it begins.’

It really resonated with me. It allowed me to say my intention, breathe my intention, and speak it to life. For me, that intention is: Make teaching fun and be a positive influence in my school community.

Another great lesson is from my dad, who told me: “Don’t take anything personal” and “just seize the moment.” Opportunities are ubiquitous, but moments are not.

‘Where are the federal dollars?’: Chicago Teachers Union says COVID relief is not reaching high-need schools

2021-11-17T21:56:17+00:00

Three months into the new school year, the Chicago Teachers Union says the $535 million in federal COVID relief funds promised to schools still isn’t reaching high-need campuses on the South and West Side.

As evidence, the union pointed to Frazier Elementary in North Lawndale, where the school librarian has become a substitute teacher and the principal has taken over an algebra class amid a substitute shortage.

A union call for more federal pandemic relief spending on additional staffing has been one of the key sticking points in negotiations over a fall reopening agreement with the district that still remains elusive.

District leaders and school board members have pointed out that their pandemic recovery plan for the coming two years includes millions of dollars for new special education teachers, counselors, and other positions. But they have stressed that investing significant resources into new hiring will set the district up for a painful and disruptive fiscal cliff when the federal funding expires.

The district is leaning more heavily on community-based organizations, mental health providers, and other outside groups to provide after-school, mental health, and other services. At its Wednesday board meeting, for instance, the board approved $45 million worth of contracts over three years with 91 vendors to provide these types of services.

The union has dismissed these arguments, insisting that schools need more bodies to address pandemic-era needs now.

Schools across the country are confronting staffing shortages in critical areas, from classroom teachers to bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Some of the shortages predated the pandemic, but COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem. Experts say the infusion of federal emergency cash may complicate matters, since more schools are hiring and competing against each other for staff.

Outside Chicago Public School headquarters on Wednesday, union president Jesse Sharkey said the staffing shortages at Frazier and other schools show that district leaders and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have failed to live up to their promises of directly supporting students and their families with COVID-19 relief funds. At Englewood STEM High School, staffers are scrambling since nine educators are out with COVID-19, Sharkey said, and substitutes are in high demand.

Chicago Public Schools expects to receive about $2.6 billion from three federal COVID stimulus packages.

Yet schools continue to contend with lack of cleanliness, staffing shortages, and sparse support resources, Sharkey said.

“Those supports have not arrived to our schools,” Sharkey said. “Where are the federal dollars? Why haven’t they arrived to our schools?”

CTU President Jesse Sharkey says schools are contending with a lack of cleanliness, staffing shortages, and sparse support resources.

Over the summer, the city launched “Moving Forward Together.” The two-year plan promises to use $535 million of the $2.6 billion federal COVID relief funds to address the academic and mental health impact from the ongoing pandemic.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said that it recognized the critical importance of equitable funding and resources for all schools, especially those that serve Black and Latino students from low-income households.

The district said it is investing federal funds in addressing unfinished learning and supporting students’ social and emotional needs. This past spring, it rolled out a $24 million plan to expand care teams for students’ behavioral health at every school over the next three years. The district said in a statement it is also investing more in programming to help students with disabilities, including doubling the capacity of its summer offerings.

As for the educators’ complaints about cleanliness, a spokesperson for the district said it is working with school communities to determine the best course of action but that improving school facilities and ensuring a safe and sanitary learning environment was a “priority.”

At the monthly school board meeting Wednesday, CEO Pedro Martinez acknowledged complaints about cleaning problems with some schools and said his team won’t shy away from accountability. There had been some improvements, Martinez said, asking board members to keep in mind there are over 600 schools in the district.

The district continued to make progress, completing a deep cleaning on Friday and planning additional deep cleaning during the Thanksgiving weekend, Martinez said.

He asked community members not to generalize this issue for the entire district based on one school.

“That is not fair to the district,” Martinez said. “That is a discredit to our staff. That is a discredit to our leadership. That is not the right thing to do.”

Frazier teacher Sandra Ochoa said this week the school was in dire need of a nurse, a psychologist, a case manager, a technology coordinator, a tutor, and more mental health support resources.

“Our community is in a crisis,” Ochoa said. “Our students need stability.”

During a press conference at Frazier Tuesday, educators underscored the need for more staffing.

Tolu Solola, a science teacher, said the school — which offers the prestigious International Baccalaureate program — has had five IB coordinators in six years, and educator turnover overall is high.

“We have a crisis that has been ignored for far too long,” she said. “The teachers as well as the students and parents have had enough.”

Solola broke down when she spoke about students having to adjust to a new teacher or a substitute after mid-year educator departures.

“I’m tired of telling my students it’s not their fault their teachers leave,” she said.

Parents and educators at other schools described similar frustrations on Wednesday. Cortney Ritsema, who serves on the Local School Council at Goudy Elementary, said that families are on three-month wait lists for mental health services provided by an outside organization connected to the school. The wait is even longer, she said, for families seeking services in languages other than English.

Teacher Caroline Rutherford said the same issues at neighborhood schools were being experienced at the charter level at Acero Marquez.

“We are missing the same resources,” Rutherford said. “The biggest resource we need is staffing.”

The school needs counselors, social workers, and academic interventionists, Rutherford said. “Our students need more adult attention and they are not getting it.”

More Chicago students are going to college. But their neighborhood can affect whether they graduate.

2021-11-04T16:11:07+00:00

Even as more Chicago students go to college, the neighborhood where they live — not just the high school they attend — has a major impact on whether they ultimately attain a degree.

New research from the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project shows that community areas have a significant impact on educational attainment outcomes — findings that researchers say underscore the need for deeper investments in housing security, health care access, and transportation to address the barriers facing Chicago students.

Researchers examined community areas to see whether boosting school choice was enough to improve educational attainment. By analyzing high school enrollment and college graduation data by where students live, as well as where they go to school, the report notes, researchers could “more clearly see the consequential impacts that the legacy and current reality of racial segregation has had on students’ educational experiences throughout Chicago.”

School choice can improve a student’s chance of getting into college, but they found “where students live deeply shapes their likelihood of obtaining a certificate or college diploma.”

Dominique McKoy, study author and associate director of engagement for the To&Through Project, said the study, accompanied by a new data tool launched Thursday, focuses on Chicago’s community areas, the 77 geographic areas that make up the city, rather than just focusing on high schools as a lens to look at educational attainment.

In compiling data, researchers found some community areas still have a centralized high school that the majority of students attend, while other community areas are home to students who may be dispersed among more than 40 different high schools across the city, McKoy said.

The dispersion of students outside of their community high school is particularly pronounced in predominantly Black neighborhoods, McKoy said.

Over the last two decades, Chicago Public Schools has expanded school choice, which has resulted, in some instances, in more than 75% of students leaving their neighborhood to attend schools outside their communities areas.

This data “provides us an opportunity to better understand how school choice is being exercised throughout community areas,” McKoy said.

While high school contributes to shaping student’s lives, a student’s community area plays a large role in whether they complete a college degree, said Jenny Nagaoka, study author and deputy director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

“We all already know the rates of high school graduation vary widely by high school,” Nagaoka said. “But when you organize the same students by the community area where they live, the high school graduation rates start to look pretty similar across all the community areas in the city.”

Across the city, more than 70% of CPS students are graduating from high school compared with graduation rates below 50% nearly two decades ago, Nagaoka said. The citywide five-year graduation rate is 83.8% in 2021.

The researchers found similar patterns for college enrollment, too.

“When we look at college enrollment rates by community area, they’re pretty similar across the city,” Nagaoka said. “In almost every single community area in the city, high school graduates are going to college at rates at 50% or higher.”

But after high school, a community area may influence whether a student attains a degree. This could be attributed to levels of support and resources that vary based on community area, researchers said.

“Changing the educational trajectories of Chicago’s young people also requires institutions and organizations across sectors to address other deep-seated inequities through investment in the communities in which students live,” McKoy said.

Rather than perpetuate stereotypes of community areas, McKoy and Nagaoka hope this data tool sparks local conversations to better understand how student experiences both “inside and outside CPS classrooms” impact educational outcomes.

Greater investment in students’ college graduation could have huge implications for intergenerational change inside communities, Nagaoka said.

“If a community area has more students graduating from high school, going to college, and graduating college,” Nagaoka said, “that has the potential impact of really changing what is happening inside of community areas and provides human capital for the future.”

Among the report’s other findings:

In about one-third of Chicago’s community areas such as in North Lawndale and West Garfield Park on the city’s West Side and Riverdale on the city’s far South Side, less than 25% of ninth grade students are projected to complete a college credential within 10 years if current attainment rates do not change, compared to more than 50% in five community areas including Armour Square on the South Side, and Lincoln Park and Lakeview on the North Side.
About 16% of high schools had college enrollment rates below 50% (21 out of 124), and four had rates below 40% (according to CPS data, many of the city’s alternative schools also have enrollment rates well below 40%). At the other end of the spectrum, in four high schools, more than 90% of graduates made an immediate transition to a two-year or four-year college.
Out of the city’s 77 community areas, 15 neighborhoods showed the most commonly-attended schools were charter schools, but all of them enrolled 20% or fewer of the CPS ninth-graders living in the community area.

Chicago to expand anti-violence youth program that reduced arrests in pilot

2021-10-25T22:10:46+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will spend $7.5 million to expand an anti-violence program for teens in “high-risk situations” and connect with them with weekly therapy and dedicated mentors.

The program, called Choose to Change, will reach 1,000 students this school year, CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday. Four community groups will help provide the services to students most impacted by violence and trauma.

The program is being funded by the district, the city of Chicago, and philanthropic donations.

“We know right now that with COVID all of the challenges that already existed before COVID have just been exacerbated, especially around the mental health of our children,” Martinez said. “When children are hurting, you have to provide them support and you have to provide them help.”

District officials are looking to raise another $4 million for the program to help an additional 500 students, they said.

Bright Star, New Life Centers of Chicagoland, Lifeline to Hope, and Build Chicago will work together to serve 300 students as part of the expansion.

Chicago Public Schools is building on a program that started in the nonprofit sector and has a track record of helping vulnerable students, Martinez said.

Choose to Change, which originated in 2015 as a collaboration among nonprofits, connects teens with trained trauma therapists who provide regular sessions and with mentors who coach them on staying in school and reaching longer-range goals.

The program also helps students and their families with everything from basic necessities or employment coaching.

The students referred to the program are from 13 to 18 and at risk of becoming gang-involved. Others may have been on juvenile probation or victims of traumatic violence, according to researchers.

About 600 Chicago teens have participated in the program since the start, and researchers have touted early evidence of its efficacy. A 2020 research brief by the University of Chicago Crime and Education Labs found that participants had 48% fewer crime-related arrests compared to their peers — and that they were still less likely to be involved with the criminal justice system in the year after the program ended.

Participants were also likely to attend seven days more of school a year than a control group of their peers and were involved with fewer incidents of misconduct on campus. The early research did not find evidence of an impact on grades, however.

Daryl, a participant in the Choose to Change program and a student at the alternative school Ombudsman Chicago South, said Monday that he was “thankful” for the program, which offered him positive support.

“I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the program,” said Daryl, whose last name was withheld by the district.

As of September, more than 250 Chicago children under age 18 had been injured or killed from gun violence. A week before Martinez started his job in Chicago, two teenage students from Simeon Career Academy were killed in separate incidents within hours of one another. In early October, a teenage girl and a security guard were wounded by gunfire on the steps of Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Bronzeville.

On Monday, Martinez, who was raised in Pilsen, said it was a “difficult time for families.”

“I have never seen violence be so explicit and we see it every week ... It’s not in our schools, but it’s in our communities,” Martinez said. “We can’t ignore it. We have to join together. We need to provide these services to students that really need it.”

After the Phillips shooting, Martinez said there needed to be all hands on deck to address the needs of students at schools reeling from gun violence.

During a press conference earlier this month, the new district leader said he was going to partner with the mayor, the police department, school-level crisis teams, and surrounding communities to address the issues of violence.

“It can’t be the schools by themselves. It really can’t,” Martinez said. “It’s something we all have to work together on.”

Will the bus come today? For some Illinois families, school transit still a gamble

2021-10-12T11:00:00+00:00

Just before 9 a.m. on a recent Friday, Jeanette Sámano’s phone buzzed and her son’s name lit up the screen. The school bus hadn’t arrived for pickup outside Enrico Tonti Elementary School in Gage Park, he told her. With only 10 minutes to go before the start of his first class at Maria Saucedo Elementary School about five miles away in Little Village, Raúl, who is a diverse learner, wouldn’t be making it on time.

“I was really worried about his safety,” Sámano said, who was upset that her seventh grader would also be missing critical learning time. “My heart dropped.”

Sámano, who works an hour and half away in the suburbs, called the bus company only to be told service had been canceled for the day. The bus service provider hadn’t called parents ahead of time to let them know of the last-minute cancelation, Sámano said.

She called her husband, who left work to take their 12-year-old son to Maria Saucedo.

“They should be calling the parents so we know what to do. That way we can make alternate choices,” Sámano said. “It’s not OK.”

Weeks into the school year, Illinois families such as Sámano’s are still grappling with unreliable bus service because of the state’s school bus driver shortage and logistical problems with district planning. Parents describe how their children are dropped off at home 30-45 minutes late or later, pickups are canceled last-minute, and communication is spotty from district officials. That has left them frustrated and concerned about their children’s safety, as students have been stranded at bus stops alone or have to stay home alone because parents are working.

Chicago’s bus problems made headlines the first week of school, and district officials promised cash payments for transit assistants and a fast solution. But weeks later, several families told Chalkbeat that bus service is still a daily gamble, and data provided by Chicago Public Schools shows that even more families lack service now than at the start of the year.

Chicago is responsible for transporting about 16,000 students to and from schools every year. Currently, students with disabilities make up more than half of the outstanding transportation requests — about 2,500 out of 4,000 students across the district. Students with disabilities have transportation written into their Individualized Education Programs, and the requirement is backed by federal law.

“Like school districts across the country, the district is experiencing a shortage in drivers. CPS remains committed to providing full transportation services to students,” a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said in a statement.

CPS is working with vendors to ramp up bus driver hiring and training to resume regularly provided transportation services, according to a CPS official.

When school started at the end of August, 2,100 students were left without a ride on the first day of school and families were offered $1,000 to cover transportation. Last month, Chicago Public School board members said 3,300 students were stranded without bus service, citing the continued bus driver shortage, but said they aimed to prioritize students with special needs. But weeks later, the bus problem hasn’t improved.

Over the last year, Chicago Public Schools also consolidated or canceled 289 bus routes.

District officials said the total number of students without transportation may vary as part of the evolving situation.

Asked to explain why more students are now without bus service, district officials said the “higher number of transportation requests can be attributed to new requests, changes in enrollment, and route assignments returned by bus companies.”

The numbers fluctuate in the first couple of months of a new school year, district officials said.

Sámano said bus service has been inconsistent all year so far, and Raúl sometimes is late for his first class, which is one of two classes that provides enhanced learning assistance to diverse learners, and on some other days there is no service. While school ends at 4 p.m.,Raúl’s bus often arrives at the school around 5:30 p.m. and doesn’t reach his drop-off location until after 6 p.m.

Families who have children with disabilities say that this isn’t the first time that they have struggled with unreliable bus service to get their children to school. Laurie Viets, a mother of three children with autism, says that reliable transportation pre-dates the pandemic. She remembers her children sharing a bus with another school in 2019, which resulted in children at one school always being late.

“This is systematic. This has been happening every single year that my children have had busing,” Viets said. “They are always understaffed.”

The district’s solution of offering money to parents to pay for other transportation to school isn’t an option for everyone, especially parents whose children have special needs, Viets said.

“We have to put a huge amount of faith and trust in CPS transportation just to put our kids on a school bus with an aide and a driver, and then to say, ‘You should just put them in a random Uber and we will reimburse you — It’s just ridiculous,” Viets said.

CPS parent Laurie Viets and her three children Raven, far left, Canyon, center right, and River.

One parent told Chalkbeat their child was denied remote instruction after a bus route was canceled. The bus problems forced the family to keep their child home entirely, said the parent, who did not want to be named out of concern about retaliation from the district.

The parent provided Chalkbeat with proof that school officials denied requests to provide child remote instruction.

Parents throughout Illinois are dealing with delays and last-minute route cancellations due to lack of bus staffing. While their districts are providing solutions when students can’t get a bus to school, families are still awaiting permanent fixes — especially because the school bus is the only way for some children to get to classes.

Maria Gonzalez’s daughters attend schools at Community School District 308 in Oswego and do not have the option of taking public transportation. Melanie, 15, attends high school between 7:20 a.m. and 2:40 p.m. and must get to the bus stop at 6:25 a.m. Dayana, 10, starts classes at 8:45 a.m. and ends at 3:45 p.m., and she needs to be at her bus stop around 8:25 a.m.

Some days, the bus doesn’t come. The girls have to stay home and attend classes online since Gonzalez is a single mother who works at a factory from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is rarely able to drive her daughters to school.

Although her daughters are usually able to get a bus to school, buses are delayed in the evening. Sometimes Dayana comes back home 30-45 minutes late and misses her after-school activities.

Without anyone to watch her daughters, Gonzalez’s worries about their safety. Sometimes she is so worried, she chooses to miss work, a risky proposition for a family with a single income. “When they are at home, sometimes I have to stay with them because I don’t have people to support me.”

Community School District 308 in Oswego could not be immediately reached for comment.

It can be challenging for immigrant families to navigate American schools. I know from experience.

2021-10-06T18:45:00+00:00

Meet Mauricio Peña, a Chicago reporter who has covered the Southwest Side and migrant farmworkers in Southern California. At Chalkbeat, Mauricio will be covering Chicago Public Schools. Below is his introduction to our readers.

When I was a child, adults often had my siblings and me translate for our immigrant parents.

We were still learning English ourselves, and it felt as if we were carrying the weight of the world trying to make sense of conversations before explaining those words effectively in another language.

From casual translations at grocery stores to more serious visits at clinics, or explaining school notes, rules or policies — something my parents simply weren’t familiar with — it felt daunting and often stressful.

Until fifth grade, my school district didn’t consider me fluent in English, a fact I didn’t learn until reading a college recommendation letter from a school counselor years later. So I would be pulled out of class for extra help on the one hand, while also helping translate for my parents’ conversations with school officials on the other.

Even as a child, I recognized the dissonance between being labeled needy while shouldering a responsibility that belonged to district officials.

In Mexico, my parents attended elementary school until leaving to work as farmhands. When they arrived as young adults to California’s Coachella Valley, they found work as farmworkers, gardeners, restaurant workers, and housekeepers. Survival was their priority. All they asked of their children: work hard and don’t get into trouble at school.

For me and my six siblings, taking on the task of helping our parents navigate our school experience and other responsibilities of living in the U.S. meant growing up earlier than some of our peers.

Our experience is far from unique.

In my seven years of reporting on Chicago’s Southwest sides and rural migrant farm working communities in Southern California, I’ve met many new immigrant families that share my family’s experiences.

The parents became essential workers who immigrated dreaming of a better life for their families. Part of this dream is seeing their children pursue a higher education. That’s a heavy responsibility for any child to carry during normal times — and perhaps an impossible burden during a crisis when rules and regulations are constantly changing.

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve thought many times of how difficult it must be for English language learners trying to navigate remote learning. Staring at a screen for hours trying to absorb information in another language is tough enough — then add trying to understand the ever-changing information from city and district officials on whether they’ll be returning to school in person the next day.

At Chalkbeat, I plan to report on how English learners have experienced the pandemic and remote learning, what they need academically and emotionally, and what resources are available for them. How are schools using federal aid money to help these students make up for any learning loss? Is the help reaching those most in need?

I’m eager to hear from readers about what stories you’d like me to prioritize. Please don’t hesitate to email me at mpena@chalkbeat.org or message me on Twitter @mauriciopena.

Boys of color were hit hard by the pandemic. What do they need now?

2021-10-05T09:00:00+00:00

As students across the country wrestled with pandemic stress last winter, sophomore Nathaniel Martinez logged on to a virtual retreat. Forty mostly Black and Latino teens in Chicago were getting a crash course on gauging how their peers were coping.

They also opened up about pressures they faced amid the COVID-19 outbreak and an uptick in gun violence, from depression to disengagement from school.

Nathaniel spoke about struggling to focus in virtual classes as he grappled with isolation and insomnia.

The project offered Nathaniel a support group of sorts as he returned to full-time in-person learning this fall, short on credits but bent on regaining his footing. It also gave him an active role in reimagining how schools can better help teens of color.

School systems have long vowed to shrink the disparities in graduation, college enrollment, and other outcomes that leave Black and Latino boys consistently behind girls of color. The pandemic’s disruption further widened such gaps. In Chicago and nationally, data show a steeper drop in attendance and a more marked increase in failing grades for male Black and Latino students.

This is the third installment in a Chalkbeat series about how Black and Latino young men navigated an unprecedented school year — a year in which pandemic disruption collided with a rise in gun violence, a citywide battle over reopening schools, and the national reckoning over race. Reporter Mila Koumpilova decided to focus on this group of students because they have historically faced large academic disparities.

In Part One, co-published with USA Today, Koumpilova followed a trio of students throughout the school year as they grappled with the pandemic’s fallout, attended virtual classes, volunteered for racial justice causes, and applied to college. Part Two examined data suggesting the crisis widened disparities for male students of color in Chicago and other cities. Here, in Part Three, also co-published with USA Today, Koumpilova explores efforts to address the academic and mental health needs of these students — often, by enlisting them in the search for solutions.

Accompanying the package is this powerful first-person account about what Chicago needs to do differently, written by the CEO of a youth outreach nonprofit who recently lost her stepson to gun violence.

The country’s reckoning over race has brought a greater sense of urgency to the search for solutions, and districts are flush with billions of federal pandemic relief dollars. But so far, most efforts to rethink learning for male students of color seem to be relatively small-scale, often driven by nonprofits rather than schools and colleges, say experts such as Roderick L. Carey, professor at the University of Delaware who studies the educational experiences of Black and Latino boys and young men.

“I’m not seeing many concrete steps to reimagine schooling in the wake of what we have experienced with racial unrest and COVID-19,” Carey said. “Folks seem to be just trying to get back to business as usual.”

Still, advocates are encouraged by initiatives that show promise, including new programs to steer more Black and Latino males into teaching, and efforts such as the project Nathaniel joined that give students more agency in helping find solutions. The project, a partnership between Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital and nonprofit Communities United, was just named among 10 finalists in the Kellogg Foundation’s international Racial Equity 2030 Challenge, which comes with a $1 million planning grant and a shot at winning up to $20 million.

Pedro Martinez, the former San Antonio superintendent who took over as Chicago schools chief at the end of September, says addressing the pandemic’s fallout for Black and Latino boys will be a priority.

“We wanted to shift the gaze of research away from the trauma and the pathologies and toward solutions,” said Dr. Claudio Rivera, a clinical psychologist at Lurie Children’s who is part of the research project. “These young men are our mental health expert partners and co-researchers. That to me is empowering and hopeful.”

Boys of color as agents of change

The idea behind the Lurie-Communities United initiative: Since Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods had seen the heaviest health and economic toll from the pandemic, local youth were in the best position to assess what teens like them need to bounce back.

That original group has since shrunk to a core group of about a dozen who continue to meet. Those boys have found a sense of belonging and license to be vulnerable with each other. Some students refer to the group as a “brotherhood” and “family,” Rivera said. Others have reached out to him and other facilitators for advice and support.

The evening after Chicago Police released a video of an officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo last spring, the teens conveyed their shock and grief at seeing the killing of a student who shared a ZIP code and life experiences with some of them.

They spoke about encounters with law enforcement they had in their schools and neighborhoods. One member of the group told a Lurie facilitator that the conversation had overwhelmed him and he needed to step away from the screen — which Rivera saw as evidence of the trust and camaraderie the project had built.

“The most important thing you can give young men of color is an outlet,” said Nathaniel, who identifies as Afro-Latino. “They don’t really get an outlet that’s healthy.”

The pandemic and the national racial reckoning have fired up educators and advocates focused on male academic achievement, said Edward Smith, a program officer at the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation. But amid this unprecedented confluence of crises, he and other advocates are losing patience with incremental efforts to break with harmful practices, from disproportionate school discipline to curriculums that don’t reflect student experiences.

Instead, there is an appetite for a more comprehensive, radical reimagining — especially efforts to engage boys and men of color as partners and agents of change.

Smith points to a New Orleans program Kresge supports called Brothers Empowered to Teach, which steers Black male students to careers in education, where boys of color face a shortage of role models.

By 2020, the program, which has come to partner with 20 school districts and college and university campuses, had graduated about 50 participants. About 75% started teaching or went into teacher training programs such as Teach for America. About 60% remained in education jobs two years after graduating.

Roseland Reconnection Hub leaders Pauline Sylvain-Lewis and Laura Bailey, and Iona Calhoun-Battiste of Thrive Chicago stand outside the Hub, hosted by the nonprofit Phalanx Family Services in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago. The Hub steers young people who are not in school and not employed to education and job opportunities.

Tragedies close to home

This fall, Chicago Public Schools and the nonprofit Thrive Chicago — a local partner of former President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative — are launching a similar pilot project at five district high schools, where 100 male Black and Latino students will take a new, year-long “Introduction to Urban Education” course.

There, they will explore the idea of teaching as a form of activism for young men of color and get mentoring and support as they eventually continue to education programs on local college campuses.

Sonya Anderson, Thrive’s president, says the pandemic strengthened her belief in the importance of programs geared toward supporting male Black and Latino youth. Then came a personal tragedy. Earlier this summer, her 18-year-old stepson, Miles Thompson, was shot and killed in an apparent robbery while visiting his father in Austin, on the city’s West Side. Anderson’s 10-year-old son discovered his brother’s body in the yard the morning after the shooting.

For Anderson, the tragedy redoubled her sense of purpose. By speaking out about the loss of her stepson — a college-bound athlete from a well-to-do suburb — she wants to explode a false narrative that Chicago’s young gun violence victims are invariably troubled youth living in the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.

“‘Those people’ feel very different from us,” she said. “Now it’s not ‘those people over there.’ I have two Ivy League degrees and worked for Oprah, and my son died in the backyard because somebody shot him.”

She plans to be more vocal in pushing city and civic leaders to back investments in mentoring, social and emotional support, and job development. Those, she says, could reduce violence and disrupt a “pipeline of disconnection” that Chicago youth, especially boys and young men, face.

Thrive already partners with nonprofits in Roseland and Little Village in operating two Reconnection Hubs: one-stop shops for education, employment, and mental health support for “opportunity youth,” 16- to 24-year-olds who are not in school or working, a majority of whom are male. The Hubs, which have served 1,230 young people since 2018, have seen more demand amid the pandemic. Most recently, the nonprofit Phalanx Family Services, which hosts the Roseland Hub, steered 500 participants to a city of Chicago summer jobs programs.

“We can only create lasting system change when the Chicago Public Schools of the world are at the table,” Anderson said.

Sidney Johnson mentors Ti’Shawn Clark at the Roseland Reconnection Hub in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago, which helps youth ages 16 to 24 reengage with school or find employment.

Giving students a say

Last spring, Al Raby High School on Chicago’s West Side set out to measure its students’ sense of belonging and connectedness to the campus amid the pandemic’s disruption.

The school, which serves a mostly Black and low-income student body, wanted to know what the boys were feeling: Did they think their teachers cared about them? Did they feel valued? Drawn by Al Raby’s popular football program, boys outnumber girls at the school about 2 to 1. But, a survey used by educators showed, their connection to the school is tenuous.

“Our boys did not feel their identities were recognized and did not feel as much a part of our classrooms as our girls,” said Michelle Harrell, the school’s principal.

With a grant from the Chicago Public Education Fund, the school launched an effort to re-engage freshman and sophomore boys who read below grade level. Al Raby will explore a conference model in which a teacher checks in with a small group of students each week, fostering all-important relationships.

The school will continue to host a mentoring program called Becoming a Man. Learning at home last year challenged boys of color, who can be more reluctant than girls to reach out for guidance and support. The program this fall will strengthen its focus on empowering young men to advocate for themselves, says Phillip Cusic of Youth Guidance, the nonprofit that runs it.

Al Raby also plans to strike up mentoring relationships between those freshmen and sophomores and its upperclassmen.

“We are really trying to elevate and be responsive to student voices this fall,” Harrell said. “If that means we have to scrap all the planning we did over the summer, so be it.”

In recent years, some districts across the country have touted new commitments to racial equity, but fewer have launched programs geared specifically toward Black and Latino boys.

A notable example is a program called Kingmakers of Oakland, which sprang out of Oakland Public Schools in California more than a decade ago and has since been embraced by eight districts in three states, including Seattle. The program cultivates male Black student leaders through mentoring and the study of Black history, and more.

In Chicago, the school district vowed in 2019 to prioritize Black and Latino boys in its push to raise achievement but, two years later, it still has not spelled out specific strategies.

The district, which was under interim leadership over the summer and intensely focused on reopening schools for full-time in-person learning at the time, declined an interview for this article. But last spring, Maurice Swinney, now Chicago’s interim chief education officer, pointed to an effort to connect students to jobs that do not derail their education and to a districtwide initiative to train educators to respond to students’ mental health needs.

District data shows a deeper plunge in attendance and a steeper increase in failing grades for Black and Latino boys last school year than for girls of color.

The district, which received almost $3 billion from three federal pandemic relief packages, is using a formula to push more funding to schools with higher student needs, where principals have some leeway on how to spend it. At the district level, the money will largely power more sweeping efforts such as the mental health training initiative rather than programs targeting specific student groups.

Educators have a powerful opportunity to connect with male students of color as they return to school campuses this fall, says Carey at the University of Delaware.

In the fall of 2019, Carey started The Black Boy Mattering Project, in which he and other researchers met regularly with a group of high school students to explore how they perceived their value and worth in school and society. Many told him that few of their teachers brought up the high-profile police killings of Black men and racial unrest following George Floyd’s murder — even as they regularly asked how students coped with the COVID outbreak.

The students felt a major part of their lived experience went unacknowledged.

This fall, Carey said, educators should tip to students’ experiences with this “dual pandemic” and use the crises in their lesson plans to stir discussion.

“The pandemic exacerbated feelings of nonbelonging and not-mattering; already tenuous relationships between schools and Black boys became more frayed,” said Carey. “We can use COVID as a miraculous opportunity to change schools for the better.”

Nathaniel Martinez takes a quiz in a geometry class at Roosevelt High School in June, when he was among a minority of Chicago high school students who returned to part-time in-person learning.

This fall, Nathaniel’s group of young researchers is signing up participants for a mental health survey and research interviews in their neighborhoods. The results could inform trauma response training for Chicago’s educators.

In the meantime, Nathaniel started the school year at Roosevelt High School in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood as the district returned to full-time in-person learning. He had tried to make up several classes in summer school, but illness prevented him from finishing them.

What does he need from his school to bounce back?

Grace, for one. Too much homework can derail students like him who will be juggling regular school with evening courses to make up for classes they failed last year, he said.

And more of the social and emotional outreach that educators embraced during the pandemic.

“A simple ‘Hey, how’s your day going?’ from a teacher,” Nathaniel said, “makes a big difference.”

Chicago fell behind on plans for students with disabilities during COVID-19. New data show the depth of the problem.

2021-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools last year, David Rushing was an energetic 15-year-old who liked to play basketball and baseball. He was an avid swimmer and a member of the Jesse White Tumblers — performing high-energy stunts like backflips and somersaults, sometimes in front of large audiences.

Then COVID-19 swept across the country and forced Chicago schools to close, leaving David, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, unable to participate in sports and without the proper support to help him focus in online classes.

At the beginning of his freshman year at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy last fall, David’s Individualized Education Program, a legally binding document known as an IEP that outlines what special education services and interventions a student should receive, was set to expire on Nov. 5, 2020. He was to be re-evaluated for a new plan the month before. But that didn’t happen.

Within a matter of months, David’s life spiraled out of control.

Yvonne Bailey, David’s biological grandmother who adopted him at a young age, noticed David behaving differently.

David “got involved with the wrong people in the neighborhood,” Bailey said. “He was running away from home and staying out all night.”

David’s case is not isolated. The pandemic year has uprooted support for students with disabilities in Chicago and nationwide, creating a backlog of old IEPs that could lead to widening academic gaps for students in need of special education services. Students with disabilities make up 14.6% of Chicago’s enrollment, almost 50,000 students. Nearly half of those students are Latino, and about 40 percent are Black.

New data obtained by Chalkbeat shows that during the 2019-20 school year — which saw an 11-day teacher strike and COVID-19 school closures — more than 10,050 re-evaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews were incomplete, a more than threefold increase over the previous school year. More than 3,500 students, like David, were waiting for a re-evaluation that is required by federal law.

The data shows improvements during the 2020-21 school year, but 1,768 students were waiting to be re-evaluated and 230 were waiting for an initial evaluation to get an IEP.

Hidden from public view

Delays in IEP re-evaluations were a pre-pandemic problem that landed Chicago Public Schools under state review. In 2018, the state board of education appointed a monitor to ensure that Chicago was not denying or delaying special education services to students. In June of this year, the state board of education approved another year of state oversight.

Even though the coronavirus pandemic made it difficult to conduct IEPs in person, schools were still responsible for updating the plans and had to provide remote evaluations. Yet despite issuing waivers for such activities as standardized testing, the U.S. Department of Education never waived any part of federal law meant to protect students with disabilities.

Correspondence between Chicago, the state board of education, and special education advocates in the city shows that as far back as September, officials had evidence that the pandemic had disrupted students’ services.

In a September letter obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request, the district’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services acknowledged that some evaluations were left “indeterminate.” The district promised in the letter that all evaluations would be completed during the 2020-21 school year.

Some parents and advocates say that did not happen, and data released by the district show some students were still left waiting during the 2020-21 school year. But the full scope of the problem is not clear because Chicago Public Schools continues to withhold key data points that indicate compliance with federal special education law, including the race of children whose families seek evaluations and how many referrals were initially requested by parents or educators.

Chalkbeat sent Freedom of Information Act requests to both the state board of education and Chicago Public Schools in March asking for data on how many students were waiting for initial evaluations to create an IEP and how many students needed to be re-evaluated to update their current IEPs during the 2018-2021 school years.

The state board referred Chalkbeat back to Chicago Public Schools officials, saying that the state only has limited access to the district’s database that tracks the status of students’ IEPs. Chicago Public Schools extended the information request deadline several times. In April, Chalkbeat went to the state’s Attorney General Public Access Bureau for assistance, but the district still refused to provide the data. In late July, the district partially released data weeks after Chalkbeat filed a lawsuit against the school district in the Cook County Circuit Court. (Chalkbeat is represented by Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights firm.)

The data Chicago released in late July offers a first public look at end-of-year numbers for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 school years and shows how many re-evaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews were completed and how many were left incomplete. Across the three categories, students in need of annual reviews were most likely to face delays, with about 8.7% of eligible students waiting in 2019-20 compared to 1.7% the year prior.

Network	2021 Incomplete	2020 Incomplete	2019 Incomplete
Other	66.08%	62.41%	N/A
AUSL	18.53%	40.63%	8.16%
Options	17.61%	45.89%	20.48%
Network 15	17.54%	14.44%	1.80%
Network 3	14.02%	24.76%	1.06%
Chicago Average	13.13%	25.14%	7.75%
Network 16	12.44%	15.97%	6.79%
Network 13	12.43%	36.47%	0.82%
Network 6	12.14%	24.39%	2.65%
Network 11	10.88%	31.53%	2.02%
Network 10	10.84%	32.46%	1.10%
Network 12	10.70%	26.49%	3.67%
Network 17	9.75%	18.36%	0.87%
Charter	8.48%	17.80%	5.40%
Network 4	8.37%	29.57%	0.23%
ISP	8.28%	21.37%	1.03%
Network 9	8.23%	28.40%	0.90%
Contract	8.22%	13.33%	1.49%
Network 1	7.37%	27.18%	0.79%
Network 8	5.70%	18.04%	0.25%
Network 7	4.58%	23.05%	0.69%
Network 14	3.58%	12.05%	0.51%
Network 2	3.57%	28.07%	1.91%
Network 5	3.23%	21.19%	1.53%

Rates of incomplete education plan re-evaluations in Chicago schools

NOTE: “Other” includes students who are enrolled in a separate day school, have been evaluated but have not yet enrolled, or attend a private school but receive services from CPS, such as therapeutic day schools.

Annie Fu, Chalkbeat

According to the data provided by the district, broken down by network, the 2019-20 school year saw the highest numbers of students waiting for a re-evaluation. The number of students waiting depended on where they attended school in the city and what type of school it was. Students who attended schools in Networks 11 and 13 — the former spans Englewood and parts of the Southwest Side and the latter cuts across neighborhoods on the city’s far south and far east sides — were unlikely to be re-evaluated during the school year.

Also, the district’s turnaround school operator, the Academy for Urban School Leadership, or AUSL, which was tasked with managing some of the lowest-performing schools in Chicago until the district decided to phase out the program earlier this year, had a higher rate of non-compliance during the 2019-20 year, with 40.9% of re-evaluations left incomplete. Charters as a whole tended to perform better than city averages during 2019-20, with 17.8% of re-evaluations incomplete compared with a citywide average of 25%. The following year, however, charters did not comply as well as most of the district-run networks, reporting some of the highest numbers of incomplete annual reviews and initial IEP evaluations and reporting middle-of-the-pack numbers for re-evaluations.

Chicago Public Schools denied a Chalkbeat request to interview a representative from the district’s special education department. However, district spokesman James Gherardi said there were complications re-evaluating students with disabilities due to the pandemic and a year of related school closures.

“The COVID-19 pandemic added a layer of difficulty to the evaluation process that our school leaders and staff are still working through to ensure each student that needs an evaluation receives one,” said Gherardi.

Families search for options

Dunbar High School freshman David Rushing (center) was one of over 3,500 students affected by Chicago Public School’s failure to re-evaluate IEPs for its students in a timely manner.

That still leaves family members such as Yvonne Bailey, David Rushing’s mother, desperate to find help for struggling students.

Bailey went to Equip for Equality, a nonprofit legal service organization, to get help with getting David’s evaluation. With Equip for Equality’s help, David was re-evaluated in the spring and a new IEP was written in April.

Unlike Bailey, many Chicago parents are not able to access legal services. Instead, some have decided to leave the school district to ensure that their child receives special education services.

For some families, the issue wasn’t the timeline. It was poor execution.

Courtney Aviles moved to Cincinnati after spending a year trying to get her 5-year-old son re-evaluated for an IEP. When her son was in preschool, a teacher raised concerns about his fine motor skills, especially his ability to write.

Before schools shut down in March 2020, Aviles’ son had an annual IEP meeting to assess current goals, at James B. McPherson Elementary School, on the city’s north side. Aviles, a former teacher in Florida, was taken aback to see that her son’s teachers and case manager, who previously worked with him, were not there to speak about his needs in the classroom. Legally, schools are required to have teachers and case managers present at IEP meetings.

“As a former teacher myself, I feel that it greatly impacted our ability to conduct the IEP meeting,” said Aviles. “Having his teachers there to share their experience with and to advocate for my son would have made the meeting more productive.”

During the annual meeting, Aviles and the IEP team agreed that her son would be evaluated for occupational therapy to help him write. However, schools across the state were shuttered in response to the coronavirus pandemic and Aviles’ son did not receive special education services for the remainder of the year.

At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, Aviles transferred her son to Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies. Prior to the start of the school year, Aviles emailed the school’s case manager to inquire about the occupational therapy evaluation discussed at her son’s last IEP meeting in August.

Aviles did not hear back from the case manager until October.

The case manager emailed Aviles to say that her son’s previous school had not finalized the assessment plan needed to get him evaluated for occupational therapy. Aviles signed a consent form to be connected with the school’s occupational therapist for an evaluation.

However, Aviles’ son, who was supposed to be evaluated by Jan. 22, 2021, never received an assessment. In February, Aviles and her son’s IEP team again gathered to update his program. The team concluded that Aviles’ son would need a full re-evaluation — but that didn’t happen.

By March, the family moved to Ohio. Aviles called it a “spur of the moment” decision after visiting friends for her son’s birthday. Aviles and her husband felt that they could make a good life for their children in Cincinnati. She said that while she loved Chicago, struggling to get special education services for her son was a major factor in her decision to move to another state.

Aviles wished she would have pushed harder for her son’s services, but felt she had to maintain a good relationship with the school’s staff. “It could be a really delicate balance,” she said.

A national problem emerges

Rachel Shapiro, an attorney at Equip for Equality, believes that schools in Chicago used the pandemic to cover their shortfall in evaluating IEPs.

The stakes for students who do not receive a re-evaluation are high, according to Rachel Shapiro, an attorney at Equip for Equality.

“We explain it to parents that your child’s development could progress or there could be regression,” said Shapiro. “We have no way of knowing that without having some kind of standardized data.”

When the district delayed special education services for David Rushing and Aviles’ son, both boys saw a regression in their skills and changes in behavior. David started to run away from home and Aviles’ son struggled to learn how to write.

While working with parents, Shapiro claims that schools in Chicago were using the pandemic as a cover to only review IEPs and not perform evaluations.

“Part of the evaluation is that it has to be thorough and contain multiple different assessments because we don’t want to diagnose students based on one assessment,” she said.

A student’s IEP team — which includes teachers, case managers, and therapists — are supposed to meet every year to review a student’s progress, address any concerns, and update that student’s goals. The state requires re-evaluations every three years. Parents must be proactive in ensuring that their child gets what they need, said Shapiro.

Correspondence between Chicago, the state board of education, and special education advocates in the city shows that as far back as September, officials had evidence that the pandemic had disrupted students’ services.

Shapiro suggests parents document requests in writing and ask for standardized assessments, progress data, and requests for IEP meetings. If things don’t go well, Shapiro says, parents can request a mediator from the state board of education or file a complaint with the board.

According to Lindsay Kubatzky, policy manager at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., school districts across the country have a backlog of evaluations due to the pandemic. Also, some school districts were concerned about the validity of doing evaluations remotely.

Kubatzky recommends that school districts communicate with parents about what to expect from the evaluation process this year.

“We see that the strongest indicator of whether a school district is doing a good job at evaluating or re-evaluating is whether parents have the information that they need and have a good understanding of what the process will look like,” said Kubatzky.

Kubatzky also urged school districts to use emergency federal funding to increase staff for evaluating students.

“So one thing that they could do is hire additional paraprofessionals to work with students to do some of the evaluations or contract with outside evaluators to help with the workload,” said Kubatzky. “There’s resources outside of the school building that could be beneficial for students and families.”

Chicago Public Schools said that it will spend $17 million to hire 78 nurses, 44 social workers, and 51 special education case managers for next school year.

What’s next for students

Since leaving Chicago, Aviles has turned to private occupational therapy for her son and has seen a lot of growth in his writing skills. In the fall, the 5-year-old will be attending kindergarten at a smaller school district in Cincinnati.

“At CPS, he couldn’t even hold a pencil. He can write his name, he’s writing letters and he’s recognizing letters,” said Aviles. “It’s a huge amount of growth in a super short period of time and it’s really unfortunate that it took a move to do that.”

Yvonne Bailey’s son, David, has been doing much better since he received an updated IEP. At the end of the school year, Bailey signed him up to attend in-person school two days a week. This summer, David was enrolled in the school’s football camp.

David will be returning to Dunbar for his sophomore year. Bailey feels that in-person learning will be better for him, especially when more students are at school.

“David does well around people. He likes hanging out with the kids like any kid at this age,” said Bailey. “So I think it’ll be better.”

Samantha Smylie began this project at Chicago Headline Club’s FOIAFest 2021 Boot Camp under the mentorship of journalist Angela Caputo, an investigative reporter at APM Reports.

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Three Chicago teens, one pandemic year: How COVID-19 widened education gaps for boys of color

2021-07-01T09:00:00+00:00

As the promise of spring hung over Chicago, three teenage boys tussled with insomnia, sifting through the fallout of a pandemic year’s interlocking crises.

In Little Village on the West Side, senior Leonel Gonzalez often couldn’t sleep, beset by stubborn what ifs. What if next fall, one of the panic attacks that dogged him during the COVID era creeps up on him on a college campus? What if he didn’t pick the right school? What if he didn’t graduate and go to college at all?

Several miles away one morning before dawn, Derrick Magee and his stepsister, Anna, griped about virtual high school, which Derrick had tuned out weeks ago. Anna pleaded with him not to give up on a trying junior year at Austin College & Career Academy — and with it, on his entire high school career.

And farther north in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, Nathaniel Martinez would stare at the ceiling and make plans. The sophomore had joined a new push to remove cops from city schools, at a time Chicago was reeling from the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. But school had receded in Nathaniel’s mind, leaving his grade report card in shambles.

In Chicago and across the country, there is growing evidence that this year has hit Black and Latino boys — young men like Derrick, Nathaniel and Leonel — harder than other students. Amid rising gun violence, a national reckoning over race, bitter school reopening battles and a deadly virus that took the heaviest toll on Black and Latino communities, the year has tested not only these teens, but also the school systems that have historically failed many of them.

Last fall, the nonprofit education news outlet Chalkbeat set out to take a deep dive into how Black and Latino boys were navigating an unprecedented school year. In Chicago, the pandemic’s disruption collided with an uptick in gun violence, a citywide battle over reopening schools, and the national reckoning over race. Against that backdrop, Chalkbeat reporter Mila Koumpilova decided to focus on this group of students because they have historically faced some of the largest academic disparities.

Koumpilova followed a trio of students throughout the school year. She spent time with them while they attended virtual classes, volunteered, hung out with peers, and took part in virtual student advocacy. To understand their experiences better, Koumpilova spoke with family members, teachers, mentors, and principals.

Data on the 2020-2021 school year is more limited since many school districts did not administer standardized tests, but Koumpilova used public records requests to obtain attendance and grading data by race and gender. That data showed marked differences in academic performance by male Black and Latino students compared to female students — a pattern also evident in newly released national data. She also conducted numerous interviews with educators, advocates, and experts about the pandemic’s impact on male students of color and the apparent widening of academic gaps it triggered. Part Two of the series looks more closely at the data. Part Three of the series examines emerging efforts to close the gaps.

Chalkbeat is partnering with USA TODAY to publish the story.

It has severed precarious ties to school, derailed college plans and pried gaping academic disparities even wider.

But in this moment of upheaval, educators and advocates also see a chance to rethink how schools serve boys of color. With billions in federal stimulus funds on the way, the crisis is fueling a patchwork of efforts to bring diversity to the teaching cadre, support college-bound teens and more, though a bolder, wholesale overhaul is yet to emerge.

The stakes are high. Even before pandemic disruption set in, boys of color were most likely to drop out, skip college, and end up unemployed.

“This is a critical moment of opportunity to help young men of color,” said Adrian Huerta, a faculty member in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, who studies the educational experiences of boys and young men of color. “It’s a national issue, and it will take a national investment.”

Against this backdrop, Leonel tried to become the first in his family to go to college despite sometimes debilitating anxiety. Nathaniel tried to strike a balance between the demands of school, the draw of advocacy, and the escape of video games. Derrick tried to stay in school.

By spring, they faced decisive moments, in the making since the school year’s early weeks.

Leonel Gonzalez outside of Solorio Academy High School. He wants to become the first in his family to go to college. During the school year, he grappled with pandemic-induced anxiety attacks and self-doubt about whether he would get into college.

FALL: Chicago struggles to recreate the school day online

On a sunny Wednesday in October, Leonel, 17, sat in a classroom at Solorio Academy High School, eerily hushed on his first day back since the previous March. In a hoodie and ripped jeans, his hair tied in a ponytail, he had returned to take the SAT, the college entrance test, with other seniors.

But Leonel could not focus.

The hand sanitizer bottles, the masking signage, the one-way traffic stickers — it all unsettled him. He started every time the proctor coughed, exchanging alarmed glances with several girlfriends. They were marooned at socially distanced desks, but having his friends nearby after months of isolation gave him comfort.

He read a passage about astronauts in the English section, but its meaning crumbled.

Even before its COVID-19 makeover, Solorio — a highly rated district school in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, where Leonel lived before his parents split up — hadn’t always felt inviting. In his freshman year, Leonel was bullied in a locker room, and, worried his family would hear about the incident, came out as gay to his parents in a Mother’s Day card. Even as a junior, he walked to school some days, paused in front of the building — and headed back to his house.

Now, at home full-time, his attendance was near-perfect and his grades were up.

But not everything was going so smoothly.

Leonel was in a program called OneGoal, the Cadillac of college application support groups, giving him daily access to a seasoned mentor. But the pandemic had confined their interaction to Google Meet, putting two screens between Leonel and his adviser, Chris Vienna.

Sometimes Vienna felt he was not getting through to Leonel. One minute, the teen rushed to apply to a $32,000-a-year college in Iowa that sent him a marketing email. The next, he seemed paralyzed, making little headway for weeks.

Leonel’s GPA was lackluster, but Vienna pointed to his extracurriculars, such as his service on a string of Solorio committees, where Leonel was usually the only male student: “This is where you look like a badass.”

Leonel, who wants to be a social studies teacher looking out for kids who don’t fit in, yearned to head out of town for college. But he knew his family wanted him to stick around.

That morning at Solorio, Leonel reassured himself the colleges he eyed had made SAT scores optional amid the pandemic. Still, a decent score could boost his spotty high school record.

He tried rereading the astronaut passage. The words jumbled. Finally, he filled out the bubbles next to a string of remaining questions. One random C after another.

Before the pandemic, male Black and Latino students such as Derrick, Nathaniel, and Leonel were key, if complicated, players in Chicago’s storyline of academic resurgence.

District leaders feted them for driving some of the steady growth in test scores and graduation rates that helped erase a one-time label of the nation’s worst school district. A 2017 Stanford University study showed students here grew in reading and math faster than 96% of districts, outpacing wealthier suburban locales. Leaders have credited efforts to cultivate stronger principals, an unflinching look at data, and an ecosystem of nonprofits dedicated to supporting boys of color.

But the five-year graduation rate for Black male students, at roughly 71%, remains almost 15 percentage points behind that for Black females. Latino boys, who have gained on other student groups faster in recent years, still lag almost 10 percentage points behind Latinas. Such gender gaps are the norm nationally as well, the product of a complex tangle of factors, from pressure on young men to contribute financially to disparate school discipline to a shortage of male role models.

On the cusp of the pandemic, Chicago leaders decried signs of backsliding for Black students, such as a dip in SAT scores.

Then came the COVID-19 outbreak — with its disproportionate death toll and economic devastation in America’s Black and brown communities, including the neighborhoods the three Chicago boys call home. By November, the virus had killed more than 3,000 Chicagoans. Black residents, who make up less than 30% of the city’s population, accounted for 40% of COVID deaths.

In Austin, on Chicago’s West Side, Derrick, 18, stared at his school-issued laptop. It was late October. Another school day afternoon cooped up in his bedroom. Another blur of impassive rectangles representing classmates who had turned off their cameras in Google Meet, no one but the teachers saying anything for hours. Another gauntlet of virtual classes and educational videos.

It was the same thing over and over again — Derrick’s mantra. A waste of time when he could be doing something to chip in for the family budget. Except today, Derrick would try something different: He would set up an Instagram account for his new business — using stencils to personalize sneakers, at $80 a pop.

Derrick Magee has remained engaged with Chicago’s VOYCE program over the past year, but had struggles with virtual learning.

Staff at Derrick’s high school, Austin College & Career Academy, where almost all students are Black and poor in one of the neighborhoods hit hard by both the coronavirus and a rise in gun violence, were on social media as well. They tweeted at students with upbeat hashtags: #MondayMotivation or #WellnessWednesday. “Email your teachers to create action plans for getting on track,” they implored. “You and your education matter.”

But Derrick did not follow his school on Twitter. His connection to Austin Academy was shaky even before the pandemic abruptly shuttered the building last spring. At that point, he had decided to sit out the remainder of the year. He thought all his teachers would pass him amid a pandemic. He thought he could return to a reopened school building in September.

He was wrong.

Over the summer, district officials had made a plan to return to in-person learning. But amid teachers union pushback, an uptick in COVID cases, and skepticism from Black and Latino families, they scrapped it. Instead, they set out to rebuild online the brick-and-mortar school day, with its seven classes and scrupulous attendance-taking.

In the fall, short on credits and motivation, Derrick returned to a virtual school that seemed designed to torment guys with ADHD like him. He tried playing monotonous instrumental beats on his laptop as a soundtrack to his classes to settle his mind. But staring at a screen for hours only made him want to pace his apartment. Being isolated just hardened a long-held conviction: Whatever Derrick’s school might tweet, his education didn’t matter to anyone.

Mikala Barrett, an organizer with the student leadership group VOYCE, told Derrick that showing vulnerability was a sign of strength. But Derrick never thought to ask his teachers for help. Not even after his grandma died that fall. Nah, they would not be swayed.

It was the same thing over and over.

He should probably just chuck school until summer and make up his classes then. He pictured himself as a self-reliant entrepreneur, his shoe business taking off.

Anna Robinson holds up her Nike sneaker customized with skeletal art by her stepbrother, Derrick Magee. Derrick started a side business stenciling sneakers during the pandemic to help his family financially.

Nathaniel, the Belmont Cragin sophomore, imagined himself as a student leader, triumphing over a shortage of confidence. On Election Day, the 16-year-old waited in front of a laptop in a church basement in Albany Park, his legs jiggling to the muzak pouring out of the speaker. He sipped nervously from his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup while the system autodialed registered voters. At any time, someone might pick up, and Nathaniel would have seconds to nudge him to the polls.

Like Derrick, Nathaniel was involved with VOYCE, and the group had gathered teens for a get-out-the-vote push in Albany Park, on the city’s Northwest Side, where Nathaniel and his mom used to live. In the group, he had found a sense of belonging as he sorted through the complexities of his adolescent identity: Black and Latino, shy gamer and aspiring activist.

This year, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, VOYCE pushed the school district to remove police officers from its campuses. To Nathaniel, the issue felt personal — and complicated.

Nathaniel Martinez bikes to school through the Northwest Side of Chicago.

In 2020, when 774 people were killed in Chicago amid a major violence surge, shootings doubled in Albany Park, pitting its alderman — an advocate for defunding the police — against residents who wanted more neighborhood cops. Nathaniel embraced the goal of replacing school cops with counselors, but after his school’s governing council voted to remove the officers, he also worried about gang tensions seeping in.

Nathaniel went to the neighborhood Roosevelt High School, but his heart wasn’t in it that fall. There was the impulse to get involved through advocacy. Then, there was the pull of video games, which took up more and more of his time. With his school’s new gaming club, Nathaniel played “Among Us,” a game turned wildly popular among teens seeking virtual camaraderie during the pandemic.

In the church basement on Election Day, the muzak cut off, and Nathaniel straightened, stumbling over the voter’s name on his screen.

“I’m calling to remind you to vote — or, um, I guess, see if you already voted,” he said, and cringed.

WINTER: More Fs, fewer students logging on, and a brewing battle with the Chicago Teachers Union

In December, amid a spike in coronavirus cases that had caused infection rates in the city’s majority Latino neighborhoods to soar, Leonel’s assistant principal emailed him. A teacher had flagged her after Leonel said he needed a day off. On a hour-long Google Meet, the assistant principal talked up positive thinking and mindful breathing. Touched by the unexpected offer to help, Leonel opened up about the pressures of that winter.

At first, he had believed the presidential election’s uncertain outcome explained his relentless panic attacks. The stakes had felt high for a gay kid from an immigrant family. But Joe Biden had been declared the winner, and still the panic attacks kept coming.

After one episode, Leonel’s mom gently broached an issue that had hung over them: “I don’t think you are ready to live on your own.”

Leonel Gonzalez has worked with a OneGoal mentor through the pandemic to prepare him for the next step after high school.

Leonel, who was scrambling to meet college application deadlines, didn’t push back. His mom was probably right. But part of him clung to the idea of striking out on his own.

That afternoon on Google Meet, he told the assistant principal about allowing himself to cry recently — a release from his upbringing’s expectation that, as a man, he remain stoic. They made a plan: He would get a physical, and then the school would refer him to a therapist.

In the coming weeks, Leonel waited for the school to check in with him, wishing staff would follow up. But he knew that many teens — at Solorio and across the country — were struggling with mental health. His challenges, by comparison, felt insignificant — even as they threatened to derail him.

Early data has made it clear that the pandemic’s academic fallout has been wildly uneven, setting back further students, including Black and Latino youth, who were already vulnerable. Much less is known about the effect on gender disparities.

Girls have faced their own set of hurdles, including handling child care and remote learning for younger siblings. But some educators believe the disruption has hit boys harder, causing them to disengage at higher rates. And some solid evidence is trickling in.

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that while college and university enrollment dipped across the board last fall, the drop was seven times larger among men. That decline was especially steep at community colleges, which serve more diverse, first-generation students like Leonel.

In a new data analysis of fall 2020 test scores by the NWEA, Black and Latino boys made significantly less of their typical growth than Black girls and Latinas, who themselves showed less growth than white and Asian peers.

“We know many of these kids were already behind before the pandemic,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a NWEA senior research scientist. “This is compounding already existing inequities.”

And in Chicago, attendance and grading data for the first half of this past school year showed disproportionate impact by both race and gender as well.

The reasons for that uneven fallout are not entirely clear, but advocates and experts say a slew of factors likely are at play. There’s the added pressure young men feel to pitch in to family budgets, and the research suggesting girls are better at staying on task independently, a key skill during remote learning.

Educators such as Vienna, Leonel’s OneGoal mentor, say computer school took away opportunities to peek over students’ shoulders and offer suggestions, or bond informally in hallways. That’s significant because, as research has shown, boys are less likely to reach out to educators for guidance, notes Huerta, the University of Southern California professor. Home and community culture, with a premium placed on male self-sufficiency, play a part. But school norms have fed into this dynamic as well.

“In the classroom, boys are conditioned to sit down, shut up and not be a disruption,” Huerta noted. “Do we really expect them to reach out and ask for help 10 years later?”

At Austin Academy, Derrick’s math teacher, Steven McIlrath, didn’t wait for students to ask for help. On some days that winter, the school’s virtual attendance dipped below 40%. A quarter of McIlrath’s students went missing, and he called some homes as many as 10 times.

McIlrath repeatedly called Derrick’s mom and emailed the teen: Why wasn’t he logging on?

On a cool, blustery February evening, Derrick sat at a long table in an office off the sales floor of an Austin bicycle shop, where Mikala Barrett’s VOYCE group had started meeting in person. In an “Outlaw Cycles” jacket with faux leather peeling under his arms, he slumped in his chair, peering at his cell phone. His shoe stencil business idea had fizzled out months ago.

Later, the half dozen students spoke about a friend who was shot and killed last year, one of two teens lost to gun violence for whom they recently held a candlelight vigil. Barrett paused and looked around the room.

“So, how’s school?” she asked. “For the two of you who are still going?”

Derrick stopped logging on to virtual school last semester, and failed his classes. But he clung to a precarious connection to his school. He never turned off the Google Classroom notifications on his phone, and it pinged each time teachers posted assignments. And he continued to respond to emails from McIlrath, just to say hello.

Derrick Magee with his stepsister Anna Robinson. Anna encouraged Derrick to stick with his classes, but he has had difficulties staying engaged with school.

Anna, 16, Derrick’s stepsister, a sophomore at Englewood STEM High, urged him not to give up. Yes, virtual learning was rough. An A and B student, Anna also struggled with motivation. But did he want to send her and his other younger siblings the message that it’s cool to drop out?

“It’s like when your basketball team is down by so much,” Derrick countered. “There’s no point in watching any more.”

To Derrick, returning to Austin Academy’s classrooms seemed the only way out of his stalemate. But district and teachers’ union officials were caught up in one of the most acrimonious standoffs over reopening elementary schools nationally. There was no plan or target date to reopen high schools — and little discussion of improving teens’ virtual experience.

In the meantime, Derrick put in applications at a couple of big box stores, but had not heard back. He fell back on his mantra: It was the same thing over and over.

At the bike shop meeting, he looked up from his phone.

“School’s going great,” he offered.

Barrett held his gaze until he looked away.

Unlike Derrick, Nathaniel continued to log on to classes daily, but he was increasingly struggling to stay engaged.

One afternoon, Nathaniel unmuted his laptop mic during a virtual drama class and called out to his partner on a project due in a couple of days. Nathaniel sat cross-legged on the floor, wedged between his bed and a dresser, a cup of ramen cooling on the windowsill. His view was a brick wall an arm’s length away, his room immersed in gloom even on a sunny day.

Nathaniel Martinez maintained his attendence throughout the pandemic, but was often distracted by both his student activism and gaming.

“Hey, real quick,” Nathaniel asked. “Which character did you pick for the costume design?”

But like him, his fellow student had his camera off — and had apparently wandered away from the screen.

His classes these days were nothing like the lively virtual meetings with his VOYCE group. Nathaniel had even gotten to MC a virtual town hall, where students said they wanted the city to invest its school cop dollars into counselors, librarians, and restorative justice coordinators.

After many meetings to prepare for the event, Nathaniel came off as confident and laidback.

But the more he got the hang of student activism, the harder it seemed to keep his mind on school work. He failed two classes during the first semester, and should have signed up for evening credit recovery courses. But that was when VOYCE students met to chart next steps in the district’s “Whole School Safety” initiative.

Next up was a Civil War documentary for history class. But 10 minutes in, Nathaniel’s attention had drifted. He donned headphones in front of a larger screen on his wall and started a video game, which whisked him from the 19th-century battlefield to a stark futuristic landscape.

Nathaniel Martinez plays the video game Titanfall while a documentary on the Civil War plays on his school laptop during history class.

SPRING: Chicago high schools reopen. But where are the students?

In April, Chicago reopened its high schools, but Leonel opted out of in-person learning. The decision weighed on him: Returning might help him catch up after he and his entire family got sick with COVID, sidelining his studies. But he was too worried about having a panic attack in the building.

By spring, several colleges had accepted Leonel. One admissions counselor, at Arrupe College in Chicago, gave him a call to share the news, sealing the deal. Leonel was drawn to the supportive, small-school feel at the affordable community college within the private Loyola University. Already, Leonel was reaching out to staff there almost every week, forging a bond.

Settling on a college shifted his perspective. After working so hard to achieve this goal, would he really let anxiety keep him away from college classrooms in the fall? Besides, he spent time with his friends for the first time in months and was astounded by the change in his sense of well-being.

“When I am with my friends,” he told his mom, “I forget I have anxiety.”

Leonel decided to go back in person after all. At first, school officials said the deadline had passed. But a couple of weeks later, he got the green light and returned to finish his senior year on campus.

In Chicago, nonprofits that focus on boys and young men of color kicked into gear that spring, questioning how the city can reimagine the way it serves these students. More robust mental health support is top of mind here and nationally.

VOYCE, the group Nathaniel and Derrick work with, has partnered with Lurie Children’s Hospital on a new project called Ujima, in which teen boys of color will weigh in on addressing the mental health needs in their communities.

The school district along with the nonprofit Thrive Chicago and My Brother’s Keeper, one of President Obama’s signature initiatives, are launching a pilot project in the fall to steer more Black and Latino boys to careers in teaching, presenting education as a form of activism, said Sonya Anderson, Thrive’s president.

Maurice Swinney, the Chicago district’s inaugural chief equity officer and now interim education chief, hosted a focus group with Black male students who spoke about the pressure they feel to contribute to family budgets amid the crisis. Swinney says the district is working to cultivate after-school job and internship opportunities that complement students’ long-term goals.

OneGoal adviser Chris Vienna stands for a portrait outside Solorio Academy High School. OneGoal mentors have worked through the pandemic to prepare students like Leonel for the next step after high school.

Vienna, the Solorio adviser, says internet school starkly exposed a chronic failure to teach students skills needed to succeed in college, including advocating for themselves, managing their time, and working independently. Next fall and beyond, he says, schools like Solorio should double down on cultivating these skills.

“Many within education want to go back to business as usual,” Vienna said. “I sincerely hope we don’t.”

That spring, Derrick gave school another try. His mom and school officials teamed up to encourage him, promising teachers would help him get caught up. But his comeback didn’t stick.

He had missed the email inviting him to opt into in-person learning. Once Derrick felt that opportunity would change everything. Now it seemed the moment to seize it had vanished.

In early June, Derrick got an unexpected call from a new mentor his school assigned him: She urged him to enroll in summer school and told him he would go to an alternative high school in the fall. He wants to start taking classes to get licensed to sell life insurance — another crack at his entrepreneurial dream he knows will require a high school degree.

Nathaniel Martinez is still readjusting to the routine of in-person learning, and the school is working to help students catch up after a year away from the classroom.

Across the district, about a third of high schoolers, including Nathaniel, returned to in-person classes. On a crisp Friday morning in late April, his mother, Miriam, dropped him off at Roosevelt, more than a year since he had last been on campus. By then, almost 5,500 people had died of COVID in Chicago.

At first, Nathaniel couldn’t recognize anyone, and no one seemed to want to talk. Still, both mother and son had high hopes for his return.

A month earlier, a furious Miriam had stormed into Nathaniel’s bedroom, holding his first semester grade report. He teared up — the first time he had cried in front of her.

“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he told her, and she softened.

That first day back, Nathaniel’s photo was on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, with a story in which he and other students argued that Toledo’s killing in a Little Village alley strengthened the case for removing cops from campus. That afternoon, the district announced that it would pull officers from its high schools for the remainder of the school year.

Nathaniel had come into his own as an advocate.

Nathaniel Martinez was among a third of Chicago high schoolers who returned to in-person classes this spring.

But school was another story. Returning to the building two days a week was not a cure-all. He was still trying to relearn the routines of in-person school. Some mornings on his in-person days, he just stayed at home to log on remotely. Roosevelt was working on a plan to help Nathaniel and other students who had remained engaged in learning to get caught up over the summer and into fall.

In early May, Nathaniel again lay awake in the early dawn hours, all his screens dark, sleep still elusive. The coming months loomed: a grueling slog and a thrilling ride rolled into one, make-or-break.

“Nate, you are all over the place,” he admonished himself. “You gotta get back on track.”

‘Proof is in implementation:’ Chicago offers a first look at its $135 million curriculum overhaul

2021-06-17T18:09:24+00:00

In a glossy YouTube unveiling on Thursday, Chicago Public Schools offered a preview of its new, centralized $135 million curriculum called Skyline.

The district launched the curriculum project in 2019 and developed the curriculum bank with four publishers; a group of 300 district teachers customized it.

Chicago Public Schools introduced Skyline and some related materials Thursday, a day before LaTanya McDade, who oversaw the curriculum project, leaves her job as chief education officer. Her boss, schools chief Janice Jackson, steps down in two weeks. This week the district announced her temporary successor, interim CEO Jose Torres.

Jackson and McDade often have touted the value of a curriculum bank offering rich resources and culturally relevant materials to every school and teacher in the district.

In defending the $135 million cost, the pair said that teachers didn’t always have access to high-quality curriculum materials. While schools with more wealth could afford to purchase lessons and resources, higher-need schools had to scramble for curriculum or make do with outdated resources.

“When teachers are forced to find their own materials, the quality of those materials begins to vary widely,” McDade said Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools’ Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade previews Skyline.

“Just like the skyline connects the city, Skyline was created to inspire and connect all of our schools with the high-quality, standards-aligned, culturally resourced curriculum that our schools need to succeed,” said Jackson in the YouTube video.

As of Thursday, the district had not made the Skyline curriculum bank accessible to the public.

The district said the digital curriculum bank, which is centralized and optional for schools to use, spans preschool to high school grades. It covers various subjects, including English, math, Spanish, and French.

It offers comprehensive lessons that teachers can customize. Each unit includes options for English language learners, mini-lessons for enrichment, and materials teachers can use to assess learning.

The district will make materials, all online, available via Google Docs that teachers can comment on, add suggestions for improvement, and adapt.

That customization, a panel of experts organized by the district said Thursday, makes Skyline stand out among curriculum projects undertaken by large public school districts.

Elaine Allensworth, director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, said Thursday that she immediately noticed how the curriculum bank differed from curriculum developed by other cities that had middling to poor results.

“What I think is really unique about this is that teachers were involved in the development and it is grounded in Chicago,” said Allensworth. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Teachers can figure out what works for them and what works for their students.”

Panelist Scott Marion, executive director of the New Hampshire-based Center for Assessment, said that involving teachers in the customization and encouraging them to sustain and update it over time makes this effort unique.

“States are too frightened to get involved in curriculum work, yet we know that access to high-quality curriculum, or the lack of access to high-quality curriculum, is really one of the great contributors to inequalities we see manifest in our system,” said Marion.

District officials touted the curriculum bank’s lessons rooted in Chicago places and history that will resonate with children living here.

An example list of texts related to lessons includes several books based in Chicago and written by locals, such as Adam Gamble’s picture book “Good Night Chicago,” Kevin Coval’s anthology “The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,” and Eve L. Ewing’s “Electric Arches,” an exploration of Black girlhood and womanhood that is partially set in the city.

Other works touch on topics of equity and diversity: Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” investigates the impact of apartheid, and Yangsook Choi’s “The Name Jar” explores themes of identity and assimilation.

“This is game-changing work,” McDade said in an interview with Chalkbeat Thursday. “As a district, this is a bold and audacious goal.”

Also Thursday, teachers and principals spoke about how the new curriculum can free up educators from the time-consuming and sometimes costly process of designing their own lessons — so they can focus instead on tailoring the instruction to specific student needs.

A centralized curriculum is also a powerful resource in a district where many students switch schools repeatedly, only to find themselves in unfamiliar territory with lessons in their new classrooms.

Juanita Martin, a teacher at New Sullivan Elementary on the city’s Far South Side, piloted draft Skyline lessons this school year with other educators. She said the phonics-based learning materials helped third graders who arrived in her classroom still unable to read get caught up.

She said she and her students appreciated the engaging games and activities that came with the curriculum: “It was all right there.”

Several students spoke about the importance of seeing themselves and their communities reflected in the curriculum.

Cassius Palacio, a senior at Brooks College Prep Academy, said learning about Afro-Latinos during Black History Month this year was revelatory: “I was so excited to see myself in the classroom for the first time.”

Officials said Thursday that the district will offer an extra hour of teacher training each week from the fall. McDade said the district plans ongoing professional development on the fully digital curriculum — a job made easier by the experience with technology all teachers got during the pandemic, including some training the district provided to educators earlier this school year.

“No matter how good your curriculum is, the instruction is going to be crucial,” said Gloria Ladson Billings, president of the National Academy of Education, and a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The proof is in the implementation.”

Chicago reopened high schools this week. Here’s what we’re watching.

2021-04-22T14:12:58+00:00

In the week before her high school reopened for some in-person instruction, principal Melissa Resh found herself up late one evening wrestling with a COVID-era math problem: How many students could safely fit in the hallway of her school at one time?

Her school, Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, had the highest number of students returning for in-person learning among Chicago’s high schools, and the logistical challenges were huge. She had to juggle teachers’ technology needs, staggered school start times and staff schedules.

“‘I’m just so excited that we have students back in the building,” Resh said.

Chicago reopened its high school buildings for the first time Monday, capping off months of parent pleas, stop-and-start labor negotiations and concerns about new COVID-19 variants.

That effort was celebrated by district leaders, who promised at a Monday press conference held at Payton, that the goal is to open all schools to all students five days a week this fall. “I have been fighting to get our kids back since the beginning of the school year,” schools chief Janice Jackson said. “My goal is to have every kid back in school full time.”

We looked at four lingering questions that have come up in the first few days of the reopening, which could affect what in-person school looks like in the coming months:

What safety protocols are specific to high schools?

Opening high schools is more complicated than reopening campuses for elementary or middle grades. High school students change classes more often, which makes it difficult to establish the strict pod structure that elementary and middle schools have adopted to minimize contact.

Instead, school leaders have been instructed to adapt the normal high school routines to the new reality of COVID-19. That can mean staggered entrance times and passing periods, limited time that students can use restrooms, and putting the responsibility for sanitizing desks on students themselves.

All of these measures are set up to ensure that, in the case of a positive COVID-19 test in a high school, the district’s team of contact tracers will be able to make recommendations for who should quarantine.

Right now, the district said there are 12 contact tracers, along with several other employees managing the program, who will be the backbone of Chicago’s COVID-19 alert system in schools, and support for a total of 30 contact tracing positions if additional capacity is needed.

What will the remote experience be like for students staying home or learning online in classrooms?

Chicago school buildings may be open for all students, but remote learning is still a part of most school days.

First, not all students have returned for in-person learning. Some 26,000 high school students were expected to return to in-person classrooms, or 35.6% of eligible students, according to district figures released last week. Nearly two-thirds of the city’s 73,000 eligible high school students will continue learning from home.

And many of the students who opted into in-person learning will continue to learn from home most of the week. The district is implementing a three-tiered reopening schedule that would have students at the biggest high schools returning to buildings as little as one day a week, those at medium-sized schools coming back two days a week, and at smaller schools, students learning in person four days a week.

High school students, along with many parents, have been more vocal on what they’d like to see in school this year and next. Many want the option for schooling five days a week. But students have also said they want less computer time, more access to counselors, and less grading.

For Resh at Payton, creating a school culture that bridges the in-person and remote experiences was important. Teachers at the school used multiple screens to engage with both sets of students, and they held ice breakers and small group discussions to open the door for some social-emotional engagement.

“We wanted to make sure that there was intentional work around community building for at-home and in-person students,” she said. “How does everyone feel connected in that?”

With all school buildings open, can Chicago keep them fully staffed?

After issuing nearly 6,000 remote work accommodations to teachers and other staff in the first stage of reopening this winter, officials called back most teachers this spring, citing broad access to vaccination appointments and the expectation that more students will opt for in-person learning in the fourth quarter.

So far, most information shared publicly shows the district has been able to avoid major staffing crunches. About 90% of the expected in-person high school staff have returned to school buildings, according to district officials. Some schools also have additional support staff and cadre substitutes where needed, part of the 2,000 additional staff the district promised to hire to support reopening.

Jackson, speaking at a press conference to mark high school reopening on Monday, said staffing had certainly been a challenge when reopening elementary schools but was no longer immediately urgent. “We feel extremely confident that we have the staff in our buildings to provide instructional programs,” she said.

School leaders say that having committed in-person staff is crucial, but the complicated day-to-day realities of staffing amid COVID-19 mean that even with most staff returning, having adults where they need them is not a given. In-person staff, including those who are vaccinated, must complete a daily health screener and, if they have any symptoms that might be COVID-19 related, remain home.

That leaves principals to rearrange schedules or pull other teachers to supervise those classes. At Payton, where the vast majority of staff members have returned, Resh said staffing remains her most urgent question.

Preparing for that includes having a schedule showing when certain staff members can fill in for classroom teachers, and having an understanding throughout the building that staff may have to step in to fill those gaps, she said.

“It’s the constant threat,” she said. “How will we put the right adults in the right spaces?”

When and how will students get vaccinated?

With older students more likely to catch and spread COVID-19 than younger students, and Illinois further along in its vaccination efforts than in earlier reopenings, whether high school students would get the shot, and how, was a much bigger part of the school reopening negotiations this spring.

The teachers union made vaccines for students and their families a part of its demands over the high school reopening agreement. In the final agreement, the district agreed to ensure that students and families in the top one-fifth of Chicago communities most vulnerable to COVID-19 could access vaccines, and use district-run clinics to help make it happen. Chicago Public Schools also said it will offer shots at district-run sites to students who are 18 years or older, and work with the union and health department to help students and their families access vaccine opportunities through informational flyers.

That’s on top of broader access: On Monday, Chicago made all adults age 16 and older eligible to receive a vaccine, though snagging vaccines in easy-to-access city sites has been a challenge.

Available doses may not translate immediately into easy access for appointments, especially in Chicago, where the health department head has encouraged residents to drive to nearby Indiana because that state has shorter wait times for an appointment.

With clock ticking, no deal yet with union on Chicago high school reopening

2021-04-13T17:55:23+00:00

The next 24 hours will be closely watched in Chicago as a union-imposed deadline nears for the city to reach a deal to reopen high schools.

If a deal isn’t reached by late Tuesday, teachers have said they will not report to classrooms Wednesday, even as they continue to teach remotely, harkening a previous move this past winter that brought efforts to reopen elementary schools to a temporary standstill. High school students are supposed to return April 19.

Chicago teachers’ concerns that public schools have fallen short on meeting some basic safety promises is priming the fight over a contract to reopen the city’s high schools.

Teachers on a virtual union press call Tuesday said at one school there aren’t enough janitors to use the available cleaning supplies. At others, they warned the contact tracing process is lagging, leaving days for possible COVID-19 infections to spread.

“We are looking for a safe, sanitized…process to move on, so that we can get back in the building,” said Lolita Hardiman, a teacher at York Alternative High School, which serves students who are incarcerated.

The dispute highlights the difficulty of the effort to open high schools in Chicago, where students have more complex schedules, a higher chance of catching or passing COVID-19, and, in some buildings, are returning amid hundreds of other students.

If high schools open April 19, it will be the first time some 72,000 students would have the option for in-person learning since schools closed last spring. About 35.6% of those students have said they would return.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that they are determined to open high school buildings as planned, and that negotiations with the union have been productive.

“We have general alignment on a set of key topics including safety protocols to keep students and staff safe and scheduling models that will be tailored to the needs of each school,” press officer Michael Passman said. “We hope to reach an agreement as soon as possible to ensure a smooth transition for our high school students and families.”

Some parents have expressed frustration with the negotiations process, and directed their ire at the union, saying they need schools open for child care support. “I work a full-time job. Act as full-time remote classroom monitor, because my kid can’t focus,” one Twitter commenter said. “Can’t leave my house, because my kids can’t be unsupervised.”

The district said 84.3% of high school teachers expected to appear in person, or 3,640 out of 4,318 teachers, came to school buildings on Monday, the first day high school educators were expected to work in-person.

The district didn’t say how many teachers had received accommodations or did not come into buildings because they failed a health screener, both of which could affect in-person teacher numbers.

On Tuesday, the second early-morning press conference this week, union officials said the main sticking points in the talks are high school class schedules, accommodations to allow some members to work remotely, and efforts to secure vaccinations for high school students and their families.

The union also wants school officials to agree that teachers who have no in-person students can work remotely, and to limit how many high schools can have students in the buildings four days a week, instead of in two groups that would return two days a week each. Some high schools with lower enrollment plan to bring back students nearly full time.

Some high school teachers who went into schools for the first time on Monday said they didn’t have the web cameras or other technology that some elementary teachers did to support teaching students in person and online simultaneously. The union has asked for a technology stipend for teachers.

“I know people are working hard on this, but we still have a ways to go,” said union President Jesse Sharkey.

Chicago Teachers Union threatens to go back to teaching remotely Wednesday if no high school deal is reached

2021-04-12T13:48:28+00:00

Amid a stalemate in reopening negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union is threatening a Wednesday labor action in which high school educators would refuse to work from school buildings unless an agreement is reached with the district before then.

That means high school educators will walk into buildings Monday on their planned return date, but would revert to teaching remotely Wednesday if a reopening agreement remains out of reach.

High school students have the option to return to school buildings starting April 19. But some students are supposed to report to classrooms Tuesday to take the SAT.

The resolution, passed Sunday evening by members in the union’s House of Delegates, aims to put pressure on the school district to reach an agreement, with a de facto Tuesday evening deadline before the union’s first labor action.

It’s a tactic reminiscent of the bitter labor dispute between the union and Chicago Public Schools this past winter that delayed elementary and middle school reopening dates several weeks. On social media, some parents lamented another threat of infighting and the potential for fresh disruption.

At a Monday morning press conference, Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said that young people have driven an uptick in COVID-19 infections in the city. The union is pressing the district to make surplus shots at four school-based vaccination sites available to high school students and vulnerable family members. Sharkey stressed that the union wants a program in place to begin vaccinating students before high school buildings reopen — and said the union is not asking that all students are offered shots or that a portion are actually vaccinated.

“We’re asking for some basic safeguards and reassurance we are not pouring gas on the fire,” he said.

Sharkey said that if high school teachers do refuse to report to school buildings Wednesday and the district locks any of them out, that could set off “broadening implications,” presumably affecting in-person instruction for younger students as well.

Union officials criticized the city of Chicago for so far failing to open up vaccinations for teens ages 16 to 18, even as the rest of Illinois and neighboring states have moved to do so (the city has said it plans to expand eligibility Apr. 19 due to supply concerns).

If teachers revert to remote work, it could limit the amount of time they would have to set up their classrooms, potentially delaying the return date for students. Many teachers haven’t returned to their rooms since schools closed last spring.

High school teachers were asked to return to Chicago school buildings on Monday for the first time since schools were first shut down a year ago. But without a labor agreement — and with ongoing questions about how many students will return to in-person learning — there are big questions about what Chicago’s high school reopening will look like.

Initially, district and union officials suggested discussions were promising and had taken on a more collegial tone compared to the protracted battle earlier in the year around reopening elementary and middle campuses.

But that optimism soured last week, with the union publicly raising concerns about reopening high schools amid an uptick in city-wide COVID-19 rates. The district, for its part, has said it is committed to the April 19 reopening date it set a month ago, and believes classrooms can be reopened safely for older students.

An agreement to reopen Chicago’s high schools would cover about 5,000 teachers and paraprofessionals. Educators who were expected in buildings earlier this year but received health accommodations have also been asked to return to classrooms Monday.

Union officials have said they want an agreement that grants educators a remote work day Wednesday, child care and health accommodations for teachers who request them, and a student vaccination plan for ages 16 and older. Chicago Public Schools said they are working with the city’s public health department on such a vaccination plan, but the district has not shared any details.

At the Monday press conference, union officials said high school class schedules and accommodations to allow some members to work remotely still remain sticking points in the talks after the weekend. Still, union leaders underscored the demand for a high school student vaccination plan, saying the district must act decisively to rebuild trust with students and their families.

“Schools are already set up to administer vaccines,” said Mike Smith, a member of the union’s bargaining team. “Why can’t we shift it to the community? That’s what builds trust?”

He said some of his students at Englewood STEM High School have been asking about the possibility of getting vaccinated; some have gotten sick or have seen family members get the disease.

The union is still demanding a weeklong delay in bringing high school students back, though Sharkey said that could change if an agreement with the district is reached quickly.

The back and forth shows how much more complicated it is to open high schools compared to elementary or middle grades. High school students change classes more often, which makes it difficult to establish the strict pod structure that elementary and middle schools have adopted to minimize contact. Older students are also more likely to catch, and transmit, the virus, research shows.

At a union press conference held last week, teachers said they wanted a firmer plan for keeping students and teachers safe. Taft High School teacher Eden McCauslin said she was worried that the district will reopen and “figure it out as we go along.”

Another teacher, Mary Rose O’Shea, said last week at the press conference that educators in her building who requested accommodations hadn’t heard back yet.

A Chicago principal at a small high school, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said she was prepared to reopen her building for students on April 19, but that effort had been hard won.

She said she learned the date that students would return just as it was released to the general public in mid-March.

While she estimated that the majority of her staff will return to work in person, she only learned who had received accommodations after spring break, setting off a two-week scramble to find additional staff or shift schedules to fill those gaps. “That doesn’t give me a lot of time to make alternative plans,” she said.

Only around a third of her students said they would be returning to in-person learning for the fourth quarter. That’s in line with the district average: among the city’s 72,947 high school students, 35.6% said they would return, 45.3% said they would continue to learn at home, and 7.5%, or nearly 2,000 families, didn’t reply.

Because it is a relatively small school, her building will be open for students four days a week. Her message to families, and the district, is that principals need to be included earlier in reopening plans for the process to run smoothly.

She suspects that some families opted out of in-person learning because she didn’t have answers to some of their questions about school safety. “The reason we don’t have a lot of answers for them,” she said, “is because we learned about high school reopening at the town halls, the same way they learned about it.”

Buildings have been open for pre-K to eighth grade, and some elementary school students, since March. About 1 in 4 Chicago elementary and middle school students came for in-person learning.

District leaders have said that they are determined to reopen high school buildings to students this school year, and the district’s elementary and middle school reopening has paved the path for returning high school students to classrooms.

Still, even when students return to the classroom, the complicated nature of remote work accommodations and class setups to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 infections mean that many students will still be learning online. A survey by a Chicago’s principals group says students in as many as one-third of reopened classrooms may have an educator teaching virtually from home — and this scenario is much more common in schools that serve primarily Black and Latino students.

Essence-Jade Gatheright, a senior at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, is sticking with remote learning through the remainder of the school year. Remote learning has been “extremely hard,” she said, and she didn’t feel she received enough support with college applications or enough guidance on school work. But with COVID-19 rates rising again in the city, she doesn’t feel safe returning to the building and doesn’t fully trust the district with mitigation measures.

Still, she expects the district’s high school reopening will affect her as well. She doesn’t think teachers juggling in-person and virtual students will be able to engage with students learning remotely as much.

“I can’t see this getting any better,” she said. “It’s just not ideal for anyone.”

Talks between union officials and district leadership were expected to resume Monday.

Chicago moves to officially start school year earlier

2021-03-22T17:31:14+00:00

After soliciting feedback from families and receiving thousands of comments, Chicago plans to eschew its traditional post-Labor Day school start and instead bring back students Aug. 31 in an effort to address concerns over school disruptions caused by the pandemic.

The Board of Education will vote Wednesday on the proposal. Under the new start date, teachers would return to school Aug. 18.

The announcement comes as the district has extended the date for families to opt in to in-person learning for the fourth quarter, which begins April 19, as part of its staggered reopening plan. Families now have until midnight Tuesday to tell the district if they want to return to school buildings.

For the first time in over a year, high school families also have that option. The district has set a target high school reopening date of Apr. 19, pending the outcome of negotiations with the teachers union.

Elementary and middle school students returned to school buildings in February and March, respectively. About 1 in 4 of the elementary, middle, prekindergarten and special education students eligible to come back to buildings did so this year.

Earlier this month, the district’s No. 2, LaTanya McDade, said “it too soon to tell” whether Chicago Public Schools students will be able to return to classrooms full time in the fall.

Under the new calendar, the last school day of the year for students in 2022 would be June 14. The district also marked possible days that school could be extended if school days fall below the state-mandated requirement next year.

In public comments left on the district’s portal for community feedback, opinions on the new start date ranged widely. “This is a fantastic idea to minimize learning loss and aligns with the rest of the surrounding areas,” said one person. Another argued that “families need the Labor Day weekend” ahead of the chaos of the school year.

More than 3,000 people weighed in on the question.

Las escuelas de Chicago comienzan a realizar pruebas COVID-19 a los estudiantes

2021-03-08T21:14:01+00:00

Este artículo está disponible en español gracias al proyecto “Traduciendo las noticias de Chicago”, del Instituto de Noticias Sin Fines de Lucro (INN).

A medida que los estudiantes de escuela media regresan a los edificios escolares de Chicago por primera vez, el distrito aumenta un elemento clave de su plan de seguridad escolar: las pruebas COVID-19 para estudiantes.

Este esfuerzo es parte de una estrategia de salud pública más amplia que el distrito está implementando ahora que las escuelas están abiertas, incluyendo un examen de salud en línea, controles de temperatura en la escuela, un nuevo equipo de rastreo de contactos y pruebas rutinarias a los maestros.

El objetivo será realizar las pruebas a los estudiantes sintomáticos o aquellos que tuvieron contacto cercano con una persona que dio positivo al virus y usar pruebas de vigilancia para detectar a los estudiantes que pueden ser asintomáticos.

Un plan para realizar pruebas a los estudiantes en escuelas ubicadas en las áreas con los índices más altos de COVID-19 fue un punto principal del acuerdo de reapertura de la municipalidad con sus maestros.

Hasta el momento, esto es lo que sabemos sobre el programa:

Las pruebas a estudiantes en la escuela no formaban parte de los planes originales del distrito

Las pruebas COVID-19 generalizadas para estudiantes sin síntomas, no estaban en la mesa de negociación rl verano pasado cuando la Ciudad de Chicago presentó su plan inicial para reabrir las escuelas. Pero en medio del aumento de los casos y la creciente evidencia de que una parte de las personas con COVID-19 no mostraban síntomas, el Sindicato de Maestros de Chicago puso como uno de los puntos principales de su campaña para un acuerdo escrito sobre la reapertura de las escuelas, que se realizaran en algún nivel, las pruebas aleatorias.

Lo que se ganó, también cumplió con otra de las preocupaciones principales del sindicato, que se diera más apoyo a las escuelas que reabrirán en áreas con altos índices de COVID-19.

Según el acuerdo de reapertura del distrito con el sindicato, a todos los estudiantes y empleados con síntomas de coronavirus se les hará una prueba. Además, el distrito hará exámenes semanales al 25% de los estudiantes de 10 años de edad o más, junto con todos los empleados en las escuelas ubicadas en los 10 códigos postales de la ciudad con los índices más altos de COVID-19.

También se realizarán pruebas a los empleados y estudiantes de 10 años de edad o más que regresan a los edificios escolares ubicados en esos códigos postales. Los códigos postales se revisarán mensualmente, ya que los índices de COVID-19 fluctúan según los datos de los registros de COVID-19 de la municipalidad.

El distrito también ofrecerá pruebas de vigilancia a todos los estudiantes de secundaria que participen en programas para niños con discapacidades moderadas a severas.

Las pruebas de vigilancia son solo para estudiantes de 10 años o más

Mientras que los estudiantes de todas las edades pueden ser examinados en caso de que sean sintomáticos o hayan estado expuestos a alguien con COVID-19, las pruebas de vigilancia del distrito solo se le realizarán a estudiantes de 10 años de edad o más, según lo estipulado en el acuerdo de reapertura que se hizo con el sindicato, hasta que haya una prueba comercialmente más viable para los niños más pequeños.

Se les hará una prueba PCR a los estudiantes

Los estudiantes a los que se les haga la prueba en la escuela también se les hará una prueba molecular conocida como PCR, y cuyos resultados demoran de dos a tres días según el distrito, y que será administrada por profesionales médicos contratados por un proveedor para visitar las escuelas.

No se espera que los estudiantes estén en cuarentena durante este tiempo, a menos que tengan síntomas, según la información compartida hace dos semanas en el evento “Pregúntale al experto” (“Ask the Expert”), del distrito.

Las pruebas de los estudiantes serán voluntarias

Los padres deben dar su consentimiento para que a un estudiante se le haga la prueba; se les pedirá que completen un formulario de consentimiento antes de que se les realice. Las familias pueden negarse a hacerse la prueba COVID-19 solicitada por la escuela, pero si un estudiante tiene síntomas, será enviado a casa. Para los casos asintomáticos, el distrito ha dicho que sus medidas de uso de mascarillas y distanciamiento social deberían ayudar a prevenir la propagación más amplia de la infección dentro de los edificios escolares.

Las pruebas a los estudiantes pueden ser un tema polémico

Mientras que en Chicago el sistema de pruebas a estudiantes está en sus etapas iniciales, las preocupaciones sobre la privacidad y la seguridad en relación a las pruebas se han convertido en un problema candente en otros distritos.

En las escuelas de la ciudad de Nueva York, las pruebas semanales aleatorias para detectar el coronavirus han sido un requisito para el 20% de los estudiantes y el personal en todas las escuelas desde diciembre pasado. Posteriormente el estado dijo que los distritos no podían exigir a los estudiantes que dieran su consentimiento a las pruebas, poniendo en duda el protocolo de la ciudad antes de revertir el curso.

La guía de la Junta de Educación del Estado de Illinois dice que los estudiantes sintomáticos deben realizarse una prueba COVID-19. Si se niegan, deben permanecer en casa durante 10 días a partir de la fecha de la aparición de su primer síntoma.

Traducido por Gisela Orozco

Chicago schools will begin testing students for COVID-19 next week

2021-03-08T21:14:01+00:00

As middle school students return to Chicago school buildings for the first time this week, the district is ramping up a key element of its school safety plan: COVID-19 testing for students.

That effort — which officials say they expect to begin rolling out late next week — is part of a broader public health strategy the district is implementing now that schools are open, including an online health screener, in-school temperature checks, a new contact tracing team, and regular testing of teachers.

The goal will be to test symptomatic students or those who had close contact with a person who tested positive for the virus, and to use surveillance testing to catch students who may be asymptomatic.

A plan to test students at schools in areas with the highest COVID-19 rates was a cornerstone of the city’s hard-won reopening agreement with its teachers.

Here’s what we know about the program so far:

In-school student testing was not part of the district’s original plans

Broad-based COVID-19 testing for students without symptoms wasn’t on the table when Chicago put forward its initial plan to reopen schools last summer. But amid rising cases and growing evidence that a portion of people with COVID-19 showed no symptoms, the Chicago Teachers Union made some level of random testing a central part of its campaign for a written agreement on school reopening.

What it won also met another of the union’s key concerns — more support for schools that would reopen in areas with high COVID-19 rates.

According to the district’s reopening agreement with the union, all students and employees with coronavirus symptoms will be offered a test. In addition, the district will offer weekly tests to 25% of students age 10 or older, along with all employees, in schools in the 10 city ZIP codes with the highest COVID-19 rates.

It will also offer tests to employees and students age 10 or older newly returning to school buildings in those ZIP codes. The ZIP codes will be reviewed on a monthly basis as COVID-10 rates fluctuate according to data from the city’s COVID-19 dashboard.

The district will also offer surveillance testing to all high school students in programs for children with moderate to severe disabilities.

Surveillance testing is only for students 10 and over

While students of all ages can be tested in case they are symptomatic or have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, the district’s surveillance testing will only be conducted for students age 10 or older, according to the reopening agreement with the union, until there is a more commercially viable test for younger children.

Students will receive a PCR test

Students tested in school will receive a molecular PCR test that takes two to three days for results, according to the district, and will be administered by medical professionals hired by a vendor to visit schools.

Students won’t be expected to quarantine during this time unless they have symptoms, according to information shared at the district’s “Ask the Expert” event last week.

Student testing will be voluntary

Parents must give their consent for a student to be tested, and will be asked to fill in a consent form before a test is given. Families can decline to take a COVID-19 test requested by the school, but if a student has symptoms, they will be sent home. For asymptomatic cases, the district has said that its masking and social distancing measures should help prevent the broader spread of infection inside school buildings.

Student testing can be a contentious issue

While Chicago’s student testing system is only in its initial stages, concerns about privacy and safety around testing have made it a hot button issue in other districts.

In New York City schools, weekly, random testing for the coronavirus has been a requirement for 20% of students and staff at all schools since December. The state later said that districts could not require students to consent to testing, throwing the city’s protocol into question before reversing course.

Guidance from the Illinois State Board of Education says symptomatic students should take a COVID-19 test. If they decline, they should stay home for 10 days from the date of their first symptom.

Five things to know about Chicago’s COVID-19 alert system in schools

2021-02-23T11:44:00+00:00

When Chicago reopens its school buildings for students from kindergarten to fifth grade Monday, schools will be using gallons of hand sanitizer and liberally posted informational signs about social distancing to help implement safety protocols.

But one key aspect of Chicago Public School’s safety plan won’t be on display.

That’s the district’s COVID-19 notification and contact tracing system. The district has budgeted more than $1 million for the initiative so far, which includes a new district-level team and several online reporting programs.

In other cities where schools have reopened, notification systems have become closely scrutinized. New York City created a “Situation Room” to quickly alert school communities of COVID-19 cases, but the effort has been dogged by failures to let “close contacts” know that they may have been exposed and conflicting guidance to principals and families.

Several experts interviewed by Chalkbeat have pointed out places where Chicago’s plan is ahead of the curve - and some areas it may be lacking.

In Chicago, schools were only open for a few weeks in January before the district paused in-person learning over a labor dispute with teachers.

Now, as the district plans to bring back students from kindergarten to eighth grade, here’s what we know about Chicago’s effort so far:

Chicago has created a specialty team to oversee its notification and contact tracing system

At the center of that work is a new district-level contact tracing team that includes 10 positions, seven of which have been staffed, including a manager, as of Feb. 22. The district has budgeted $988,000 to cover those costs, for an unspecified time period. Those staff are trained through online courses offered by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and by members of the district’s Office of Student Health and Wellness.

Their primary focus is on figuring out when a person who tests positive for COVID-19 became contagious, and identifying whom they may have been in contact with during that period. The system is supposed to kick into gear within 24 hours of a student or educator reporting a positive COVID-19 test result on the district’s self-reporting form.

The district has also contracted with CDW Government LLC, a technology company, to create its online health screener and contact tracing case management system. In total, the district has spent $714,000 on its health screening and self-reporting portals.

Pods, an online health screener, and testing will help Chicago track any COVID-19 cases

Chicago will organize groups of in-person learners in classroom “pods” with about 15 students. Smaller numbers minimize how many people students interact with and help the school district more easily track contact.

The district will also ask staff, students and visitors who enter school buildings to fill out an online health screener to help keep track of some of the basic information it needs in case a person with COVID-19 enters a school building, and as a warning signal for anyone who reports a symptom associated with COVID-19. The screener asks whether a person has recently traveled internationally, or has any of a range of symptoms, including fatigue or a cough.

According to the district’s reopening agreement with the union, all students and employees with coronavirus symptoms will be offered a test, along with all employees as well as some students weekly in 134 schools in areas of the city with high COVID-19 rates — and half of staff in other schools. And it will offer tests to employees and students ages 10 and older newly returning to school buildings.

The reality on the ground will likely be more complicated. At many schools, educators who teach physical education, art, or music may travel between multiple pods, increasing exposure and complicating contract tracing efforts. The health screener depends on truth telling — and is likely to flag only symptomatic cases.

The district is tracking numbers and posting them publicly every week, but it’s not instantaneous

The first few weeks of school reopening in January can give some indication of what COVID-19 notification would be like. In January, Chicago Public School’s online case tracking system, which the data portal says only reports cases if a person was in a school building during the contagious period, showed 203 COVID-19 cases among staff and 15 cases among students. Nearly 4,000 staff members and 3,250 Chicago students returned to in-person classes in the first round of school reopening.

In some of those first cases, contact tracing tools helped determine where and when infected staff may have been in a building. At McCutcheon Elementary in Uptown, district officials were able to determine that a second COVID-19 case at the school was a close contact of the first, Block Club Chicago reported. Eight employees eventually had to go into quarantine in the first few days of school reopening.

The school reopening agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union spells out some protocols. If a person tests positive who was in the classroom during the contagious period, the in-person classroom would revert to remote learning. Entire campuses would pause in-person learning if there are three or more confirmed cases in a building within a 14-day period.

The agreement also mandates that each building have school-level safety committees to oversee safety complaints and weigh in on decisions about when a building may need to revert to remote learning. Those bodies are likely to play an important role.

The onus of reporting, and staying home, rests on individuals

If that health screener shows that a person has COVID-19 symptoms, or if a student or staff members tests positive, they’re asked to self-report their status to the district through an online form. That’s the backbone of the district’s contact tracing program.

From there, the district’s contact tracing team will email people identified as close contacts, which means they have been with a COVID-19-positive person in an enclosed space for 15 minutes or more, according to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They will also be added to a “no admittance list” at the school level.

Positive individuals and their anyone identified as a close contact should also expect a call from the Chicago Department of Public Health. Principals are also able to communicate with schools and families about positive cases, and in some instances, even report positive cases on behalf of families.

Experts say the district’s self-reporting mechanism helps it move more nimbly than waiting on the city health department, but questioned a notification system that relies primarily on email.

Chicago Public Schools would have access to the most detailed information about where students and staff are expected to be, and who they would have contact with, which is helpful in contact tracing, said Melissa Marx, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies child health and infectious disease. “The best practice for the school is to keep track of who is together in enclosed spaces, and do the initial notification,” she said.

But relying on email notifications to inform families of possible exposure isn’t best practice, she said. “You need to add a text option,” Marx said. “Especially for low-income folks who don’t work with computers on a regular basis or don’t have access to smartphones.”

There are still many unknowns

It’s unclear what will happen when the number of students in school buildings goes up.

Around 62,000 kindergarten to eighth grade students that opted for in-person learning are supposed to return to classrooms for the first time in nearly a year beginning Monday. That will bring significantly more students and staff into school buildings than the 3,250 Chicago students who returned to in-person classes in the first week of January.

Howard Ehrman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, a former assistant commissioner of health and a vocal critic of the district’s school reopening plan, said that, with thousands of students returning to every building, the district should grow its contact tracing office. “There has to be a specific contact tracer assigned to every school,” said Ehrman.

Another potential complication may be a new strain of the virus, which recently emerged in the U.S. and appears to be especially contagious. England, where the variant originated and is rapidly spreading, announced plans in January to shutter all of its schools.

Meanwhile, the district said it has offered more than 7,500 educators vaccinations and that it plans to soon open four sites to expedite vaccinations.

And in recently released guidance, the CDC said schools can open for some in-person instruction, with regular testing and mask usage, even when community spread is high.

From anxiety to joy: Stories of Chicago’s contentious return to the classroom

2021-01-15T00:07:53+00:00

After being closed to students for 300 days, Chicago reopened campuses this week and ushered in a new era of schooling with temperature checks, classroom pods, health screeners — and a continued standoff between city leadership and the teachers union.

For some, reopening doors has caused them to fear for their safety. For others, it’s been a relief, injecting some normalcy into difficult times.

Interviews with families and educators on the ground reveal a mix of emotions and experiences that are intensely personal and also framed by race, class, and the COVID-19 rates of various neighborhoods.

Chalkbeat Chicago spoke to seven people at length about reopening school buildings this week for prekindergarten and some special education students who need extra support.

Here’s what we learned.

The cautious grandmother: Regina Simms

Regina Simms has taken a cautious approach to safety amid the pandemic.

Still, when her son’s family made the decision to send her youngest grandson back to the classroom at Dixon Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, she backed that wholeheartedly.

It was not an easy call for the boy’s parents: Her daughter-in-law, who works in the district, opposed sending the preschooler back, questioning if safety protocols would be followed faithfully. Simms’ son felt strongly the boy should go back.

Simms says her grandson this week quickly learned how to keep his mask on properly throughout the day and stay a safe distance from classmates. He reported he liked in-person school.

Simms, who is active with the nonprofit Community Organizing and Family Issues, which advocates for parents of color, says she understands the safety concerns surrounding reopening schools but feels all residents face a measure of risk.

“If you are concerned about catching the COVID-19, but you are not concerned about kids’ education, I disagree,” she said. “All these thousands of students in Chicago are failing like crazy. I’d rather for my grandchild to take a chance in school.”

The resolute mother: Cindy Ok, Vaughn Occupational High School

Until she began remote learning, Cindy Ok’s daughter would sometimes struggle with expressing herself. Then she found a new tool: the chat option in the Google classroom tool most Chicago schools use.

“If she doesn’t want to talk, she can just type her answer in the chat,” said Ok, whose daughter is set to graduate this spring from Vaughn Occupational High School. “She loves it.”

Still, Ok regrets that her daughter is missing the life skills classes she’d usually be taking at school right now, such as learning how to shop for food or develop leisure interests like visiting art museums.

Because Ok’s daughter is prone to seizures, those activities all felt unsafe amid the pandemic.

A positive experience with remote learning, along with an abiding fear of how COVID-19 would affect her child’s health, helped Ok decide that she wouldn’t send her daughter back to classrooms this winter, even though she only had a few months left at the specialized school.

“I would not send my daughter into school when there are students in her classrooms that come from ZIP codes that have a 17% rate of infection,” she said of Vaughn, which enrolls students from all over the city.

As school buildings have reopened, the first crop of school-based cases have occurred. On Wednesday, school officials at Vaughn announced that a person working in the school building had tested positive for COVID-19, but later said that staff member had not been in contact with students.

Still, the news only underscored Ok’s decision not to return her child to in-person schooling. “I still don’t think that one week after the winter break is a good time for anybody to go back in person,” she said.

The teacher in limbo: Marrissa Seidler, Burbank Elementary School

Every day since Chicago schools reopened this month has brought unanswered questions and logistical nightmares for Marrissa Seidler.

As a special education teacher recruited from outside of Chicago, Seidler lives in Skokie with her two children, and struggles with health conditions that she worries put her at higher risk if she should catch COVID-19.

She’s asked for several accommodations to work remotely that would address either her child care issues or health concerns, but hasn’t heard back on either. So far, Seidler says the stress of managing child care and waiting for answers has made her sick. She’s failed the health screener, required of all staff working in schools, several times and taken several sick days this week.

She’s extra frustrated because this week all her students have remained remote, but the district has said teachers must return to classrooms regardless of the choices their students make. She hasn’t been able to log on with them so far this week.

She misses her students. “It’s so hard to hear from my aides that they just aren’t doing what they should be doing,” Seidler said. “But I’m not going to put my health at risk. I have young kids: They deserve their mother.”

She’s not alone. Teachers with children are among the least likely to get accommodations from the district, according to data released this week.

The stress has her rethinking her future in Chicago Public Schools, which already struggles with a shortage of special education teachers. “They are going to lose high-quality special education teachers,” Seidler said.

The hopeful social worker: Brian Calhoun, Rogers Park and West Ridge

For weeks before schools opened, social worker Brian Calhoun studied the district’s suggested safety protocols, determined to follow them to the letter. When he returned to school, the walls featured posters and rooms had hand sanitizer stations.

What was missing? The students. “The big shock is that we have all these people reporting to the building, and so few students showing up,” said Calhoun, who works with special education students. “The most in one classroom is four students.”

The biggest challenge has been teaching students both online and in person, especially as the first wave of prekindergarten students are, simply, very excited.

“If I’m in a classroom and I haven’t seen [new] toys in a while, I am going to get up and get in the toys,” Calhoun laughed. He wishes the district had built an adjustment period into the first days of school.

Still, he is holding on to the good moments, like hearing a student who was kicking a ball outside for recess exclaim: “This was my best day!”

The excited father: Dave Wisneski, Vaughn Occupational High School

On Monday, the first day of in-person learning for students, Dave Wisneski’s daughter was dressed at 5:30 a.m. and brimming with excitement.

As a student at Vaughn Occupational High School in Portage Park, she’s among the students with complex disabilities identified as a priority to return to campuses.

So far, the first few days of taking the bus and chatting with school support staff, even if she still does most of her schoolwork remotely in the classroom, have given her much-needed social interaction, he said. “It’s been a great experience,” Wisneski said.

That contrasts with remote learning from home, he said. The more his daughter missed social interaction, the more she struggled to focus on the computer.

Wisneski, a newly elected school council member, applauded the district for bringing special education students who need extra support back first. “Kids with disabilities always seem to be left behind,” he said. “It’s great to see how we were the first ones invited back.”

The demoralized educator: Sandra Méndez, Southwest side

When the week started, Sandra Méndez and the other prekindergarten teachers from her elementary school on the Southwest side of Chicago were determined to resist returning to school.

Remote learning was tough, but Méndez felt that after nearly a year, she had found ways to engage her young students and build relationships with their families. The virus has decimated her school’s neighborhood, home to many essential workers. Only one student in her class of 10 had opted for in-person instruction.

“The whole week that we were out I had been thinking, how am I going to do it if I have nine kids on the computer and one kid in the classroom?” wondered Méndez. “I have one lesson I repeat at 9:30 and then at 10:30. That means that student that is in the classroom is going to listen to the lessons two times.”

Then, a few days ago, the district disciplined teachers who were resisting returning to school, by freezing their pay and locking them out of remote classrooms.

Méndez worried about losing her job and felt little support from teachers at her school — many who teach higher grades not set to return to classrooms until later this month. She overrode her fears and returned to campus.

“This is our future and it’s our career, and many of us don’t want to lose that,” she said. While she had enjoyed and appreciated becoming part of the union’s citywide organizing to oppose in-person school, she felt demoralized by the lack of support in her school. “They are probably thinking the same thing: we are not going to step in and jeopardize our jobs. It feels like we are alone right now.”

The newly energized math teacher: Sam Williams, Schurz High School

Even though Sam Williams has been working with her special education class of 12 high school students since the fall, she was surprised by how much easier it was to build a relationship with them in person.

“They are totally different students in person,” said Williams, who works in a classroom with two aides. “We are getting to learn about their behaviors, where they are at academically.”

Out of 47 students in the specialized program, 12 have returned, and were placed in two pods of six. Some special education teachers reporting to Schurz High School still primarily communicate with students remotely, to minimize exposing children to adults.

Her students have returned at all different levels, with some having spent months with assistance from an eager parent or sibling and others lacking any guidance. Now she must figure out who needs extra support in which areas, but Williams said the challenge has newly energized her.

She and her co-teachers spent six weeks putting together their learning plan, which already has required some tweaking. They record their lessons so they can more easily plan instruction for different levels in each subject.

Williams said she’s glad to have the flexibility to meet those needs — and to get to see some of her students face to face. “There is just something about being in the classroom that you can’t get at home.”

Mila Koumpilova contributed reporting.

One-third of Chicago students opt for in-person learning, but students are disproportionately white

2020-12-16T22:11:45+00:00

About one-third of elementary students in Chicago Public Schools plan to return for in-person instruction in early 2021, according to figures released Wednesday.

The school district is predominantly Black and Latino, but a disproportionate number of students returning are white. About 77,000 students are coming back.

The figures, which were announced during the monthly board meeting, show that 23% of returning students are white, compared to 39% who are Latino and 30% who are Black. The district as a whole is 11% white.

That is in line with other school districts, such as New York City, where a disproportionate share of white families also sent their children back for in-person learning.

Still, the numbers show that thousands of families favor returning to school buildings, even as the COVID-19 positivity rate in Chicago remains in the double digits, and the teachers union continues to challenge the plan.

“Every single family has a choice in this plan,” said schools chief Janice Jackson Wednesday.

District officials have argued that widening academic disparities are a key reason to push for reopening school buildings in early 2021, and said remote learning simply doesn’t work for all students.

Even as a disproportionate number of white families want to return to in-person learning, Jackson noted that, as more than 80% of district students are Black and Latino, reopening school buildings offers tens of thousands of Chicago students a chance to learn in schools.

But data released by district officials Wednesday show the majority of Chicago’s Black and Latino families, as well as vulnerable groups, such as students experiencing homelessness and students in special education, opted for remote learning next semester.

Of the 16,944 students who are in pre-kindergarten or have complex disabilities and are first in line to return on Jan. 11, 38.2%, or 6,470 students, have opted for in-person learning. The majority, 57.8% or 9,786 students, said they would continue learning remotely. About 4%, or nearly 700 students, had not yet replied.

Another 191,055 students in kindergarten to eighth grade will be eligible to return Feb. 1. Of those students, 37% of families chose in-person learning, while more than half, 59%, said they would continue to learn at home.

Those numbers only shifted significantly when they were broken down by race. Around 67% of white families, and 54.7% of multiracial families, who represent 3,276 students, said they’d send their elementary school children back for in-person learning, compared to 33.9% of Black and 31% of Latino families.

Still, those figures may not show the final number of students who return to buildings this winter, as families can opt out of in-person learning at any time. Families can only opt into in-person learning for the next semester, in April.

The district also announced it would launch a high school reopening task force to make a plan for returning older students to buildings.

With only about three weeks until teachers will be expected to return to buildings, the discussion at Wednesday’s board meeting ran the gamut of lingering questions on school reopening.

Board members grilled district leaders about the metrics they will use to determine whether COVID-19 spread is low enough to reopen schools. Until recently, the district used a seven-day average positivity rate to assess community spread, but officials said more recently that, in consultation with the city’s health department, they are now choosing to focus on the number of days it takes cases to double (below 18 if considered a greenlight for reopening).

Marielle Fricchione, a doctor with the Chicago Department of Public Health, told board members Wednesday that, while there was no clear national metric for when it was safe to reopen schools, whether a COVID-19 outbreak was controlled or not was a key factor.

“When we saw a change from controlled to uncontrolled transmission, and then from uncontrolled transmission back to control transmission, it was around a doubling rate of 18,” she said.

Fricchione also said, with the first COVID-19 vaccine distributed in Chicago this week, teachers could be within the first few tiers of essential workers eligible for the injection. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has not yet spelled out where teachers would fall in the state’s vaccination plan, which prioritizes health care workers and long-term care facilities.

How far the union is willing to go to challenge the plan remains an open question. In response to board member questions, school officials said Wednesday that they had met with union officials 43 times, and still hoped to secure a written agreement with the union. However, they were first and foremost determined to reopen schools for vulnerable students.

Union leaders, speaking both at an early morning press conference and at public comment, said again Wednesday they disagree with the district’s reopening metrics, and want a written agreement before any return to in-person learning. Among the union’s recently released list of detailed demands: that the district only open schools if the COVID-19 weekly average positivity rate is at 3% or lower.

Even as schools move toward reopening, union president Jesse Sharkey said the union was far from done making its case. Not only will they continue to appeal to parents and labor courts, but “all options are on the table,” likely meaning a possible strike, Sharkey said.

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board is expected to hold a hearing Thursday morning on the union’s request to stop in-person learning until they have a written reopening agreement.

Parent comments were also sharply split on the question of reopening.

Several parents, including one who said “my child will happily return to class,” said they were excited the district would offer the option of in-person learning. They also said some parents were afraid to speak out because of opposition from teachers.

Others said they would not send their children back to in-person learning because they were worried about their ability to wear masks for hours, or that asymptomatic spread inside schools could go undetected.

Chicago is launching a new reading plan. Five questions for the educator in charge of it

2020-12-04T19:39:59+00:00

In Chicago Public Schools, where some students compete in national slam poetry competitions while others graduate still struggling to comprehend grade-level texts, how well students learn to read can vary greatly between schools and even teachers.

The district’s wide-ranging new literacy plan, announced in late November amid a flurry of reopening news, aims to close those gaps. Jane Fleming, the district’s director of literacy, is the educator in charge of the new plan.

Named the PK-12 Vision for Advanced Literacy, the approach promises more professional development for teachers, easier access to strong literacy curriculums, and stronger bilingual reading resources for students. The literacy plan is a key ingredient of Chicago’s $135 million push to design a homegrown curriculum that will be available online to teachers across multiple subjects, and it’s one of the first parts of the plan to be publicly previewed.

It promises to be flexible for both in-person and remote learning, but stays within two key elements of the district’s approach to literacy: autonomy that lets schools choose the reading approaches they use and an approach it calls balanced literacy which uses individual and group reading, context clues, some phonics, and writing practice.

National researchers have said balanced literacy isn’t supported by the science on how children learning basic reading skills, which is dependent on phonics instruction. Fleming said there is some disagreement on how balanced literacy is defined, and that Chicago’s approach includes strong phonics instruction.

Chalkbeat Chicago caught up with Fleming to discuss the new plan and what it could mean for students:

What brought you to literacy work?

I started my career as a middle school mathematics teacher 28 years ago, and a lot of my students had difficulty with math because they had difficulty with reading. Back in the 80s, when I was trained, teachers were content specialists and weren’t trained more broadly about reading development. I eventually went back to school and got a certification as a reading specialist, worked for a number of years as a resource teacher and learning disability specialist, and eventually got my doctorate, where I studied reading disabilities and started to think about the broader context of learning to read and write.

What are the key ingredients of Chicago’s new plan, called the PK-12 Vision for Advanced Literacy?

At its core, it is our roadmap to ensuring that Chicago Public Schools students graduate with what we are terming advanced literacy skills. It’s really the idea that in 2020 it’s not sufficient to have basic or sufficient skills, we need all our students to have advanced literacy skills. Our goal is really to set out some research-based shifts and key practices that we are going to focus on over the next five years. The vision is organized around a framework that involves four shifts: ensuring equitable access to effective and rigorous literacy instruction, using data to create conditions for literacy equity in schools, increasing access to high-quality, culturally responsive resources, and redefining professional learning.

Since the pandemic shut down schools in March, how learning happens in Chicago schools has shifted. Teachers have to figure out new ways of judging reading comprehension, or attending to the needs of students at different levels. How are you approaching implementing these changes in a new environment?

Part of the CPS literacy vision and our five-year plan was to build in a focus on digital literacy, and communicating content in a digital environment. The move to remote learning has helped us accelerate in some ways our collective effort in those areas and so teachers are really gravitating toward the use of some of these tools.

We are thinking about this as tools to enhance student engagement and differentiation in any environment, whether it’s remote, hybrid or in-person learning. What we are anticipating is that {as} we gradually move back to hybrid and full-time in-person learning teachers will take these tools back with them into the [physical] classroom.

We have partnered with a digital literacy expert to develop a set of learning modules that are designed to support teachers in using a small set of [digital] tools that they and their students can get good at.

Does the new plan change any of the district’s central approaches to literacy? How are you defining balanced literacy?

The way we define balanced literacy in CPS is that you have to have a balance of foundational skills. Students need explicit systematic instruction in the sound structure of the language, and that is a core component of the CPS model. Nationally, we have somehow started to equate the term balanced literacy with just putting the books in front of students and hoping for the best. For us, it’s a balance of reading, writing, and instruction, really fostering comprehension. It’s a balance of teacher-led versus kind of student-initiated activity.

How do you weigh giving schools autonomy with making sure that each of the 513 district-run schools is teaching reading in a science-based way?

Yes, schools do have the option to choose which curricular tools they can use. If a school has a dual language program, they are going to use a different literacy program from one for monolingual English speakers.

The approach that we are taking with the vision for advanced literacy is to put forth our best research-based understanding of the practices that will lead to advanced literacy. Identifying these key research-based practices is an expectation we are setting as a district, to show teachers why we are advocating for these practices and giving schools tools to self assess and identify areas for growth.

This year, we also have a set of about 55 elementary schools that we identified last spring that didn’t have a phonics program that was sufficient for early literacy development. We worked with schools to set early literacy goals that followed a systematic and research-based scope and sequence, without saying you have to use this program or that program. We’re supporting these routes with professional learning.

Drive-ups, delays, and a trickle of voters mark unusual school council election in Chicago

2020-11-19T03:22:41+00:00

Despite much anticipation and perhaps because of pandemic fears, polling for school council at one Chicago school Wednesday drew few voters. Election judge Margarita Cruz mostly presided over an empty gym at Richard Yates Elementary in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

“I’ve only had six voters today, and all were teachers,” said Cruz, who has worked city elections since 1970. She was called to fill in for a sick judge — a reshuffling that delayed the start of the Yates election by 2½ hours. “None have been parents — not even one.”

Yates’ Principal Israel Perez sent robocalls, text messages and emails to the families of his 330 students about the biennial elections. Perez said he hoped he’d still get mail-in ballots — parents have until Nov. 30 to drop off ballots at schools — but so far he hadn’t received a single one.

“People are scared,” he said, as cases of COVID-19 rise precipitously and health officials have warned people to stay home.

Still, he praised Chicago Public Schools’ massive undertaking: to rewrite the election rules to establish a mail-in option and curbside voting, and send ballots to hundreds of thousands of families.

“What the district has done by allowing people to vote at home is really awesome.”

Voting for school council matters because the mini-democracies are able to hire and fire principals, make budget decisions, and, at some schools, decide on whether to keep stationed officers.

Chicago Public Schools leaders tried at the start of the year to stoke enthusiasm for Local School Council elections. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. A coalition of parent groups and civil rights attorneys now say the district was underprepared for the election, leaving too many parents and community members unaware and jeopardizing the integrity of election by not ensuring ballots were printed correctly nor communicating how votes will be counted safely and securely.

Elementary schools voted Wednesday, and high schools will vote Thursday. Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson said Wednesday that she hoped a record number of candidates would draw a record number of voters. “The next two days are extremely important for the Chicago Public Schools community,” she said.

The results and voting data won’t be in until Dec. 1. But early reports signaled challenges at some campuses and a smooth voting experience at others.

By late afternoon, a hotline set up by the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights had received about a dozen calls about delayed poll openings, misprinted ballots, and general confusion.

“The big theme of day has been a basic lack of planning from CPS — something we were concerned about and the reason why we sent so many advocacy letters,” said Timna Axel, the director of communications for the lawyers committee.

A spokesperson said the district developed a staffing plan, with backup judges at the ready, to ensure polling sites were operational, and contested any reports of understaffed polling locations. It also staffed a command center to support election polling sites throughout the day.

Still, voters said variously they mistrusted the mail-in ballots and didn’t see enough candidate information online.

Councils were required to hold virtual candidate forums, and encouraged to put up candidate statements.

“There was a forum in October, but there are no statements and no recording that I can find,” parent Elizabeth Dowling said. “There’s nothing on the school Facebook page or webpage. Should I vote so blind? I don’t know.”

Troy LaRaviere, head of the principals association, told the school board Wednesday that the district didn’t provide principals enough support to run the elections at their schools. Some lacked election judges.

“They are telling principals to ‘just make it work,’” said LaRaviere, a former principal and frequent critic of district policies. “Do you have any idea how much frustration, anxiety and stress you are creating?” he asked the school board Wednesday.

A handful of voters who cast their ballots Wednesday said they found the process straightforward and mostly safe.

Tim Lacy, the chair of Swift Elementary’s council, said he found voting to be quiet and orderly at school, though he did see an election judge not wearing a mask inside the building.

Lacy, who is running for his second term, said he hoped to make the council, in the Edgewater neighborhood, more welcoming to immigrant and refugee families. But with little translation available, the council relied on the school’s “Friends Of” group to handle most outreach to those families.

Established in 1989 to provide parent and staff input into the running of schools, Chicago’s Local School Councils were heralded as a way to empower communities. In recent years, participation has fallen off and some members have complained of lack of training training or resources to effectively wield their power.

This year, elections drew 5,910 candidates, a 4.5% increase over last year. The number of seats without a candidate declined to 696, a 21.4% drop.

Still, Axel, of the Lawyers Committee, said she’s worried.

“Folks are not participating because they don’t trust that their vote count, that they are going to be able to vote anonymously and without reprisal, and, at some schools, that they are going to be physically safe,” she said.

“The lack of engagement is the more tragic part of this whole thing.”

Chicago Public Schools said it did not have any preliminary numbers on first-day turnout but that “many” community members voted both at the polls and curbside.

Counting will begin at schools on Dec. 1, and vote challenges may be filed from Dec. 2 to 4. New council members will begin their terms on Jan. 11, and serve for 18 months.

Natasha Erskine, parent organizer with Raise Your Hand, said that among the difficulties, she saw bright spots: a significant number of new candidates and positive energy among voters. “Folks are out there doing what they are doing in their cute masks and participating in this democratic process.”

Two Chicago charters to keep virtual learning until the new year; CPS hasn’t announced plans

2020-10-10T01:18:28+00:00

Two of Chicago’s largest charter school networks announced this week they are sticking with virtual learning for the second quarter based on family input, while Chicago Public Schools also remains in remote learning but has not announced its plans nor broadly consulted parents as a possible reopening deadline draws near.

Chicago International Charter Schools and Acero, which each oversee more than a dozen campuses, said they surveyed parents and found a majority preferred to continue learning remotely.

Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools says a decision is coming soon but has not said when.

A month from the start of the second quarter on Nov. 9, district leaders have disclosed little about the ins and outs of their decision-making, the timing, or how they are engaging with the city’s powerful teachers union. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have said they are prioritizing the needs of children, not adults, and that they still want to see school buildings reopen given the academic and other benefits of in-person learning to students.

In the absence of any districtwide survey on second quarter reopening, parents say it’s time for the district to solicit their feedback and lay out what metrics will determine the final call. Families say they lack information on school plans, as many struggle through remote learning, balancing work and child care, or making sure their children’s special education needs are met.

“Every kid is different, even with special needs,” said Jeannie Liu, the parent of a high school student with Down syndrome. In deciding whether to go back to campus, “some are not able to because the families are concerned of their immune systems but others are able to. The choice should be given and not made for them.”

The teachers union, another big stakeholder in any reopening of Chicago schools, also is pressing for more consultation. “We don’t even have a hypothetical sketch of a plan,” Stacy Davis Gates, the union vice president, said. “It’s difficult for us to react to something that doesn’t exist.”

A reality that changes daily

Chicago’s metrics give mixed messages and change daily. Its COVID-19 test positivity rates now hover around 4.2%, which could permit a cautious reopening. But the COVID death recently of a district first-grade teacher has rattled the school community. Case counts remain high in some Black and Latino ZIP codes where many students and essential workers live.

Meanwhile, progress toward reopening school buildings in the Chicago suburbs and in urban districts such as Miami-Dade and Denver is putting pressure on district leaders.

Tracy Occomy Crowder, of the group Community Organizing and Family Issues, which advocates for parents of color, said parents are eager to weigh in.

“Parents want to be consulted about how this is working out,” she said. “They definitely want to be surveyed before any decisions are made about going back in the buildings.”

District officials, in an email about the upcoming Indigenous People’s Day holiday, said this: “We will provide an update on the second quarter in the near future. Parent input will remain an important consideration, and we will be engaging you as soon as possible.”

In Chicago’s mayoral-controlled district, Lightfoot likely will make the final call, though her office said the announcement will come from Chicago Public Schools officials.

Last summer, the district convened a task force of employees and representatives of the private and charter sectors to advise it on reopening. It has not assembled a similar group recently.

The district hasn’t shared data on parent preferences this fall, but last summer a survey showed more than one-third did not feel comfortable sending their children to school. Black and Latino families were even more reluctant.

This week Lightfoot said the city was working toward providing some in-person learning. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that children learn best, particularly our youngest children, with in-person instruction,” she said Wednesday.

She also said she was following the experience of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has reopened 150-plus campuses. The city also is examining data from child care centers it is running. “We’re tracking everything,” Deputy Mayor of Education Sybil Madison said Thursday. “So far we haven’t seen anything terribly concerning.”

Neighboring decision-makers

Parent feedback determined the course for both Acero and CICS, the charter operators said this week.

In an email Friday to CICS families, interim network chief Christine Leung said CICS’s 14 schools would remain remote until at least early January.

“An overwhelming majority of parents and guardians indicated they were not yet comfortable with their children returning to school buildings, and this information was a critical factor in our decision-making process,” wrote Leung, who promised the network would revisit the decision in December.

Acero, which runs 16 schools, told families that a recent survey showed nearly 60% of respondents favored remote learning. “Scholars are deeply engaged in learning as demonstrated by an average 93% daily student attendance rate across our network,” a statement on the networks’ website said.

Any return to hybrid learning, Acero officials said, would include a new parent survey, input from Chicago Public Schools, and a transition agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the network’s teachers.

In contrast, the Archdiocese of Chicago says it will stick with in-person learning.

In a Friday interview, Justin Lombardo, the archdiocese’s chief human resources officer and the point person on reopening schools, said the schools only once has had two coronavirus diagnoses indicating possible transmission within a “cohort” — groups of 15 to 23 students who spend the school day together.

He declined to provide the number of COVID-19 cases among students and employees or the number of school quarantines imposed.

He noted that Catholic schools tend to be smaller than district schools and often can take advantage of parish space to place students apart — an ability that may not translate to other settings.

Lombardo said an archdiocese team responds to COVID cases with rapid contact tracing and 14-day quarantines of student cohorts.

“We are really comprehensive about this,” he said. “That’s led to very, very good outcomes for us.”

Labor ruling could complicate Chicago’s fall school reopening timeline

2020-10-05T15:13:26+00:00

The latest ruling in a labor dispute between Chicago’s teachers union and the public school district could complicate efforts to reopen school buildings later this fall.

An arbitrator for the state labor board, Jeanne Charles, sided with the union in a case about whether school clerks had to return to school buildings amid the coronavirus pandemic and said the district should err on the side of providing an opportunity for remote work.

“Although the board has made efforts to mitigate the risk, subjecting these employees to increased risk of COVID-19 infection for work that can be performed remotely does not fulfill CPS’s contractual promise that its employees work in ‘safe and healthful conditions,’” Charles wrote.

The school district said the decision, issued late last week by a state labor board judge, sets an impossible bar. District officials said they will dispute the finding.

The ruling comes in response to an unfair labor practice lawsuit filed by the union this summer. The union argued school clerks shouldn’t be required to work in-person if another option is possible, and that bringing in employees violated the contractual promise for a safe working environment.

In response, school officials called the ruling “deeply flawed,” and promised to contest the decision. “The arbitrator’s deeply flawed ruling substitutes actual public health standards for her own judgments and doesn’t find any actual deficiencies in the district’s plan or a single building where conditions are unsafe,” said spokesman Michael Passman.

How this dispute is resolved could have implications for whether the country’s third-largest school district brings students back into school buildings on Nov. 9. The school year started virtually for all students in district-run schools, and so far, Chicago has offered little information on when or how it would decide to resume in-person schooling, even as a decision date looms.

Like many districts vacillating between whether to provide in-person or remote schooling amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chicago must weigh concerns about COVID-19 contagion from in-person learning with increasingly vocal complaints about student struggles with remote learning.

Most New York City schools haven’t even been open a full week, and already the mayor plans to close 100 schools in virus hot spots. In Chicago, the death of a first grade teacher in Chicago Public Schools last week, and reports that a person who attended in-person SAT testing at Lane Tech High School last month tested positive, have also put the spotlight on the risks of reopening buildings.

But district leaders have acknowledged that remote learning has limitations, particularly for the district’s most vulnerable children. Families of special education students, for example, have said their children are not receiving services, and some interventions are difficult to provide remotely.

The arbitrator’s ruling found that reporting to work increased the danger of contracting COVID-19, and remote work was the only way to fully eliminate the risk. Therefore, the district should err on the side of providing an opportunity for remote work.

The arbitrator gave the union and district two days to agree on which of the clerks’ duties can be performed remotely and those that need to be handled in person. Without an agreement, the arbitrator would impose a resolution.

School district officials have said that some tasks, such as student registration, must be done in-person. The union has argued those tasks could be done remotely if necessary.

At a Monday morning press conference, union officials said that 1,000 clerks, tech coordinators, and other staff who worked remotely in the spring were asked to return to buildings this fall to register students and take on other duties; many of them did not receives sufficient protective equipment, the union said.

“These schools are deplorable,” said school clerk Sabrina Woods. “They have no PPE.”

The district insisted again that employees reporting to buildings are provided with safe working conditions, with measures including face coverings, temperature checks, and sneeze guards.

The union also raised concerns about aging ventilation systems in schools, an issue that has taken center stage nationally. The district vowed to complete air quality checks before it considers reopening schools and said it was installing new air filters at every school.

The city said this summer that it would pursue a hybrid learning plan as long as the number of new daily cases stayed below 400 a day without other concerning factors, such as an increase in hospitalizations, and said an overall positivity rate below 5% was a positive indicator for a possible return to school. It has not said what metrics it would use to make a determination for a second quarter return to school buildings.

But the union has argued that the city’s overall positivity rate of 4.3% does not reflect higher case counts in some Black and Latino communities, where many school support staff and clerks live and work.

While the union threatened a strike ahead of initial fall plans to reopen schools, and has been critical of recent plans to bring special education students in for select services, leaders stressed that they weren’t wholesale against the reopening of schools, but needed to see a more concrete safety plan from the district.

“The people who do the frontline work have to be part of the discussion and decision of how to make schools run safely,” union president Jesse Sharkey said Monday morning. “This continues to be a public health emergency.

Thousands of students are missing from Chicago’s virtual classrooms. Here’s the plan to find them.

2020-09-23T23:31:05+00:00

Chicago Public Schools said that 49,000 students failed to log into classrooms on the first day of remote learning, a figure it has now winnowed down to fewer than 6,900 after expanded outreach efforts.

The figures released at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting offer the first look at how many of Chicago’s 300,000 students the school district is still trying to contact. They are a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges that Chicago faces in connecting with students remotely.

After school buildings closed in the spring, the district also reported thousands of missing students. Now, with a fresh start to the school year, officials detailed new protocols to find them, including tens of thousands of phone calls to vulnerable students, a mass flyering campaign led by Safe Passage workers, and security guards trained for home visits.

District leaders said they have continued to get in touch with new students this week, the third since school started, in large part due to their broad outreach efforts. As of last Friday, the number of students marked “did not arrive” was 2,680.

“We did have a smooth opening to the school year,” LaTanya McDade, chief education officer, said. “We extended the time to allow phone calls and outreach, and saw results with kids engaging with school.”

Those outreach efforts have expanded significantly this school year compared to last spring, when the responsibility for tracking down the thousands of students who fell out of touch in the first weeks of remote learning fell primarily on individual schools. (A revised figure released by the district at the end of the year counted 559 students as off-the-grid for most of the spring.)

Since August, central office staff, bus aides, and Safe Passage workers have been making daily phone calls to students who are homeless, attending Chicago schools for the first time or in key transitions such as ninth grade. The staff members let them know school was starting, and checked to see if students had internet and device access.

As of Tuesday, nearly 35,000 families had received those calls, according to the district. Safe Passage workers, who are usually employed to stand on street corners before and after school to look out for students as they commute, handed out nearly 60,000 flyers around the city.

This school year the district will also take a more centralized approach to home visits. The district trained 1,317 security officers to visit students that schools couldn’t reach by other means, with a focus on the 100 schools with lowest attendance.

It has also spent $50 million to get low-income students internet access, with an ambitious goal of signing up 100,000 students. So far, about a quarter of that number have signed up.

Still, board members expressed concern Wednesday about efforts to contact students. Not only have some Chicago communities been deeply affected by COVID-19 deaths and financial uncertainty, enrollment also affects district finances.

“Chief McDade, how are we going to contact the 6,900 students?” board president Miguel Del Valle asked Wednesday.

In response, McDade said outreach efforts would continue. “All of the efforts I described have not stopped,” she said. “In the coming weeks, we will be able to give a more accurate picture.”

District officials also said the number of students who registered but didn’t come to class was not a function of remote learning, and that there was often a gap between students who registered and the district’s final 20th day enrollment calculation.

Last spring, a Chalkbeat analysis showed that the schools that struggled most to contact all of their students were in Black and Latino communities hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic; they also were more likely to have a higher percentage of Black students and students who receive subsidized lunch.

At the start of each school year, some students who register for Chicago schools never show up, either because they moved out of the district or choose to send their children to charter or private schools. The district marks those students as “did not arrive” after the first day of school.

This year, rather than removing students from the class rolls, schools were instructed to continue marking all registered students as absent, while the district, and individual schools, continued outreach efforts.

Attendance data from the first day of school showed 84% of students attended on the first day, down 10 percentage points from the 94% rate the district met the last several years. Those numbers varied widely at the campus level, with some schools reaching attendance rates upwards of 95%, while others reported closer to 60% of students participating on the first day. Schools that had trouble reaching students in the spring tended to have lower attendance rates.

Even as they have received district support, individual schools have still worked to create parent engagement systems and help families adjust to remote learning.

At Brunson Math & Science Specialty School in Austin, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19, only 52% of students logged on the first day, far below the district average of 84%.

Principal Carol Diane Wilson said that wasn’t for lack of trying. Over the summer her staff updated the contact information of more than 300 parents, planned outreach meetings, and asked students to reach out to their friends, all in an effort to secure engagement at the school, where 84% of students are low income. Over the first few days of school, the number of students logging in climbed to 83% as parents overcame internet issues and difficulties logging in.

Still Wilson said she expected a drop in enrollment, largely driven by the COVID-19 crisis. “COVID has run rampant in this area. We have a lot of parents coming in to get food distribution, we have a lot of families that are doubling up,” said Wilson. “I do foresee a drop in enrollment and I’m just hoping that once this pandemic is done, enrollment will increase.”

Suder Montessori Magnet School, in the wealthier West Loop neighborhood and with only 45% of students living below the poverty line, started the first day with a 98% attendance rate. The principal, Bosede Bada, said the spring was a disaster.

In an effort to better prepare for fall, her staff conducted a digital needs survey over the summer. Then, for the first week of school, Bada and her staff cleared their schedules to address technology issues. Many students logged on, but some did not. “The children that need the most support are the children that we often have a very hard time getting in contact with,” Bada said.

Now, she hopes to continue to build relationships in her school so students stay engaged. “When you have a strong connection with a child or a family, you have to leverage that connection to get the students engaged.”

Still, even as students log on, schools must turn their attention to keeping them engaged. The district has returned to pre-pandemic attendance taking.

Foreman College and Career Academy had the highest percentage of students in the district who didn’t log into remote learning in the spring, with 26%. On the first day of school this year, Foreman had 71% attendance.

Jessica Cipicchio, a special education teacher at Foreman, said that most of her students eventually came to class, but they still struggled to regularly engage while juggling school, work and family responsibilities, all made more urgent by the pandemic. “This online learning is hard,” Cipicchio said. “We are seeing a lot of things we saw in the spring.”

Chicago could bring some special education students into school for services under new plan

2020-09-21T21:07:25+00:00

Chicago is floating a plan to reopen school buildings to some special education students for in-person therapeutic services such as physical therapy or vision screenings.

The proposal would be Chicago’s first effort to reopen schools to students since schools reopened this fall in an all-virtual format — and a broader step toward addressing widespread concerns that remote learning is leaving special education students stranded without critical support.

Still, the city’s teachers’ union opposes the plan, whose timing isn’t clear, arguing that there is no safe option for in-person learning, either for teachers or vulnerable students.

The district’s proposal would offer only some students limited in-person services — hearing and vision screenings, special education evaluations, and occupational and physical therapy. Both the district and union have recognized that some therapeutic services are best offered in person, but they differ on whether a small-scale return to schools is justifiable with Chicago positivity rates hovering at 4.6%.

“The district’s highest priority is health and safety and CPS strongly believes that specific types of student services — including hearing and vision tests and physical therapy — can be delivered in-person safely and must be delivered in-person for our most vulnerable students to benefit,” said Emily Bolton, a spokeswoman for Chicago Public Schools.

What happens next could be a trial run for how the district will address safety concerns, and labor disputes, around any plans to return to in-person schooling in Chicago this year. The district started school remotely this fall, but has said that it will reopen school buildings for some in-person learning in early November if health officials deem it safe.

Since buildings closed in the spring, parents of children with disabilities have sounded the alarm, saying remote learning feels unsustainable and they aren’t able to meet the complex needs of their children the way a raft of school professionals could.

One concern for the school district to address is evaluating students for special education services and offering an individualized education plan, or IEP, eligibility meeting for parents within the required 60-day time frame.

This will require some clinicians to be in person to assist in identifying a child’s disability. Evaluations are required by federal law. In late April, the U.S. Department of Education did not recommend waiving any parts of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act despite the coronavirus pandemic. Chicago is running out of time to meet this requirement.

Special education advocates also say giving families the choice of receiving some services in person would be a step toward supporting Chicago’s diverse learners through a time of uncertainty.

“There are students who cannot use online learning platforms due to their disabilities,” said Chris Yun, educational policy analyst at Access Living, an advocacy center for people with disabilities. “I think that the key is consent. If a student needs in-person services and her parent also consents to such services, there should be a way to receive in-person services.”

But union officials, speaking on a press call Monday, cited the 258 COVID-19 cases among Chicago Public Schools staff since March and said there was no safe option for clinicians working in schools. (It’s not clear how many of the cases stemmed from work on campuses.)

“My major concern is that we are placing high-risk students in a potentially compromising situation,” said clinician Sharon Gunn.

Bringing students back into buildings, even for select services, would be a significant logistical undertaking. Clinicians in Chicago schools often work with students at multiple schools, and have caseloads with more than 50 students, say union officials.

School officials may also have to consider how to safely bus students to schools for services. By federal law, schools are mandated to provide bus service to those with special needs.

One part of the conversation is a proposal to revisit individual clinicians’ caseloads and potentially reassign some students. That approach could help address concerns about workers moving between schools, but union leaders say such a shift also would undo the months of relationship building clinicians have done with parents so far.

“For the first time, as therapists, we have connected with parents in a way we’ve never had the opportunity to do before,” Gunn said. “We have become more creative and innovative in the way services are delivered.”

Some other Illinois school districts have prioritized in-person learning for children with disabilities, homeless students, and preschoolers in their reopening plans. How Chicago structures its reopening plan this fall will be closely watched. The district initially proposed a hybrid learning plan but scuttled it in August after coronavirus case loads resurged.

Every student in the district is learning virtually until November; however, school buildings are open for free meals and device distribution. Principals or a designated administrator, security guards, custodians, engineers, warehouse staff, and food service personnel have worked in school buildings since March.

For staff already working in schools, the district provides an online symptom screening questionnaire, requires masks (as per state law) and recently installed sneeze guards at every school. The district also allows employees who are not comfortable working in buildings, but whose job includes that requirement, to apply for special accommodations or a leave of absence.

Still, at least 258 school district employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since March and eight have died, though a district spokeswoman said workplace transmission was unlikely to have caused most of the infections seen in district employees or contractors.

The union is also in the middle of another dispute over the school district’s decision to require some clerks to return to campuses. The labor relations board is still accepting briefs on the issue this month.

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A fraction of Chicago students flagged for summer school completed it

2020-09-18T19:08:41+00:00

Only about a fifth of Chicago students who were eligible to attend summer school programs completed them this year.

Slightly more than a quarter of students the district flagged for its Summer Bridge program — for elementary and middle school students who did not meet criteria to advance to the next grade — finished that program. But because of a policy change amid the pandemic, all those students were automatically passed on to the next grade, even if they did not participate in summer school.

Nationally, some educators saw the summer session as an opportunity to make up for a spring rife with disruption from the coronavirus outbreak. But for a variety of reasons — from technological hurdles to families yearning for a break from sometimes dispiriting remote learning experiences — many students in Chicago and other districts did not enroll in the entirely online program.

“While the district hoped that more eligible students would participate in voluntary virtual summer learning to mitigate learning loss, we also recognize that challenges related to the ongoing pandemic likely exacerbated existing barriers to participation,” Chicago Public Schools said in a statement.

The 300,000-student district flagged more than 58,600 students as eligible for summer programs. About 21,600 enrolled, and just more than 14,200 completed them.

Only about 10% of elementary and middle students eligible for a special program for English language learners enrolled and completed it. A higher proportion of students with special needs participated in an extended school year program: Roughly half of 5,700 students finished that program.

Chicago did not have the number of students eligible for Summer Bridge in previous years readily available, but it said about two-thirds of students who enrolled in that program in each of the past two years completed it, compared with more than 68% in 2020. About 4,430 students enrolled in Summer Bridge in 2019; 8,635 did this past summer.

The district touted its summer efforts to expand student access to computers and the internet, and said its leaders are “encouraged by a significant increase in participation from the spring.”

Officials stressed all summer learning was optional for students, though schools highly recommended it for those who were eligible.

With a dearth of meaningful data to evaluate remote learning, student participation numbers offer a rare and important window.

Last spring, slightly more than 5% of the grades that high school students received were non-passing grades, according to districtwide data. In elementary schools, a significantly higher portion got incompletes — about 10% of elementary students overall. That percentage, which represented a marked increase over previous years, meant many more elementary students qualified for summer school.

The district said that because remote participation for younger students depends more on parent support, schools stepped up efforts to reach out to families over the summer.

“We are confident that students will have an improved remote learning experience this fall,” the district’s statement said.

How this Chicago special education teacher helps students build connections, even remotely

2020-09-15T15:14:27+00:00

When Artemis Kolovos noticed that her students were having trouble making friends and working through conflict, she began brainstorming about how to address the issue.

Kolovos, who teaches special education students at Budlong Elementary, a preK-8 campus near Lincoln Square, knew that what happened at lunchtime would eventually make its way into her middle grades classroom. So she introduced a novel called “Freak the Mighty,” about two young boys whose friendship helps them face physical and emotional challenges.

“We realized that we needed to address these topics directly and in a way that students could connect to,” said Kolovos, who became a teacher after mentoring a young person who she felt wasn’t being adequately supported at their school.

Now, as the coronavirus pandemic has shut down school buildings, Kolovos said social connections are even more important. And not just for students — for teachers, too.

Having a support group of “teachers being there emotionally to recognize the challenges we all face and remind each other we need to breathe sometimes,” said Kolovos. “Don’t teach in isolation. This advice has been invaluable to me.”

During an interview with Kolovos, she laid out her tips for engaging students and creating community with teachers, and she explained why feedback is crucial to learning.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

I was working as a headhunter actually for the brokerage community. I found it emotionally unsatisfying and a little depressing. I started volunteering my extra time as a tutor with Volunteers for America. I had a student whom I looked forward to meeting with every week. We were both frustrated with his homework as it had little to do with what he was learning in class and even less to do with his everyday life. I knew I could help.

I knew from experience that students liked to see their own lives represented in material. I felt more prepared not only to share stories from more diverse cultures but to use examples of individuals from different walks of life. Hearing about others, who students can make a connection with, will spark curiosity, which is the first step in learning.

How did you decide to specialize in working with diverse learners (special education students)?

While I was in school, I watched my sister try and navigate specialized services for her daughter. I was at first attracted to learning about the rights of students with special needs. I decided this was the area for me once I learned the impact quality services had on a student with diverse needs.

How did you get to know your students before the pandemic, and how are you getting to know them remotely?

At my school we have committed to building relationships. This means we prioritize getting to know our students in the first two weeks. I plan welcoming lessons together with my team, which focus on identity and community building. There are a number of trust-building activities as well as opportunities for students to reflect on what makes them unique.

This year, we are adjusting our “brown bag” get-to-know-you activities on the virtual site. We still want to hear voices, but we have to teach new chat features or visual hand signals for agreement. It takes some getting used to, but our students are flexible!

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach. Where did the idea come from?

For the past few years my English co-teacher and I have taught a unit on the novel “Freak the Mighty,” by Rodman Philbrick. We weave many social-emotional learning lessons into this unit about being a good friend, building self-confidence, and accepting others as they are. The idea came when we started seeing more interpersonal challenges at school, particularly with friendships. We realized that we needed to address these topics directly and in a way that students could connect to.

We’re going through an undoubtedly historical period. How does that affect what goes on inside your class?

My class is a microcosm in that we have diverse representations of our neighborhood and city as whole. Without a doubt, we have students directly impacted at home. Through this uncertainty, we must first offer some stability. My co-teachers and I are finding opportunities to teach anti-racism and celebrate our diversity by reflecting on lessons from history.

One approach is picture walks. In class we often used pictures of sit-ins from the civil rights movement and had students rotate with post-it notes to add noticings, comments, or questions. This generated good discussions. During remote learning we tried a similar activity using a photo of a young lady protesting from the summer. It proved valuable to have students consider the young lady’s perspective and consider her motivations before jumping into discussions about civil unrest in Chicago.

During distance learning, many students may have fallen behind (or further behind). How do you plan to help them catch up?

Yes, with this in mind it is important to ground all learning with a rationale. Students need to buy into learning and be engaged. Along those lines, I am definitely learning to apply new platforms that can capture attention and allow students to interact with lessons fluidly. Some of my favorites are Peardeck and Nearpod. My co-teachers and I are using this to elicit direct responses from students in our power points and conduct quick student polls. They seem to enjoy this especially as they can add images to their responses and “like” each other’s input.

What does a close network of support for teachers look like when everyone is remote?

Teachers sharing resources, jumping on video calls when necessary to troubleshoot. Teachers volunteering to tutor others on new tech skills or with new platforms. Teachers being there emotionally to recognize the challenges we all face and remind each other we need to breathe sometimes!

Recommend a book that has helped you be a better teacher, and explain why.

“Growth Mindset,” by Carol Dweck. I have used excerpts and visuals of the brain to motivate students each year to take learning into their own hands. Really, this has made me a better teacher because I am not afraid to raise my expectations. Especially with math, I realized that students in the past had negative self concepts that kept them from taking risks. I now am very purposeful in my feedback and consider how I can get students to not fear mistakes but learn from them.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about teaching?

Don’t teach in isolation. This advice has been invaluable to me. The past few years in particular, I have cultivated a close network of support. In my building, it is my grade. We are different in age and our backgrounds, but we trust each other. This allows us to support new ideas and lift up team members when one has a bad day. I realize it is essential we model this first, if we expect our students to do the same.

Correction: This story originally said Budlong Elementary was located in Lincoln Park.

For some Chicago high school students, remote learning brings a new school struggle: motivation

2020-09-14T14:39:46+00:00

Darius Stanley and his friend Trinity Colon loved high school. For the two student athletes, the hallways of George Washington High School in South Chicago sometimes felt like their own personal version of High School Musical, the energetic film series.

“I love my school. It’s like a giant community,” said Darius, 16, a volleyball player and member of the student council. “Always fun while still learning.”

Then the color drained out of the picture, as the coronavirus pandemic abruptly forced school closures during the spring and an all-remote start to the new school year this fall.

Without the excitement of seeing friends in person after the summer or the anticipation of sitting in a new teacher’s classroom, both Darius and Trinity found themselves nodding off during the long days of remote learning, or the lunch breaks, during the first few days of school.

Unlike some other students, Darius and Trinity had overcome the biggest hurdles to remote learning — securing home internet and a working device — but they found themselves staring down a more intractable challenge: how to stay motivated over a screen.

“Self-motivation is a thing I have to have every single day,” said Darius, who added that it often helped to have teachers and other classmates to keep up his energy level. “I tell myself that I need to prepare myself to keep my own space up and keep myself involved.”

In an effort to make up for lost time in the spring, Chicago Public Schools has mandated a virtual learning day similar in length to what students would experience on campus during a normal school year. But the six-hour day already has caused a backlash, with complaints from some parents and the teachers union.

The stakes are high. With more than 300,000 students learning online this fall and an unclear timeline for when in-person schooling could resume, whether students can learn remotely matters.

Darius, Trinity, and Julissa Reyes, three high school students at George Washington, are all active and engaged students. They play sports. They are excited about participating in the rigorous International Baccalaureate program offered at their school. But they’ve also struggled with the transition to remote learning.

Looking back

In the first months after school buildings closed, Trinity struggled to engage with school.

Usually a straight-A student, she felt like she was in a fog. She described days spent overwhelmed with information about the coronavirus. She missed her dad; because her parents are separated, he lived in another home, and the pandemic had cut short their visits. Meanwhile, she was struggling to find the motivation to engage in online classes.

When this school year started, she tried to tackle that problem, but it was hard. She missed the first day outfits, personalized supplies, and plans to decorate her locker — all back-to-school rituals that usually made her excited to return to school.

“It seems silly, but that kinda stuff has been normal for a while and it’s sad not being able to carry out those same traditions,” she said.

So she spent the night before the first day of school channeling her low-key stress into some redecoration. The high school sophomore rearranged her room to have a desk area for remote learning,keeping in mind that “people will be able to see my house now. 😅,” Trinity said in a text message.

“I’m still trying to remain optimistic and making up for the lost traditions in other ways like putting a lot of effort/time in creating a special physical and digital space for myself,” she said.

For Darius, bringing some normalcy back into the school year has meant getting creative about new social channels and establishing some boundaries in his home. The 16 year old lives with his brother and a cousin; three other cousins from across the street often spend school days at his home. “It gets chaotic,” he said.

In the first few days, it felt strange to put introductions into a Google form instead of saying them out loud or to hear one person’s voice at a time instead of the ambient noise of a full classroom.

So he tried to recreate some of the unity that comes from being together, in class: “As soon as I found out the roster for the class I immediately made a group chat,” he said. “It made it feel like, ‘ok we are still all in this together, we are still in class together.’”

A joint effort

Students say individual teachers and the school itself have helped them adjust.

At George Washington, which dubs itself “your neighborhood high school where college is the mission,” the school’s website offers any students “lost” on the first day the opportunity to connect to a Google meet with their counselors or the front office.

Julissa Reyes, a junior who lives with her mom and older sister, said she has appreciated teachers being real with students.

They have participated in the virtual icebreaker activities as students get to know each other, whether by making a presentation about hobbies or playing a game called “Two Truths and a Lie.”

“They kind of opened up themselves a lot over the last few days,” she said.

Last spring, she felt overwhelmed by the amount of schoolwork in the first confusing weeks of remote learning, with teachers trying to make sure students finished their learning requirements. As an IB student, “I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with everything.”

So far, the workload this year seems fine, she said.

“Once the classes started the teachers were very understanding from the students’ point of view,” she said.

Darius noticed that teachers this year seem aware of the larger issues happening outside of the classroom, and they haven’t hesitated to address them virtually. Teachers have asked students their gender pronouns. They also have discussed race and racism, big issues in the news this summer as the protesters across the country marched against police violence toward Black people.

“I like that our teachers are bringing awareness to that,” he said.

Trinity said it has been easier to connect with teachers and students in some classes, but not others. She prefers when teachers give students the option to turn off their videos, even though a district directive encouraging students to turn on their cameras.

“There’s classes where teachers demand cameras to be on and make things uncomfortable for students,” she said. In others, “teachers are trying to be as inclusive & understanding as possible.”

Trinity is all-too-aware that she has some things that many of her classmates lack: a desk, working technology, and a quiet set up.

In the good moments, she says she’s adjusting. In other moments, it feels hard to get used to this new normal: “Off the bat, that looks like it could be a struggle.”

More than 80% of Chicago students logged on for the first day of virtual learning, but some schools struggled more than others

2020-09-11T16:08:00+00:00

On the first day of remote learning in Chicago schools, 84.2% of students attended online classes, a 10 percentage point drop from the usual first-day figures that have hovered around 94% for the past several years.

But attendance rates tended to vary widely on the campus level, with some schools reaching attendance rates upwards of 95%, while others reported closer to 60% of students participating on the first day.

Schools chief Janice Jackson said she was “proud” of the broader efforts to connect with students, a positive sign for a district that has struggled to equip all students with devices and internet access ahead of the school year.

“The overwhelming majority of our students showed up ready and eager to learn on the first day of school, and I am so proud of our staff and school communities who have been working tirelessly over the summer to ensure families had what they need to log in on day one,” said Jackson in a statement.

The data also shows a steady increase in attendance over the first three days of school, with student participation clocking in at 90.2% by the third day of school.

Still, that rate is lower than last year’s in-person attendance on the first day, a stark reminder of the challenges faced by Chicago families amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

A closer look at the school-by-school data shows that attendance rates generally follow the same patterns as previous years when students attended classes in-person, with campuses with more white students reporting higher attendance rates, while schools with significant percentages of Black or special education students tended to report lower rates.

In the data released Friday, schools that had trouble reaching students in the spring, when remote learning first started, tended to have lower attendance rates. Meanwhile, around 20% of schools did not report first-day attendance rates at all. The majority of these schools were charter, but some district schools were also missing data.

How the pandemic will impact Chicago’s enrollment more broadly remains a critical question. The numbers don’t capture how many students and families left the school district in advance of the fall, either seeking out seats in districts that reopened buildings or who unenrolled to homeschool children. The district, which has reported steady declines in overall enrollment over the past decade, typically releases enrollment data after the 20th day of school.

In advance of fall, district officials said they stepped up efforts to reach families ahead of the school year. That has included enlisting hundreds of district staff, along with bus aides and Safe Passage workers, to call families and distribute fliers in neighborhoods.

In the spring, many families struggled to connect to the internet. This year, district officials said they are stepping up efforts to reach families about a new $50 million initiative, “Chicago Connected,” which aims to connect low-income students to the internet.

But they have run into a “trust gap”: skepticism in some communities that they would get this service for free, no strings attached. The program so far has signed up a quarter of the 100,000 students that officials estimate can benefit from it.

‘We are all first-year teachers today’: Chicago educators start unprecedented school year with ambitions, questions

2020-09-08T20:16:59+00:00

As the morning dawned gray and rainy in Chicago on the first day of an unprecedented school year, teachers expressed first-day jitters unlike those they’d experienced in previous years.

“We are all first-year teachers today,” said Christel Williams-Hayes, the recording secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union.

That sentiment seemed to be felt across the district, as teachers shared hopes, ambitions, and a lot of questions on the first day of an all-virtual start to the school year.

The teachers union offered a window Tuesday into some of the common concerns: Will internet access hold up for each of the district’s 355,000 students and tens of thousands of educators? Are there sufficient accommodations for students with disabilities? And how will educators keep young people engaged for six hours a day when teaching through a screen?

Lauren Kullman, a drama teacher at Nightingale Elementary in Gage Park, said she was excited and had arranged multiple monitors in her home office. She had contingency plans if the internet went out or if she needed to assist one of her small children. “I feel like I’m producing the Emmys or something,” she said.

At an eerily quiet South Side elementary school on Tuesday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson toured classrooms with the principal and passed out caramel apples to a handful of teachers who opted to come in and take advantage of a district policy that lets educators work from school buildings.

The only echo of previous back-to-school celebrations: A moment where, in front of cameras, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Jackson rang the traditional bronze bell to signal the start of school. “This is a ritual,” said Jackson, ringing the bell with a smile. “We have to try to bring back as much normalcy as possible.”

But nothing else rang familiar. The schools chief — a former teacher and principal — said she’d woken up on the first day also uncertain what the year would bring. “I had a lot of questions when I woke up this morning about what this school year was going to look like. How do you get the excitement of the first day? How do you package that in a remote environment? It’s hard walking through a school and not hearing kids voices in the hallway.”

At Nightingale Elementary, Kullman only had a half day to reach out to parents and students before the new year. She wasn’t sure who would be able to log on for the first day.

She also worried about the effects of coronavirus-related trauma on her school community. Nightingale is located in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Gage Park, an area hit hard by COVID-19. “The thing that I’m most nervous about is not seeing some of them for the past six months and really checking in with them,” she said.

On Tuesday, Jackson stressed that despite the unusual circumstances of this school year, she expected a certain level of academic rigor.

“Last week, we announced a record high grad rate, and I expect to see record-high numbers throughout this school year,” said Jackson, referencing Chicago’s improvement trajectory on several different metrics — from test scores to college enrollment — across recent years.

For now, some teachers said they are trying to shore up as much excitement as possible and to bring that energy into the homes of their students.

Nina Hike, a chemistry teacher at Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side, said in a classroom it’s easy to gauge students’ energy. But now “I feel like my energy is going to come through the computer screen,” she said.

Her fall curriculum will teach students about the chemistry they see in their home on a regular basis, and she has purchased small beakers and flasks to help illustrate her teaching. “They’ll feel my excitement to teach.”

For many Chicago communities, there is no COVID safety net. So teachers are stepping in.

2020-09-08T10:00:00+00:00

Amid the first chaotic weeks of remote learning last spring, as headlines flashed a growing unemployment rate and businesses across Chicago shut down, Rebecca Coven’s students were suddenly missing class. The reason? Work.

Like thousands of people across Chicago, the students at Sullivan High School in Rogers Park found themselves facing an economic crisis. In some cases, a family’s main breadwinner had died of the virus. In others, parents lost jobs or had their income cut. Some of Sullivan’s immigrant families weren’t eligible for government aid. In those cases, students took jobs to help make up the difference.

As school counselors and social workers were inundated with requests, Coven saw a need for immediate action. At stake was her students’ education, Coven said: “We can’t teach our students unless they have their basic needs met.”

With a handful of other educators at the school, Coven launched a Google questionnaire to ask families what they needed and a GoFundMe to solicit donations. Six months into the coronavirus crisis, Sullivan’s group has raised more than $11,000. They have given 25 families varying amounts based on need.

Across Chicago, teachers at other schools have done the same, with around 20 schools putting together impromptu mutual aid groups — as efforts led by ordinary people to meet social needs are called — to help families buy groceries, cover medical bills or pay rent.

Schools have long played a central role in providing social support services to families. In Chicago, where 76.4% percent of the district is low income, district officials swiftly set up food distribution efforts after school buildings closed in March. The district also runs a philanthropic nonprofit called the Children First Fund, and education nonprofits like Community in Schools expanded their work this spring from counseling to helping families meet basic needs.

The need has continued to outstrip demand. Chicago’s unemployment rate hovers at 12.6%, up significantly from 3.6% in February. The first round of eviction moratoriums and city housing grants have expired or been used up. And yet Chicago’s neighborhoods — and the students in them — continue to hurt financially.

School-based mutual aid networks may not be able to keep families afloat, but they offer a relatively quick turnaround for support, with little paperwork, and flexibility to meet needs that range from groceries to rent. Crucially, they rely on the relationships built in schools —and the organizational prowess of teachers.

Fatima Salgado, a special education teacher at Lara Academy, said she and other teachers learned a lot about families’ home situations in the first weeks of the shutdown, from assisting with remote learning to helping set up the internet. “We know what is going on behind the curtains in their home,” Salgado said.

That helped them decide how to prioritize their assistance funds - the more compounding hardships a family faced the higher priority they had to receive help.

At Roberto Clemente Community Academy in Humboldt Park, the mutual aid group runs a social media campaign every payday to encourage teachers to donate. The group also takes money through a GoFundMe and phone apps like CashApp or Venmo. Requests for financial support, made through a Google form, feed into a spreadsheet. Then a staff member checks with the student or family to figure out the urgency of the need.

Economic insecurity isn’t new for that community, says teacher Mueze Bawany, but the scope is. “I used to stock my classroom with food: bread and peanut butter and jelly, ramen noodles and stuff,” Bawany said. “After COVID the demand for support went up and we needed something more formal and we needed to expand our efforts.”

The Clemente group has raised $34,288 in about six months, the vast majority of which they distributed. Each payment and who it went to is painstakingly chronicled, and the group hopes to create a program for recurring donors.

The innovations at each school and what support they provide reflects the local communities.

Clinton Elementary in West Rogers Park has a high number of immigrant families, so their intake form is in English, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi (the school has also been able to accommodate the needs of many Rohingya families, despite their language having no written form). Teachers at the Jahn School of Fine Arts bought a portable washer for a family who was at risk of contracting COVID but didn’t have home laundry. At George Washington High School on the Southeast side, many members of the mutual aid group eventually became the core of teachers who organized in favor of removing school police this summer.

Using donations solicited on social media or through communities isn’t new for Chicago schools. The website DonorsChoose, a schools-specific fundraising platform, is full of teachers soliciting support to build a class library or purchase class journals.

But the mutual aid groups, operating outside of formal nonprofit status and without a specific legal standing, have had to tread carefully. Most teachers note their groups are not a formal project of their schools, even though many administrators are supportive. A workshop run by the Chicago Teachers Union’s Latinx Caucus in May offered a how-to for schools looking to start their own group.

Working with established nonprofits or other mutual aid groups has also helped the groups sustain their work.

Avondale Mutual Aid, a group of volunteers, some of whom work with schools in their day job, have run donation drives for school supplies and computers for remote learning along with food or financial support.

Kate Walsh, a volunteer with the Avondale group who works with a Chicago Public Schools art partner, is currently overseeing volunteer efforts to scrub donated computers for neighborhood families who have multiple children and not enough devices. “We wanted to make sure families in Avondale and beyond were prepared no matter what,” said Walsh. Currently, they are expecting about 40 donated computers, with 28 already in hand.

In Back of the Yards, a mostly Latino community on the Southwest side with a long history of organizing, six schools formed a new group, called Assistance for Back of the Yards Families, with the existing Brighton Park Neighborhood Council to streamline requests and fundraising efforts.

Still, the groups haven’t always been able to meet the demand. By June they had helped more than 50 families but had run out of funds; it took several weeks to clear a waiting list.

Six months into the pandemic, the economic reality in Chicago remains bleak. With the new school year starting, the mutual aid groups say they plan to continue their efforts. They say it’s essential for students to focus on their education without the looming shadow of a precarious housing situation or food insecurity.

At Clemente, they have seen donations from small businesses drop off as they themselves struggle or are shut down. But just this week, teachers and support staff involved in the mutual aid project met to create a recurring program for both donors and recipients.

Teachers say the mutual aid efforts have given them a stark knowledge of their students’ realities, but hope in the power of their communities.

“The whole thing of, it takes a village, definitely has so much truth to it,” said Salgado. “ If we don’t help, who will?”

Chicago board keeps school police contract but promises new safety plan

2020-08-26T23:48:47+00:00

After heated debate, the Chicago Board of Education extended the school police contract for another year — and passed a separate resolution urging the district to develop a police-free safety plan by the spring.

Both measures narrowly passed Wednesday after a contentious discussion and a nearly seven-hour meeting. For both votes, four members voted in favor, two voted against, and one abstained.

That means police officers will continue to patrol the 55 Chicago schools that voted to retain their officers this summer. And the contract with the Chicago Police Department remains mostly intact, but will cost $12 million this year rather than $33 million.
The Chicago school board also unanimously approved a $6.9 billion operating budget and a $758 million capital budget. The budget counts on an infusion of $343 million from the federal government, though talks on school stimulus have stalled.

The school police votes showed a stark divide between board members on the issue.

Vice president Sendhil Revuluri, who drafted the resolution calling for a safety plan, said he wanted the district to develop alternative safety measures for schools before making a wholesale plan to phase out officers.

“I don’t think making a black-and-white decision is going to get us to a better place,” he said during Wednesday’s virtual meeting.

But the most outspoken critics of the school police program said the resolution did little more than the district had already promised. They argued that the board should remove officers now.

“We should be honoring and listening to our youth, rather than serving as barriers to their data-informed demands,” board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said. “We cannot wait more months. I see no other choice than for us to vote down the IGA [intergovernmental agreement between the school district and police] and remove police from our schools.”

The contract in place this year won’t look quite like the one last year. In response to months of public pressure to remove school police — and a rush of school-level discussions and votes by local school councils — the district recently introduced a series of reforms.

The current contract will cost less than last year’s agreement, put stricter protocols on which police officers serve on campuses, and pull out school-based computer terminals that previously connected officers with centralized criminal databases.

Youth organizers, some of whom held a rally outside Chicago district headquarters during the vote, reacted with anger and disappointment. “WE’RE TIRED OF BEING F***ING IGNORED. WERE THE ONES WHO LITERALLY HAVE TO DEAL WITH THESE COPS EVERY DAMN DAY. YALL. LITERALLY BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS,” said a tweet by a group of students at neighborhood schools called Students Strike Back.

As the meeting ended Wednesday, organizers sent out messages on Twitter calling for supporters to meet them downtown to register their protest at the vote.

The future of school police is up to the Chicago board this week

2020-08-25T18:16:18+00:00

With a whirlwind summer of police votes coming to an end, the future of Chicago’s school police program now goes to the board of education.

Board members will consider two items Wednesday: whether to renew a modified contract with the Chicago Police Department for school officers and, in a surprise addition, a resolution that would call for schools to create safety plans with the goal of eventually removing officers from campuses.

In recent months, Chicago has seen a flurry of activity around school policing. Activists, who were inspired by the Minneapolis school district’s decision to cut ties with the local police department after a white police officer killed George Floyd, began pushing for the same in Chicago. They put pressure on the mayor, city council, and school board, but Chicago punted the decision to individual school councils. After weeks of voting and amid concerns about the process, most schools decided to keep their police officers. Then, earlier this month, district officials announced a series of reforms to the police program, cutting the overall cost and raising the bar for which officers could serve on campuses.

That leaves the board with a less expensive but mostly intact school police program to consider renewing alongside a resolution that would push the district to make plans for a future of police-free schools. Sendhil Revuluri, board vice president who drafted the resolutions, said his hope was to push the conversation on school safety beyond just ending the school police program. “For lasting change that benefits students, we must provide schools with real alternatives, and schools must change how they think and act around safety,” he said.

The resolution, however, stops short of mandating a specific date by which officers would be phased out or next steps for the district once the plan is developed.

That’s left some advocates and board members calling for more.

Board member Amy Rome said she would support a policy with a definitive end date for the school police program and a clear promise to include student voices. “The language of this resolution does not read definitely enough,” said Rome, who helped draft the board vote to terminate the contract earlier this summer. That vote failed by a narrow margin.

Last week, district leaders announced a series of new reforms to the police program, including stricter protocols on which police officers serve on campuses and a plan to remove school-based computer terminals that previously connected officers with centralized criminal databases. The week before, the city revealed that the cost of the school police contract would now likely be cut from $33 million to $12 million, once the school board votes on a new budget proposal.

Even as district officials have promised changes to the school police program, a majority of votes by local school councils over the summer were in favor of keeping police officers.

Neither the reforms or the votes have deterred advocates who say they want police out of schools altogether. They have increased pressure on the board ahead of Wednesday’s votes.

“You can’t address a systemic issue by dividing it up - the board of education needs to take leadership when it comes to this,” said Maria Degillo, an organizer with Voices of Youth in Chicago Education.

Student groups at the forefront of recent protests against school police held a sit-in at Chicago Public Schools headquarters Monday afternoon to call for more restorative justice options.

“Our schools are in need of resources that truly address the root causes of our issues. If a student is acting out, ask them: ‘Have you eaten today? What does your home situation look like? How can I best support you?’ We are ready to reimagine what our schools would look like without police,” Santiago Magana, a junior at Kelly College Prep in Brighton Park, said in a statement.

A coalition of union, neighborhood, and progressive political groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union and United Working Families, released a statement Monday rejecting recent reforms to the school police contract, saying they “do not meet the moment or burdens.”

Instead, they called for the district to “undertake robust community engagement processes to develop alternative school safety plans, and provide school campuses with the resources they need to address conflicts and keep students safe.”

The new resolution to phase out school police addresses some of those concerns. It instructs schools chief Janice Jackson to develop new school safety plans — without police officers — by the spring. The plans would be developed in close collaboration with school communities and include ongoing evaluations of student safety and additional funding to help schools use alternative safety measures.

“It is the sense of the Board of Education that there are alternatives to the SRO Program in CPS that will more effectively build positive community relationships, ensure a safe learning environment for students and address students’ social and emotional needs,” the resolution states.

Revuluri said its important to put some of responsibility for creating new safety solutions on experts at the district level. “School communities can work in partnership with district experts to create and implement alternatives that ensure their students are physically and psychologically safe and supported in their learning and growth,” he said.

But critics say the resolution doesn’t expressly include the term “restorative justice” or a plan to include student voice. “I would want the resolution to state that these options are restorative, and really again underscoring community input,” Rome said.

Board members have been split on the school police issue. Elizabeth Todd-Breland and Rome introduced a resolution in June to terminate the school police contract. The measure lost by a narrow margin, with other board members, including board president Miguel Del Valle, making an impassioned case for police as an integral part of school safety, even as they acknowledged that the program needs reforms.

The board members who voted against terminating the contract in June said they would allow local school councils to decide whether to keep officers. The councils were granted the authority last year as part of a spate of federally mandated reforms. In all, 55 councils voted to keep police and 17 voted to remove them. But the process was dogged by transparency issues, from concerns about how to access the virtual meetings to whether councils included sufficient student or community voice in their decisions.

Now, the question is whether the new resolution will garner the support of enough board members or if the board will accept the modified police contract.

Schools will not be charged for police during remote learning days, district says

2020-08-06T19:44:24+00:00

With Chicago’s school police contract up for renewal this month, school officials revealed Thursday that schools won’t be paying for police officers during remote learning this coming school year.

Chicago Public Schools announced this week that it will start the school year remotely, as COVID-19 cases rise and as district surveys reveal that the vast majority of Black and Latino parents aren’t comfortable sending children back into school buildings. The earliest students could return would be Nov. 9.

A joint Chalkbeat Chicago and WBEZ investigation found that, even though school is only in session for 10 months of the year, the school district agreed to pay salary and benefits up to $152,000 per police officer and $172,000 per sergeant on 12-month contracts.

Now, with COVID-19 dramatically changing the landscape for schools, the district will again seek to modify its school police contract to reflect how often officers are or aren’t in school buildings.

“SROs will not be reporting to schools during remote learning and CPS will not be charged for days when police officers are not assigned to schools,” the district said in a statement.

The district is still reconciling costs for last school year. Chicago Public Schools said that it will only pay for the time the police officers and sergeants worked in schools; the district won’t be charged for the months when school buildings were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The district hasn’t paid the Chicago Police Department yet. School officials did not respond to a request for an update on this process.

The school police contract will be up for renewal at the Aug. 26 board meeting.

School board President Miguel del Valle hinted that next year’s contract will look different than this year’s, but didn’t offer any concrete details.

“Stay tuned — this is still being worked on,” del Valle said in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, about 30 more schools must vote, through their Local School Councils, about whether to keep officers. How those votes go could influence the final vote on the contract. So far, only three schools have voted to remove their officers, while at least 19 voted to keep them. (See our tracker here).

More Chicago school councils add police to the agenda

2020-07-13T19:27:59+00:00

Local school councils across Chicago have less than a month to case a vote on whether to keep or remove school police officers.

So far, two local school councils, representative bodies made up of parents, teachers and community members, have voted to remove school resource officers. (Follow our tracker here.)

Northside College Prep’s Local School Council in North Park voted 8-0 to remove its officers on campus this fall.

Members of Roberto Clemente Community Academy’s Local School Council are leaning toward removing school officers — but before they make a final decision, they want to hear from the community. The group voted 8-3 in favor of eliminating school officers in a nonbinding “advisory” vote.

Recent months have seen a growing youth-led movement in Chicago calling for an end to school police programs, buoyed by similar decisions in other cities spurred by nationwide protests against police violence against Black people.

Chicago’s board of education declined last month to remove police officers from all public schools after hours of emotional debate and public comment. The school board is expected to vote on whether to renew the $33 million school police contract later this summer.

More than 70 schools will vote on the issue by August 14, per a mandate from the district. Chicago has 144 resource officers at schools, 48 mobile school officers, and 22 staff sergeants.

Here are the local school councils scheduled to meet this week:

TUESDAY, JULY 21

Taft High School, Norwood Park - 6 p.m. Tuesday Watch it live here. Call-in here: 312-626-6799 Meeting ID: 890 5707 5062 PIN: 777562

Ogden International School of Chicago (All 3 campuses) - 6:00 p.m. Tuesday Watch it live here. Meeting ID: 874 5716 9457 Passcode: 5yfJ33

THURSDAY, JULY 23

Manley Career Academy High School, East Garfield Park - 3 p.m. Thursday (Meeting link TBD)

Do you know of a Local School Council meeting this week that isn’t on our list? Email stephanie@blockclubchi.org and ykunichoff@chalkbeat.org and we’ll add it to our list.

Second Chicago school votes against police, but the poll is non-binding

2020-07-09T20:03:42+00:00

A second Chicago high school has taken an advisory vote to remove its school police, the Local School Council secretary at Roberto Clemente Community Academy said Thursday.

The vote sets what may be a growing precedent as the district asks representative bodies at the 70-plus Chicago schools with police to vote over the next month on whether to keep their officers.

Clemente, an International Baccalaureate school in Humboldt Park, joined Northside College Prep in rejecting officers. However, a council member said the vote was not binding, and Clemente’s Local School Council will have to vote again by August 15.

On Wednesday night, Clemente’s Local School Council, a representative body made up of parents, teachers and one student, voted 8-3 in favor of removing school officers this fall. Northside’s council took their vote to remove police on Tuesday night.

Shortly after the vote, some educators from Clemente took to Twitter to ask Chicago Public Schools to give them the money originally allocated for school police, which they argued could be used for academic and mental health support.

While some educators and supporters of removing school police celebrated the vote, council secretary Daniel Marre told Chalkbeat the decision wasn’t final. “It was simply the start of the conversation,” said Marre, a 3-year council member whose son graduated from Clemente this summer.

He said the council wanted to seek additional community input before voting again. Chicago Public Schools did not reply to a request for comment.

Other schools will soon have to weigh the decision: The district has asked councils to take their vote by August 15. Chicago has 144 resource officers at schools, 48 mobile school officers, and 22 staff sergeants.

Chicago’s board of education declined last month to remove police officers from all public schools after hours of emotional debate and public comment.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have opposed the wholesale removal of police officers from schools, saying they preferred to leave the decision to individual school councils. Critics have said not all councils have enough members to vote, are appointed instead of elected at struggling schools, and, with only one student representative, don’t have enough student voices.

While schools are being encouraged to vote this summer, they can revisit their decision at any time throughout the school year.

Corrected: A previous version of this story did not say the vote was advisory. The story has been updated to clarify that the vote takes was non-binding.

Summer school starts Monday for some students. Here’s what we know so far

2020-06-26T22:31:17+00:00

In Chicago, as in cities across the country, summer school carries higher stakes this year.

After the profound disruption to learning wrought by the coronavirus outbreak, summer instruction will give students a chance to catch up on school work — and credits — they missed this past spring. It will allow some students to get back on track for fall studies or to graduate.

With an all-virtual format, it will be a summer learning season like no other.

The district this week shared some information about its plans for summer school, which starts Monday for some students. A push to sign up students is already under way, LaTanya McDade, chief academic officer, told the district’s governing board this week.

“We’re really working very hard to make sure all eligible students and their families are informed about summer learning opportunities,” she said.

Leaders stressed the need for a more uniform approach across the district after a spring of remote learning in which schools had leeway to design their own plans — and saw mixed results. The district will use the same digital platforms and set requirements for all teachers providing instruction this summer.

Answers to some key questions, which Chalkbeat posed to the district last week, remain unclear: How many students will take part? How does this year’s cost compare to last year?

Here are answers to some questions:

Which students will take part in summer school?

Summer school this year is geared toward elementary students who got “incompletes” in reading and math, as well as high school students who need to earn credit to meet their graduation requirement. The district will also offer programs for certain English language learners and for students with special needs whose individualized learning programs recommend an extended school year. There will be a “summer melt” course to help prepare graduates to meet their postsecondary goals and a “summer of algebra” for freshmen who were enrolled in algebra classes but did not meet competency criteria.

When will summer school begin and end?

Some summer learning, including credit recovery and extended school year learning for diverse learners, begins on Monday. Other courses, like “bridge” learning for students who ended the fourth quarter with an incomplete, begins July 20. The full schedule is available on slides 6 and 7 in this district presentation.

Can families opt in?

Families can’t opt in to summer learning, which the district intends to meet the needs of specific student groups, but they pointed families towards free learning summer resources offered as part of the district’s COVID-19 remote learning support.

What platforms will the district use to provide uniform instruction?

The district will use the platforms Amplify and Imagine Learning for reading instruction, ST Math and Khan Academy for math, and Apex and Edgenuity for credit recovery. Officials also said educators will embed social and emotional learning into daily lessons.

Khan Academy this week touted math courses Chicago will be using, designed especially to address the acute learning loss some students might have experienced during the pandemic.

Using these outside instructional platforms is a departure from previous years when teachers designed their own summer school curriculums, said Dominicca Washington, who recruits teachers for the district and used to teach summer school. Washington thinks the use of these platforms will allow the district to enroll more students, simplify things for educators still working to adjust to remote teaching, and “create the objectivity we need to measure student success.”

“My question would be, ‘If these kids couldn’t participate in the beginning, what provisions will be made to ensure they can participate during the summer?’” she said.

Will district teachers provide instruction during summer school?

Chicago Public Schools teachers will provide all instruction during summer school using the platforms noted above. More than 1,200 Chicago educators will teach in the various summer programs. The exception is the high school credit recovery program which, as it does every year, will use outside vendors, said the district.

Will the district take attendance?

Yes, the district plans to take daily attendance during summer school. Enrollment numbers for the summer program are not yet available, according to school officials.

What will a typical day of instruction look like?

The district gave as an example the daily schedule of a student in summer school, which would start at 8:30 a.m. with a 35 minute to 55-minute literacy video class. The student would spend the next 65 to 85 minutes working in small groups and doing independent work using the platform Amplify. After a break, the whole class would meet virtually again for a half hour of math at 10:30 a.m., followed by more small group and independent work using Khan Academy.Students will get somewhere between 3 and 4.5 hours of schooling a day.

How will the district recruit students and ensure they have internet access?

This year, the district is using a centralized process to recruit and register students who qualify for summer school. Officials said they are notifying families by phone, email, robo-calls, and text messages.

The district and the city of Chicago announced a new initiative Thursday to connect as many as 100,000 students to high-speed internet for free, using donations and federal funds. They said students who qualify for summer school will be first in line for the program, and the district will begin outreach to them next week.

What is the total estimated cost of summer school this year?

The total estimated cost of summer school this year is $15.1 million, according to the district.

Chicago Public Schools will keep its police program — for now

2020-06-24T21:31:42+00:00

An effort to remove police officers from Chicago’s public schools failed Wednesday after board members voted against terminating a contract with the city’s police department.

It was a close vote — with four board members voting in favor and three against — but the question will come up again before school begins in the fall, when the board will vote on whether to extend the $33 million school police contract.

That means the future of Chicago’s school police program is far from decided.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot had opposed the wholesale removal of police officers from schools, saying she preferred to leave the decision to individual school councils. School leaders, speaking Wednesday, promised further reforms before next school year.

But youth activists said that while the measure failed, they were encouraged by the close vote and the chance of another soon. “That signals a potential for change,” said Denise Carmona, a youth organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council who graduated from Kelly High School in 2019 and listened to the board meeting from a rally outside of Board President Miguel Del Valle’s home.

Wednesday’s board vote came after an unusually emotional discussion where board members weighed their personal experiences with policing and violence in schools against their concern for students’ safety.

“Our schools should be places of nurture,” Elizabeth Todd-Breland who, along with Amy Rome, put forward the original motion. Instead, she said, board money is used to pay for tasers and patrols. “Reforming school resource officers is not enough.”

Board members who voted against the measure spoke of their experiences of feeling unsafe in school — of the psychological scars of being beaten by gang members in a school basement, of fearing that you will be harassed both by the rival gangs inside school and the police officers outside of it.

Board member Dwayne Truss, who voted against the measure, said communities “under siege by gun violence” need police protection. “This helps create an environment of safety for the students,” Truss, a longtime community activist on the West Side and the father of five Black men, said.

All of the board members agreed on the need for a change to school safety, but were divided on how to make that change happen. Some, including Truss, Del Valle, and Luciano Sotelo, argued that, even if some police interactions are negative, the officers should remain in schools if their presence contributed in any way to a safe school environment.

Others, including Todd-Breland and Rome, pointed to the disproportionate arrest of Black students to argue that the system was broken. They said that the Chicago Police Department’s recent failures to meet most of the reforms laid out by a federal monitor showed that incremental change wouldn’t work.

“This is a deep institutional problem... it is not enough to reform or make a better trained or kinder school to prison pipeline,” Todd-Breland said, noting that some students in Chicago had been asking for police to be removed from schools for more than a decade.

As the board discussed the contract, two rallies Wednesday called for an end to school policing. One, led by the Chicago Teachers Union, included a car caravan downtown. The other, led by youth activists, kept up a steady stream of noise and chanting outside Del Valle’s house.

The board will have another chance to discuss the issue when the contract comes up for a renewal vote in July or August, district leadership said Wednesday.

That fact may have been a decisive one for board member Sendhil Revuluri, who appeared split on the issue. He confirmed with school leadership that there would be another chance to weigh in before casting a vote against the measure. “We are long overdue for imagining what safety looks like in our schools, and we need to do that,” he said.

Next week, the city council will hold a hearing on school police.

Organizers who have led the movement against school police, many of whom rallied throughout most of the meeting leading up to the vote, said Wednesday that they are disappointed but not slowing down.

After listening to the board vote, Brenda Leyva, a Roosevelt student and organizer with youth group VOYCE, said she felt “really mad.”

She felt more hopeful a few weeks ago, when a march against school police in Albany Park that she helped organize brought out several hundred people.

Now, she plans to put her anger toward planning another: “It hasn’t been a new thing, so I am going to make another protest, to keep everyone aware.”

Some Chicago city council members join efforts to remove police from schools

2020-06-15T20:50:57+00:00

A group of Chicago aldermen want to remove police officers from the city’s public schools.

They plan to introduce an ordinance this week to terminate the $33 million contract between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department. But legislation in Chicago’s city council generally doesn’t have a long life without the mayor’s approval, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she won’t remove the police.

The ordinance indicates a new front in the effort by community activists to end Chicago’s school-police program. The legislation, which will be sponsored by aldermen Rick Sawyer, Jeanette Taylor and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, is part of a week of action led by youth and community groups with teach-ins about the history of school policing and alternatives to police.

Since Minneapolis Public Schools voted to end its contract with its city police department earlier this month, there has been a cascade of school districts either cutting ties with school police or raising the question in board meetings. Districts in Denver, Seattle, Oakland, and Richmond, Calif., are talking about changing their relationship with school police.

In Chicago, students led a protest in Albany Park last week and another over the weekend in Hyde Park calling for police officers to be removed from schools. At a special board meeting on Monday, all five speaking slots were taken by youth activists or their supporters making the same demand.

The aldermen want to remove police officers from schools and reinvest the $33 million from the contract into trauma-based support for students.

Jeanette Taylor, an alderman who went on a hunger strike as a community activist in 2015 to stop the district from closing Dyett High School in Washington Park, said: “The trauma and harm that was done by this practice can never be erased. The money we spend on CPD in CPS can be used for a nurse, counselor, and real restorative justice programs that our students will need once returning to school.”

Neither the city or school district immediately replied to a request for comment about the ordinance. The Chicago City Council will hold its next meeting virtually on Wednesday.

As conversation on school police in Chicago rushes ahead, here are five things you need to know

2020-06-09T22:04:52+00:00

One week ago, the demand for police-free schools in Chicago was led by a tireless group of youth advocates and activist teachers who had been hammering away at the issue for years.

This week, they’re joined by an unprecedented chorus of new voices — thousands of marchers who have picked up the demand in recent days, and the Chicago Sun-Times, one of Chicago’s two largest newspapers, that Tuesday published an editorial calling for an end to police in schools.

It’s a sign of the fast-moving public discussion taking place in a moment of unprecedented social upheaval, marked first by a pandemic that shut down schools and workplaces around the world, and then a protest movement against police violence ignited by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

As the conversation moves forward, here’s a breakdown of the facts around safety and security in Chicago schools:

This school year Chicago saw the biggest changes to school policing in a decade.

Chicago overhauled its school policing system this school year in response to changes mandated by a federal consent decree. By September, the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department were instructed to make a slew of reforms intended to bring clarity, accountability, and safety to school policing.

The district also signed a new $33 million contract with the police department for school police, which will be paid for with money from the school district’s budget. These costs have been volleyed back and forth in recent years; both youth advocates and union officials, who were negotiating their new contract this past fall, have criticized them, saying they drain schools of money that could be spent on other types of aid for students.

Those changes included writing out a clear job description for school officers, mandating that police stay out of any school discipline, and clarifying how officers are hired or fired.

But even as those rules were laid out, they weren’t always clear to teachers and students on the ground. A Chalkbeat examination earlier this year found that the reforms remained a work in progress, six months past the deadline.

As the school year wraps up, some of the details about Chicago’s school police program are still in flux. Police and school officials solicited public comment in May about the directives they’re developing for school officers.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she won’t consider removing police from schools, but has promised new reforms to the police department in the coming weeks, including increased training and a shift in recruitment to bring more officers from communities of color onto the force.

Most school security is provided by security guards, not police officers.

Chicago has more than 500 district-run schools, plus another 118 charter and options schools. School police walk the halls of 72 of the district-run schools, mostly in high schools. Officers in squad cars are also assigned to some elementary schools.

The district’s Office of Safety and Security hires and trains security guards, oversees the Safe Passage program that places guards at strategic points along students’ paths from school, and conducts background checks on school staff and volunteers.

According to Chicago Public Schools employee data for this school year, there were more than 1,400 security officers of different levels. In total, 180 police officers are assigned to Chicago schools.

Discipline varies school by school — but the district has moved toward a restorative approach.

Since 2012, Chicago has taken a districtwide school discipline approach toward restorative justice, and has seen a decrease in suspensions and expulsions as a result. The district saw suspensions and expulsions fall. In the 2018-19 school year, there was a 46% drop in students being referred to police across the district, the head of safety and security said.

In early 2019, Chicago schools downgraded their categorization of students’ use of alcohol and drugs in schools from the most serious type of misconduct to a lesser infraction with milder penalties.

That’s been helped along by efforts like those of State’s Attorney for Cook County, Kim Foxx. She runs a special court that offers juvenile offenders restorative justice options and mediation in lieu of jail time. She also has proposed a diversion program to connect young people arrested in schools with social workers.

At the school level, some buildings have a dean of discipline whose job is to make decisions about enforcing school rules. Others have discipline committees consisting of a group of teachers and a counselor to head off serious misbehavior before it starts.

School communities say they still need more support for a non-punitive discipline approach, such as additional training in restorative justice and more social workers and counselors.

Organizers in Chicago say they have new momentum.

The decision by Minneapolis Public Schools to cut ties with its local police department has galvanized efforts nationwide to remove police from schools. School districts in Portland, St. Paul, and Rochester have taken up the issue in recent weeks.

Meyiya Coleman, a youth organizer with the youth group VOYCE, said the decision in Minneapolis created the perfect moment for organizers to push for their demands. She hopes the school district will end its police contract. “Now is the time,” Coleman said.

Community groups rallied at several schools Saturday and held a virtual discussion to talk about what it would look like to remove police from schools. Another march planned for this week again pushes the demand.

On Tuesday, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times called for an end to school policing. “No child walking through the door should get the unsettling feeling that they’re under the distrustful eye of law enforcement, no matter how friendly Officer Friendly may be,” the paper said.

And Roderick Sawyer, a local alderman whose ward includes the South Side Chatham neighborhood, stood next to young people at a press conference with VOYCE and called for a change to school policing. He promised to bring the issue up in the city council, even as he said that his community wants more officers on the streets.

Still to come this week: a march against school police in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, led by VOYCE.

Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department have promised continued engagement around the issue.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday she will not take police out of schools. “We’re not going to do that. Unfortunately, we need security in our schools,” Lightfoot said in a press conference last week. But the school district and police department have pointed school communities to some other ways to engage.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said that schools could remove their police officers through their Local School Councils, which last year were given the authority to vote on keeping officers in a school. The district also said the police department would create a school police working group to incorporate statements from the public collected through recent public comment.

“Chicago Public Schools values the feedback we are receiving from students, families, and community members, and we remain committed to continued engagement and dialog about the role of School Resource Officers in our schools,” Chief Security Officer Jadine Chou said in a statement, referring to the sworn police officers on campus.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot names new watchdog for Chicago Public Schools

2020-06-08T23:08:39+00:00

Mayor Lightfoot has named William Fletcher, a former deputy investigator, to a new role as chief watchdog for Chicago Public Schools.

Fletcher is a former park district investigator who will serve as the new inspector general. He will lead the charge into student complaints of sexual misconduct by educators and staffers, as well as investigating possible district wrongdoing more broadly.

“Through challenging times, our office will remain committed to the priority of making CPS a safe environment for children to learn. I also look forward to strengthening the working relationships with the Board of Education and (Chicago Public Schools) management,” Fletcher said in a statement provided by the mayor’s office.

In Chicago, where the mayor appoints the school board, she also appoints an independent investigator to serve a four-year term. Fletcher will finish out the term of his predecessor, Nicholas Schuler, who stepped down in February following reports that he had created a “toxic workplace” for staff. Schuler’s term was set to expire in 2022.

Under Schuler’s tenure, the inspector general’s office took on a larger role, as Chicago Public Schools responded to the fallout from a Chicago Tribune investigation into school-related sexual assaults. His office formed a specialized unit to deal with complaints.

In his last board meeting before leaving his post, Schuler formally presented a report showing irregularities in the administration and scores of a high-stakes test for third through eighth grades. District leaders disputed some of his findings, but acknowledged the need for more clear and consistent oversight over the test, known as the NWEA. The score factors into school ratings and student applications for placement in selective enrollment high schools.

Fletcher is a graduate of Whitney M. Young Magnet School and recently served as the president of the statewide association of inspector generals.

Illinois debuted a virtual learning system months before the pandemic. Why is no one talking about it?

2020-06-08T20:01:28+00:00

With little fanfare in January, Illinois debuted an upgraded collection of online courses featuring hundreds of classes from agriscience to anthropology offered by multiple providers. They were available to any school in the state.

Within months, the global coronavirus pandemic shut down school campuses and pushed every student in the state into remote learning.

The state’s fortuitously timed redesign was poised to fill a desperate new need — education delivered via the internet. But oddly enough, the courses under the state umbrella have remained unnoticed in some areas, even as school districts rushed toward remote learning.

While states like Virginia expanded their virtual programs and made them free to schools, Illinois can’t even say how many students have taken advantage of its online courses this spring. The state didn’t mention its new catalog in its remote learning guidance — and it hasn’t explained how it plans to advertise its program in the months to come.

With the redesign, Illinois kept the non-profit Illinois Virtual School that is run out of Peoria, and added five private providers into the mix. But one of those new online course providers, the experienced Arizona State University, attracted no — zero — Illinois students. And some district leaders still know little to nothing about the newly expanded catalog of courses.

Meanwhile, the state’s decision to expand the number of providers — ostensibly so more students could choose from a larger menu of courses — left less money for its existing familiar program, which was seeing a sudden increase in demand.

The Illinois Virtual School lost a state grant that had accounted for nearly half of its operating budget. It slashed its budget more than 18%, to $1.8 million, and cut teacher salaries by 30% to keep courses available. As demand surges, some of its courses have hit capacity, but the school has scant resources to hire more teachers.

Now, federal aid intended precisely to shore up remote learning could boost the state’s efforts. But it’s not certain what Illinois’ plan is to seize that opportunity.

It’s also not clear why the state’s expanded menu of courses hasn’t been a savior to desperate districts, but observers say an inflexible enrollment date, a specific mission to only supplement learning, and a lack of broad awareness about the five new providers may have hampered enrollment.

Virtual learning experts suggest this is the moment for Illinois to spotlight what it’s built for remote learning.

States should tap into existing structures for virtual learning, said John Watson, head of the national Digital Learning Collaborative. “That seems like a wasted opportunity,” he said, when they don’t do so.

In Illinois, an early wave

When Pamela Shaw’s son was struggling under the social and academic demands of the transition to high school, she turned to the Illinois Virtual School. Shaw, a music instructor at the non-profit course provider, enrolled her son in English and algebra that he could take from home.

Within a year, he was back at his school, and ready for its challenges. With the support of the online courses, he was able to graduate on time.

“If we hadn’t had that as an option, it would have been rough,” said Shaw, who has been a remote learning instructor for eight years.

Since 2001, Illinois, among an early wave of states turning to the internet to augment education, has subsidized remote learning for families like the Shaws, while also providing flexible work for teachers. Today, it is among 24 states that run their own network of courses.

Other states opened the door early to for-profit and non-profit providers, a mix of universities and startups, charging tuition for online courses.

In Illinois, the Illinois Virtual School was the sole statewide provider of courses, first run by the State Board of Education, and now by the Peoria Regional Office of Education.

Students who signed up for the Illinois Virtual School included those seeking to make up classes that they failed to pass but needed for graduation, students who want to take online courses to free up their schedule for other classes, part-time students, and those with disabilities that keep them from classrooms.

A district or school could purchase an entire chemistry class, or a credit recovery course for one student seeking to make up a class to graduate.

As the teacher shortage crisis grew, particularly in downstate rural communities, the remote learning program sought to fill the gap in hundreds of schools that couldn’t find or afford qualified teachers for subjects like Mandarin, Spanish as a foreign language, or high school math and science.

The school, on average, has served about 7,000 students a year from 600 partner schools. However, a state school board member in May 2019 questioned whether its completion rate — 90% of students scoring a passing grade or higher over four years — signaled good performance.

The landscape shifts

Then came a shift, after a committee appointed by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, recommended opening up virtual learning to multiple providers.

The committee drew inspiration from Louisiana’s state-run remote program, the first in the nation, which included both in- and out-of-state, and for-profit and nonprofit providers.

Illinois’ new catalog, launched in January after a stop-and-start request for proposals spanning several years and two state boards, offered districts, schools, and families courses and teacher training from the virtual school itself, plus courses from Apex Learning, Arizona State University Prep Global Academy, BCG-North American Co., Edgenuity, and Edmentum. (BCG-North American Co., Edgenuity and Edmentum did not respond to requests for comment. Apex declined to comment for this story.)

The cost per student generally runs from $90 to $350 per course per semester, which is paid up front by families or districts, who then apply for a reimbursement from the state board. When it sought course providers, the state board suggested that subsidies for classes would not exceed $6 million over five years. The state’s catalog now offers 840 accredited courses for students from middle through high school.

Enter the pandemic

The state could help meet a huge need for remote classes. But officials have stressed that their course catalog was designed only to provide supplemental instruction. So far, they seem to do just that.

In March operators lacked the flexibility to adapt to the pandemic emergency. Just when districts most needed to arrange courses — shortly after school buildings were shut down, a survey of Illinois school leaders showed that two-thirds felt unprepared for remote learning — enrollment in the state’s new privately offered courses was closed. It only opened again in March, for summer classes.

It’s not clear how many districts or schools are enrolling students, because state officials say they don’t get reports until requests for reimbursement come in. The state has also not yet decided to what degree it will subsidize summer courses.

The Illinois Virtual School, meanwhile, did accept mid-semester enrollees. It has hired 11 more teachers to meet an increase in demand and more than double its per-course enrollment for the summer session from its usual 175 students to 450 students.

But having lost much of their state funding, the virtual program’s officials said they’re struggling to meet the surge in demand.

Kip Pygman, the head of the Illinois Virtual School, said he is concerned that rules prohibit the school from negotiating prices, thus putting courses out of reach of districts that can’t afford them, particularly those interested in large-scale partnership.

Cynthia Hamblin, a longtime advocate for virtual education in Illinois and the one-time head of the Illinois Virtual School, believes the budget cuts have weakened the program.

“They have years of online experience in delivering programs, in teachers teaching online, and I hope the state would be tapping into that expertise,” said Hamblin, who now heads the Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance.

A missed opportunity?

Even so, some districts remained in the dark.

Teresa Lance, assistant superintendent for Equity and Innovation in Illinois Unit District 46, said she had never heard of the course catalog.

“We have had several teachers who had to go out on long-term leave, but we have not engaged in remote learning to support students when teachers are out,” she said.

The Illinois Virtual School, meanwhile, can draw upon two decades of name recognition to attract interest.

The Leyden Community High School District #212 district, in a Chicago suburb near O’Hare Airport, regularly turned to the Illinois Virtual School for long-term substitutes or make-up courses for students.

“We appreciate the fact that it is local, and we can work with them directly,” Superintendent Nick Polyak said.

State-run virtual schools will get an additional boost from federal coronavirus relief earmarked for the hardest-hit states to expand virtual education. The Illinois State Board of Education plans to apply for funding.

But long term, advocates worry that competition will further hurt the Illinois Virtual School.

For example, the national group Quality Matters reviews courses for quality to help would-be partners, but charges $1,000 per review — which the cash-trapped Illinois Virtual School may struggle to pay.

More broadly, to make virtual learning more attractive and successful, the state would have to ensure that schools issue blanket approval for virtual credits for graduation, rather than weighing them case by case as it does now, said Timothy Dohrer, education professor at Northwestern University.

He is also concerned that the catalog doesn’t provide a way to assess the value of each course, as the state report card does for schools themselves.

And the Illinois Federation of Teachers wants the state to invest in supports for classroom teachers moving to remote learning, rather than bringing in out-of-state companies to teach.

The Illinois Virtual School is trying to fill a growing need, via partnership with National Louis Teachers College to train teachers in remote learning. Arizona State University, and other private providers, are also expanding in that direction.

It’s possible that teaching teachers may provide the most growth in enrollment.

“We’ve moved toward training and upscaling teachers that were classroom teachers and needed to go digital,” Lisa Edgar, of Arizona State University, said. “No teacher should be thrown into online learning.”

Chicago mayor to keep police in school, as protests grow

2020-06-05T20:27:08+00:00

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday she will not take police out of schools, even as community groups around the city plan to strategize over the weekend on how to amplify their campaign to remove city police schools by school.

It was the first time the mayor, who has promised a raft of police reforms in the next 90 days, directly addressed the future of school policing in Chicago. Her comments came the day after hundreds of marchers took over city streets to call for school policing changes.

“We’re not going to do that. Unfortunately, we need security in our schools,” Lightfoot said in a press conference Friday addressing city efforts to support small businesses affected by recent unrest. “I think we’ve got a system in place that works very well.”

Groups including the Chicago Teachers Union, Raise Your Hand, and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council are planning a Saturday discussion about what police-free schools could look like, and how Local School Councils, which are representative bodies of parents and community members, could vote to remove officers.

“We are building it as we go,” Jianan Shi, executive director of Raise Your Hand, said Friday. “We want to remove Chicago Police Department officers from schools and reallocate funding to other supports.”

Chicago overhauled its school policing system this year in response to changes mandated by a federal consent decree. As part of that process, Local School Councils were given authority to vote on whether or not to keep officers in their schools.

Last year, all 70 of Chicago’s Local School Councils at schools where police are stationed voted to retain officers in their schools, though some council members raised concerns about the votes, saying they were rushed or weren’t able to speak.

Earlier this week, both the school district and police department put out a request for public comment on the school police rules developed this year. The police department will create a school police working group to incorporate the statements from the public.

Some of the marchers Thursday called for removing police from Chicago schools, a demand that has drawn more support since Minneapolis’ school board voted to cut ties with its police department earlier this week.

In Chicago, the school board in August approved the $33 million, one-year school police contract. Jadine Chou, head of safety and security for the district, spoke ahead of the vote and said there had been a drop in Chicago students being referred to police across the district since last school year, part of a less punitive and more restorative approach to school discipline.

Even then, some board members criticized the police role in schools.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, the sole dissenting vote, commended the school district on its efforts to seek community voices, but said she worried that any officer presence in schools would hurt black and brown students.

“Research is overwhelming that having police in schools is the entry point to the school to prison pipeline,” Todd-Breland said.

This weekend, multiple protests are planned, including several that list removing police from schools among their demands. The Chicago Teachers Union, which opposes stationing police in schools, has planned a car caravan Saturday morning starting at a now-closed in Englewood.

Two marches, led by Chicago students and alumni, call for school policing changes

2020-06-05T03:25:25+00:00

At two marches Thursday evening, one starting at a well-resourced North Side school and the other at a district office on the South Side, young people in Chicago called for removing city police from schools and reducing police budgets.

The two marches, part of the nationwide protest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, are among the first rallies in Chicago called to bring out school communities to make demands directly connected to education issues.

“In my opinion, the presence of police in schools does more harm than it does good,” Shadi Naji, who graduated from Lincoln Park High School last year, said.

He wasn’t able to donate to the bail funds and other measures to support the protests and police victims, so he came out to march, he said.

“The presence of police,” he said, “targets students and brutalizes them within their own schools.”

Some of the marchers Thursday called for removing police from Chicago schools, a demand that has drawn more support since Minneapolis schools cut ties with its police department earlier this week. Others pointed to the underfunding of schools, and said that money now spent on police would be better spent on education.

“Chicago Public Schools values the feedback we are receiving from students, families, and community members, and we remain committed to continued engagement and dialog about the role of School Resource Officers in our schools,” chief security officer Jadine Chou said in a statement, referring to the sworn police officers on campus.

More than 1,000 people attended the North Side rally, which was organized by former Chicago Public School students. It started at Lincoln Park High School. Supporters then marched to a police academy and then the juvenile jail.

South Side marchers, organized in part by students affiliated with the youth group Good Kids Mad City, began at a Chicago Public Schools district office in Bronzeville and marched to police headquarters in Bronzeville. Social media reports said around 300 young people attended.

One parent of three children at Chicago Public Schools, who did not want to give her name for fear of retribution, said she pulled her autistic son out of a district elementary school after the school called police on him during an incident.

”Cops should not be called at all to schools,” she said. “With a child with a disability, you don’t know what could happen in that conflict. I immediately took him out of that school.”

Along with people new to marching, the North Side rally attracted seasoned activists. Rousemary Vega, who was active in the protests against Chicago’s mass school closings in 2013, was marching with her two daughters.

“Where the problems for the black and brown children start is at our defunded public schools,” Vega said, pointing to a lack of social support like counselors at some schools, while the district has paid for the police contract.

“We have more cops in our public schools than we do counselors,” she said.

Vega’s third daughter was one of the youth organizers of the North Side march.

“When you raise your kids to do better and to know better,” she said, “you expect nothing less.”

Solving Illinois’ teacher shortage is complicated. These five charts explain why.

2020-05-14T14:01:28+00:00

Thousands of education jobs around Illinois went unfilled last school year.

The 6,052 teaching and support vacancies signal a complicated problem that won’t be solved just by recruiting more college students, according to education experts. Instead, they said, the solution lies in making the profession more attractive, providing more support and funding across the board, improving teacher retention, and diversifying educators.

Warnings about the teacher shortage have reverberated around the state for years, but a new report released Wednesday from the policy group Advance Illinois offers insight and suggests possible remedies.

And while much of the focus in education is currently on stemming learning losses due to extended school closures and the coronavirus disruption, the discussion has started to turn to the future of in-person learning.

“The single most important thing we can give a child coming out of this pandemic is a quality teacher,” said Robin Steans, the president of Advance Illinois. “It has never mattered more.”

The pandemic has narrowed the window to legislate solutions to the teacher shortage, as well as intensified financial pressure on public education systems. But Steans said the teaching profession might draw renewed interest, as other industries shed jobs and workers seek new careers.

“I’ll be surprised if there aren’t some number of young people looking ahead who don’t set their sights on teaching,” she said. “What will be interesting is whether we take advantage of that and do it in a way that really increases diversity.”

Here are five things that stand out in Advance Illinois’ analysis.

The state has lost half of its educator prep programs since 2012.

Teaching is a rewarding but difficult profession. More than 6,000 education positions around Illinois went unfilled last year, including instructional, administrative and support positions, but the policy fix won’t be as simple as recruiting more college students.

Since 2012, Illinois has seen a 50% decline in the number of graduates of education prep programs, as well as a decline in the number of teacher prep programs. Fewer programs has translated to fewer graduates: In 2012, there were 11,000 graduates. In 2017, there were just under 5,000, thus sending fewer teachers into the workforce.

“This is not just an interest problem,” said Ann Whalen, director of policy at Advance Illinois.

Research has shown that it matters where programs are located. Whalen noted that a majority of teacher candidates choose to teach near where they went to school or where they are from originally. In Illinois, nearly one in five districts is more than 30 miles from a teacher training program, hampering their ability to recruit student teachers and build pipelines to future educators.

Traditional training programs are particularly sparse in southeast Illinois, Whalen said. Alternative non-traditional certification programs are mostly located in Cook County. But even those have seen a decrease, dropping from 12 to six programs from 2008 to 2016.

The decline is due in part to state disinvestment in that time period, Whalen said. According to information from the Illinois Office of Management, spending on teacher recruitment and financial assistance programs, including the Illinois Teacher Loan Repayment Program, Golden Apple tuition assistance and scholarship program, and minority teacher scholarships, has shrunk by more than $3 million since 2008.

“We need to ensure both our districts and our educational prep programs have the resources they need to support these candidates but also for teachers to grow and be retained by the profession,” said Helen Zhang, policy associate at Advance Illinois, who analyzed data from the Illinois State Board of Education, the census, and federal Title II reports on national teacher preparation.

“Maintaining the status quo isn’t going to be sufficient to get us out of where we are right now.”

2. The shortage is most acute in special education, followed by elementary education, bilingual education, and science, math and technology (STEM).

Linda Perales teaches reading and math special education to kindergarten, first and second graders — many of whom also require English and Spanish language instruction — at Corkery Elementary School in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.

The number of students in her classroom has fluctuated throughout the years, but reached a peak of 17 students. That’s small compared with a traditional classroom, but her students aren’t typical. She said it’s difficult to give each child the attention they need when she has a full classroom of students with different needs.

“I have to basically do the job of eight teachers,” Perales said. “The kids that need the most support are actually just getting a fraction of what they need because of the shortage … It’s a disservice to the students for sure and also unfair to the teachers who have to do way more.”

From 2012 to 2016 the number of special education teacher prep programs in Illinois dropped 25%; the number of bilingual education programs for aspiring teachers fell by half. The number of graduates from each specialty program likewise plummeted.

A similar trend happened with STEM preparation programs, which dropped by a third.

The numbers have started to inch back up. But the increase has not caught up to previous supply levels, and the need meanwhile has increased. In Illinois, the proportion of students in special education, as measured by those with Individualized Education Programs, has increased from 14% to 16% in the past five years. The share of English learner students has risen, too.

Perales said she believes fewer people are entering teaching because the profession is undervalued.

“A lot of people are not choosing teaching as a career because they know that it’s exhausting and they know that our profession is poorly respected, they know that we lack resources and that our schools are underfunded,” Perales said. “They know that they’re going to be overworked and underpaid.”

3. The state can’t tackle the teacher shortage without addressing teacher turnover.

For Kira Baker-Doyle, an associate professor and director of the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Literacy, the slowdown in students entering teaching is exacerbated by a wave of older teachers retiring. Education experts have braced themselves for a national shortage for 30 years, she said, anticipating when baby boomer career teachers would retire and leave a multitude of unfilled positions.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education’s annual financial report, the number of retiring teachers peaked in 2017 and has been declining, but retiree counts still top 1,000 each year.

The losses aren’t just among older teachers.

Younger teachers are leaving the education field in search of higher-paying, less stressful opportunities, something that wasn’t as common in the past, Baker-Doyle said.

Across the country, turnover rates are highest among new teachers with less than three years experience. Statewide teacher retention rates have hovered around 85% for the last five years, but vary widely when broken down by district, from 35% to 100%, according to Illinois Report Card data.

With fewer teachers, the increased workload lands in the laps of the remaining teachers who then may be more likely to quit due to stress, said Catherine Main, an associate professor at University of Illinois at Chicago.

When a school can’t find a teacher, often it will rely on temporary employees to fill in. Main said her students report difficulty with having a succession of teacher assistants while they complete student teaching rotations in the classroom. Students entering the field won’t have trouble finding a job, she said, but many have already witnessed the pressure that the loss of teachers and teacher assistants puts on the remaining employees.

“People are excited that there are lots of [job] opportunities from the student perspective,” she said. “But on the flip side, there’s a lot of turnover in the workplace because of the shortage … it’s a vicious cycle.”

4. Teachers of color enter teacher prep programs but don’t end up getting hired.

Aspiring teachers of color are entering the teacher prep pipeline, but they’re not ending up in classrooms. Steans, of Advance Illinois, said policymakers need to focus on why.

Research has shown that teacher diversity affects many learning conditions and outcomes for students, including test scores, graduation rates, attendance and suspension rates.

About 50% of bachelor degree candidates are black, Latino, or non-white, but in Illinois, just one in four new hires is non-white.

There has been slight progress, the report notes, as Latino teachers have increased from 7% to 9% of new teachers in Illinois from 2013 to 2018.

“Every student in Illinois deserves skilled educators who reflect their diversity and are dedicated to challenging them academically and supporting their growth and development,” Zhang said. “These data make clear that not only are we not recruiting and graduating enough teachers of color, we are doing a poor job retaining them in the classroom. This is something our state needs to bring greater transparency to in order to ensure we are sufficiently addressing the need and targeting effective strategies.”

5. There’s not going to be a quick fix for the issue.

State leaders, including the governor, have acknowledged that the teacher shortage is a critical issue. That was before the coronavirus forced the shuttering of all school buildings in the state at least through the end of the school year and began squeezing state revenues.

Before the crisis, a change in the state funding formula and a boost in state spending on public schools allowed some districts to add teaching jobs. But some other approaches that would help with recruiting, such as prioritizing loan forgiveness programs and offering scholarships to early-career teachers, were slow to get off the ground.

What will happen now is unclear.

Pre-coronavirus enrollment numbers had slowed at Northeastern University, including among Latino and African American students in the education college, said Andrea Evans, interim dean of the Daniel L. Goodwin College of Education.

Some potential students may have decided to attend out-of-state schools that offer more student loan forgiveness, less costly housing, or higher supply stipends for early-career teachers, Evans said. Illinois’ dwindling support for higher education, which means oversaturated scholarships and programs that often don’t cover enough, may have also played a role.

“The entire education enterprise — federal, state, local — has to be willing to provide the types of professional development, financial, and social supports early-career educators need,” Evans said.

Solving the shortage will also require a cultural shift in how our society values teachers, she said.

“The public perception of the job may make it difficult to recruit students,” Evans said. “The manner in which we talk about teaching as a profession — challenging work environment, low pay, disrespect from parents, students, and/or administrators — can make it difficult to recruit talented students into the profession.”

But with broad shifts in the economy likely coming with the coronavirus pandemic, this could be a moment for renewed interest in the job. In a shrinking economy, Steans said, “there is a real chance that teaching will look more appealing than it did six months ago.”

Cassie Walker Burke contributed reporting.

Tens of thousands more devices coming to Chicago schools but internet remains a challenge

2020-04-22T23:02:05+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is ramping up its push to hand out devices to students, with a second wave of schools slated to get computer shipments in coming weeks.

The district had initially ordered 37,000 new devices, but after hearing from schools about higher needs bought 16,000 devices more recently. The purchases of Chromebooks, iPads and laptops are part of roughly $32 million the district has spent so far to respond to the coronavirus crisis that shuttered schools throughout Illinois and shifted much learning online.

The district is roughly halfway through handing out the new computers plus about 65,000 devices schools already had on hand — a total of 115,000 digital devices in all. It has so far prioritized an initial group of schools in some of the city’s highest-poverty neighborhoods, but other schools will see reinforcements as well.

But amid educator concerns that they are still not reaching many of their students, the district’s governing board pressed administrators Wednesday to expand access to the internet. During their virtual monthly meeting, board members suggested Comcast and other major providers could do more to help needy students — and questioned whether district and city officials could do more to pressure them.

“This requires much more cooperation from Comcast,” said board President Miguel del Valle. “In unprecedented times you need to do things differently.”

At the board’s previous meeting in March, members unanimously voted to allow the district to spend up to $75 million for its coronavirus response without prior board approval. District leaders said they needed the flexibility of this blank check to act swiftly and decisively during an uncertain time. They said the money would go toward technology, meal distribution, overtime pay for front-line school workers, and other expenses.

This week, the district reported about $5 million in expenses so far under that authorization: about $2.3 million on 11,600 hotspots to provide internet access for students in temporary living situations, $2.6 million on premium pay for front-line staff such as janitors and $18,900 for face masks.

School board members had been separately briefed on millions of additional spending under existing contracts and previous authorizations, including the device purchases — but the district has not yet made these expenses, which fall outside the $75 million most recently authorized by the board, publicly available.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, the district said it spent $6.5 million on Chromebooks, $4.8 million on laptops and $2.5 million on iPads.

District spokesman James Gherardi said that later this month, the district will start posting monthly updates on its website that outline all spending “done to support students during the COVID-19 crisis.”

Chicago, the state’s largest district with 355,100 students, is slated to receive $205.7 million in emergency federal funds to support districts’ coronavirus response efforts, according to preliminary figures. Some of the money will go to private and charter schools. The state has encouraged districts to spend that money on strengthening their infrastructure to deliver learning remotely.

Chicago officials said they are working on a plan for spending the federal dollars, which they will also make public down the road.

“There are a lot of unknowns,” said school chief Janice Jackson, noting uncertainty about the coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the economy and the state’s budget. “$200 million sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not a lot.”

CPS Chief Information Officer Phillip DiBartolo noted the district has estimated 115,000 students need a digital device. Adding to the tablets and laptops schools already have, the new purchases get the district to that number — though he cautioned that some devices will likely need to get replaced as they are damaged or lost. He added the district — the third largest in the country – has been able to use its “buying power” to expedite the purchases despite significant backlogs.

“My sense is that next week will be a very heavy distribution week,” he said.

DiBartolo said the district estimates 115,000 students also lack internet access. But because the district didn’t have a stockpile of mobile hotspots before the outbreak, that’s a tough gap to bridge. To complicate matters, hotspot devices are in extremely short supply because of high demand and COVID-19 disruption to production in Asia.

District schools largely continue to steer families to a Comcast internet program for low-income residents, which comes with two free months, and other low-cost offers. Some community nonprofits have criticized what they see as the Comcast deal’s problems.

DiBartolo said district and city leaders have reached out to internet service providers to ask for more help.

But some school board members said some families have balked at signing on to these offers for various reasons, including concern about credit checks and charges eventually kicking in.

They pressed the district on what response they are getting from providers.

“We’re pushing very hard to do right by our students,” DiBartolo said.

As remote learning ramps up in Chicago, a high-stakes question: Should students be learning anything new?

2020-04-09T01:00:01+00:00

Chicago biology teacher Bryan Meeker had planned a photosynthesis experiment he would conduct at his kitchen table, with students watching via videoconference.

But only a portion of Meeker’s students have the technology to tune in. Going forward with the demonstration would not be fair to the rest, he decided, and threw away the perishable kit.

As Chicago schools prepare to step up remote learning after this week’s spring break, the district has recommended schools stress revision and enrichment rather than forge full speed ahead with new material. That’s also the approach embraced by some charter schools, such as Meeker’s Garcia High in the Acero network.

Some district schools — generally early adopters of a device-for-each-student approach — do plan to introduce new concepts, a move leaders there say is key to maintaining academic momentum. But other schools say they will emphasize holding the academic line in fairness to students who don’t have access to devices or the internet, or are too preoccupied by weathering the coronavirus outbreak to focus on learning.

“I really grapple with this because there was so much I wanted to do with my class this spring,” said Carla Jones, a teacher at Cook Elementary on Chicago’s South Side. “But we need to see our families for who they are and where they are before we can push the academics.”

District leaders say allowing each school to tailor a remote learning plan to its student body makes sense even as some parents and educators worry students across the city will have markedly different experiences.

Ensuring that the coronavirus outbreak and school closures don’t magnify learning inequities is a daunting task: Even at schools that stick with enrichment, students who engage with the material this spring will pull ahead of peers who tune out school amid the upheaval.

Urban districts nationally are grappling with the question of just how aggressively to push academics while buildings are shuttered: High-poverty districts such as Detroit have described their approach as “enrichment,” using a blend of online and paper resources like Chicago. Others, from Miami-Dade to New York City, are working to pick up the academic pace remotely, which in New York has led the teachers union and other groups to call for reining in the academic push.

🔗Stressing enrichment

Jones, the Cook Elementary teacher, has repeatedly emailed students missing since schools closed and texted their parents through an app called Remind. She still can’t reach some families.

“The sad reality is that those who are not responding are the ones who need the engagement the most,” she said.

District leaders have acknowledged that even after CPS distributes 100,000 devices to students over the coming weeks, some will still be left without a computer or a reliable internet connection at home. Amid a massive shift in how schools deliver instruction, a focus on reinforcing key concepts students learned earlier this school year makes sense, officials have said.

Still, the district’s new remote learning plan allows schools to move forward with new material if they have “a clear plan on how to deliver this content in an equitable manner.” Either way, students’ grades should not suffer if they are not able to keep up, and they should get a chance to make up missed work.

Jones and her colleagues at Cook have fully embraced the recommendation to focus on warding off academic losses. She said keeping students engaged without introducing new concepts is challenging, but it can be done by keeping schoolwork relevant. She has compiled grade-appropriate articles and podcasts about the coronavirus outbreak.

She envisions hosting a kind of “Socratic seminar” via Google Classroom, where students weigh in on reading assignments at their own pace — even if that means using a parent’s phone after she returns from work at 8 p.m.

Meeker, the Garcia High teacher, said there’s “heartbreak” in potentially writing off new material he’d planned to tackle this spring. He has scrapped the lab projects that are a cornerstone of his classes. Some of the students who join the biweekly virtual sessions he holds are already raring for fresh content and questioning if they’ll end the year unprepared for the college-credit courses they hoped to take next fall.

But Meeker said many students can really benefit from drilling down on the basics, such as writing a hypothesis. And this approach is the fairest way to make it through an unprecedented time.

“This pandemic can’t be punitive toward our students,” he said. “If that means no new biology concepts for the rest of the school year, so be it.”

Emmanuel Del Rio, a high school math teacher at the district’s Kenwood Academy High School, agreed.

“We have to keep it as simple as possible,” he said. “The most important thing is to maintain and retain what we’ve already done.”

🔗Moving forward

In contrast, Senn High School Principal Mary Beck said her school and team of educators are ready to forge ahead with new content. Last fall, the school provided a Chromebook to each of its roughly 1,600 students, almost 90% of whom qualify for subsidized lunch, a measure of poverty. Students took home the tablets last month when the school closed, and staff have been troubleshooting internet access and other issues since.

As with all district schools, teachers will hold daily office hours to help students with questions and offer feedback on assignments. Classes will convene via videoconference. With most of the upperclassmen in International Baccalaureate courses — a challenging college-credit program that generally spans two school years — students just can’t afford to fall behind, Beck said.

“When a student has an A and has already done the review and revision, what are they going to do?” Beck said. “We need to keep pushing them.”

Lee Elementary on Chicago’s Southwest Side, another district school that assigns a tablet to each of its 800 students, will start handing out those tablets to students next week. Students in the upper grades already are versed in using the devices for schoolwork, such as submitting assignments via an online platform.

For the younger students, the coming weeks will be “almost like starting the first day of school,” Principal Lisa Epstein said. For that reason, the school will emphasize revision and enrichment at first, she said, but the goal is to tackle new material later in the year.

Kat Shapiro, a district special education teacher, said Westinghouse College Prep high school worked hard to set clear, consistent remote learning expectations. The high school will introduce new material in the coming weeks, but teachers plan to keep revisiting the most effective ways to convey it. In the end, educators likely will not be able to reach some students.

“We are putting work out into the ether,” Shapiro said. “Sometimes it comes back to us, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Jennie Biggs of the parent group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education said members this week reported the divergent approaches schools are taking. That includes communication about schools’ plans: Some parents have received detailed information about what next week will look like, and others have gone hunting for it on school websites.

Biggs said parents appreciate that schools are entering uncharted territory and fully expect trial and error. Still, she worries that students appear poised to experience school very differently in different parts of the city.

“Looking from school to school, we see a lot of inequities in how remote learning is addressed,” she said.

Chicago’s high school competition: Percent of students who win spots in coveted campuses remains flat

2020-03-27T23:18:44+00:00

The percent of Chicago eighth graders who secured their first choice of Chicago’s most competitive test-in high schools this year remained essentially flat, with only 15.6% accepted to their first-choice school, compared with 16.2% last year, even as the overall number of students who applied for selective-enrollment schools dropped.

The first round of applications to schools is the apex of the anxiety-provoking Olympics of school choice in Chicago. For the second year in a row, a districtwide online portal streamlined the application process and allowed researchers to compare student interest in different types of schools.

In total, 23% of applicants will get accepted into one of their top three selective-school choices, according to data provided Friday afternoon by Chicago Public Schools. The district planned to notify students Friday evening of their individual results.

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools, and seats at these schools are among the most competitive in the district. Students can rank up to 20 choices from among 250 programs in more than 130 schools — and among those they can choose up to six selective enrollment schools — on a universal application system called GoCPS that Chicago rolled out last year.

The selective enrollment system is controversial. Some laud the city’s highly ranked and competitive schools, saying they are a crown jewel in Chicago’s education system. But others say the schools reinforce inequality by rewarding students who can spend money on test prep and tutors.

Among applicants to all high schools, 53% of eighth-graders will get their first-choice school, a blip down from 54% last year. Students rank selective-enrollment schools separately from other high school programs, such as the rapidly expanding International Baccalaureate curriculum, career technical programs, and arts programs.

The district said 26,208 incoming freshmen participated in GoCPS applications this year, compared with 26,619 the previous year.

All Chicago students are automatically zoned to a neighborhood school, and students always have the option to attend that school.

“Nearly all CPS families are using GoCPS to find their ideal high school, and the district is pleased to see that the vast majority of students continue to receive their top school choices,” spokesperson Emily Bolton said in a release announcing the new figures.

While the district released the top line data publicly on Friday, students will find out between 5 p.m. and midnight Friday exactly which schools accepted them.

Families have two weeks to accept their Round 1 offer. Students can end up on waitlists for some popular programs, and receive calls from schools later in the spring. The exception are the competitive selective enrollment programs, which don’t run waitlists.

Students tended to apply to both charter and district-run high schools. Only 4% applied only to charters, about the same as last year, and 38% of applicants applied exclusively to district-run schools.

The second-round process requires a new application, and several high schools with seats to fill usually offer open houses and tours in the spring in the hopes of recruiting incoming freshmen who may not have considered them the first time.

How that will change under the new restrictions — schools will be closed through at least mid-April — remains to be seen. One option could be to change the timeline for the high school application process.

“The CPS Office of Access and Enrollment is working to assess the impact of school closures on the remainder of the GoCPS high school application timeline and will communicate any other changes or adjustments as soon as possible,” Bolton said.

How Illinois educators are getting more students to take — and pass — AP tests

2020-03-03T22:24:40+00:00

Five years ago, only 16 students from United Township High School District took Advanced Placement exams. Now thanks to efforts that make the rigorous courses more accessible, 92 students from the one-high-school district are signed up to take a total of 172 exams in May.

A decade ago, Coal City 1 Community School District students had access to just one AP class: calculus. Now they can choose from 10. And Reavis Township High School District has added AP subjects based on student feedback and offers extra study time to AP students.

The districts are three of 11 in Illinois on the College Board’s 10th annual AP District Honor Roll. Nationally, 250 school districts were recognized for expanding access to AP courses while maintaining or improving the number of students who earned passing scores of 3 or higher on the exams.

The College Board also singled out Illinois in a February report for leading states nationally last year on the percentage growth of students who passed AP exams. The report appeared just before Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced his latest budget proposal — a plan that included subsidies to help pay for more AP tests but was overall more austere than some educators had hoped for.

AP was designed to give students a shot at college-level work while in high school and to give those who earned at least a 3 out of 5 on a final exam a leg up with college credit. By subsidizing the tests, which cost $94 per student per subject, districts have seen booms in AP enrollment and test taking.

Since 2016, the United Township district has paid exam fees for all students.

Shannon Miller, director of curriculum and instruction for the district, said removing that financial barrier has made a significant difference, as 60% of the student body qualifies as low-income.

“They could maybe take one exam, but for a family to pay for four exams is super costly so we just took that away and said, ‘No, we’re going to pay for it and you take as many as you’re prepared for,’” Miller said.

But district leaders across the state say that picking up the cost of the tests isn’t enough. To recruit more students to take AP classes and pass the exams, schools need a larger selection of courses, fewer academic prerequisites, and more support from faculty.

Since 2016, both the number of students taking exams and the number of exams passed have increased, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education.

But despite an increase in the number of students taking the tests, researchers have said, too few black and brown students are included. The available data does not provide analysis of the percentage of students of color taking exams. (To read about Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to enroll more black and Latino students in Advanced Placement courses, click here.)

Miller said the 1,750-student United Township district, in East Moline, Illinois, is trying to accomodate a rapidly changing student body. In four years, the school’s English learner population has more than doubled. Students speak about 26 different languages, mostly Spanish and French, she said.

In response, the district offers the Seal of Biliteracy program. Students can take AP Spanish or AP French exams to demonstrate proficiency in either language, and if they pass the tests with a 3 or higher, can earn up to two years of foreign language credit at Illinois colleges, Miller said. The district has also added courses popular with students, such as AP Psychology, and removed a testing requirement for admission into AP courses that had limited participation.

United Township District also offers a three-year critical thinking program that is not an AP course but that it argues gives students a stronger foundation for taking and passing literature, language or government AP exams at the end of senior year. The average AP scores of students who enroll in the critical thinking program are above a 3, which is higher than the state average on the exams, according to district leaders.

Last year, a few students graduated with AP passing scores of a five, entering college with 15 to 18 college credits, Miller said.

Coal City 1 Community School District Superintendent Kent Bugg is excited about the increase in offerings.

“We’re very proud of it, especially considering we’re a little different school district than some of the others on the list,” Bugg said. “We’re a small rural school district. A lot of the schools you see on the list that are traditional AP school districts are more of your suburban area school districts.”

He credits word of mouth among students and the successes of college-bound former students with the district’s significant growth in AP course enrollment.

“We don’t actively try to recruit and push our kids into courses if we feel like they don’t belong there or it wouldn’t be beneficial to them,” Bugg said. “We promote career readiness but we also want to make sure we have those AP courses available for those college-bound students.”

Changing school culture can be critical, said Reavis Township High School Principal Julie Schultz.

“The belief of the faculty and staff is that all students can learn,” Schultz said. “All students should have equal access to guaranteed viable curriculum, that curriculum being vigorous and challenging. It’s a mindset. It’s a culture of how we view our students.”

The school added courses such as AP Environmental Science based on student feedback. Though the district doesn’t pay all exam fees, students can apply for a fee waiver. Reavis High is more than half Latino and also offers the Seal of Biliteracy program.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to recognize and acknowledge and not just celebrate but emphasize multi-language, multi-skilled students,” Schultz said.

AP students receive extra academic support, such as an intense review period before the exams in May and homeroom periods that give students an extra 30 minutes with their AP teachers to work on homework or get help, that has proved successful, she added.

“The kids already have what it takes. It’s coaching them and building that confidence that they can do it,” Schultz said.

We asked Chicago teachers to tell us about their most powerful lesson. Here are five answers.

2020-02-27T23:01:11+00:00

Chicago is embarking on a $135 million curriculum redesign and leaning on committees of teachers to help. But which lessons resonate most with students? Chalkbeat asked five Chicago finalists for the 2020 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching — which recognizes educators for their teaching practice, curriculum selection, and impact on students — to tell us about their most powerful lesson in their classrooms right now and how their classes respond.

Here are five of the responses, edited for length and clarity.

Want to tell us about a powerful lesson of your own or weigh in on the district’s curriculum redesign? Take our survey below. Your responses could inform a future story.

Kelsie Mizel
Teaches fifth grade English, science, social studies, math, and social and emotional skills at Wildwood IB World Magnet SchoolA lesson called “What About Us?” sheds light on racial and gender inequalities that existed around the American Revolution. I show a slideshow with Pink’s “What About Us?” song playing in the background. The first half consists of portraits of historical figures from the colonial era. I ask questions like, “What did you notice?” or “Was anyone missing from the slideshow?”

Students note the absence of women, African Americans or Native Americans in the slideshow. They often make connections and references to other historical periods and even the present day. Then I show the second half of the slideshow which includes pictures of influential women, African Americans and Native Americans, also from the colonial era.

I end by asking, “Was there liberty and justice for all Americans in the 1700s? Is there liberty and justice for all now?”

I like this lesson because it doesn’t teach a story from one perspective. Growing up, I always felt that we learned about the same people who shaped America. It is important for students to learn from multiple perspectives and to be inclusive of all cultures.

Tolulope Solola
Teaches sixth through eighth grade science and social science at Frazier International Magnet School

My students love the genetics unit. They learn about what makes them unique. Middle school students’ worlds revolve around their egos, so students are interested in learning more about what their genes say about who they are. We discuss how genes are influenced by both environmental and genetic (nature vs. nurture) factors.

In one lesson, students use a diagram to explain fraternal twins who look different. In one example, two African American parents gave birth to a set of twins. One had lighter skin, blues eyes and blond hair and the other had darker skin, brown eyes and dark brown hair. Students find this a fascinating phenomenon.

I teach majority African American students. Students find out what truly makes them unique and love themselves more for it. This unit touches on having pride in their melanin — skin color — and also forces them to inquire more about their ancestry and inherited genes be they dominant or recessive.

Ruth Muhlberger
Teaches sixth through eighth grade math and eighth grade social and emotional learning at Belmont Cragin Elementary

Social and emotional learning is a part of the Belmont Cragin culture. The older students become, the more self-conscious they become. I have found myself having to be a bit more creative in sparking discussions in the classroom. I teach lessons using TED Talks and other videos and have found that even if I can’t get everyone to participate in the whole class sharing time, I can get them to participate in the smaller group setting.

When I asked my students to share what lessons resonated with them I was surprised to have unanimous feedback. Every group wrote about the Golden Rule, which are videos created by Brooks Gibbs, an award-winning resilience educator who teaches students, parents, and teachers how to become emotionally strong and resolve conflict. They teach students to treat others as you want others to treat you.

The lesson led to a great discussion. At the end of our conversation, the majority of students were able to see the value in being kind to everyone. They understood that kindness can help diffuse a situation.

Students learn the foundation of what it means to be a more engaged, thoughtful, empathetic, respectful, responsible and compassionate citizen. Students’ involvement in social-emotional learning is laying the foundation for them to be able to make good decisions on their own. In class we discuss how their choices impact their future. We focus on “self” so that students can be able to then make a difference in the lives of others — it has to start with self. This lesson definitely caused students to think about behavior and choice making.

Michael Stewart
Teaches seventh and eighth grade math and social studies at LEARN South Chicago

One lesson that resonated with my seventh grade students took place when we simulated buying and financing a car to understand and solve simple interest problems. The goal was to deepen the students’ understanding of problem solving using percentages. Students used the simple interest formula and a table to demonstrate the proportional relationship that exists between the number of years, principal and interest.

Students were given the price of a car ($30,000) and three loan scenarios involving down payments, monthly payments, and duration of loan. They had to choose the best loan and provide reasonable explanations for their choice.

Students recognized that while the monthly payments for the loans with longer terms were smaller, the overall interest paid on the longer loan was higher when compared with loans with shorter terms. The scenarios were set up to illustrate how different factors affect the total amount that is paid over time. For example, higher down payments or initial investments shortened the length of loans and resulted in lower interest rates and less interest accrued. Conversely, lower initial investments resulted in longer loan repayment periods, higher interest rates, and more interest accrued.

This required parents to share their ideas and experiences with loans with their children. We also discussed predatory loans and high interest rates that disproportionately affect lower-income groups.

Paloma Salcedo
Teaches fourth grade at Brighton Park Elementary School

One lesson that resonated with my students centered around the book, “Stef Soto, Taco Queen.” Many students enjoyed the text because it featured a very relatable character who learned the importance of family, friendship, and honesty.

I created lessons in English and Spanish on how to create a positive and welcoming community. The lesson that had the most impact taught students that good readers can make meaningful connections between the text and their lives.

I also used the lesson to explain the importance of friendship and the feeling of wanting to belong and to connect to others.

This lesson prompted students to think critically: What is a friend? What do they look like, sound like, etc.? This lesson also helped bolster the lessons taught in our social and emotional learning program, where students learn they have to listen to others with attention if they want to build friendships.

My goal was to have students reflect on whether they have been good friends and what they can do to build new friendships at the beginning of the school year. I also wanted to create a safe and warm environment where the students would feel more comfortable with sharing their thoughts with their partners and understand that they need to respect everyone’s perspectives and voices in our classroom.

Here’s what to watch in Chicago’s school budget revamp

2020-02-14T01:05:12+00:00

Special education teachers want more aides. Parents want more music teachers and librarians, while alumni are asking for a more diverse teacher workforce.

And if a specific request can’t be funded, they want the district to tell them why.

At Chicago’s first-ever round of public feedback meetings in recent memory on the school budgeting system, parents and educators turned out in droves to explain and demand what the school district should fund.

Now, a working group of educators and administrators, brought together by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, will consider the suggestions and recommend how Chicago should change its complicated school budgeting system, and what schools should offer.

They face a challenging mandate: how to meet needs and desires and fix school funding without getting more money for an underfunded system?

Chicago receives more than $7 billion for education but steers only about half that to the campuses it runs. The rest goes to pensions, capital expenses, citywide and network level support, charter schools, and central office administration.

And while some advocates hope the state will tax the rich more to boost revenue, it’s not certain that will happen, or how much would trickle down to schools.

Here is what to watch as it moves forward:

The proposed changes could be implemented as soon as the next budget cycle.

The working committee will recommend how to make next school year’s budget more equitable.

Among the ideas on the table: funding that works more like the state’s model, which gives schools more money based on student need; a continuation of the targeted pots of money awarded to some schools; and a new timeline for releasing budgets, to help principals plan.

This is only the first round of public feedback meetings.

This process is likely going to be a model for other efforts to solicit and incorporate public response. The district will seek community input into its long-term budget process, according to a recent district presentation. The district promised that anyone who participated in one of the public meetings will receive a follow-up survey.

The district will hold similar public feedback meetings about the upcoming capital budget discussions on campus improvements. Parents and activist groups, along with some board members, have criticized the previous process for being opaque and difficult to understand.

Parents and educators were specific in what they wanted to see in their schools.

In the budget hearings parents and educators talked less about process and more about what they’d like to see on their campuses. In interviews with Chalkbeat, they mentioned smaller class sizes for special education students, more librarians and music teachers, parent mentoring programs, and extracurricular activities, among others.

Even if the budget formula shifts, Chicago faces tough decisions to deliver money more equitably to schools — the stated goal.

In Chicago a gap yawns between have and have-not campuses, separating schools where veteran teachers tend to flock with their higher salaries or parents can raise funds to supplement staff and supplies, from campuses with younger, inexperienced teachers or no parent fundraising groups.

There’s also another critical factor that determines how much money a school gets: its enrollment. In Chicago, which is steadily leaking population, the district has lost 54,100 children in a decade. That has left 145 district-run schools less than half-full, according to the latest round of capacity data.

Chicago must decide how enrollment should count toward a school’s budget, with the district propping up dozens of small schools with additional funds. It will have to determine how to factor in the distribution of experienced — and more expensive — teachers.

Some advocates, including the Chicago Teachers Union, seek an influx of new funds. Gov. J. B. Pritzker has pinned his hopes on passing a graduated income tax to provide more revenue for schools. That move would need a constitutional amendment to proceed.

The committee will release its first report in March.

The budget working group is supposed to issue its first report next month, using information gathered from the public meetings as well as informational sessions organized by the district. Overhauling the budgeting process could take years.

Carlos Azcoitia, a former district principal in Little Village and a member of the committee, said the group was considering school funding scenarios based on how many students are in a school, as well as need. Azcoitia said he would draw on his personal experiences to help shape his input.

“As a principal for 10 years … I served a population that had the greatest aspirations but also a greater need,” he said, noting the large number of immigrant and homeless students at his school.

This story is part of the Lens on Lightfoot series, a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining the first year of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are Chalkbeat Chicago, the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE. It is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Chicago is revisiting school funding. Here’s what 7 parents and educators would prioritize if they were in charge

2020-02-10T21:25:49+00:00

Arnette McKinney arrived at a recent Chicago Public Schools budget workshop armed with a written list of items she wanted to be funded in public schools across the city: a gym, better arts programs, and a more robust library, to name a few.

“Where’s the librarian, where’s the music teacher?” asked McKinney, a parent at Lenart Elementary Regional Gifted Center School and a teacher at Fiske Elementary in Woodlawn, echoing a frequent question that has surfaced at hearings about how Chicago funds its schools.

At Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s urging, Chicago Public Schools held six workshops to solicit public feedback on school funding, a complicated topic in a city that spends more than $7 billion on education but steers about half that to its individual campuses (the rest goes to charters, pensions, capital expenses, citywide and network level support, and central office administration).

Meetings were wide-ranging, with educators, parents, and community members offering up suggestions in front of district officials. But the district has provided little clarity about promised changes and how public comment to influence them.

“We actually want to earn public trust in a very honest way,” said Maurice Swinney, chief equity officer for Chicago public schools, at a hearing at Corliss High School. “How do we keep these movements and conversations going? … What are the definitions and formulas we need to put out so people can see how we’re making decisions?”

A 29-member funding commission will recommend how the Chicago school board could change its school funding formula.

But what if parents and teachers had the pursestrings? Chalkbeat spoke to several at the Corliss hearing in the city’s Pullman neighborhood, to find out what they’d prioritize.

McKinney (pictured above) said her school, Fiske Elementary, has an art program that it funded by a foundation run by the Chicago hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper. But the school has no music program.

“I believe our schools should have the same funding, it shouldn’t be more on the North or more on the South, it should be equal,” McKinney said. “Those that are underserved should be brought up to the standard of everyone else.”

McKinney also said she’d like to see funding for a parent mentoring program at Fiske. Parents may qualify for a stipend only after they’ve volunteered 100 hours for the program, she said.

Pearlena Mitchell, also a teacher at Fiske, said that schools should be funded based on individual needs of students, rather than all schools getting a flat rate, and parents should be able to see where the funding goes.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” Mitchell said.

Chicago Public School moms Alexis Mimms and Rodneyka Armstrong attended a public forum on school-based budgeting.

CPS parents Rodneyka Armstrong, left, and Alexis Mimms, whose children also attend Fiske Elementary, want more resources for extracurricular activities to keep students engaged during and after school.

“Extracurricular activities for the kids, football, basketball and after-school programming, like tutoring,” she said, “it’s important because it gives children things to look forward to and things to keep them out of trouble. Children at the school are always saying how they wished they had football, basketball, things like that and tutoring for them.”

“My son gets bored very quickly, he just sits in his seat and does work all day,” Armstrong said. “They need to get out, stretch their arms. I think a science lab would be good.”

Brent Hamlet attended Chicago Public Schools growing up and now works at CICS Bucktown, a charter school.

Brent Hamlet, a paraprofessional at CICS Bucktown, attended Chicago Public Schools and now works at a charter school managed by Distinctive Schools. A fellow with the education policy group Educators for Excellence, he said he attended the workshop to learn more about how funding is allocated and to share his insight from working in schools on both the South and North sides.

One of the issues he noticed at some schools was that the cadre of teachers did not reflect the diverse student body. He would like to see resources directed toward recruiting more teachers of color.

“How does staff reflect the community’s vision of the school and how does the staff reflect the student body?” he asked.

Deborah Riddel is a special education teacher at Charles W. Earle Stem Academy.

Deborah Riddel is a special education teacher at Charles W. Earle Stem Academy, where she said last year she had a packed classroom of 22 diverse learners. In some cases, her classroom is larger than the classrooms the students were pulled from, she said.

“I’m a special ed teacher and our students are not receiving what they need in resources,” Riddel said. “With special education, they need something extra or different and they don’t receive it … there should never have been 22 students in my classroom at one time, but my principal said there’s nothing we can do.”

Riddel said that many parents aren’t aware of their children’s rights. She suggested that the district provide an advocate to help bilingual students and students with disabilities at each school.

Additionally, the school system should fund additional social workers, case workers, advocates, and resources in schools in areas with high crime rates, she said.

“Some of these students are experiencing things like PTSD, depression — the things that they share with me you would not believe,” she said. “The area where I teach has the highest crime in the city. That means that those students are either related to the perpetrators or the victims in higher numbers than anybody else in Chicago. So we should be getting more [resources to help them], right?”

Tamara Helse is on the board of governors at Airforce Academy High School and the Local School Council at Harold Washington Elementary School.

Tamara Helse is a parent who serves on the board of governors at Air Force Academy High School and the Local School Council at Harold Washington Elementary School in Burnside, where her children attend school. She said despite its designation as an arts school, Harold Washington doesn’t have a robust art program and she’d like to see more of the budget dedicated to that.

Nearly half of Illinois’ teacher prep programs fall short on teaching reading, study says

2020-01-31T18:16:55+00:00

Illinois lags behind other states in preparing aspiring elementary teachers how to teach reading — and it isn’t improving, according to a report this week from the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The report awarded a D or F to 19 higher education programs — 43% of those the council evaluated in Illinois — on how well they prepare teachers in scientifically based reading instruction methods. The council gave 38% of the teaching programs an A or B, and 18% a C.

Nationally, more than half of traditional teacher-training programs earned an A or a B grade, up from 35% in 2013. Across the country this year, 39% of programs received a D or F score, a lower percentage than in Illinois.

“Not only does Illinois not do well, but there are no signs of improvement and that runs counter to what we’re seeing in many states,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. “It’s extremely frustrating to see. Kids aren’t learning how to read and what is more damaging to your life than not learning that essential skill?”

Other states, including Colorado’s teacher preparation programs, also scored poorly in the report. Higher education officials have criticized the council’s methodology.

The study graded 44 undergraduate and graduate education programs across Illinois. It did not review 10 other programs, including the University of Chicago, that did not provide enough information about how they teach reading.

To determine the rating of each program, literacy experts review the topics, readings, assignments, practice opportunities, tests, and textbooks of required early reading courses to determine whether they effectively teach the science of reading. That method includes five components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Walsh said that the science of reading method teaches 90% to 95% of kids to read.

The study also found that an increasing number of textbooks used in education programs reflect the science of reading.

Walsh said if the council doesn’t find the syllabus of a course clear during analysis, programs have multiple opportunities to submit additional materials and “correct courses and turn over additional materials” to improve their ratings.

Based on the findings, “there needs to be some on-the-ground work in the state,” such as programs investing in tools, including updated textbooks, to prepare teachers for success, Walsh said.

Higher education leaders have criticized the study for its methodology which they say doesn’t show the full picture.

University of St. Francis, a private university in Joliet, was assigned a D for its undergraduate education program. The university declined to provide the council access to syllabi or other materials, said John Gambro, dean of the college of education, calling the study “extremely flawed.” The D grade was based on evaluation of public materials, such as the education department website, he said.

“They draw conclusions based on information that isn’t there,” Gambro said about the council’s study. “The equivalent would be to judge a restaurant by their menu.”

Despite the failing grade, Gambro noted that St. Francis’ education programs are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and approved by the Illinois State Board of Education. He added that the university uses the science of reading as the basis for its curriculum.

For a more accurate study, literacy experts might have spoken with faculty, observed students, and surveyed graduates, he said.

Northeastern University’s undergraduate program earned an A, but the graduate program received an F.

How Illinois prepares its teachers has been an ongoing conversation at the state level amid a teacher shortage. Last year, the state decided to jettison a basic skills test it previously required aspiring teachers to pass.

Becky Raymond, executive director of Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition, said that the study brings attention to the dire issue of literacy in the city of Chicago. The coalition, which was founded in 2003 to improve the quality of adult literacy programs throughout the city, teaches reading to adults. A 2011 Southern Illinois University study showed that three in 10 adults in the city have low basic literacy skills.

Raymond hasn’t noticed a change in reading ability, and said that adult education programs also often struggle to find quality instructors.

“Retaining talent is an issue,” she said, adding that many other variables, in addition to teacher quality, influence a child’s educational attainment.

Chicago mulls how to reslice the school budget pie — but what about a bigger pie?

2020-01-30T05:59:00+00:00

While few communities would say their public school is adequately funded, in Chicago a gap yawns between have and have-not campuses, separating schools where parents can raise funds to supplement staff and supplies, and those where teachers struggle to meet students’ complicated needs.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot pledged to revamp how the district doles out funds. On Wednesday, the first public meeting called by a committee overseeing the overhaul attracted about 140 people brimming with ideas and questions on how to redo school budgeting.

But even as participants agreed on the need for change, few had ideas on how to address the elephant in the room — how to fix school funding without more money?

Spurred by the possibility that the district might at long last heed the public’s complaints about insufficient funding, parents and teachers shared ideas on how to better serve students’ needs and spread out opportunity.

Chicago differentiates somewhat in how much it allocates schools serving middle-class students and those serving needier ones. Campuses get more funds for students living in poverty and those requiring special education. But educators and parents have said that’s not enough, and that schools serving students who face learning challenges, language barriers, and other difficulties need more resources.

As a candidate, Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding and to consult the public about it, and last month the city created a working group to lead the charge.

Wednesday’s meeting was the first of six to be held in the next two weeks. School board members Sendhil Revuluri and Elizabeth Todd-Breland also attended the gathering.

“How do we best support and align the work and the resource and the talent of our district to ensure that young people get what they need?” asked Maurice Swinney, who leads the district’s equity work.

In small groups, the participants brainstormed ideas and the budget work itself.

Among the suggestions: pattern school funding after Illinois’ system, which weights according to student need; educate parents on how money is spent so they can better advocate for school needs; eliminate money for special programs like International Baccalaureate or science-technology (STEM) schools; and hold a storytelling event between schools with resource disparities.

People acknowledged that the room had a significantly larger proportion of white people than the district itself. They also noted that students, principals, and support staff were largely missing.

After the public meetings, the school budget committee will recommend how to make next school year’s budget more equitable. It will hold more public meetings next school year.

Of the district’s budget, 57% comes from local funds, 32% from the state, and 11% from the federal government. But Chicago Public Schools falls about $1.9 billion short of what the state considers adequate funding. That means it needs about $5,000 more per student to properly serve student needs.

Participants wondered, how effective could a new formula be if the district didn’t have more money to spend?

Andrew Askuvich, whose two children attend Jamieson Elementary School in North Park, said the meeting underscored how Chicago schools are underfunded.

At Jamieson, the parent organization raises enough to offer each teacher about $300 for school supplies every year. That’s less than schools that fund teacher positions, Askuvich said, but it’s more than what many schools raise.

“In the end, there’s the understanding that there is just not enough right now,” he said. And if the district does get more money, he said it should go to schools with the highest needs first. “For a lot of people [here] it was really about equity, about making sure the schools that have been neglected for decades, that more is done for these schools.”

Can Chicago design a better school ratings system? Principals, parents, and teachers think so.

2020-01-28T05:59:04+00:00

Ellen Kennedy gripped the microphone and spoke poignantly about how school ratings put pressure on everyone involved with a school, starting with the principal.

“The struggle is really, really real,” said Kennedy, the principal at Richards Career Academy, a high school in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that moved up from the lowest-rated tier last school year. She was one of about 60 principals, parents, and community members who took part in a school ratings discussion at the new $85 million Englewood STEM High School Monday night. “My school lovingly serves some of the most vulnerable children in this city, yet I’m being measured by the same [ratings] policy as selective enrollment schools. There is something truly disturbing about that.”

School ratings factor heavily into which schools parents choose, and can trigger interventions when they drop past a threshold. They are required by both state and federal law, but school districts have considerable leeway in how they design the ratings.

Critics, including Chicago’s teachers union, have had sharp words about the city’s current five-tiered system, which rolled out in 2014, for being too reliant on test scores and attendance.

In June, Chicago Public Schools introduced revisions to its rating system, and the city’s newly minted school board passed the changes in its members’ first public meeting, despite concerns that the amended ratings would still penalize schools with the highest concentrations of students living in poverty.

Eight months later, the board is reopening the conversation. Exactly what the school board plans to do with what it learns from its meeting isn’t quite clear — the district is also trying to drum up participation in a citywide survey on the topic and said there would be future public discussions — but members said they would weigh what they heard. (School board members also play a prominent role in a new committee that Mayor Lori Lightfoot tasked with revisiting school budgeting. Read more here.)

Amy Rome, a school board member and a former principal and teacher who led the ratings conversation Monday, said that the board was in search of “a way to compare schools that is value-based.”

“There is a historical context for how [Chicago’s ratings policy, known as SQRP] has been used that has really damaged trust in the community, and we need to earn back that trust,” she said.

Bridgitt White, a parent with two children in two differently rated elementary schools, listened with interest. Her daughter attends a test-in classical school on the South Side that is among the city’s top-rated. Her son attends a neighborhood school that is a level lower and has seen cuts to arts and its library. He lost teachers midyear in second and third grade.

For White, the conversation about school ratings can’t be isolated from discussions of how much money or attention some schools receive compared to others. She would like to see the city draft a ratings policy that doesn’t rely so much on standardized test scores in reading and math (which currently count for much of a school’s score, along with attendance), but also the availability of arts programs, technology, and social emotional investments for students. “We’ve lost our arts, our libraries — I’m tired of my son saying school is ‘blah’ to him because he has no sports, no extra activities outside of academics. What kind of environment is that for a child?”

Attendees brainstormed in small groups about what “quality” should look like. The list of suggestions included everything from a school’s diversity of programming — such as arts and sports — to the availability of counseling and psychological services, to teacher diversity, to more qualitative metrics, such as how welcoming a school feels to families, or its cleanliness.

Jeff Broom, the director of school quality measurement and research, said that the district would hold future meetings and that what it learned would inform more “technical conversations.”

In November the district shared an open survey with the public and has so far collected a little over 4,000 responses, with teachers making up 41% of respondents (parents were only around 24%) and 44% of survey takers identifying as white. Soliciting broader representation and feedback is a challenge, Broom said.

Several attendees suggested the district take a more school-by-school approach with engagement and try to reach a broader set of parents by working through neighborhood groups and churches, instead of scheduling more districtwide meetings.

Principal Stacy Stewart of Belmont-Cragin Elementary said the meeting was a step in the right direction, but challenged leaders to foster more conversations about the “whole child, whole school model.”

“How do we leverage assets in our community so our children get the supports they need?” she asked. “Our city needs resiliency. We can’t be victims of circumstance. We have to bounce back.”

Wanted: Ways to boost the profile of Chicago’s Local School Councils. A new bill could be a start.

2020-01-28T01:29:51+00:00

Established as a way to ensure parent and staff input into the running of schools, Chicago’s Local School Councils were heralded as a potent mechanism to empower communities.

Twenty years later, many councils suffer from vacancies, parent indifference, and a sense of powerlessness. But with council elections looming in April, the school district is hoping to beef up participation, parents are speaking out, and a key state bill could boost the councils’ profile. Chicago community groups are seeking to engage parents and community members and press lawmakers to give the bodies more teeth.

In a city lacking an elected school board, “It is the only democracy we have within the education system in Chicago,” said Rod Wilson, an organizer from the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, at a workshop aimed at strengthening the councils.

“If you’re getting public dollars then we’re saying that parents should have some say in the governance of the school.” But some parents feel as if they’re fighting an uphill battle to create change.

“Most members don’t welcome me there,” said Myriam Perez, who has served three terms as a community representative on the council of her former school, Nathan S. Davis Elementary in Brighton Park. She joined the council because she wanted to give back to the school that made her feel safe when she didn’t in her own home. But she’s had a mixed experience.

“I tend to ask a lot of questions, I tend to call people out if they’re not doing something … I don’t like going sometimes but I go anyways because I know that I want to speak up for students that might want a safe space at Davis.”

At the Saturday workshop, the host group Raise Your Hand encouraged attendees to get involved with their councils and briefed on coming changes, including the proposed LSC Empowerment Bill that would bolster councils’ powers.

More than 150 council members, parents, teachers and community members, plus several school board members, attended the Saturday workshop at offices of the teachers union.

Chicago is the only city in the state that uses the local school council model in public schools. Each school council has space for six parents, two teachers, one non-teacher staff member and two community members, as well as a student representative in high schools.

The councils have the authority to hire and evaluate the principal, allocate discretionary funds, and approve and monitor the school improvement plan.

Charter schools, contract schools and military schools — which together make up about one-fifth of public schools in the city — do not have councils.

But those schools would be required to form local councils under a state bill proposed by Rep. Sonya Harper, of the 6th district, and Sen. Ram Villivalam, of the 8th district. The bill also would allow councils to keep decision-making authority when schools are on probation.

It also would prohibit the district from closing any school without a supermajority of the council approving.

Additionally, the bill would scale back district influence on the councils and create advisory positions for seventh and eighth graders. In response to criticism about the preparation and ongoing support for council members, the bill calls for an independent commission in charge of training.

Some parents cite a lack of consistency among schools in running councils. Many attendees raised questions about voting technicalities and election rules, as well as the specifics of LSC authority.

The John H. Hamline Elementary council has a community vacancy and a non-teacher staff vacancy, said Geszill Lightfoot, a teacher at the school who has served on the council.

“Community should be involved because they have a stake in the education of the kids as well. It’s their school, their neighborhood,” said Jessica Suarez Nieto, who also teaches at Hamline Elementary, located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. “How do we welcome parents to come in?”

David Vance, who is the community representative at James H. Bowen High School and James N. Thorp Elementary School, in South Chicago, said he’s noticed a lack of parent and community involvement in both councils.

“We need more parent involvement,” Vance said. “This is our taxpayer money. Our schools are public institutions, so we need to have our voices loud and clear to fight for the money that we need to fight for better schools because CPS hasn’t been doing it.”

Others said they hoped to bring a fresh perspective to their current councils. Bridget Doherty Trebing, a visual art teacher at Taft High School, in Norwood Park, said that her school’s council does not reflect the diverse student body and has consistent low attendance at meetings.

“We benefit from some privilege, being a well-resourced school, but our LSC is not terribly progressive … so I don’t feel like our LSC best serves our students,” Doherty Trebing said. “I don’t think we’re doing a good job of engaging the community.”

The coalition LSCs.4.All will launch a hotline Feb. 15 will launch a hotline on Feb. 15 to assist with elections and answer general inquiries, said Jennie Biggs, communications and outreach director of Raise Your Hand. The number will be 707-LSC-4ALL.

Elections will be held April 22 at elementary schools and April 23 at high schools.

Chicago’s teaching corps is becoming whiter. How the district hopes to entice — and keep — more teachers of color

2019-12-20T18:48:54+00:00

One question surfaced again and again during the Chicago Board of Education’s first public meeting about better diversifying its teacher workforce: What about doing more to keep teachers from leaving?

“Take care of those who are already in the system,” Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates asked of the district Monday. “Begin to see educators of color as partners and experts in the field.”

Retaining teachers of color is vital for a district where half the teachers are white and 89% of the students they teach are not. Since 2011, black teachers have left the district at higher rates than have teachers of other races. As a result, the city has lost a quarter of its black teaching force over a six-year period. At the same time, more than nine in 10 white teachers remained in the district, and the number of Latino teachers grew, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district data.

It’s hard to zero in on just one reason for the losses of black educators, and a round of 2011 layoffs is the subject of ongoing litigation between the union and the district. That year, according to union calculations, 42% of 1,456 laid-off teachers were black, despite black teachers making up 29% of the total workforce.

Chicago schools face a crisis in teacher retention and a mighty struggle with hiring replacements — problems that may intensify as more teachers hit retirement age amid a national teacher shortage. Data on district hiring show that the city’s teaching corps is growing younger and whiter, as older black teachers retire and are replaced by younger newcomers who are predominantly white.

But the union pointed to other reasons the number of black educators has dropped dramatically, from teacher evaluations that tend to disadvantage black teachers to so-called turnaround schools where majority-black teaching staffs were let go in district-mandated overhauls for low-performing schools.

Retention is key

Both Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have pledged to renew district efforts to build a workforce that better reflects its students. Key to delivering on that promise would be holding on to the teachers of color who have stayed with the district. Recognizing its need, the district has launched several recruiting and teacher-support initiatives, some with promising results.

“Research on the importance of a diverse teacher workforce is vast and quite definitive in its conclusions,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a history professor and school board member spearheading the teacher diversity committee’s efforts. “All students benefit.”

A 2009 report from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research showed the average Chicago school losing half its teachers every five years. More recent analysis isn’t available at the school level. At the district level, according to a decade’s worth of data provided by Chicago Public Schools, the district loses between 10% and 12% of its teachers each year, with fewer teachers — 8.3% — leaving in 2018-19. Another 5% of teachers switched schools but stayed within Chicago last year.

The drain in talent is a critical problem because research shows teacher quality is one of the most important factors in student achievement and growth, and beginning teachers are typically in the least effective stages of their classroom careers.

Chicago’s teacher diversity committee discusses how to better retain staff, at a meeting Dec. 16, 2019.

The problem, like many in Chicago, afflicts schools unevenly. Schools hemorrhaging enrollment also lose teachers faster. So do charters, although their teacher retention data is incomplete.

Data analyzed by Chalkbeat show that the 100 district-run schools that struggle most to keep teachers tend to serve predominantly black students, and have higher percentages of students who are in special education, from low-income families, or are homeless.

Teachers of all backgrounds are less likely to remain at black schools, but especially white and Latino teachers, who tend to stay at schools that are racially mixed or predominantly Latino.

Tackling those figures, the network has cultivated a residency program that provides mentors and underwrites graduate education. During the board’s meeting this week, officials touted the program, which counted 90 teacher residents this year, more than triple the 25 it had last year. By 2021, the district aims to have 150 residents in the program.

Residents are paid $35,000 per year and receive benefits as they work toward a master degree in education, boosting access for participants who couldn’t afford to forego a paying job to attend college. A bachelor’s program is also in the works, officials said.

One of the program’s recruits is Saleetra Garnett, a third-grade language arts instructor at King Academy of Social Justice in West Englewood.

Schools like King that serve black and economically disadvantaged students and struggle academically often have a hard time holding on to educators.

“But I felt the need to be where black kids are,” said Garnett, who taught in Chicago Public Schools seven years ago in a turnaround school — one where the campus was managed by the independent Academy of Urban School Leadership — then left for a Texas school district. “It just feels like I belong here.”

That Garnett, 32, has returned to Chicago Public Schools speaks to both her growth as a teacher and the district’s small triumph in luring her back. Just three years ago, King was losing nearly one-quarter of its teachers annually, more than the average district school.

Opportunity Schools

A program dubbed Opportunity Schools that helps with teacher recruitment and trains principals at the 60 toughest-to-staff schools helped lure Garnett back. The program also pairs new teachers with veterans, provides monthly coaching, and offers principals strategies to help hold on to teachers.

“We’ve been really trying to focus [principals] on some of the leadership moves that help create the kind of culture, the kind of career growth, and the kind of professional support for people that helps them stay in a job they otherwise would not want to stay in,” said Matt Lyons, the district’s chief talent officer.

But ongoing challenges facing Chicago schools also pose hurdles to recruiting staff. Schools like King can be a tough sell to prospective teachers, whose evaluations depend in part on how well their students perform, said Jasmine Thurmond, the principal at King.

“It’s heightened accountability, heightened expectations — but the same compensation,” she said. “Part of the interview process is differentiating between people just looking for a job versus those who want to do the work of supporting the development of children and their community. As a neighborhood school, our school reflects the community — the phenomenal things available as well as some of the challenges.”

At the same time, the district aims to boost the pipeline of future teachers of color, while also making moves to recruit more of the available educators. The district’s ambitious goal calls for hiring 3,000 more black and Latino teachers by 2024.

Since Jackson, the schools chief, announced that goal as part of her five-year vision early this year, it has hired 512, though that’s not a net increase. In the five years from 2013 to 2018, the district hired more than 3,500 black and Latino teachers, but that wasn’t enough to make up for the teachers who left.

Expanding Chicago’s residency program — an initiative gaining momentum in Illinois — is another way the district hopes to make it easier for paraprofessionals or other aspiring teachers to gain experience while working toward a degree.

Officials point out that the first cohorts of the residency program comprise mostly people of color, strengthening the possibility that tangible change is on the horizon.

To get results, though, there are some intractable problems that the district must deal with to boost retention: Research shows that poor school climate and low student achievement are two big reasons why teachers leave schools. But those problems are hard for a school to solve when it is constantly losing and replacing teachers year over year.

“The people who could be the greatest promoters of teaching our students don’t feel like they can honestly encourage people to get into this profession in this district,” Troy LaRaviere, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said at the board’s committee meeting. “You have to change what teaching is like for the people doing it.”

Otherwise, the district runs the risk of losing more teachers of color like Chikamso Odume. She moved to Chicago to work for the district through Teach for America. After five years at Gary Comer College Prep in Grand Crossing, instructing eight classes of 35-45 students each, she said felt drained and opted to leave a workload she felt was unsustainable.

“I’m wondering why we’re focusing on the pipeline to get teachers when we can’t even keep them,” Odume said. “At the end of the day, all we’re doing is treating symptoms, and if the teachers aren’t staying, it doesn’t matter.”

Corrected: A previous version of this story included teachers who stay within the district but switch schools in teacher retention figures. The data has been updated to clarify which percentage leave the district each year.

Chicago school board votes to close two charter schools

2019-12-12T05:07:10+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education voted Wednesday night to revoke the charters of two schools, Chicago Virtual Charter School and Frazier Preparatory Academy for continued poor performance.

At the evening meeting at Curie Metro High School on the Southwest side — part of the board’s efforts to increase community input and public participation — members voted unanimously to close the virtual charter and voted 6 to 1 to close Frazier. The district recommended the closures after each school earned the next-to-lowest school quality rating for two consecutive years.

But parents and students delivered heartfelt pleas to the board. Frazier parents said the school was a home-away-from-home. Both schools, parents and students said, offered struggling students a second chance.

Board member Dwayne Truss, an active member of community groups on the city’s West Side, voted against the closure of Frazier, in the West Side neighborhood of North Lawndale.

Staff, parents and students from Frazier all begged the district not to close their school, saying the closure would reflect on them personally.

One Frazier student, Kiya Cox, said that a closure would be akin to “taking my childhood and throwing it in the dumpster.”

“I am empathetic with the pain you are feeling,” board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said, adding that the closure wasn’t a mark on the school community or on the students. “There is nothing wrong with your children that you find yourself in this situation today,” she told parents.

The district administration had recommended closing the two charters because of consistently low performance. But public testimony prompted board members to push the district to include more community input before future school closings, and to make sure that students receive adequate support in their transition to new schools.

“There are individual students who are doing well. We heard from [those] students tonight,” board President Miguel Del Valle said. “I want to make sure they are doing well and continue to do well.”

Board members also acknowledged the complicated, and controversial, history of charter schools in Chicago.

The Illinois Network of Charter Schools, the main statewide advocacy group for charters, supported closing the two schools.

In response, Todd-Breland, whose research has focused on community-based roots of charter schools, blamed the charter movement for supporting the schools until they were facing closure. “You are caught in a system that is bigger than yourself,” Todd-Breland said to students.

Since 2014, the district has closed seven charter schools for low performance, though others have shut for financial or other reasons, district officials said.

The closures, effective at the end of this school year, will leave Chicago with 125 charters and contract schools, Chicago is also planning to close a district-run high school with zero students that is part of a larger shift in Englewood to phase out four underenrolled high schools. They are being replaced by a science and technology high school that opened this fall.

About 20% of Chicago’s schools are charter or contract schools.

No new charter schools submitted bids this year to expand or open in Chicago, a sign of the shifting environment for the independently run, publicly funded schools in Chicago and at the state level.

Beyond politics, charter operators face Chicago’s steady citywide decline in enrollment. The losses have slowed but are projected to continue. This year, the district lost about 6,000 students from the previous year.

Chicago is attracting more substitute teachers — but here’s why many classrooms still go wanting

2019-12-11T22:35:12+00:00

Chicago has struggled to recruit substitute teachers, particularly in the era of the gig economy, where residents looking for part-time work can turn to Uber or Lyft.

An investigation earlier this year found that one in three teacher absences at majority black and Latino schools went unfilled.

District leaders say some new efforts, from promised pay bumps for substituting at hard-to-fill schools to relaxing restrictions on retirees, are starting to pay off. The teachers’ union, too, has also advocated and won cost-of-living raises for substitutes across its new five-year contract.

“We’re really excited about the moves we’ve made,” said Matt Lyons, the district’s chief talent officer. “We really evened out the inequities in a lot of ways.”

But a bureaucratic hiring process and inaccessibility for less mobile substitutes still pose a barrier while the district searches for ways to improve the sub experience.

The new agreement between the teachers’ union and Chicago Public Schools awards substitutes annual cost-of-living raises of 3% to 3.5% over five years. That will boosts daily rates that currently start at $122 for day-to-day substitutes without teaching degrees to $226 for displaced teachers who have been waiting over a year to be rehired.

The district also now guarantees work-free lunches and professional development for substitutes. For the heart of the substitute corps — so-called cadre teachers who are on the payroll to accept most any assignment — the district lowered to three the average number of days per week they must accept jobs that come their way. Retired teachers can also work 120 days, up from 100, without losing their pension — a move in line with a new state law.

Making it easier to be a cadre substitute was a key result of the district’s efforts to lessen its shortage of subs, Lyons said.

“We’ve had more and more day-to-day subs actually decline offers to become cadre subs,” he said. “Either they don’t want the commitment to work every day, or they’re not comfortable going to any school we assign. In most cases, they say if they live in Rogers Park, how can they get down to a school in Pullman?”

The district hopes easing regulations on cadre substitutes and creating geographic boundaries for them to work within will help convert more day-to-day substitutes into the more consistent, reliable cadre substitutes, who also receive health care and other benefits, Lyons said. Recruitment efforts have also gotten a boost, with weekly interview days and a job fair this month.

The move is sorely needed in a district where one in three substitute requests went unfilled last year at schools that have a majority of black or Latino students. At 62 schools, there was no substitute for half of teacher absences, according to an August investigation by WBEZ.

The issue is compounded by the fact that almost a third of the 520 district-run schools had at least one regular education or special education position vacant for the entire year, reporters found. The gaps were worse at schools serving a majority of black and low-income students, which were twice as likely to have yearlong vacancies.

To better the distribution of subs across the city, the district began offering higher pay for subbing at high-needs schools. This year, substitutes who fill requests at those 125 schools — nearly all of which are on the South or West sides — receive an extra $45 per day.

The results are promising, Lyons said. The 25 schools that had the hardest time filling sub requests went from filling just under half their requests last year to almost 66% this year. “That really evened out the inequities in a lot of ways,” Lyons said.

But some say the lengthy application process is choking the pipeline for substitutes, worsening the shortage.

The district tells substitute teaching applicants that it can take two months to hear back after their initial interview. Once they do, applicants have three days to get tested for drugs and tuberculosis and submit a background check.

One former CPS teacher, who required anonymity to speak candidly because she did not want her ability to sub negatively impacted, said she first applied in mid-September. Three months later, she is working on getting her college transcript to the district, with the hope she’ll be able to start teaching in January.

“I have another job, so this would really be part-time, but I don’t think a lot of other people have that flexibility,” she said. “How many people who are waiting around are actually becoming substitutes?”

Between the tests and background checks, voluntarily reinstating her teaching license to get a higher pay rate, and paying for an official college transcript, she has spent about $600 so far.

The district confirmed that applicants must pay around $80 to $90 for their tests and background checks, although renewing a teaching license is not a requirement for substitute teachers.

Chicago is far from the only district facing a substitute shortage. Two-thirds of superintendents in Illinois called it a “serious problem” in a 2018 survey. The issue is compounded by the increasing availability of part-time work for companies like Lyft and Uber, Lyons said.

“We’re competing in a different marketplace than 10 years ago,” he said. “The labor market is really strong for job seekers, especially those with college degrees.”

Substitute teachers and principals say the district can do more to to quickly get subs in classrooms. Providing parking spaces for subs would make it easier, especially for retired teachers, to work during winter months when icy streets and sidewalks can be a hazard.

And while allowing retired teachers to work more days without losing their pension encouraged more to become substitutes, some suburban districts have no limits, making them more attractive places to substitute teach. Those districts also wait a full year before removing a non-active sub from the roster, whereas in Chicago, they only get 90 days.

“If subs are retired, they might go to Florida for three months, and the 90 days is gone,” said substitute teacher Kathleen Cleary. “That’s a big factor.”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to spend more money on students in need. Could change be imminent?

2019-12-11T12:00:46+00:00

This is the third story in the Lens on Lightfoot series, a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining the first year of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are Chalkbeat Chicago, the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE. It is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Sullivan High School in Rogers Park has been nicknamed “Refugee High” for its student body. Often students come in speaking little English and sometimes far below grade level, while many students, both newcomers and others, suffer from the mental and emotional wounds of violence, perilous journeys, and family separation.

But with a budget that gives Sullivan roughly the same amount per student as it does for a student at Whitney Young Magnet High, a large selective-enrollment high school where fewer students live below the poverty level and parents are more involved in school fundraising, Principal Chad Adams has found himself facing what feels like an impossible choice: pay for a trauma counselor or a literacy coach, but not both.

This year, Adams chose a counselor. “I think about all the trauma my kids see,” Adams said. “Their trauma may be more impactful to their learning. But it’s a complex jigsaw puzzle.”

Schools with more students who face learning challenges, language barriers, or other difficulties need more resources to educate them. But for six years Chicago Public Schools has budgeted the same per-pupil amount for schools, regardless of students’ needs and background.

Granted, the district does give additional sums to campuses based on their count of students living in poverty or requiring special education. But the dollars often fail to cover the cost of hiring counselors and specialists.

Advocates with differing politics have assailed that budget uniformity.

As a candidate, Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding and to consult the public about how to do that. Now she appears ready to fulfill her promise.

After bringing increased transparency to school board meetings and boosting staffing for high-needs schools when pressed by teachers contract negotiations, Lightfoot will start the long and complicated process of tackling one of the most technical items on her education agenda.

According to her office, by the 2021-22 school year, Chicago could shift how it hands out funds to schools. But the mayor hasn’t provided details on when, how, or who will lead the charge, which promises to be a Herculean undertaking. School officials have said an announcement is imminent. They also promised an “engagement process” related to next school year’s budget, and details on soliciting public opinion.

As to whether an initiative would be led by City Hall or the school district, a city spokeswoman said in a statement that “Mayor Lightfoot and CEO [Janice] Jackson have both made it clear that promoting greater equity in our schools is a top priority, and both the City Hall and CPS teams are focused on this effort.”

How school budgets work is wonky, but they get at the heart of questions about priorities, values and investments. In a recent poll of 2,500 Chicagoans developed by a coalition of community organizations including Grassroots Collaborative and Chicago United for Equity, the second most-suggested need was to adopt a more equitable school funding formula, after increased staffing of nurses and social workers.

State funding and local property tax proceeds, along with some federal funding targeted at poor students and special education students, provide the core base for public education. The state doles out money based on some student needs, but for the most part doesn’t dictate how school districts spend the bulk of the dollars.

Chicago then distributes operating funds to the 632 district-run and charter schools it funds. This year, the total operating budget is $6.32 billion, with just over half going to individual schools.

Under a five-year-old formula, about 60% of a typical school’s district grant is based on how many students it has. In fiscal year 2020, that was an average of nearly $4,500 per student. Those funds pay for a school’s core instructional needs.

The district also pays additional sums for special education students and for programs like after-school activities. Schools also receive additional dollars for low-income students and for English language learners.

Sometimes the district will award supplemental grants. Last school year it held an application process that granted $32 million to neighborhood schools for popular academic programs, in order to help recruit more students. A similar competition has been announced for this school year.

How Chicago funds schools is in line with many other urban districts around the country, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab research center at Georgetown University.

And while Roza said she understands community interest in considering different funding models, she warns that without additional funding into a new system, a new model may not make huge changes. “The district doesn’t get any more money if it moves to another budgeting model,” she said, adding that, at the same funding level, directing more money to schools with higher needs would mean less for others.

Critics say Chicago’s current way of budgeting locks schools into a downward spiral. As schools lose enrollment, they get less money, which then dooms non-core classes and extracurricular programs, which further erodes enrollment, in turn shrinking the budget even more. A September report from Roosevelt University found that the schools with the smallest budgets were concentrated in black neighborhoods that had seen precipitous population declines, contributing to racial inequality across the district.

Chicago last overhauled its funding structure in 2013, moving from a budget that allocated teacher positions at each school based on enrollment quotas, to student-based budgeting. That move gave principals more autonomy to decide how to use the per-pupil funding they received, calculated according to the number of students they had during the 20th school day of the year.

But critics said budgeting by student count doesn’t address schools’ reality.

The district has promised to consider school funding as a key part of the mayor’s five-year investment in schools, announced this summer. And the district’s new equity framework, released last month, names “resource equity” as one of its four pillars. The teachers union contract, approved in November, also includes a side letter promising the district will review school funding.

Since Lightfoot took office, a band of unlikely allies, including education reform organizations, parent groups, and the teachers union, have pressed her to overhaul school funding, to promote educational equity and bring more dollars into schools.

Some groups have been sharing ideas.

Ralph Martire from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a policy research group, suggests the district scrap its current budgeting formula and instead follow the state’s “evidence-based” approach, which allocates more money to certain needy populations like homeless students, refugees, and students facing other challenging life circumstances affecting learning.

The education reform group Kids First has developed an “equity index” budgeting tool, which weighs the incidence of trauma and violence and the concentration of single-parent households in communities.

The Chicago Teachers Union has also been pushing for a more nuanced funding formula that considers student and community need. The union won a side letter in its recent contract agreement that promised the district would review school funding.

Chicagoans may get a sense of what’s on the table from the equity framework published in November by Chicago Public Schools’ year-old Office of Equity.

The framework, drafted by the district’s equity chief, Maurice Swinney, says it’s unfair to assume students from different backgrounds and facing a variety of challenges have the same needs. That will “maintain the status quo of unequal achievement,” it says, and it suggests progressive spending patterns and schools sharing resources as possible solutions.

“Tools coming soon in 2020,” the framework says.

Will Chicago redistribute current dollars or seek new funds to distribute based on student need?

That may depend on whether the district can find more dollars. During her campaign, the mayor promoted such lifelines as redistributing tax-increment financing (tax proceeds intended to finance city development projects) and boosting the district’s credit rating to secure better rates on borrowing — but in her first budget as mayor, she directed tax surplus funds only to plug spending holes in the new contract with the union. If Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax rate passes, it could produce more revenue and offer more financial stability for Chicago schools.

Alternately, the district could divvy up its financial pie differently — but that could drain funds from schools with fewer high-need students, a move that could set off a political firestorm at schools with more politically savvy parents, whose influence makes this option unlikely.

Effective reform requires deft political maneuvering. School funding may be an important need, but the topic is complicated and dry, even for people in the know. Lightfoot will face a challenge in both laying out the rationale and logic of a new way of budgeting and, from groups long pushing for a change, the blowback if they feel it doesn’t impact their school communities.

How the district handles budget talks with residents could affect plans.

Jianan Shi, executive director of parent group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, said, “that conversation should be centered around communities most affected: underenrolled schools, schools with a history of change, and not just a closing but any kind of school action,” such as merging campuses or redrawing attendance boundaries.

At least another full school year likely remains before a new budget system is fully in place.

At Sullivan High School, that means another year of struggling to balance the needs of a diverse student body within the school budget. Adams, the principal, is hopeful for a change.

“This is where equity could come in — you are going to have to really listen to the community needs.”

This is the third installment of the Lens on Lightfoot series. Click here to read about the first story, on aldermanic prerogative, from The Daily Line. Find the second story, a Better Government Association analysis about the mayor’s slow start on her environmental promises, here.

7 questions asked and answered about Chicago’s new teacher diversity committee

2019-12-09T19:40:13+00:00

It’s not common to see Chicago’s Board of Education take the lead on a policy discussion. So it was a surprise earlier this year when the board announced a new committee dedicated to the topic of increasing teacher workforce diversity and equity. Chalkbeat sat down with board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland ahead of the first community meeting Dec. 16 to discuss her vision for the committee and how her work as a history professor specializing in education policy and racial inequality informs those plans.

Tell us about the diversity committee.

Our student population is primarily students of color, and our workforce does not reflect that diversity. The goal we’re focusing on at this first public meeting is hiring more black and Latinx teachers. Research says there are increased educational outcomes from having teachers of color. It breaks down societal perceptions and stereotypes. For some students, it might be the first time having a person of color in front of them in an authority position.

Even as a board member, I didn’t know about all the initiatives Chicago Public Schools already has in these areas, and I think the community doesn’t either. I want the session to be a time to come forward and say we see this as a challenge, and it’s a challenge they’ve started to undertake with future initiatives, genuinely engaging the community and consulting with interested stakeholders, because it’s a challenge the district alone can’t tackle.

Why is this such an important issue?

Speaking for myself, this work is deeply important to me professionally, but also personally. I know what it means to have black teachers and how important that was to my own development. I know what role black teachers have played historically in communities. They’re holding down blocks, buying from local businesses. They’re a stable middle class in deindustrialized or disinvested communities. Teachers are there holding down communities and raising children, not only in classrooms, but in communities. That’s where my passion for this work comes.

What sort of tangible results do you hope to see from these public meetings?

This first one, the goal is particularly informational. We’re not going to solve the problem in one meeting, absolutely not. But we’ll have a conversation about the approach and existing programs like the teacher residency program, then we’re going to divide into smaller group table discussions to have people give feedback, consult and contribute to what this might look like going forward.

I don’t know what exactly will come out of it. The conversation has to be broader than a one-off with a lot of different people. Maybe people who are already community-based partners will share more in these groups about what they’re doing. I would love it to be an opportunity for students, parents and teachers to come be involved and contribute, as well.

Is this the first time the Chicago Board of Education has focused on this issue specifically?

As a historian, I’m not apt to say anything is the first time, so the short answer is no. But for us as a board, we’re talking about different ways we can be as transparent as possible and get out of [district headquarters] and get in communities.

While recruiting more teachers of color is important, how does retaining the ones already in Chicago come into play?

Retention is something the district is deeply interested in as well as part of the five-year mission. I think, for now, the focus on recruitment and the pipeline side of things is really the first swing we’re taking to introduce both the committee and the topic that people are already deeply invested in. But we can’t talk about recruitment and not think about retention, and I can certainly imagine a future public meeting of this committee to have retention as a topic. This first meeting is a jumping-off point.

Are there any cities or school districts Chicago might look to as a model?

I don’t think there’s anywhere that has figured it all out, but I’m very interested in looking at what’s going on in other places. Challenges are being shared across the country, and it’s not by happenstance that lots of districts are trying to have teachers of color relative to the racial demographics of students across the United States. Pennsylvania passed a state law recently, and there are initiatives specifically around this issue in Minnesota. But context also matters — the specific history of black and Latinx teachers in the City of Chicago is distinct from other cities that have a different history.

As someone who has studied this complex issue quite extensively, what steps would you like to see taken?

A major and important shift is talking about the pipeline. Instead of thinking about recruitment and how we siphon off more folks in an existing pool of applicants, how can we target people who want to be teachers? How can we think about our students as future teachers, and what would that do to reimagine a pipeline? This is not just my idea; community folks have been working on this for years, and the district is very open and excited about it.

Shifting the nature of that question around the pipeline provides opportunities to think more broadly about different partners that would have to be involved. I work at universities and colleges that have a really important role to play in this work, a role that we in higher education are not always doing what we need to do in those areas. This is a problem that manifests in the district, but it’s not confined to the district. We all need to get together to have these conversations.

Chicago is expanding sought-after academic programs. Now it’s seeing some welcome payoffs.

2019-11-25T20:17:11+00:00

Chicago is plowing money into special academic programs that it is sprinkling throughout the city — a move to spread opportunity more equitably, the district maintains, and not primarily to boost enrollment.

But don’t tell that to Principal Dan Kramer, whose Roosevelt High School just marked its first enrollment increase in a decade, after the school won funding last spring to launch a dual language program.

“For us to begin to rebound and rebuild enrollment is very positive, and being able to offer dual language directly contributes to that,” Kramer said about the program where students will be taught classes in English as well as in Spanish or Arabic.

About the school’s striking enrollment gain, he said, “It might be more of an outcome than a driving goal, but it’s a very much appreciated outcome.”

Numbers examined by Chalkbeat bear out his enthusiasm.

Half of the 32 Chicago schools that won funding last spring to add new programs increased enrollment this school year. The entire group saw enrollment decline by only 0.34%, one-fifth the district’s rate. There is no proof yet, but it appears to be a potential payoff from a program that schools throughout the city have been clamoring for.

Granted, the district’s enrollment drop has slowed markedly as well, down to 1.7% this year from 2.7% last year.

The 102 schools that originally applied for program funding had seen an average enrollment decline of about 5.2% last school year, nearly twice the district average. The 70 schools that applied but failed to win funding this year averaged a 1.28% drop in enrollment — closer to the district average.

But not all of the funding recipients benefitted when it came to enrollment, and principals shouldn’t consider a program a “scout patch” to stamp on their schools without considering what it will take to implement, said Sam Mathias, who works in the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation.

He noted that some of last year’s applicants may have been enthused about adding programs, but hadn’t laid all the groundwork within the district to succeed. The district hopes to change that with a second round of grants this year, by providing feedback and suggestions for improvement to schools that don’t win the funding, which will be announced in the spring.

“There were a lot of schools that didn’t have network chief support, and that’s a big indicator to us,” Mathias said. After 58 schools were invited to submit full applications in last year’s first round of funding, selecting finalists was “often based on a balance of the needs of the school and their readiness to implement the program,” he said.

Even as it launches its second year of the request for proposals, Mathias said there is no set number of schools or dollars for this year’s awardees. The main goal remains making academic programs more equally available for students districtwide.

Using the programs to slow enrollment decline is “not our intent,” Mathias said, “although it only makes sense that people look at it that way.”

Principals like Kramer welcome the chance to respond to the district’s request for proposals, a method for awarding expansion money that “has created a more even playing field,” he said. Previously, principals had to contact each program department — dual language, gifted, and so on — and find out the nuanced differences to apply to each one separately.

“Sometimes, not knowing where to seek support could feel like as much of an obstacle as what was actually available,” Kramer said.

While Roosevelt won’t begin offering dual-language classes until next fall — the funding is spread over six years with a built-in incubation year — Kramer and other recruiters have already heavily pushed the program as a key reason why incoming freshmen should consider Roosevelt.

And it seems to be working: this year, the school’s enrollment grew by 100 students, the first significant increase since 2009 (not including figures from the phased-out middle school). Over the past decade, the Roosevelt enrollment has plummeted 40%, to 922 students last year.

Now the neighborhood high school, which offers culinary arts, game programming and medical career courses, is in the midst of a “real renaissance moment,” said Lauren Sivak, founding president of Friends of Roosevelt.

Sivak decided to launch the group last year after a graduating senior told her that “no matter how many good things happen at this school, there’s always a dark cloud hanging above us,” Sivak recounted. A 2013 shooting outside the school and low school ratings — coupled with high principal turnover — contributed to the negative perception.

But, Sivak said, Kramer, now in his third year as principal, has grounded the school, while Friends of Roosevelt has raised $14,000 in under two years for building improvements and marketing.

Roosevelt escaped district probation after two years of improved ratings, and the dual language program will only further enhance what it can offer students, one-third of whom are English language learners, Kramer said.

Situated in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, Roosevelt’s students together speak almost two dozen languages. Being able to offer core academic classes like chemistry and history taught in two languages “means kids have more than just a spoken fluency,” Kramer said. “They can read, write and speak at a very high academic level, which is going to make them successful in college and qualify for careers for people who are bilingual.”

It also allows a new mindset for the school, he said.

“We’re reversing the idea that a student developing English proficiency as something that needs corrective action,” Kramer said, “and instead saying the fact they’re coming here with fluency in more than one language is a huge skill set that we need to build on.

New Illinois report card shows minimal test score gains for schools

2019-10-30T20:06:37+00:00

Statewide, less than 40% of elementary students meet state English and math testing standards, according to Illinois report card data released Wednesday. This reflects little change from last year’s performance.

Statewide, 37.8% of Illinois third through eighth graders met or exceeded English standards on 2019 exams. Last year, 36.9% students hit those benchmarks. Statewide 31.8% of students passed the math exam, while 31.3% passed in 2018.

Illinois last year switched from one exam, the PARCC, or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, to the IAR, or Illinois Assessment for Readiness. The tests are similar, but the IAR is slightly shorter.

While little changed for the state average, some schools saw significant gains. For years, Gordon Bush Elementary in East St. Louis has been well below the statewide average. But this year the school made major leaps ahead.

Gordon Bush is a majority black school and just over 95% of its students are considered low income. In 2019, 29.2% of Gordon Bush third graders passed the English portion of IAR and 40.3% met standards on math. That’s up significantly from 2018 when only 9% hit the mark on English and 13% on math.

In 2016, the school was awarded a federal School Improvement Grant, and administrators said that helped turn things around. They were able to offer more coaching and consulting to teachers and students. Principal Brittany Green said administrators were also able to address the needs of students, like behavioral issues.

“Once we got the behavior, going from a 22% suspension rate to now 0% for the last two years, that’s allowing students to stay in class,” Green said. “Not only be in class, but be focused and engaged. Now teachers can do their job, which is to teach.”

Green said Gordon Bush has been making steady improvement over the past few years, and administrators intend to implement best practices in other schools in their district. They already set goals for this year, including a 30% composite score on the IAR, a 95% attendance rate and holding steady with zero suspensions.

“We’re sure that we’re going to hit those goals. We have them posted throughout the building and classrooms,” Green said.

More advanced courses

Illinois State Board of Education officials are highlighting an increase in students taking rigorous courses like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. (To read about Chicago specific gains and how the district is trying to recruit more students of color into advanced courses, click here.)

“These gains reflect Illinois’ investments in equity and opportunity,” said Dr. Carmen Ayala, the state superintendent of education.

About 1,000 more high school kids around the state participated in these programs. While state officials praise that increase, they recognize it hasn’t done much to move the needle on state tests or graduation rates.

“The benefit of advanced course work like AP is that students who have those credits can move on,” said Rae Clementz, ISBE director of accountability. “But at the end of the day, it also just builds critical thinking, communication skills that will benefit them no matter what they choose to do.”

ISBE officials said less than a quarter of students take advanced courses, and there is room for growth there.

Graduation rates saw a negligible difference from the 2017-2018 school year. The four-year graduation rate for 2019 was 85.9%.

Highest and lowest performing schools

ISBE placed more than 3,700 schools in one of four designations — lowest performing, underperforming, commendable and exemplary. The majority of schools in the state, 2,779, are considered commendable by ISBE. (To read more about this year’s state ratings, click here.)

But ISBE’s report card shows large gaps in student achievement even within districts. About 71 schools in Chicago Public Schools are considered underperforming, the lowest designation. But CPS also has the top five highest-scoring schools for the SATs — all schools that require students to test in.

In 2019, the average SAT English score was 497.5 and 497 for math. That’s a steady decrease from when Illinois schools started administering the SATs to all high school juniors starting in 2017. In 2017, the average was 511.5 for English and 504.4 for math. Scores of 540 or higher each on the math and reading sections of the SAT are considered meeting state standards.

New financial data on state report card

The state’s report card has a new look this year and additional data points.

For the first time, the state is highlighting per-pupil spending at the school level, including expenditures and sources of funding like federal and state. ISBE officials said the new information is intended for transparency and to allow school communities to talk about priorities in spending.

“Many districts, in addition to their communities, are seeing this data for the very first time,” said Jackie Matthews with ISBE.

The U.S. Department of Education requires the collection of certain civil rights data. New this year, the state report card includes disciplinary statistics, like rates of suspensions and expulsions.

Susie An covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @soosieon. Chalkbeat Chicago published this story in collaboration with WBEZ 91.5 Chicago.

More Illinois schools score top state ratings — a closer look shows why

2019-10-30T19:05:14+00:00

Even as proficiency on standardized tests largely flatlined, more Illinois schools are earning satisfactory marks on the state’s fledgling accountability system.

That’s because the state changed how it evaluates schools. A higher state rating doesn’t necessarily signal a school’s improved teaching and learning.

The latest round of school ratings appears on the Illinois Report Card, released Wednesday. The annual report card offers school-level data about everything from test scores to suspensions to per-student spending — a new element this year.

This year, fewer schools in Chicago and statewide ended up in the bottom groups.

In all, of the state’s more than 3,700 schools, 85% landed in the top two of four tiers. Only 15% statewide were labeled underperforming or lowest performing, the bottom two tiers, compared with 20% last year. (In both years, 5% were flagged as lowest performers, a category that is fixed at that percentage by the federal government.)

Sixteen fewer Chicago schools landed in the lowest performing category this year, 78 compared with 94 in the first year of the ratings. High schools disproportionately end up in this category because a graduation rate at or below 67% automatically drops a school down the rungs.

To look up ratings for Chicago schools, use our searchable database below.

The state said more schools in Illinois — and, likewise, in Chicago — earned the second-highest rating in part because it changed the way it calculates categories of students with special needs.

This year, as directed by the federal government, it expanded that group to include students who receive support at school for health or behavioral issues. Adding those students, who have what’s known as 504 plans, to the general calculation boosted overall school scores.

Schools statewide keep a close eye on their ratings, since landing on the bottom two rungs can trigger state aid and intervention. The rating system uses four labels: exemplary, commendable, underperforming, and lowest performing.

No school wants to be labeled underperforming or lowest performing, said Mark Klaisner, the president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents.

“If I’m a principal or superintendent, I’m not thrilled about having to tell my story if my schools are designated as underperforming or lowest performing,” said Klaisner. “But I am interested in what I can do with the dollars.”

States that land in the lowest categories qualify for a chunk of a $45 million pool of federal school improvement funds. Schools in the lowest performing category get a base amount of $100,000 annually to spend on drafting and executing improvement plans. Schools in the underperforming category get at least $15,000 per year. In both cases, schools get guidance and must devise plans to improve.

The state’s ratings reflect schools’ improvement. They differ from Chicago Public Schools ratings of a 1-plus, 1, and so on, used to help parents in choosing schools. The city has delayed releasing its latest round of ratings and other data, such as 2019-20 enrollment, during the teachers strike. In last year’s ratings, fewer schools made the top tier.

Several metrics — from test scores to chronic absenteeism — factor into the state ratings, but not everything is equally weighted.

For elementary and middle schools, the most crucial metric is growth on the annual standardized Illinois Assessment of Readiness exam. Also factored in were chronic absenteeism rates and the number of English learners who demonstrated proficiency.

For high schools, the most heavily weighted metric was the graduation rate, which was half a school’s score.

The state’s four-year-graduation rate last spring 2019 was 85.9%, only a slight uptick from the previous year’s rate of 85.4%. Chicago’s graduation rates also rose.

Allison Sherman, the director of IL-Empower, which is the state’s accountability system, said that those schools that rose above the lowest two categories still remain on the radar. The state places schools on four-year improvement plans, and they stay there even if they improve.

“Some schools this year came up in their designation, but we will continue to fund them,” Sherman said. “Building systems of continuous school improvement means there needs to be continuous support from the state. That’s really important.”

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to annually rate schools and to base those ratings, in part, on performance of students in particular categories such as racial groups and children with special needs.

But states have leeway in what metrics to factor in their ratings and how to design their accountability systems.

Chalkbeat Chicago published this story in collaboration with WBEZ 91.5 Chicago.

Chicago posts mostly flat scores on national math and reading exam — and big gaps remain

2019-10-30T05:22:49+00:00

Chicago schools posted several years of gains on the district’s own tests before scores flattened out more recently. Now, an exam that is considered the most reliable measure of student performance nationally shows a similar trend line.

Chicago fourth- and eighth-graders’ reading and math scores on the test, formally known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, were flat from 2017 to 2019, according to results released Wednesday by the federal government.

The results suggest that the significant gains Chicago students made in previous years were not a fluke — but also that the city has not figured out how to extend them.

In eighth-grade reading, scores showed a small but significant decline. That’s also the grade and subject area where scores have barely budged in the 15 years that individual cities have gotten NAEP scores.

The test, also known as “the nation’s report card,” is administered by the federal government to a nationally representative sample of students in every state and many major cities. Because it is not given to all students and carries no consequences for the students who do take it, its results are considered a reliable marker for how America’s students are doing and how that has changed over time.

The new results put Chicago students on par with their counterparts in other big cities — but far behind where they should be. Less than a third of Chicago students scored “proficient” or better in any of the tested grades and subjects.

The new scores also add to mounting evidence that Chicago’s gaps in performance across students of different races are not closing. In fact, while students of all races saw their scores rise over the last 15 years, white students in Chicago have improved fastest — meaning that achievement gaps are actually widening.

Since 2003, Chicago has had the fastest-growing reading test score gap between white and Hispanic students. During that time, many other districts narrowed their gaps.

The new scores match those of a different exam that Chicago administers to students annually. On that test, the NWEA/MAP exam, scores increased between 2015 and 2017 and have been flat since.

There, too, score gaps between students of different racial groups remain wide. Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson said this year that she was particularly concerned about the performance of black and Latino boys.

Last year, the school district for the first time named a chief equity officer who is charged with tackling long-standing disparities in the school system.

Here’s how Chicago ranked among urban districts on the four tests:

Scenes from Chicago Public Schools’ first back-to-school bash full of free stuff

2019-07-31T18:42:35+00:00

Maria Garcia stood in line Tuesday for a bag of free school supplies, watching her two girls chase each other around the bouncy castle and food tent set up outside Hibbard Elementary School in Albany Park.

With her 3-year-old in tow, she was thinking about how the school year will go for her older children: “It depends on them. If they get good grades or not. If they find good friends.”

The summer’s first back-to-school bash hosted by Chicago Public Schools was helping her get ready for the first day of school on Sept. 3 and keep her little ones occupied, Garcia said.

For the district, the bashes fit into a larger effort to build relationships with families. Schools chief Janice Jackson, who earlier in the day unveiled new efforts to reduce teacher turnover, has said in her five-year-plan that she wants to engage parents to ensure the district is “moving in the right direction.”

Chip Johnson, the district’s chief officer of Family and Community Engagement, stood in the sun and surveyed festivities including face painting, a giant blowup basketball hoop, and various groups of students performing Latin dance and tumbling.

The Jesus White tumblers entertain students and parents in front of bouncy castles.

He was expecting to lure more than 700 families Tuesday afternoon with free food, games, music, backpacks full of school supplies, and even immunizations and referrals to health services.

“It’s a community event, so we can get our parents excited about the first day of school,” Johnson said. “[The event] always exceeds my expectations.”

This is the fourth year the district has hosted back-to-school bashes across the city. The office of Family and Community Engagement has spent about $165,000 on these events in the past month, according to district.

Johnson said his office is focused on engaging families, particularly young parents, with programs like back-to-school bashes and the parent university, which provides classes such as advocating for your student, financial literacy, GED courses, and even introductory classes at city colleges.

Three dozen of Chicago’s 52 schools on the Northwest Side sent representatives to greet families and students on Tuesday, according to Johnson. The schools came from two clusters — Network 1 and Network 14 — that include most campuses on the Northwest Side.

Other organizations like City Colleges of Chicago, the Girl Scouts, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Parks Department also joined in on the fun, setting up tables to greet families.

Johnson added that his office provided shuttle buses departing from five schools across the North Side to increase access for parents. Families can find out where transportation to the other 11 bashes is available when registering for the events on the district’s website.

The back-to-school bashes will continue across the city every weekday for the next two weeks. All will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The schedule is:

Wednesday: Lincoln Square at Mather High School, 5835 N. Lincoln Ave.
Thursday: Hermosa at Marine Leadership Academy, 1920 N. Hamlin Ave.
Friday: Austin/Belmont Cragin at Michele Clark High School, 5101 W. Harrison St.
Monday: Roseland at South Shore High School, 1855 E. 75th St.
Tuesday: Near West Side at Crane High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd
Aug. 7: Pilsen/Little Village at Saucedo Elementary School, 2850 W. 24th Blvd.
Aug. 8: Englewood at Lindblom Park District, 6054 S. Damen Ave.
Aug. 9: Woodlawn at William Prep High School, 4934 S. Wabash Ave.
Aug. 12: Ashburn at Durkin Park Elementary School, 8445 S. Kolin Ave.
Aug. 13: Brighton Park at Kelly High School, 4136 S. California Ave.
Aug. 14: Garfield Park at Marshall High School, 3250 W. Adams St.
Aug. 15: West Roseland/Pullman at Fenger High School, 11220 S. Wallace St.

Leonardo Garcia reveals his blue tongue from his popsicle.

Lightfoot promises hundreds of new school support jobs, but few specifics on how to fund them

2019-07-30T21:41:46+00:00

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot offered the most detailed look yet at her education agenda on Tuesday, outlining plans to invest in special education support staff and nurses, improve the quality of vocational programs, and potentially revamp the way Chicago funds schools.

She did not offer specifics on how she planned to fund the hundreds of new staff positions across five years, but pointed to the district’s brighter financial outlook.

“The fortunes of CPS absolutely have improved,” Lightfoot said. “We feel comfortable this will fall within the resources we have.”

In a July financial report for the school board, district leaders said Chicago schools are on firmer financial footing than before thanks to increased state funding. But the district’s long-term debt now totals $8.4 billion, and it is still borrowing to pay for day-to-day operations.

During the campaign, Lightfoot pledged to wrestle with the issues of resource inequities across the district and to invest in neighborhood schools.

“Each one demonstrates our commitment to expanding educational equity for all our students and our families,” Lightfoot said at a press conference, at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School on the West Side, devoted to teacher recruitment. “While every student learns differently, every child should have the support they need to be a lifelong learner.”

Speaking after the mayor, schools chief Janice Jackson said she was excited to “work alongside” the mayor on her plans. “Listening to this presentation today, I just have one word to say: Wow. I’m pretty sure principals, teachers, and parents across the city will have the same reaction.”

By the 2021-22 school year, Lightfoot promised two full-time special education case managers to schools with 240 or more special education students, or those who have Individualized Education Programs, and one full-time case manager to schools with more than 120 special education students.

The mayor proposed adding 200 social workers to Chicago schools over the next five years, along with 250 full-time nurse positions.

Staffing has been a key ask in contract negotiations between Lightfoot and the district. Besides raises, the union is asking the district to hire nearly 5,000 teachers, professionals and aides, at a cost of $880 million over three years.

But Lightfoot’s initial offer to the union of $300 million over five years didn’t include any line items for staff.

In a statement, the union demanded again that staffing promises be enshrined in the contract, that hired staff be fully licensed, and that the work would be kept in house and not contracted out.

“The staffing commitment the mayor made today still falls far short of the sweeping need in our schools,” union President Jesse Sharkey wrote in a statement. “And they must be supported not by a press release or a public pledge but by a real commitment in revenue and a legally binding agreement with the CTU on behalf of the students for whom we advocate.”

Lightfoot, who must also deal with larger-than-expected shortfalls in the city’s budget, said the investments will help schools deal with trauma and other tolls on students in Chicago neighborhoods beset by violence.

“The trauma that our children experience on a daily basis outside the classroom impacts their work inside the classroom, and we know that,” Lightfoot said. “We need to provide the supports so they have the opportunity to address what is going on in their life outside of school, and to support our teachers in recognizing those signs and systems.”

“For far too many of our children, their school is their safe haven,” she said. “They need their support and they are going to get it.”

In recent weeks, Lightfoot has discussed school needs with principals, teachers and parents, who identified staffing, vocational education and funding as their top priorities for district investment.

Lightfoot also promised to reconsider how schools in Chicago are funded during the next school year. That sets a timeline for the mayor. Chicago is one of several large school districts in the nation using weighted student funding, which tries to allocate funding based on individual student needs and the number of students.

An unlikely group of allies, from the Chicago Teachers Union to a school choice group with charter ties, have lobbied for the district to consider a wider array of student needs when allocating funds.

Chicago parents: We want to hear from you about schools

2019-07-29T18:38:20+00:00

Chicago Public School parents: Do you want call attention to a problem in your child’s school? Praise an educator? Change district priorities? Send a message to district leaders?

Or would you like to get more information about a particular issue or subject?

We want to hear what parents care about. What you tell us will inform our coverage of education.

Our goal is to hear from parents who often don’t get the chance to make their voices heard — by local media, school leaders, or the community at large.

From there, we’ll help use your comments to incorporate parent voice as we have in other stories, like our efforts to look to parents asking the big questions about the coming rollout of universal pre-K, and community organizing by parents to lay out alternatives to school closures.

Please fill out our survey in English below, or click here to access the Spanish version.

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What lies ahead for pre-K?

Many of Chicago’s migrant students may be entitled to bus service. But are schools telling them?

Schools must inform families of their rights, advocates say

Other families are in the dark about transportation rights

How many out-of-school, out-of-work youth did Chicago reengage last school year?

Five majority-Black Chicago schools earned ‘exemplary’ status. Two principals consider why.

How the #SaveKellogg movement created a parent community

Selective enrollment doesn’t mean it’s ‘Easy Street’

How do families use Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories.

Preschool sells mom of four on neighborhood school

A mom who chose a charter school

Dad sought out selective schools for his son

Mom is daunted by high school admissions

Selective enrollment student sees problems with the system

Chicago Public Schools leaders want to move away from school choice

After court order, Chicago Public Schools extends contract with Urban Prep charter schools

Chicago Public Schools is tapping principal Joshua Long to lead its special education department

New data shows hundreds of Chicago Public Schools bus routes with fewer than 10 students

CPS has struggled to provide bus transportation

Adding students to routes isn’t simple

Not every Chicago school offers algebra in middle school. CPS is working to change that.

Algebra skills ‘build from the bottom up’

Staffing middle school algebra can be a complicated equation

Younger students get a jump start in algebra

Chicago district official says adding busing this year will be tough as driver shortage persists

As Chicago’s shelter rule for migrant families takes effect, here are three student rights to know

Homeless students have the right to stay in the same school

Homeless students have the right to transportation

Homeless students don’t need paperwork to enroll

What do you think of Chicago’s school choice system? Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

Chicago students who enrolled in ‘safety’ colleges were more likely to drop out, study finds

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

Parents share transportation challenges

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

Rising share of Chicago Public Schools graduates are pursuing college, study finds

At six Illinois college campuses, advocates seek to create ‘comfort’ for foster care peers

More Chicago students met reading and math standards in 2022-23, data show

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Chicago parents, advocates call for transparency in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s school board picks

Chicago wants schools to adopt a new $135 million curriculum. It is getting high marks and pushback.

How a uniquely Chicago curriculum originated

Schools skipping Skyline must defend their choice

Some teachers struggle to navigate Skyline

Skyline is a key tool for academic recovery, district leaders say

How one Chicago school social worker is grappling with COVID’s toll on students

Chicago doubles number of school social workers

Student mental health needs multiply

Social workers confront fights, bullying, paperwork

Youth-led Chicago initiative gets $10 million grant to expand its reach

Helping youth heal by taking action

Young people channel pain into activism

Chicago food bank supplies free lunches for children during the summer

Chicago aims to revamp its admissions policy for selective enrollment schools

Chicago comes closer to solving school bus woes six months into school year

Chicago could reroute buses from more schools to help its most vulnerable students

Chicago students walk out of South Side school over racial slurs: ‘We will not be silenced’

After early hardships, this Chicago PE teacher relishes being a role model

What are you doing to meet your students’ needs following two disrupted school years and the trauma COVID brought with it?

What is something happening in the community right now that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

How has your own school experience impacted the way you teach today?

On top of teaching at James Ward, you coach Cubs Jr. All Stars during the school year and in the summer. What is that experience like?

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

‘Where are the federal dollars?’: Chicago Teachers Union says COVID relief is not reaching high-need schools

More Chicago students are going to college. But their neighborhood can affect whether they graduate.

Chicago to expand anti-violence youth program that reduced arrests in pilot

Will the bus come today? For some Illinois families, school transit still a gamble

It can be challenging for immigrant families to navigate American schools. I know from experience.