Name: CPS will phase students back into buildings starting with preschool and special education; union calls the plan ‘reckless’ and ‘illegal’
Brand: chicagotribune.com
SKU: chicagotribune-com-116
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

CPS will phase students back into buildings starting with preschool and special education; union calls the plan ‘reckless’ and ‘illegal’

preview

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneOct 16, 2020 at 3:38 pmChicago Public Schools announced Friday that all students will continue with remote learning when the second quarter starts in November but that some of the district’s “most vulnerable” children will have the option to begin returning to schools before the end of the calendar year.In explaining their rationale for offering in-person classes first to prekindergarten and some special education students, CPS officials cited enrollment figures they released Friday that show a drop of 34% in total preschool enrollment from last year.AdvertisementPlans for the new quarter were also accompanied by data from CPS revealing that there have been 177 known COVID-19 cases since March connected to people who were in CPS buildings while possibly contagious.District leaders have not specified when the first students will begin returning to in-person learning, saying administrators will make that decision in consultation with public health officials closer to the start of second quarter Nov. 9. But in a news conference Friday afternoon, CPS CEO Janice Jackson said they’re eyeing early 2021 to start phasing in older elementary and high school students.AdvertisementAn official announcement stated the goal is to “add additional grades as early as January. Later this year, the district will be engaging parents in other grades to assess their interest in returning to classrooms.”Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who earlier this week said she was “concerned about whether or not we are doing enough for certain categories of students, particularly our youngest learners and our diverse learners,” did not appear at the news conference.Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said her team has been investigating COVID-19 cases among children in public settings such as day cares, athletic events and summer programs, and found transmission in such settings is rare.Furthermore, she said Chicago students who have returned to parochial and private school classrooms have a lower rate of COVID-19 than what has been detected among children who have not been learning in-person. A full data set was not immediately provided by the health department. Arwady said 31 cases were reported in September through early October among the nearly 23,000 students and staff.The health department encountered “less than a handful of situations where we could not rule out transmission in a school setting," Arwady said. Most cases at those schools have been isolated or tied to siblings, she said. Local officials have also been closely watching data emerging from other states.The city needs to think about limiting risk, not eliminating, Arwady said.“As a pediatrician, I remain the most concerned for our youngest children and the children with special needs who frankly are the least able to access education through screens and have the most to lose," Arwady said.The Chicago Teachers Union immediately vowed to fight the plan, with CTU attorney Thad Goodchild calling it “ill-timed, reckless and illegal” and vowing that the union will use “all available resources" to roll it back.AdvertisementBut Arwady said if she thought the plan were dangerous, she would not be supporting it.The union, which went on strike this time last year, did not specify its next move. But leaders and members said Lightfoot is shirking her responsibility to protect Chicago citizens and pointed to metrics showing the pandemic is worsening, surpassing parameters officials outlined over the summer. They say CPS has’t done enough to make buildings safe and has not been transparent about COVID-19 cases tied to schools.For the first time on Friday, the district released a breakdown of confirmed COVID-19 cases by school since March, showing 172 adults and five students who were present in CPS buildings while they could have been contagious. Since fall quarter began Sept. 8, cases have steadily risen. The highest number of new cases in one week, 20, was recorded the week of Oct. 3. The district is now committing to weekly updates.“We need more engagement, we need more collaboration, we need more transparency and we need more clarity in respect to how we can open safely,” CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said.“We also know the mayor and CPS has yet to invest the dollars necessary to open safely,” she added, citing a “conservative estimate” of $1 billion.“We cannot experiment or take lightly the responsibility we need to see from mayor," Davis Gates said.AdvertisementBut city officials cited equity as one of the main factors in the decision, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has already increased inequities in CPS.“I have worked on many outbreak responses in my career,” Arwady said. “Outbreaks tend to bring long-standing inequities into the light, and their indirect effects can linger for years.”Enrollment and attendance has been low this year at schools around the nation, and in CPS the decline has been especially profound among prekindergarten, special education, Black and Latino students, who are all attending school less than their peers and at significantly lower rates than recent years.The district also experienced its largest enrollment loss in more than two decades. Officials believe that is driven by fewer new students enrolling, including a 44% decline in Black pre-K students.“All over the country, we are seeing students falling behind,” said CPS Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “We need to do everything possible to reverse this trend.”CPS said it decided to use a phased-in approach, starting with preschoolers and students in “intensive and moderate” special education programs, because those “require a significantly modified curriculum with support in a separate classroom from general education peers for the majority of the day.”AdvertisementSchool officials said they’re closely monitoring the pandemic and say transmission of COVID-19 has been low in schools where a “rigorous commitment” to safety protocols are in place.The union, however, questioned CPS' ability and commitment to keeping schools safe. Union leaders said CPS has not committed to wide-ranging testing or contact tracing plans.CPS, without committing to rapid testing at schools, said it will make sure that anyone who has symptoms or was in close contact with someone who tested positive “has access to a free COVID-19 test.”The union said the district did not involve educators or parents in making the plan. On Thursday, only principals were briefed on the basics, leaving others clamoring for information. On a call Thursday night with special education parents, district representatives did not have many answers about a return to school, saying they were in an “assessment phase.” One CPS parent on the call said given what parents had been hearing from principals and what had been reported in major news outlets, she found it hard to believe officials on the call didn’t know anything about cluster programs going back.Proportionally, the district has struggled to engage more students in special education cluster classrooms than any other group.AdvertisementThe district enrolled far fewer new students this year, 32,000 to last year’s 44,000. Overall, fewer than 341,000 students were enrolled as of the 20th day of school, down from more than 355,000 last year, with 281,225 students in district-run schools and 59,433 in charter, alternative and options schools.That includes 63,313 bilingual students to last year’s 66,946, and 49,655 students with special education programs, down from 51,691 last year. Not all special education students are in cluster classrooms.At district-run elementary schools, enrollment dropped from 202,239 to 194,153. For high schools, the change was much smaller, from 73,954 to 73,506.Preschool accounts for 41% of the district’s enrollment loss this year, with high school enrollment slightly up. The district canceled some of its tuition-based prekindergarten programs after not enough parents were willing to pay for online classes without child care.The number of Black preschool students decreased 44%, a figure that was 29% for Latino students, 22% for white students and 9% for Asian students, according to CPS.“The stunning decline among Black children enrolled in pre-K casts a somber light on how the pandemic and remote learning negatively impact our youngest learners,” said McDade said.AdvertisementOverall, 4-year-old preschool enrollment plummeted from 14,300 to 9,540, and 3-year-old enrollment went from 3,192 to 1,954. At 21,960, kindergarten enrollment was also lower than last year’s 24,241.Even with fewer students, attendance has suffered during remote learning.Through last Friday, the district’s cumulative attendance rate was 91%, down from 95% this time last year. For students in special education cluster classrooms, attendance fell from 91% to 84%.District-reported attendance rates this year have been 88% for Black students, 92% for Latino students, 97% for Asian students and 96% for white students — the only demographic group for which the attendance rate did not decline. CPS acknowledged the attendance data “casts light on inequities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”For those who do return to in-class learning, the district outlined safety precautions such as providing cloth face coverings, grouping students and educators in pods or small class sizes, daily temperature and symptom screenings.In addition to staff hired specifically to support contact tracing, CPS is hiring 400 more custodians, or about two for every three school buildings. The district also got a hospital-grade disinfectant mister for each school and installed more sanitizer and soap dispensers.AdvertisementThe district is putting $65 million into enhancing or replacing ventilation systems and said it will only use classrooms that have sufficient “natural or mechanical” ventilation. Building engineers are taking part in assessments of all classrooms and the district has contracted a certified environmental hygienist to assess air quality.hleone@chicagotribune.com Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneOct 16, 2020 at 3:38 pmChicago Public Schools announced Friday that all students will continue with remote learning when the second quarter starts in November but that some of the district’s “most vulnerable” children will have the option to begin returning to schools before the end of the calendar year.In explaining their rationale for offering in-person classes first to prekindergarten and some special education students, CPS officials cited enrollment figures they released Friday that show a drop of 34% in total preschool enrollment from last...

public

Hannah Leone

The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the 6th highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.

CPS will phase students back into buildings starting with preschool and special education; union calls the plan ‘reckless’ and ‘illegal’

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS