Chalkbeat

Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

2023-10-27T19:24:21+00:00

An hour before dismissal on a recent Friday afternoon, eight Brighton Park Elementary School students huddled in a classroom with Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English language learners.

They were there for a voluntary, biweekly support group run by Moorhouse and Stephanie Carrillo, a school counselor, for students grappling with the upheaval of immigration and the adjustment to a new country, new city, and new school.

She asked the children — a mix of sixth through eighth graders who had recently arrived in Chicago as part of an influx of migrant families — to share the best and worst part of their week.

One boy said the best thing was that his family had moved to a new house. Another child looked up, her hair slightly covering her face. She shrugged her shoulders and struggled to come up with a worst moment.

That’s OK, Moorhouse said in Spanish, she doesn’t have to have a low point.

The girl then added, “No mejor,” meaning there was no high point either. After a moment of silence, the whole group burst into laughter.

These students, who arrived in Chicago between last year and this year, are among the more than 20,000 newly arrived migrants in Chicago since last August, with many fleeing from Central, South American and African countries experiencing political and economic turmoil, according to city officials.

Chicago Public Schools does not track immigration status and has not shared how many migrant students have enrolled in schools. But the district has pointed to clues of an increase, including 7,800 more English learners enrolled this school year, compared to an annual average increase of 3,000 such students.

As of mid-September, 2,250 migrant children were housed in the city’s shelters, according to records from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that were obtained by Chalkbeat.

Educators have raised concerns that many Chicago schools don’t have the resources, such as staff, to provide new migrants with the right language instruction, recently pleading with the state to send more help.

But there are also questions about whether newcomers have the social-emotional support they need at school. These students have potentially endured dangerous journeys to the United States, on top of the stress of leaving their homes behind for shelters or other temporary living arrangements in a foreign place.

That latter concern led Moorhouse to launch the support group at Brighton Park last year after she met a migrant student who was showing signs of trauma. The student, whom Moorhouse met in January, didn’t want to be in school and sometimes, the student’s body would shake uncontrollably, she said.

At one of the sessions Moorhouse held, the student shared a personal story about his journey to the United States. Afterward, Moorhouse recalled, the student said: “My chest isn’t hurting. I can breathe.” Moorhouse felt it was a sign of healing.

In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group. As a community school, it partners with a nonprofit organization to provide wraparound services for its students. Carrillo, the school counselor who helps Moorhouse with the support group, works with the school on behalf of its partner nonprofit, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Brighton Park Elementary’s community schools funding also helped to pay for the training on the model that the support group is based on, according to Cecilia Mendoza, the school’s assistant principal.

The model is known as STRONG, or Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, which focuses on teaching children how to understand and cope with their stress before they’re invited to share more personal details about their journey to the United States, if they choose.

It’s unclear how many schools have specific support groups for migrant students like the one at Brighton Park. About $35 million of the district’s budget this year was allocated for social-emotional curriculum, behavioral health supports for students, and additional social workers and counselors, according to a district spokesperson.

This year, Moorhouse and Carrillo are starting with the basics.

On that recent Friday afternoon, in the classroom where Moorhouse gathered with eight of her students, bright orange and blue strips of paper on the dry erase board described concepts of melting and freezing in English and Spanish: “Que le pasa al chocolate que se deja al sol?” (What happens to chocolate left in the sun?).

A plastic cupboard sat against the wall, filled with shoes, socks, and clothing donations Moorhouse had collected through her Amazon Wishlist. Sheets of paper taped to the wall have words of affirmation in both languages: “Tus emociones son validas.” (Your feelings are valid.)

A classroom for English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School has brightly colored phrases translated in English and Spanish on the dry erase board.

After their icebreaker, Moorhouse passed around crayons and a worksheet with the outline of a human body. She explained that stress can cause physical pain and asked her students to color in the part of their bodies that hurt when they are stressed.

“Entonces para mi, cuando yo estoy estresado, mi estómago me duele,” she told the students, explaining that her stomach hurts when she’s stressed.

One girl, wearing a pair of sneakers donated through the Amazon wishlist, used a green crayon to fill in the top of the head. She colored the shoulders with a green-yellow.

When Moorhouse asked students to share, one boy said stress gives him a headache, and then he feels like throwing up. A low “hmm” spread through the group, as if others recognized the boy’s feeling.

At 2:35 p.m., about halfway through the session, the students received a new worksheet. This one had a large triangle on it, and each point represented something different: pensamientos, sentimientos, y acciones. Thoughts, emotions, and actions. Moorhouse wanted the students to reflect on how a thought may lead to a feeling, which ultimately leads to an action.

After a couple minutes jotting down their thoughts, the students shared their responses. One boy smiled as he described an example: When he’s talking to other students and they suddenly begin speaking in English, he feels as if he’s been removed from the conversation.

“How does that make you feel?” Moorhouse asked him in Spanish.

“Bad,” he replied.

“What’s your action?” Moorhouse responded.

“I walk away,” he said.

That day, Mendoza, the assistant principal, was peeking in.

“I don’t think students or people in general sometimes realize the effect that has on others who only speak one language,” Mendoza said later. “So that really stuck with me, and I thought about how we could have that conversation, perhaps, with the students … because they might not be aware that they’re doing that.”

Moorhouse then presented a challenge for the students: How can they change their thinking about a situation, in order to elicit better action? One boy gave the example of taking a hard math test that he doesn’t know the answers to, so instead, he asks to go to the bathroom.

He was stumped when Moorhouse asked him to think of a better action. She opened the floor to the group, but no one came up with an answer good enough for Moorhouse. When she pressed them to think harder, they hit on a solution: He could ask the teacher for help — for understanding the exam, or perhaps even asking to take it another day.

With about 15 minutes left, Moorhouse and Carillo passed around stress balls shaped like bee hives. They asked the students to squeeze hard and pretend that they were squeezing out the juice.

A couple of kids laughed as they squeezed their fists and then released pressure.

Around 2:55 p.m. Moorhouse handed out a blank calendar worksheet. For the following week, students would be expected to log how they’ve practiced relaxation strategies, such as grabbing an ice pack from the nurse or using a stress ball, when feeling stressed. One student shared that drawing helps.

It was time for dismissal. The students didn’t run out the door. They stayed back to chat with each other. A few grabbed extra bags of Skinny Pop.

As the weeks go on, Moorhouse and Carrillo will meet individually with each student to assess whether they want to talk more about their personal experiences of coming to the U.S. and what would be appropriate to share with the other students.

In those conversations, students may show signs of needing more individual counseling provided by the school, such as bursting into tears while recounting a story, Carrillo said.

Some students take a while to open up, so it’s unclear how much they’ll participate going forward, Moorhouse said. One of those quieter students is the child who had shared that there was no highlight or lowlight of her week. During the hourlong session, this student gradually opened up a little more.

And when most of the other children left at the end of the day, that student stayed behind. She wanted to talk some more one-on-one with Moorhouse.

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.

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.

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 Public Schools ‘hitting the gas pedal’ on expanding dual language programs

2024-03-19T21:12:40+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to hit “the gas pedal” on an expansion of dual language programs, which teach students in both English and another language, CEO Pedro Martinez said Tuesday at an event focused on Latino students.

At the event hosted by advocacy organization Latino Policy Forum, Martinez said CPS has a “significant opportunity” to expand its existing slate of dual language programs, which are designed to help students become fluent in English and another language.

The district currently has dual language programs in 37 elementary schools, three high schools, and three charter schools, according to a presentation Martinez delivered Tuesday.

Officials did not immediately share details on how soon the district wants to expand its dual language offerings, what it would cost, or where new programs would open because the district is still planning, according to a spokesperson. Martinez said Tuesday his team also wants to create more world language options.

Dual language programs are one of three types of English learner programs available in CPS; however, dual language can also serve students who are not learning English as a new language.

By state law, schools with 20 or more English language learners who speak the same native language must offer a Transitional Bilingual Program, which provides instruction in English and a child’s native language but focuses on building up the student’s English skills. Schools with 19 or fewer students who speak the same native language have a Transitional Program of Instruction, which provides instruction in English, according to CPS.

Transitional programs work to ensure that non-English speakers can speak English, but “imagine if they could keep their Spanish and go deeper,” he told the crowd at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy.

“We want biliteracy, not just transitioning out of the native language into English,” said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

The district’s goal comes as CPS has welcomed more than 6,000 new migrant students into schools so far this year, Martinez told reporters after the event. Educators and union officials have expressed concern about a lack of staffing and resources at schools to properly support migrant students who have come to Chicago from the southern border since 2022.

CPS has struggled to provide bilingual programming to English language learners. In February, district officials said just under 6% of schools — or roughly 30 — did not have teachers with required bilingual or English-as-a-second-language credentials.

Asaf said this challenge has emerged as migrant families move out of shelters and find permanent homes through housing assistance programs in neighborhoods where the schools do not have bilingual programming or large numbers of English learners, Asaf said. The district is prioritizing helping teachers at those schools get certified to teach English language learners, if they are interested, she said. The district is also sending central staffers to help schools with students who are learning English, she said.

But even before the most recent wave of migrants, CPS bilingual programming lagged. In 2017, the Chicago Reporter found that 71% of 342 schools audited by CPS did not have adequate bilingual programming, in violation of state law.

CPS has gradually opened dual language programs over the past decade, with efforts stretching back to at least 2016 and an expansion in 2018.

Advocates for English learners have previously pushed the district to open more dual language programs. One study focused on fifth graders in Oregon found strong signs that dual language instruction can improve literacy achievement, according to a 2022 review of the research by the federal Institute of Education Sciences’s What Works Clearinghouse. However, that study and another out of Utah found no evidence that dual language instruction boosted math or science achievement, and reviewers called for more rigorous research.

Such programs can also be costly, which could make it challenging for the district to implement as it faces a $391 million deficit next fiscal year.

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

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pushes education agenda with ‘urgency’ during first year in office

2024-05-14T11:00:00+00:00

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On a recent Tuesday morning, Mayor Brandon Johnson visited classrooms at Kelvyn Park High School in Hermosa to present certificates of recognition to teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Flanked by an alderman and the chief of finance for the teachers union, Johnson posed for photos and created a scene rare to find before last year: The mayor standing side-by-side with teachers, some wearing bright red Chicago Teachers Union shirts.

The scene was an indicator of the pivotal role education has played in Johnson’s agenda in office.

When Johnson, a former middle school teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, was elected last year, it was no surprise education would be a central priority.

The union catapulted Johnson into office, and his win was the result of a decade of CTU organizing against how previous mayors approached public education. Instead of a system in which schools compete for students and parents choose the best option no matter how far they may have to travel, Johnson promised to focus on bolstering neighborhood schools, many which have seen declining enrollment and fewer resources.

As Johnson hits the one-year mark in office, his appointed school board has overseen a change in the district’s funding formula and directed district leaders to come up with a new five-year strategic plan, to be voted on this summer, that would rethink the city’s school choice system, which includes charter, selective enrollment, and magnet schools that require applications for admission.

“We have to fund our schools based upon the need,” Johnson said in a February 2023 video interview with Block Club Chicago. “Every single school should have a social worker, counselor and nurse as the bare minimum.”

But Johnson faces a big challenge in carrying out his education agenda: Chicago Public Schools is facing a projected $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year and has provided little detail on how it will close the gap. Federal COVID money is running out and he must bargain a new contract with the teachers union.

Johnson’s agenda also called for free public transit for students, housing for the district’s 20,000 homeless students, and creating up to 200 more Sustainable Community Schools – a partnership with the CTU that provides wraparound services at needy schools. None of these promises have seen any progress.

Still, education may be the one area where Johnson has made progress during his first year in office, said Dick Simpson, professor emeritus of politics at University of Illinois at Chicago and a former alderman.

“In comparison to, say, his other problems — solving crime, for instance — he is much further along on the school agenda,” Simpson said.

The speed with which Johnson can deliver on his education promises is important because he will soon lose exclusive control over the Chicago Board of Education, as the school board begins to transition to a partially elected body this November.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Johnson said his focus on education “has more to do with the urgency that families are calling for.”

“We’re talking about decades upon decades of school closures, the defunding of our schools, the attack on veteran educators, particularly Black educators,” Johnson said. “So our urgency is really centered around the needs of our young people and the needs that our families have.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson visits the classroom of English teacher Noe Castro at Kelvyn Park High School with Principal Keith Adams and Ald. Felix Cardona Jr. (31st) in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

Bolstering neighborhood schools, but not without backlash

Johnson’s plans to bolster neighborhood schools kicked into gear last December.

Just before winter break, the board of education passed a resolution aimed at boosting neighborhood schools and rethinking Chicago’s school choice system, which encourages kids to enroll in public schools outside their attendance zones. Half of all elementary students go to schools that are not their zoned neighborhood schools and more than 70% of high schoolers do.

Johnson has described the choice system as a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces schools to compete for students and resources and results in less investment in neighborhood schools. The resolution said the choice system “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Though many selective enrollment and magnet schools were created under court-ordered desegregation, many still lack the diversity of the city and are largely segregated by race and class. A couple dozen are integrated, but serve more white and Asian American students than the rest of the school district.

The board’s resolution did not change any current policies or suggest the closure of any schools. Board members emphasized that public feedback would drive any changes, such as to admissions policies. Board members have, however, said they plan to scrutinize charter schools more.

The resolution was praised by advocates who have long pushed for more investment in neighborhood schools and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Johnson “ran on equity,” said Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “He said that our school district had to be more equitable, and the resolution that came from the Board of Education is speaking to the inequity and their efforts to ameliorate inequity that are often disproportionately experienced by neighborhood schools.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson meets students as he tours Kelvyn Park High School in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

But the resolution also sparked backlash from families whose children attend schools of choice, including those already frustrated that CPS was not providing bus service to general education students, largely those attending selective and magnet schools.

Those concerns pushed state lawmakers to file a bill that is up for a final vote this week, which would prevent the district from changing admissions policies for selective enrollment schools – something the current board signaled it may do. The bill would also prevent CPS from cutting funding for selective enrollment schools or closing any school until 2027, when the school board will be fully elected. The bill is supported by powerful state lawmakers and Gov. J. B. Pritzker.

Johnson said the bill would prevent the board from taking actions to help create “real equity” and would prevent the district from balancing its budget. He began rattling off the relatively small percentages of Black students at some of the city’s most sought after selective enrollment high schools and noted how those figures were higher about two decades ago.

“What I’m troubled by is that you have a school district that is hypersegregated and that stratification has continued to grow because you haven’t had leadership like mine directing the school board and the Chicago Public Schools to commit to real equity,” Johnson said. “So is Springfield intervening to protect segregation?”

Simpson noted that Johnson has “a more strained” relationship with the legislature and Pritzker, meaning he doesn’t have a lot of clout to fight for what he wants.

Mayor Brandon Johnson pats the head of kindergartner Triston during a back-to-school event at Jackie Robinson Elementary School in Bronzeville on Aug. 21, 2023.

CPS changes funding formula

In March, CPS announced it would change how it distributes money to schools, delivering on another major promise Johnson made on the campaign trail to end student-based budgeting, which provides schools a set dollar amount for every child enrolled.

The new funding formula will now give every school a base level of staff and discretionary money based on need, which principals can use flexibly. This “needs-based” formula is meant to break a cycle in which underenrolled schools in underinvested neighborhoods lose money because they’re losing students.

That change, too, has drawn a fresh batch of concerns.

Parent leaders at selective enrollment and magnet schools said their budgets provide for fewer staffers next year under the new formula. Some Local School Councils are voting against their budgets for next year.

CPS officials have said that overall funding to schools remains the same as last year but individual schools could see changes. The district is looking for cuts at the central office to address the $391 million deficit, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said. CPS has not yet released school budgets for next year to the public.

The union also raised concerns about the formula, saying it lacks guaranteed positions, such as teacher assistants, and said some neighborhood schools have also seen cuts. Davis Gates blamed Martinez – not the mayor – for those flaws, because she said he is not explaining the changes well to the public or lobbying the state legislature hard enough for more money to prevent staffing cuts to some schools.

Mayor Brandon Johnson hugs art teacher Meredith Kachel at Kelvyn Park High School as he surprised her for Teacher Appreciation Week. Johnson visited the school with Principal Keith Adams and Ald. Felix Cardona Jr. (31st) in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools, said “multiple staff members” have visited Springfield throughout the session to advocate for more funding, and Martinez has pushed for more funding “for well over two years in Springfield, at our Board of Education meetings and beyond.”

CPS officials have said that no type of school is being disproportionately impacted. But Martinez has acknowledged that they are working to fix concerns at individual schools.

Mayor inconsistent on police out of schools

Some education-focused organizations have criticized the mayor’s administration for pushing big changes through or flip-flopping on commitments without properly engaging the public.

Hal Woods, director of policy and advocacy for Kids First Chicago, shared some examples. For one, the board publicly posted its resolution stating its intent to rethink school choice two days before the board voted, leaving little time for the public to digest it, Woods said. The district is currently holding hearings to collect feedback for the next strategic plan.

Parents and schools have also demanded more information about why the district is changing its funding formula, Woods said. He added that the former formula wasn’t working for many schools, but the district hasn’t shared enough about the new formula or its impact on schools.

Woods also said the mayor could be more clear with communities on his position to remove police from schools. Johnson supported getting rid of campus police on the campaign trail but later said local schools should have the power to choose whether to have school resource officers. Then in February, the mayor backed the school board when it voted to unilaterally remove officers from all campuses by next school year.

School police officers in the hallways of Lane Tech High School in Chicago.

“There’s plenty of data that shows how police in schools impact youth mental health, right, and the disproportionate impact on Black students and Latino students, but … they’re kind of making a decision based on their values without kind of educating the public on why they’re making that decision,” Woods said.

Johnson said “he will talk to anyone” and rejected the idea that his administration isn’t transparent enough. He pointed to the handful of board of education meetings that have been held at high schools in the evening instead of downtown during the day. He believes some of that criticism comes from people who “have had unfettered access” to previous mayors, and there are “people who now have access who were shut out before.”

“I’ve said all along,” Johnson said, “there’s plenty of room at the table for everyone.”

Fulfilling other promises before school board shifts

There are several promises Johnson hasn’t made progress on, including expanding Sustainable Community Schools, a CPS partnership with the teachers union that pairs needy schools with community organizations that provide wraparound services to families. Each program costs about $500,000.

While Johnson has shifted focus toward neighborhood schools, his administration is struggling to support the 8,900 migrant students and families who have arrived in Chicago from the southern border since at least August 2022.

As a candidate, Johnson promised to invest more money in bilingual education. Between August 2022 and last August – five months after he was elected – the number of bilingual-certified educators grew by 90, according to CPS. Between last August and the end of April, that figure grew by another 106 teachers.

CPS and the city also opened a welcome center to help migrant students enroll in school and access other resources. CPS said it helps direct families to schools with the proper resources when they are struggling with enrollment.

Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks at a press conference at Roberto Clemente Community Academy before the opening of a pilot CPS welcome center for newly arriving families on July 17, 2023.

Still, the union, lawmakers, and families have reported that many schools are struggling to meet the needs of migrant children, most of whom are learning English as a new language and are homeless. Those challenges include lacking enough staff to help children with specialized English instructions.

Johnson again blamed state lawmakers for their efforts to protect selective enrollment schools, saying it would “prevent us from having the type of budget, autonomy, and flexibility to invest in those schools” that lack resources to help English learners.

Johnson also hasn’t gained ground on providing the district’s 20,000 homeless students with housing — a bold promise tied to a signature campaign promise to pass the Bring Chicago Home referendum. That ballot measure, which would have used a tax on property sales over $1 million to help fund housing for homeless families, failed in March.

Ultimately, Johnson’s education legacy and the fate of his preferred policies will depend on what the future elected school board does, Simpson said.

“I do think the new school board, as it begins to take shape, will revisit these issues and either move forward with the general direction of Johnson and the current school board, or will roll them back to an extent,” he said.

It could also depend on the ongoing financial challenges for Chicago Public Schools. Asked how he will achieve his goals in the absence of more money from Springfield, Johnson said he’s exploring other “measures and steps that we can take as a city.” When pressed for details, Johnson’s office declined to elaborate.

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

Chicago Public Schools pitches safety plan calling for restorative justice, no police in schools

2024-05-15T22:38:13+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools pitched a new school safety plan Wednesday that would get rid of campus police, call for more training for educators on alternative discipline practices, and require locking classroom doors.

The proposed plan, which is on the agenda for next week’s board meeting, comes three months after the Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution to remove school resource officers, or SROs, by the start of next school year. At the time, the board directed CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to create a new safety plan by June 27 that focuses on restorative practices.

Thirty-nine high schools still have on-campus police officers staffed by the Chicago Police Department. At 57 other schools, Local School Councils, or LSCs, voted to remove SROs.

The board’s plan to remove police could be reversed. State lawmakers have filed a bill that would allow LSCs to contract with the Chicago Police Department to staff SROs. That bill is still being negotiated, according to a spokesperson for Rep. Mary Gill, the bill’s sponsor who represents Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.

The district’s new proposed safety plan, however, extends beyond campus police. The plan builds on existing district efforts to teach kids about social-emotional skills and restorative justice practices, which are alternatives to discipline meant to resolve conflict and understand the root of student behavior, according to the proposal. All schools would be required to have a safety plan based on these new guidelines by 2028.

The plan covers “physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust, which drives the development of a holistically safe environment,” said Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security, during a board meeting Wednesday to review the board’s agenda for next week.

Chou said the plan was developed with community organizations and considered feedback from a survey about school safety that drew 9,000 responses. The board will vote next week to open a 30-day public comment period on the proposed plan and would vote on the plan after that.

Among the proposed plan’s highlights:

All schools would be required to have at least one security guard. Schools would get more guards based on a formula that considers multiple factors, such as the size of the school building, the number of students, and neighborhood crime.
All schools would be required to have an emergency management plan that’s updated annually.
All schools would have to teach social-emotional learning and must implement restorative practices.
Schools would include training on “climate, trauma-responsive, and social and emotional learning” in professional development plans
All schools would be required to have behavioral health teams, which are charged with supporting students who are in crisis, those who have experienced trauma, or are in need of mental health assistance. Most CPS schools – 460 – already have such teams, according to a district spokesperson.
All interior and exterior doors must be locked at all times, except for bathroom doors. Staff would have keys to doors.

This fall, all schools would receive data from the district to “conduct a baseline assessment of their safety, culture and climate” and would be required to develop safety plans based on that assessment.

After brief remarks from Chou on Wednesday, board members applauded the proposal. Board member Rudy Lozano said it signals a shift from discipline to a “healing-centered equity frame for students.”

Board’s approach to school safety draws mixed response

The board’s recent actions on school safety drew praise from advocates who had long pushed CPS to invest money in more social workers and other resources, and highlighted how Black students were more likely to be arrested. The decision drew opposition from some Local School Councils and elected officials who felt that LSCs should decide whether to keep police on campus.

Most research shows that schools with police tend to have higher arrest and suspension rates but doesn’t clarify whether police are the cause or if officers are more likely staffed at schools with more challenges, according to a Chalkbeat review of research in 2020. Nationally, students have generally positive views of SROs but those views tend to worsen among Black students, who are more likely to get arrested. Another study last fall found that Chicago schools implementing restorative justice practices saw fewer student arrests. Students also reported feeling safer at school.

David Stovall, a UIC professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice, said the district’s proposed safety plan reflects what many community members have asked for.

However, Stovall said, the plan will work only if officials can ensure all schools are meeting requirements, such as creating behavioral health teams with mental health professionals.

“It can’t be just one office operating out of central [office], right? You have to have teams of folks in order to do that work we’re talking about,” Stovall said.

The plan seems to require more resources at a time that CPS is projecting a $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1, he said.

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which works with the Chicago Police Department to train Chicago’s SROs, said he was “deeply disappointed” in the board’s decision. Canady said officers are trained to “build positive relationships” with students, parents, and staff.

“We recognize that in some communities, there’s strained relationships with law enforcement,” Canady said. “If we’re ever going to get that right, we’ve got to get it right with the next generation [and] the next generation just happens to be adolescents that are going to become our next adults in society.”

The movement to remove SROs came into focus in 2019, when the U.S. Department of Justice placed the Chicago Police Department under a federal consent decree and raised questions about the role of campus police. Then in 2020, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep their SROs after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of Geroge Floyd.

On the campaign trail, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he supported getting rid of campus police, but later said he supports letting LSCs make that decision for their schools. Johnson flipped again earlier this year when he supported the board’s decision to remove officers.

Correction: May 15, 2024: This story previously said the incorrect number of days this proposal will go out for public comment.

Samantha Smylie contributed.

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

What to know about the upcoming state tests for grades 3-8

2023-03-23T21:50:12+00:00

It’s testing season in New York once again.

Schools across the state will administer standardized reading and math exams for grades 3-8 in April and May, as well as science exams for eighth graders in June.

With the intense attention on the pandemic’s effect on students, some schools might be ramping up their focus on the state tests. Some districts have signed up their schools for computer-based programs for math and reading, according to Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the city education department. It’s part of a learning “acceleration” initiative launched earlier this year by the education department, Gothamist reported.

There might be more attention on this year’s state tests, following the spotlight on last year’s dip in national test scores, which also showed drops in fourth grade math scores in New York City.

But there’s a big caveat with the state tests: This year, the exams are based on new learning standards and can’t be compared to results from the last school year, when nearly half of students passed reading exams and 38% passed math.

Many educators and families argue that testing takes away classroom time and doesn’t tell the full story of how a student is doing — a viewpoint schools Chancellor David Banks has previously echoed. Others believe it is a useful tool.

State officials said the tests are just “one tool” that helps teachers understand their students’ academic needs.

Here are some things you should know about the upcoming exams:

When are the tests and how will they be administered at schools?

Schools will give the state English test over a consecutive, two-day period between April 19-21. If students are absent those days, they can make up the tests between April 24-28.

Two weeks later, students will take math tests from May 2-4 with make-up dates scheduled for May 5-11.

Eighth graders will take a science laboratory exam between May 23 and June 2 and a written exam on June 3. Make-up tests for the lab exam must happen sometime within that testing window, while make-up dates for the written exam take place between June 6-9. There will be no fourth grade science test as the state prepares to transition to a science test for fifth graders, beginning next spring.

Most New York City schools will give the exams on paper. So far, 130 schools plan to use computer-based testing, Styer said — which has sometimes come with technical issues across the state. For computer-based tests, the window for English exams will be April 19-26 and for math will be May 2-9.

While computer-based testing is currently optional, mandated computer-based state testing will begin next spring for grades 5 and 8. All schools will be required to give the exam on computers in the spring of 2026 for all grades.

How will the tests be different this year?

For the first time, this year’s state tests will be based on the “Next Generation Learning Standards,” a set of grade-level learning standards established in 2017 that were revised from the controversial Common Core standards.

The Next Gen standards, as they’re often called, were meant to clarify previously vague language from the Common Core. For example, whereas Common Core geometry standards simply stated that students must be able to “prove theorems about triangles,” Next Gen’s revisions detailed the specific theorems.

When the state’s Board of Regents adopted the new standards, some groups lauded them for not straying too far from Common Core, while other education organizations said the standards were too rigorous for early grades.

What do the new tests mean for scoring them?

New tests also mean that the state will determine new benchmarks of what makes a student proficient in reading, math, and science. This summer, teachers will participate in a process where they will decide what students need to know in order to demonstrate that they’re meeting grade-level standards – otherwise known as being proficient – on state exams. That process will impact scoring for this spring’s tests.

“It’s a matter of judgment to decide, ‘OK, we think a student who’s proficient should be able to answer this question correctly, say, two-thirds of the time,’” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, giving an example.

Can we compare scores to last year?

No. Because the tests are new, the results can’t be compared to last year’s scores. Studying scores from year to year is helpful for understanding progress students have made — especially amid the pandemic.

But because state officials have warned against comparing results to previous years whenever the test changes, it’s been impossible to consider trends over the better part of a decade.

In 2016, New York allowed students to have unlimited testing time and cut the number of questions. In 2018 the state went from three testing days to two. The exams were canceled due to the pandemic in 2020, and the following school year, a fraction of students took shortened exams with just a quarter in New York City — far less than 2019.

They advised against comparisons with last year’s scores because looking at a student’s performance in 2022 versus 2019 would “ignore the enormous and, in many cases, grievous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, families, teachers, and entire school communities,” a spokesperson for the state education department said in a statement.

That may be frustrating to some educators, families, and researchers because it makes it impossible to see long-term trends of student performance and growth. These exams, however, are just one indicator of how well students are doing in New York, said Pallas, and should be viewed along with other metrics, such as graduation rates and college acceptance rates.

“The state testing system is just one piece of evidence that has to be put into relation to all the other things that are available,” Pallas said.

How are my child’s scores used?

Schools are federally required to administer these exams, and districts are required to assess 95% of their students.

In New York City, the exams are used to see where students are meeting grade-level expectations “as well as students that need academic intervention in literacy and math,” Styer said.

State officials have said that these scores are just one measure of how a student is doing in school. However, the scores don’t come back until the fall – meaning teachers can’t see them the year that children take the exams.

In New York City, high schools and middle schools that screen students for admission can no longer take state test scores into account.

Can I opt my child out?

Yes. While federal officials require schools to administer these tests, parents can pull their children out. New York City’s education department has previously advised parents to speak with their child’s principal if they’re interested in opting out.

Last year, 10% of students opted out of exams compared with 4% in 2019.

Federal law requires states to give assessments to at least 95% of students. If fewer students participate at a school, it could contribute to the school being labeled as struggling – which state officials define as needing “targeted” or “comprehensive” support. But generally, low test participation may only affect a school’s accountability status if it’s combined with bad results on other measures, such as chronic absenteeism, according to state education officials.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

What does it take to be a school board member? New Chicago leadership program offers a guide.

2024-05-03T15:21:29+00:00

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In a classroom normally filled with teenagers, 16 adults sat at desks arranged in a U-shape on a recent Saturday afternoon at Roosevelt High School on Chicago’s North Side.

Behind the group, there was a small table with a box of red, green, and yellow wristbands. Green meant you were fine with hugs; yellow OK’ed high fives and fist bumps; and red meant “no touching, send vibes!” according to a sign taped to the table. Next to the wristbands were a stack of packets that said “Effective School Boards Framework.”

At the front of the class, a projected slide said in big letters, “Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”

It was time for lessons on how to be on a school board.

AJ Crabill, an author presenting to the group that day, asked the class: Who is at the top of the organizational chart of a school system?

It’s not the school board, he said.

The superintendent, someone wondered.

“It is 1,000% not the superintendent,” Crabill said.

The mayor?

“It’s definitely not the mayor.”

Students?

That would be “beautiful,” Crabill said, but that’s not how it works typically.

The correct answer: The community.

Crabill, director of governance for the Council of the Great City Schools, was explaining to the class of education advocates, parent leaders, and prospective school board members that any school system exists to serve the public — but sometimes policymakers forget that.

“The moment you realize the community is at the top of the org chart, and then you realize, ‘That seems completely incongruent with my lived experience,’” Crabill said, drawing some laughs.

AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, speaks to the inaugural class of Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows during School Board School held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

The students are the inaugural class of a new, eight-month fellowship launched by National Louis University to prepare people for Chicago’s first elected school board, said Bridget Lee, the fellowship’s executive director. The fellowship is funded by Crown Family Philanthropies, The Joyce Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and Vivo Foundation (Crown, Joyce, and Vivo also support Chalkbeat. Learn more about our funding here.)

Known as the Academy for Local Leadership, or ALL Chicago, the fellowship is happening at a critical time. Chicago voters will begin electing people to the city’s school board this November, and candidates are building campaigns. But Lee said the program is for advocates as well as potential candidates.

Fellows had to apply to join the program, which began in March and will last through November and are hosted across the city, said Lee, who added that they are still figuring out the timing for the second cohort of fellows. Fellows are given a $400 stipend to help cover transportation costs — an amount Lee hopes will increase in the future, she said.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellow Mary Nikoo takes notes during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Over about two sessions a month, the group will learn the basics of Chicago’s school system, the district’s finances, and how to make an “action plan” for creating change in school communities.

Towards the end of the program, fellows will flesh out their actual action plan and present their vision for change during their graduation ceremony. By then, some of the fellows who are running for school board may have won their elections.

The first group of fellows includes a handful of people running for office and many with close ties to the district. It includes Sendhil Revuluri, a former board member; Danielle Wallace, a school board candidate running in District 6 on the South Side; and Mykela Collins, a mother with two children in Chicago Public Schools who serves on a Local School Council.

Wallace, a former teacher and nonprofit leader in Englewood, was on the fence about running for school board until she started the fellowship.

“One of the most valuable things for me is becoming really clear on what my thoughts and values and positions are on different topics,” Wallace said. “That just gives me a lot of confidence on making the right decisions from that seat.”

Fellows Jesus Ayala Jr. and Carlos Rivas have also filed campaign finance paperwork to run for school board seats in District 7 on the South West side and District 3 on the North West side, respectively.

Collins said she applied for the fellowship because she wanted to know how to be a better advocate.

“I wanted to know who is important for me to go to, the type of questions I can ask and needed to ask and how I can go about getting those answers,” Collins said.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows Mykela Collins, right, and Christina Jensen, left, laugh during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Lee’s idea for the fellowship formed three years ago, when Illinois lawmakers first passed a law creating the elected school board. As a former teacher and CPS employee who worked in the central office, Lee wondered how the public would learn about the complicated new governance system. Lee then visited a program in Cincinnati called School Board School, which educates school board candidates and advocates, and decided to bring the model to Chicago, she said.

Lee said “plenty” of organizations help political candidates navigate politics. ALL Chicago focuses instead on learning about the school system and how to work with people who may not agree with you — just like a school board.

For example, this first batch of fellows sees eye-to-eye on about 80% of things: They care about children, and they want all students to succeed regardless of their backgrounds, Lee said. She wants the fellowship to be the place where people can have “productive civil discourse” about the 20% of things they don’t agree on.

“I think that fellows are sort of learning from each other, like how their own stories and their own experiences have shaped their viewpoint and how the system should run and are learning how to talk about that in a way that moves things forward,” Lee said.

Since the program began in March, the group has already heard from some experienced policymakers, including former Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, Lee said. They’ve also started to create their plans for how they want to impact the school system.

On the Saturday afternoon when Crabill was there, however, the fellows went back to the basics.

He asked the group to ponder some big questions, such as, “Why do school systems exist?” Answers varied. One person said the goal was to prepare children for the workforce. Another said school systems also help students socialize.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellow Cory Cain asks a question to speaker AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

After learning that the community is at the top of the organizational chart, Crabill, who wrote the book, “Great On Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective,” emphasized another basic fact of being an elected official: Your job is never over.

“You gonna be sittin’ up in the grocery store trying to find a non-squishy avocado, and somebody gonna come up to you and complain about, how come their kid didn’t get a part in the play?” Crabill said, igniting laughter across the room.

But, seriously, he said: “This becomes your life. People will roll up on you at any moment when you have put yourself in the position to be their representative — and I think it’s perfectly appropriate for them to do so.”

The fellows’ knowledge of Chicago Public Schools varied. One person talked about the district’s school bus crisis. At one point, one fellow informed another that Chicago Public Schools had scrapped its old school rating policy last year. The second fellow replied, “Thank God.”

Materials used by Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows are seen on the desks during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Other times, fellows had some universal experiences with CPS. For instance, during a discussion about public feedback, the class started talking — and commiserating — all at once about the process of signing up for public comment during monthly Chicago Board of Education meetings.

“You gotta sign up two days in advance and it finishes in two minutes,” one fellow said.

“Yes!” another replied.

School board members should never only consider public feedback during a meeting, Crabill said, given that most people in the community won’t be represented there.

Crabill also covered the murky line of when board members should step in to solve a problem or delegate to someone else.

He asked the group to imagine a class of 26 students where six of the children have higher needs and get more attention from the teacher. Now imagine that a father of one of the other 20 children calls a school board member he knows, asking for more attention for his child. The board member then calls the teacher to fix the problem. What is the teacher going to do?

One fellow’s answer stood out: “Spend more time with that one kid,” she said.

That’s probably what would play out – but Crabill warned the group to never let that happen. School board members should be pointing the parent to the proper channels for expressing their concern instead of giving them inequitable access to power and frustrating their employees in the process.

Fellows in the inaugural class of Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago listen to speaker AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

“We’ve created a hostile work environment for our staff that pressures them to no longer do what in their judgment is the best interest of children but instead do what is in the best interest of the power that be that showed up,” Crabill said.

This lesson was enlightening for Collins, the mother and LSC member.

“Learning that the roles and the responsibilities and accountability of the board is so much different from what I ever thought,” Collins said. “I thought that the board is supposed to do everything…anything goes wrong in the school, it’s the board’s issue, but learning that’s not how it is and they delegate different folks throughout the district to make those changes.”

During the session, fellows had a meta moment. They realized that so much of what they’re learning about the school system isn’t common knowledge to the general public. Was there a way that the system or a future board could spread what they’re learning?

Crabill challenged them.

“This is a new scenario for Chicago,” Crabill said, “so write a new script.”

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO defends new budget formula as schools consider next year’s funding

2024-04-26T02:27:04+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools officials defended the district’s new school funding formula Thursday night after some school communities raised concerns about losing staff next year.

The new formula allocates staff and funding based on need and replaces a system that relied more heavily on raw student enrollment. It represents an “important milestone in a long and broad struggle to improve quality of education for all of Chicago’s children, especially those farthest from opportunity,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said during a Board of Education meeting held at Chicago Vocational Career Academy High School that drew at least 100 people.

Martinez noted that the change is the product of long-term advocacy from the community for equitable funding to all schools. Advocates for a needs-based formula, which includes the Chicago Teachers Union, argue that such a formula can provide more support for schools that have high needs and are in need of support as they lose enrollment.

But Martinez also acknowledged that CPS is not “going to get everything 100 percent perfect” and is working through budget concerns at some individual schools.

In recent weeks, some educators and parents at selective enrollment and magnet schools have said that their schools’ proposed budgets would include fewer staffers next year under the new formula, which provides at least 10 teachers at every school and increases staff and discretionary funding based on the school’s needs.

Some have also pushed for more transparency around the new formula, asking the district to release each school’s preliminary budget proposal to the public. School budgets are not yet final and must be approved by their Local School Councils. Martinez said the district will release school budgets in late May.

Some schools have reported seeing an increase in their discretionary funding, which can be used to fund more staff and other programs, under the new formula.

But even the Chicago Teachers Union, which supported eliminating the student-based budgeting formula, has concerns.

Christel Williams, the union’s recording secretary, told the board Thursday that the union is concerned the new formula doesn’t specifically guarantee schools certain paraprofessional positions, such as teacher assistants.

WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times also reported this week that two-thirds of selective enrollment and magnet schools appear to be seeing cuts in their initial budgets.

Martinez said that no one school type will be disproportionately impacted by the budget changes. Some in the crowd of at least 100 people yelled, “That’s not true.”

Martinez asked the crowd to let him finish, then said: “By far overall what we’re seeing is more equity, especially for our schools with the highest needs, while we’re still protecting our strongest schools,” Martinez said.

But Martinez also said there are “a few outliers,” suggesting that the formula may not have provided adequate staffing for all schools, which the district is working to address.

Board president Jianan Shi asked Martinez to provide the board with an assessment of how staffing changes will impact schools.

“This board acknowledges the uncertainty, the uneasiness some communities are feeling right now, and we hear that,” Shi said.

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

Chicago’s low-income families of students with disabilities eligible for new $500 grants

2024-04-23T19:00:41+00:00

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The city of Chicago is using pandemic relief money to offer $500 grants to students with disabilities who come from low-income families, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday.

Families need to apply for the one-time grants, which will be awarded to up to 8,000 people.

The Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities is partnering with Ada S. McKinley Community Services to distribute $5 million through the new Diverse Learners Recovery Fund, supported by American Rescue Plan dollars, which the federal government distributed to help cities and states recover from the pandemic. Chicago received nearly $1.9 billion in those funds, which must be allocated for spending by December 2024, according to the city.

Most of the dollars in the Diverse Learners Recovery Fund will go toward grants to families, while $1 million is reserved to cover administrative costs for Ada S. McKinley Community Services, according to a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

Sherry Henry, the mother of a child with autism, speaks with Mayor Brandon Johnson during an event announcing $500 grants for low-income families of students with disabilities.

Sherry Henry, a Hyde Park mother of a 12-year-old boy with autism, said her family had spotty access to the internet during remote school, which made it difficult for her son to log onto virtual classes, leading him to fail a math class.

She did not have to pay for services out of pocket, but she says she could use the grant to buy supplies to help him with dealing with his sensory integration, a disorder that impacts his ability to process his senses, such as touch. Because of that, Henry buys special shoes for her son and recently purchased tennis rackets to help with his grip.

“When I hear about things like this, I always come out to see how I can support my son for my household,” Henry said.

Parents and guardians of students with disabilities can apply for up to two grants per household. Applicants must be residents of Chicago and must earn a household income equal to or less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $93,600 at most for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They must also have documentation proving their child receives services at school, such as an Individualized Education Program or 504 plan, or certification from a doctor that their child has a disability.

At an event announcing the grants, Johnson acknowledged the challenges that young people with disabilities faced during the pandemic, when “typical support systems” were cut off as schools shut down.

“Many families have had to make difficult financial choices to ensure that their children remain on track with their education, and I want to honor those families for all of their hard work and the extra hours that it took to provide for and nurture and raise a family of a child, particularly one with a disability,” Johnson said.

Students with disabilities are legally entitled to school services that are outlined in an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. Those services are meant to provide accommodations for students or give them extra help or therapies in school, but school closures forced by the pandemic separated many students with disabilities from those critical supports.

Like other districts, Chicago Public Schools fell behind in evaluating what support students with disabilities needed. In the 2019-20 school year, when the pandemic hit, more than 10,050 reevaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews of student IEPs were incomplete, according to a Chalkbeat investigation. That’s triple the number from the previous school year.

Bridgeport mother Shareia Ramey, whose 15-year-old son has a seizure disorder, said she’s spent a lot of money out of pocket to meet his needs for services not provided by his school, such as a walker to help him balance himself and other medical costs.

Ramey thinks the grant will be helpful for many families but she’s hoping for more support from the city and public schools, noting that “this is a continuous lifetime that our children with disabilities have,” Ramey said.

Josh Long, the new chief of Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Diverse Learners, saw the pandemic’s impact on students when he was a principal at a school that provides specialized support to older students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Those students had suddenly lost “repetition and consistency,” which they critically need in order to learn, he said.

“What we saw across the board with all of our students was gaps just in their learning,” Long said.

Long applauded the city’s idea of offering grants, which could provide relief for families who are paying out of pocket for medical costs, food, or even transportation to and from therapy services or doctor’s appointments, he said.

Families will be chosen for grants through a lottery system. Those interested can apply online at www.AdaMOPD.com or can text “AdaMOPD” to (877) 478-1359.

Applications will be open through Oct. 30.

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

Chicago Teachers Union reveals some key contract demands

2024-04-16T21:20:12+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union wants its next contract to include raising the salary floor for paraprofessionals, more dual language programs, sports and fine arts programs for every school, and more Sustainable Community Schools, which provide wraparound services for students, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said Tuesday.

The union also wants bargaining sessions to be open to the public, Davis Gates said at a press conference at Richards Career Academy on the Southwest Side, a Sustainable Community School where she was flanked by teachers and other union members.

Davis Gates said having more Sustainable Community Schools is just one area that the union agrees on with Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher and former CTU organizer. That commonality is different from contentious negotiations of the past that led to two strikes, she noted.

That changing dynamic is coupled with the union’s desire to open bargaining sessions up to the broader public, such as through livestream, because the contract is meant to benefit everyone, Davis Gates said.

“When I say that this contract is about the common good, I am saying that in the front yard of this city, we will be inviting families to participate, our students to participate,” Davis Gates said. “We will be inviting Chicagoans who believe that this is the greatest city on Earth, to participate in building the greatest school district on Earth.”

Davis Gates later said that the public sessions can only happen if CPS agrees. A CPS spokesperson said the district “looks forward to learning more” about CTU’s request to publicly bargain. A representative for City Hall did not immediately return a request for comment.

“Although contract talks between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have not yet commenced, the District looks forward to negotiating a fair contract that balances the interests of the hard working educators with our budget constraints,” said Evan Moore, district spokesperson, in a statement.

There is some precedent. In Colorado, state law requires teachers’ contract negotiations to be done in public. In Chicago, with a union-friendly mayor who drew heavy support from the CTU on the campaign trail, contract negotiations this year may not result in a long battle or lead to a strike, as they have in past years under former mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot.

However, bargaining will occur as the district is deciding how to close a $391 million budget deficit as federal COVID dollars run out. That challenge raises questions about how many costly demands CPS can commit to.

In an interview last week with Chalkbeat, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district’s structural deficit — when expenses exceed revenue — preceded the pandemic and, in recent years, was due in part to the 2019 CTU contract agreement that will expire this June. Budget watchdogs have noted that this financial situation prevents the mayor from agreeing to every union demand.

Asked about the economic implications of the contract, Davis Gates did not provide more specific details but said the union will ask for “substantial amounts of investment into our school community,” and emphasized that schools still don’t have enough staff.

However, CTU and the district already agree on at least one thing: Both believe the state should provide more funding to CPS to help alleviate its financial pressures and have said they are pushing lawmakers to do so. The state has boosted funding for CPS since overhauling its funding formula in 2017. But that new formula indicates that CPS would still need $1.1 billion to be considered adequately funded.

There are no signs yet that more money is coming. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed a budget that would increase K-12 funding by the same amount as last year.

CTU delivers demands across the city

After the press conference Tuesday, union leaders rode a trolley to deliver its demands to Pritzker’s office, as well as Johnson’s office and some of its critics, such as the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. The trolley also stopped at the offices of White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who has sought $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build a new Sox stadium. Asked why the union approached him, a CTU spokesperson said, “because he loves Chicago as much as we do.”

Before the trolley took off, various school staffers took the microphone at Richards to discuss different contract demands.

Christel Williams-Hayes, the CTU’s recording secretary, highlighted the work of paraprofessionals who provide additional support to schools and can include special education assistants, teacher assistants, school clerks, and parent advocates, among others. The union plans to demand a higher salary floor for paraprofessionals, Davis Gates said. Their pay can range based on the specific paraprofessional job title and years of experience.

One of the lowest paid paraprofessional positions is a teacher assistant, which has a starting salary this school year of $36,259, an increase from $30,862 in the 2019-20 school year, according to the CTU’s current contract.

Charese Munoz, an English teacher at Spencer Technology Academy in Garfield Park, said the city must expand dual language programming to more Black students who can benefit from learning a language other than English.

Rolando Perez, a restorative justice coordinator at Brighton Park Elementary School, which is also a Sustainable Community School, said the union wants “each school and each student” to have a restorative justice coordinator who oversees an alternative form of discipline that focuses on resolving conflicts. The Board of Education recently directed the district to create a new safety plan by removing school resource officers from campuses and implementing alternative disciplinary practices, such as more restorative justice.

“Simply put,” Perez said, “how can a student be ready to learn when they come into a school if they are not feeling fully supported socially and emotionally?”

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

Chicago Public Schools kicks off community forums on upcoming strategic plan

2024-04-16T03:57:48+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is mapping out its goals for the next five years and wants feedback from the public.

The plan — which will be finalized this summer — will focus on three priorities: how to improve students’ daily experiences in the classroom, staffing and funding, and collaborating more closely with school communities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told a crowd of about 40 people at Crane High School on Monday night for the first of seven community forums. Many of the attendees were district staff. Others were parents, community advocates, and representatives from outside organizations.

The plan gained some attention in the winter when the Chicago Board of Education announced it would move away from the school choice system. The board said it would outline a new approach in the strategic plan, and specific changes would depend on community feedback.

But school choice didn’t come up at Monday’s session. Martinez told Chalkbeat the district will ask families their opinions on school choice and capital planning in May, because those are “big topics.” The next three meetings this month will focus more on the daily school experience and funding, though parents also can share their thoughts about school choice, he said. Martinez said he’s already heard from Spanish-speaking parents who have struggled to navigate the GoCPS system.

As Martinez went over the district’s priorities, he highlighted some successes, including a recent growth in reading and math.

“We are building a five-year plan so this continues, and we continue to accelerate,” Martinez told the crowd.

Martinez, who was hired in 2021, established a three-year blueprint in the fall of 2022. The district is developing the next five-year strategic plan at a moment of big change.

Chicago is holding its first school board elections this fall and candidates are starting to emerge. In January 2025, a hybrid board with 10 elected members and 11 members appointed by the mayor will be sworn into office.

Since taking office a year ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointed school board has voted to remove police officers from schools in addition to passing the resolution to shift away from school choice. Both moves prompted a response from state lawmakers who are debating bills that could prevent those changes.

District officials have also rolled out a new budgeting formula that provides set staffing levels to all schools and additional discretionary spending based on need. They’ve also cut bus service for general education students and struggled to comply with providing transportation to students with disabilities who are legally entitled to it.

Martinez and other district officials spent the first hour of Monday’s meeting talking about the vision for the district over the past few years, as well as the feedback officials have collected so far through other community meetings and focus groups, such as on how to ensure the success of Black students. So far, that feedback has run the gamut, Martinez said, including asking the district to better prepare students for life after high school, focus more on supporting students’ mental health, provide more funding for building repairs and transportation, and include families in decision making.

In the second hour, attendees rotated between three tables. At each, CPS staff talked about their work — such as changing the funding formula for school budgets or their desire to expand dual language programming — and then took questions from members of the community.

At one table, which focused in part on funding, most of the roughly 15 people seated were CPS staff. One of the few community members was Catherine Jones, a longtime education advocate on the West Side who asked if the district was still considering enrollment under its new funding formula. Budget Director Mike Sitkowski told Jones that the new formula would “guarantee that even the smallest school has a baseline” of staff.

“Which is good,” Jones responded.

At another table, parent Alexandra Beltrand, a mother of three CPS kids, asked if the district could expand dual language programs.

By 8 p.m. — the scheduled end of the meeting — attendees had only rotated tables twice, and attendees at at least two of the tables had just a few minutes to ask questions after hearing from CPS staff. Attendees were encouraged to write down their questions and feedback so that staff could review and record it later.

“We’re going to see what worked today, what didn’t — so for example, we didn’t have as much time to have more rotations,” Martinez said. “We’re even wondering, do we start having even more groupings instead of three?”

Still, Beltrand said the meeting was helpful. After the meeting ended, she chatted one-on-one with staff from the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education.

“I felt heard,” Beltrand said.

People interested in attending the meetings can register online here.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

From ‘winning the lottery’ to ‘leaner schools’: How the end of federal COVID money could impact Chicago schools

2024-04-10T21:06:27+00:00

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For principals in Chicago, putting together a school budget has always involved difficult choices.

Then three years ago, a $2.8 billion windfall of federal COVID money for Chicago Public Schools, meant to help students recover from the pandemic, suddenly changed the equation.

At one school, where nearly all of the students came from low-income households, the additional money meant more after-school programs for everyone, tutoring for struggling students, open gym, and even a staff-created crafting class where students could get additional social-emotional support. Test scores went up and staff noticed fewer fights, said a former school administrator who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.

“Winning the lottery is what it felt like,” she said. “Everything your kid ever asked for, you could give them.”

Research shows Chicago students are rebounding faster than other districts, particularly in reading, efforts such as tutoring are paying off, and the number of school social workers in CPS has doubled.

But the extra federal money that helped make that progress possible, known formally as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief or ESSER, is running out, meaning some of those programs could be curtailed or cut.

A Chalkbeat analysis of school budgets for the past three years found that federal COVID relief made up 7% of all the money that went to schools. And while officials said Monday they will not reduce the total amount of money dedicated to schools, they said some campuses’ “funding levels may change,” as they shift to a new funding formula that guarantees a minimum number of staff for all schools, according to a letter district officials sent to families and staff.

Next year, CPS plans to spend the last $300 million of its $2.8 billion allocation of federal COVID money, but will still face a $391 million deficit. CEO Pedro Martinez signaled recently that hard cuts, such as for critical building repairs, could be ahead but he wants to protect classrooms from losing resources.

Looking back, more than half of Chicago’s federal COVID money went to staff salaries and benefits. In an interview with Chalkbeat, Martinez said the federal COVID dollars helped the district avoid cuts because of a longstanding structural deficit – when expenses exceed revenue.

That deficit was a problem even before the pandemic for many reasons, he said, including the 2019 CTU contract, which committed to hiring more staff and increasing salaries and benefits. The district is once again negotiating new contracts with the Chicago Teachers Union and the union representing school support staff. Both will impact future school years when federal COVID money is gone.

Chalkbeat’s analysis of budget records and expenditure data from the past three years found the largest uses of COVID money at the school level were for reducing class sizes, supporting middle school programs, and expanding pre-K.

District officials said they want to preserve programs they believe have helped students, such as tutoring, professional development for teachers, after-school and summer programs, and investments in social-emotional learning. But some schools will be hit by changes next year.

For example, according to a presentation given last week to Local School Council members, some schools may lose their interventionists. These positions were created with federal COVID dollars to provide extra support to struggling students.

Next year, only Title I schools, which enroll large shares of students from low-income families, will be guaranteed interventionists.

Principals received their budgets Monday for next school year and could decide to pay for certain positions or programs using discretionary money. By early May, Local School Councils must vote on the budgets. Simultaneously, district officials are reviewing non-school spending and central office budgets before presenting a full budget to the school board for a vote in June.

“Literally every day, I kid you not, we’re going through all of our central office budgets, all of our operations, and seeing, ‘Where do we need to scale back?,’” Martinez said. “Our intention is going to be that as schools finish their budgets, we’re going to be able to protect those resources at the school level.”

How federal COVID money was spent at schools

At one Chicago school, which also serves many students from low-income families, having more adults in the building has made a big difference.

The school’s principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said the districtwide tutoring effort, known as Tutor Corps, allowed her to hire a handful of tutors who have “had a profound impact” on children who were struggling in reading and math and are now showing signs of improvement in those subjects.

The principal was also able to shrink class sizes by hiring more teachers. That was possible because the district decided to cover the salaries of two teachers the principal tapped to become interventionists. Because they were some of her most veteran teachers with high salaries, the principal said, that freed up a good chunk of money to hire other staff.

But the principal didn’t know that the district used federal COVID money to help pay for her school’s pre-K teachers, or that her school’s budget was covered by millions in relief dollars over the past three years.

“Wow, it didn’t feel like that,” she said, referring to the amount of money her school received.

The disconnect might stem from complicated budgeting practices. CPS must first spend money, then submit claims to the state to get reimbursed with federal COVID dollars, said Mike Sitkowski, budget director for CPS. In order to collect that money, which helped keep school budgets afloat, officials were “shifting expenses throughout the year” – which did not impact school operations, he said, but may have gone unnoticed by school communities.

Between July 2020 and June 30, 2023, Chicago Public Schools budgeted a total $1.4 billion in federal COVID dollars directly to schools. Another $1.2 billion was budgeted for centrally funded programs, including those rooted at schools, such as tutoring, one-on-one academic intervention for students who fell behind, and summer school.

Multiple educators were surprised to hear how much of the COVID relief dollars had been budgeted for their schools. Some parents and students have also felt in the dark about how the money got spent.

Hal Woods, chief of policy for advocacy organization Kids First Chicago, said without that knowledge or a tracker detailing where the money is going for each school, parents and schools aren’t able to “be in lockstep” if they want to advocate for more funding or raise questions about how funds are being spent.

Wallace Wilbourn Jr., a teacher at Oscar DePriest Elementary School on the West Side and a member of the school’s Local School Council, said he doesn’t know how most of the money was spent. He joined the LSC last year, but wasn’t aware of any conversations the school had with staff about how the money was being spent, even though the LSC votes on a school’s budget.

Between 2021 and 2023, nearly $2.2 million in federal COVID dollars was budgeted for DePriest. Expenditure data obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request found slightly more than that – about $2.5 million – was spent.

DePriest had Tutor Corps tutors, Wilbourn said, an expense he supports because he felt many students needed the extra help as they returned to in-person school. Still, he wishes there was more transparency early on about the money.

“It’s nice to know what those dollars are being used for so then it gives you the power to advocate for those funds,” Wilbourn said.

Martinez said the district has been “very transparent” about how it was spending the federal dollars in multiple public presentations. However, Martinez said “it gets very technical, so I can understand why it’s confusing for folks.”

Asked how the COVID money was distributed, a spokesperson did not share an exact formula in time for this story. A spokesperson said schools received federal COVID dollars based on “stakeholder meetings” that focused on what schools’ needs were, such as class sizes and limited split classrooms, access to arts and other “specialty” classes, intervention supports, social and emotional supports, resuming in-person school, and professional development.

Chicago schools have uncertain financial future

The district has not yet detailed how it will fill its looming $391 million deficit. That’s the shortfall after using roughly $300 million in federal COVID money still left to spend.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, said the district shouldn’t have plugged the federal money into operating costs, such as salaries, because that created a cliff – a sudden loss of money that could mean the loss of programs and staff that directly impacts students.

“It’s very disruptive, right?” Martire said. “What message does that send to the kids? It creates a lot of unintended and hard-to-anticipate issues.”

Martire argues the district should have used the money to pay for one-time costs, such as critical building repairs. The district might have to delay such repairs in response to budget challenges, Martinez said at a recent event about the district’s Latino students.

Martinez told Chalkbeat he is proud of the choices the district made in spending federal COVID money, pointing to the recent research around student growth in Chicago and crediting the “amazing work” of principals, teachers, and students.

“What the evidence is telling me right now is that we used the resources in a way that our students are doing even better today than they were prior to me coming here,” he said.

Officials have vowed to push state lawmakers to give the district more money. The state has increased the district’s funding by about $1 billion since Illinois overhauled its funding formula in 2017. But the state’s formula, which aims to allocate new money to districts based on need, indicates CPS would still need $1.1 billion to be considered adequately funded.

State lawmakers typically finalize a budget in late May or early June. The Chicago Board of Education usually votes on the district’s overall budget in late June. CPS is planning to fund schools differently this year, using a formula that allocates staff positions and prioritizes student and community needs instead of doling out a set number of dollars per student.

Two principals said they’ll be able to keep some of the extra programming, such as Tutor Corps, because they oversee high-needs schools. But even that will come with some changes: The tutors will use a different, less expensive curriculum, they said.

The administrator who launched more after-school programs said losing the federal COVID money could limit what a school can do. Instead of hosting programs for most of the school year, for example, her former school may have to go back to 10 or 20 weeks out of the year.

“The altruistic ones of us wish the lesson will be learned that extra money really makes a difference, and the city and state will keep providing additional funds for these sorts of investments,” said one principal. “But I am imagining that we are going to be trimming to be leaner schools with less programming.”

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

Chicago Public Schools ending student-based budgeting in favor of set staffing levels at all campuses

2024-03-21T22:08:53+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to do away with a decade-old system in which school funding was largely based on student enrollment. Instead, starting next year, each school will get a set number of staff and additional funding based on need.

The change, announced Thursday at a Chicago Board of Education meeting, is part of a revamp of the district’s funding formula and delivers on a promise Mayor Brandon Johnson made during his mayoral campaign to end student-based budgeting.

The district had already started to move away from a student-based approach in the previous two budget cycles, as it funded more positions – such as social workers – centrally. The current formula also accounts for student needs, such as how many students with disabilities need additional support.

Under the new formula, every school will have certain guaranteed staff, including an assistant principal, a counselor, and core classroom teachers. It would guarantee “a baseline level of resources for every school, regardless of enrollment,” then add more based on need, according to a district presentation.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, welcomed the move away from student-based budgeting, calling it an inequitable approach “because not every student has the same needs and doesn’t generate the same resources.”

It will, however, likely be challenging for the district to roll out a new funding model when schools already have “a certain funding expectation” they rely on to pay for contracts or programming. The district should try to hold schools harmless, meaning schools shouldn’t lose money under the new formula, Martire said.

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools switched from using a budgeting system that funded a set number of staff at each school to one that allocated money per student. As schools lost enrollment, their budgets often tightened. But budgets have also grown over the past few years with the influx of $2.4 billion, so far, in federal COVID relief funding.

The district’s enrollment declined significantly over the past decade, losing more than 75,000 students since 2013. Enrollment stabilized this year with about 323,000 students enrolled. At the same time, the number of employees has grown. District staffing data shows CPS employed roughly 43,500 people as of the end December, up from around 37,000 as of December 2018.

District officials and school board members did not immediately share more details about the formula. It remains unclear exactly how funding will be allocated to campuses or how much autonomy a principal and Local School Council would have over their school’s budgets.

Schools will also receive discretionary funding, but it is not clear how that will be calculated.

A school’s need will be determined by something called the “opportunity index,” which considers several factors, such as the percentage of students with disabilities, those who are homeless, those learning English as a new language, those who come from low-income families, the number of teachers a school was able to retain, and whether a school is segregated by race or ethnicity. The index also considers data about the surrounding community and how a school has been funded historically.

“Maybe it’s just more striking because I’ve been here for a while now, but this is a major shift and it’s important,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, vice president of the Chicago Board of Education.

The funding formula shift comes as the district is also facing a projected $391 million deficit, as federal COVID relief funding runs out. That gap must be filled by revenue that has not yet been identified, Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget director, told the board Thursday.

District officials are projecting an additional roughly $25 million in K-12 funding next year under the state’s Evidence-Based Funding formula, or EBF, which makes up the largest portion of state funding for CPS. That would bring total EBF funding for Chicago to nearly $1.8 billion. State officials have gradually provided more funding to Illinois school districts under the formula, but CPS officials are advocating for a larger increase, arguing that the district is still owed more than $1 billion.

When accounting for all state funding, Illinois gave Chicago Public Schools nearly $2.5 billion for this current fiscal year, up from $1.5 billion in 2017, the year before the state reformed how it was funding school districts.

Even with the budget challenges, the district is working to keep several of the new investments it made using federal COVID dollars, including high-dosage tutoring, additional counselors, and extended learning time, such as the expansion of summer school, as well as before- and after-school programming.

Officials defended those investments by highlighting a recent study that showed Chicago’s reading scores have bounced back from the pandemic at a greater rate than most big school districts.

“It should not take a crisis for us to fully fund our schools,” Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said during her presentation Thursday.

In an interview earlier this week, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district may also have to make “hard decisions” this year. That could include pausing “critical” repairs for buildings, he said.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago tendrá un consejo escolar que será elegido. ¿Qué preguntas tienes?

2024-02-29T11:00:00+00:00

En menos de un año, las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago tomarán juramento a sus primeros miembros electos del consejo escolar.

Pero incluso con una fecha firme de juramento del 15 de enero de 2025, muchas preguntas sin respuesta aún permanecen sobre la elección del 5 de noviembre que daría paso a los nuevos miembros del consejo- y cómo el consejo funcionará una vez en su lugar. La ley estatal establece que 10 miembros serán elegidos este año, pero los legisladores están debatiendo si elegir a los 21 ahora. (El alcalde Brandon Johnson pidió recientemente a la legislatura que se asegure de que sólo la mitad sean elegidos este año, informó el Sun-Times).

La legislatura estatal también debe finalizar los límites de los distritos para los miembros del consejo escolar. Los legisladores parecen haber acordado un tercer borrador del mapa el pasado noviembre.

Una vez que los miembros presten juramento el próximo enero, ¿qué sigue? ¿Cómo funcionará el consejo en comparación con el consejo que sustituirá?

Chalkbeat Chicago quiere escuchar tus preguntas sobre las próximas elecciones para el consejo escolar y sobre los miembros elegidos del consejo escolar. Vamos a tratar de responder a tus preguntas a través de nuestros reportajes mientras seguimos las campañas y las elecciones de este año.

Responde a la encuesta aquí o rellénala abajo. No utilizaremos tu nombre en nuestros reportajes sin tu permiso.

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Reema Amin es una reportera que cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago para Chalkbeat Chicago. Ponte en contacto con Reema en ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Institute for Nonprofit News.

Busing not guaranteed next year for general education students, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez says

2024-03-21T18:56:46+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools may not provide busing next school year for general education students, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said during a board meeting Thursday.

Martinez shared the update one day before families of elementary school children will receive admissions offers to magnet and selective enrollment schools, which provided busing to eligible students until this school year. The district is currently providing busing to students with disabilities and those who are homeless.

As a result, the district is extending the deadline for accepting school offers by a week, to April 19 at 5 p.m., Martinez said.

Martinez said the district is working to find other options for transportation, such as adjusting bell times, but for now, the district cannot guarantee busing for next year. The district remains under a state-issued corrective action plan that requires CPS to shorten bus commute times for students with disabilities to less than an hour. A Chalkbeat analysis in December found that hundreds of routes were carrying fewer than 10 students.

“We want to make sure families are aware of the challenges,” Martinez said during the meeting.

CPS canceled busing this year for about 5,500 general education students as it worked to ensure students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs call for transportation were getting it. The state required CPS to take multiple corrective actions over the past two years to ensure students with disabilities entitled to busing were receiving it and that their ride times were not longer than an hour.

The district is also now taking state-mandated corrective action for how it assigns students with disabilities to schools. Those assignments are often far away from where they live.

The district’s “unwavering commitment” to provide legally required transportation to students with disabilities and those who are homeless “has, admittedly, presented challenges in accommodating general education students,” said Mary Fergus, a district spokesperson, in a statement. The district said it has not attracted the number of drivers it needs, despite efforts to hire more of them that include increasing pay.

The district said Thursday it’s currently busing 8,700 students. As of December, nearly all of the students who received busing were students with disabilities.

For general education students, the district is offering prepaid Ventra cards, a move that has drawn criticism from families who don’t have the flexibility to accompany young children on public transportation. Additionally, about 3,700 students with disabilities have opted for stipends of up to $500 to cover their transportation needs on their own, down from 4,000 students at the start of the year, according to the district.

Currently, about 130 students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, according to CPS. That’s significantly down from the 3,000 such students on long routes last year, but it is up from 47 students at the start of the school year.

Many families with general education students at magnet and selective enrollment schools have protested the district’s decision and have demanded a stipend to cover their transportation costs. Some families who have struggled to juggle transportation have pulled their children out of magnet schools and enrolled them somewhere closer to home.

This week, 27 Chicago alderpeople signed a letter urging the district to make several changes to transportation, including to provide stipends to families with general education students.

“We cannot afford to live in Lincoln Park or Lake View, so please include transportation,” Laura Leon, the grandmother of a student who lost busing this year, said during the board meeting.

On Thursday, a district spokesperson said stipends are “not sustainable” this year as the district focuses on students with disabilities and homeless children, and faces a projected $391 million budget deficit next year.

Advocates have also suggested regional transportation hubs in which students would join an existing route. However, that has been a challenge to implement, Fergus said. Hubs “would work for some but not all routes, thus not serving all families and schools in an equitable manner, but, again, we will continue to explore all options for the coming school year.”

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

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.

Illinois lawmakers challenge Chicago school board’s plans to remove police, rethink choice policy

2024-03-11T20:07:43+00:00

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Illinois state lawmakers filed two bills last week aimed at reversing the Chicago Board of Education’s decisions to rethink school choice policies and remove school resource officers from campuses.

The bills focus on board moves that have drawn both support and sharp pushback in recent months from school communities and elected officials. Those decisions include a plan to reconsider the district’s system of school choice — including charter, selective enrollment, magnet, and gifted schools — and to create a new school safety plan that bans the use of school resource officers, or on-campus police.

The new state bills would significantly curtail both board decisions. One bill would prevent the closure of selective-enrollment schools and any changes to admissions policies at those schools for the next three years. The other would let local school councils retain the power to decide whether they want on-campus police — a right they would lose by next school year under a new safety plan.

Both bills have gathered support from other Chicago-based state lawmakers and powerful allies, including House Speaker Chris Welch.

The legislation is an example of lawmakers seeking to use state power to override Chicago’s authority over its schools. It comes just days after the Illinois House and Senate passed a bill governing elections for Chicago’s first-ever elected school board.

That power dynamic drew criticism from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, who has supported the board’s moves around school choice and resource officers.

“I remember being told by (Illinois General Assembly) members that they would *not* circumvent local control of CPS BOE,” Davis Gates tweeted in response to a tweet about the resource officer legislation. “That was in 2013 when Rahm Emanuel closed down 50 Black schools impacting nearly 20K Black children. Can anyone help me define irony?”

Dwayne Truss, a longtime activist on the West Side who has opposed the board’s decision on school resource officers, felt state lawmakers took an important step.

It’s the state’s attempt, Truss said, to “say, ‘Hey, if this is what they want, and it’s fair and it’s reasonable, then we have to protect those rights.’”

Some local school councils want to keep police officers

One of the state bills, House Bill 5008, would allow local school councils to contract with the Chicago Police Department for school resource officers. It would counteract a board vote two weeks ago to create a new school safety policy by June 27 that would end the use of school resource officers, effectively removing officers from 39 schools that currently have them, by next year.

“Local school councils are designed to make the best decision for their school,” said Rep. Mary Gill, a Democrat who represents neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, and is a key sponsor of HB 5008. “This is about keeping the power local to be able to decide if a (school resource officer) is needed, and from my research, 39 high schools would like to keep them. I think that’s enough.”

This bill passed the House’s Police and Fire committee last week, 13-0, and is headed to the House floor.

The safety plan board members called for in their vote two weeks ago would focus on more “holistic” approaches to discipline, such as restorative justice practices, which emphasize conflict resolution.

In steering away from on-campus police officers, the board cited data showing that Black students and those with disabilities were disciplined and arrested at school at disproportionately higher rates than their peers.

Schools that implemented restorative justice saw a drop in student arrests, according to a recent study.

The board decision drew substantial support, including from organizations that had pushed for years to get rid of on-campus police officers and use the money on other resources, such as more social workers or alternative discipline practices.

But it also triggered a backlash from community members and elected officials who want local councils — not the board — to decide whether their schools should have school resource officers.

Froy Jimenez, member of the district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, said Rep. Gill is “doing the city a big favor” by letting councils make the decision. Many parents, students and staff will be happy if the bill passes, said Jimenez, who is also a teacher at Hancock College Preparatory High School, which voted to remove its resource officers.

“Some will choose not to, and having that ability is crucial,” he said.

CPS spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said in a statement that the district “follows the policies and procedures set by the Board of Education and the Illinois State Board of Education” and that the district “remains committed to working with our leaders, administrators, and school staff toward improving efforts to bolster student safety and protection.”

Lawmakers say ‘hands off’ selective enrollment schools

The second bill, House Bill 5766, would prevent the closure of any school with selective admissions criteria — such as the city’s 11 selective high schools — until Feb. 1, 2027. The bill also calls for a halt to any changes to admissions criteria for selective schools or any decrease in funding to selective schools until 2027.

The bill is a response to the board resolution stating that it would rethink the school choice system and invest more resources in neighborhood schools. The resolution criticized admissions policies at selective enrollment and other “choice” schools, which were originally created to desegregate the school system but have in recent years led to segregation along the lines of student race and income.

Rep. Margaret Croke, a Democrat serving neighborhoods on the city’s northern lakefront who is sponsoring the bill, said her constituents were concerned about changes to selective enrollment schools under a majority appointed school board. They would rather wait for changes to be made after the Chicago Board of Education is fully elected during 2026, she said.

“If an elected school board that has been elected by the city of Chicago decides to take a position or action as it pertains to selective enrollment schools, I may not agree with it, but they were elected by the constituents and the voters of the city of Chicago,” said Croke.

Croke said she believes the current board is trying to change the funding formula to provide less money to selective enrollment and give more to neighborhood schools. The board’s resolution states that it wants to “ensure equitable funding and resources across schools within the District using an equity lens.”

Board members have expressed a desire to scrutinize charter schools more closely. They also want the district to provide more resources to neighborhood schools, or a child’s zoned school, in order to support “students furthest away from opportunity and ensure that all students have access to a world-class public pre-K through 12th-grade education,” officials said.

The board’s resolution did not include any language about closing schools, and board members have stated they don’t plan to close selective-enrollment schools. Written into the compromise hybrid school board bill in 2021 was a moratorium on school Chicago closures until after Jan. 15, 2025.

The resolution didn’t call for specific changes; board members said they want to hear from the public on what the district should do. The resulting plan will be part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which the board is expected to vote on this summer.

Community groups call for better engagement

The pushback in Springfield comes after a coalition of community groups in Chicago sent a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson urging him to push his hand-picked school board to do more — and better — community engagement.

The letter, which was sent to other elected officials, city staff, district officials, and school board members, also asked that the resolution on rethinking school choice policies, among other things, be repealed because it “was crafted with no input from the communities it will impact” and was published and approved during the final week of classes before winter break.

“There wasn’t a public comment opportunity when the resolution was announced. And then it just kind of passed,” said Daniel Anello, executive director of Kids First Chicago, a parent advocacy organization that helped create the letter.

In December, district officials said they would hold community engagement sessions in February. A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said last week that the district now plans to hold community engagement sessions around the next five-year strategic plan after spring break, which is the last week of March.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

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.

Chicago Public Schools is in new era for negotiations with the CTU. What could it mean for schools?

2024-03-06T22:24:06+00:00

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When former Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey thinks about the dynamics between City Hall and the union, he flashes back to 2011. That’s when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended a decision to cancel pay raises for teachers by saying they got other types of salary boosts, while “our children got the shaft.”

The stinging quip illustrates how contentious contract negotiations and the relationship between the CTU and city officials were back then, ultimately leading to a weeklong teachers strike in 2012, said Sharkey, who currently sits on the union’s executive board.

After years of thorny relationships with district officials and mayors who did not align with the union on how to improve or support schools, the CTU is expected to begin bargaining this spring over a new contract with a district that now answers to Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher who rose to power as a CTU organizer.

“This is going to be a struggle because the culture in Chicago with the public schools and the teachers union is a culture of ‘No,’ and ‘Make me,’ and ‘OK,’” current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said during a City Club speech Tuesday. “That’s different from what we are embarking on this time. We’re saying, ‘How might we?’ That’s a different question.”

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Damen Alexander said the district “looks forward to negotiating a fair contract that balances both the interests of the District’s hard-working educators and our duty to be fiscally responsible.”

A City Hall spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

The latest contract talks will come amid massive change for Chicago Public Schools. The first-ever school board elections will take place this fall and a 21-member partially elected board will take office next January. And bargaining will happen as the district attempts to fill a projected $391 million budget deficit for next year, after four years of being buoyed by $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief dollars that will soon run out.

Amid those challenges, the union has a strong ally in office.

The CTU was Johnson’s largest campaign donor, and Davis Gates introduced him at his victory party.

Before the union propelled one of its own into the mayor’s office, the teachers union regained some bargaining power in 2021 when state legislators passed a law that restored its right to bargain over a broader set of issues — such as class size or the length of the school day — which had been restricted since 1995.

Still, Johnson signaled on the campaign trail that he would face “tough decisions” as mayor in negotiations with the CTU and wouldn’t be able to meet all of the union’s demands.

“So who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?” he said during a mayoral forum last year.

But the Johnson administration has already overseen policy changes the union counts as victories, including expanded parental leave for CTU members, a promise to remove school resource officers by next school year, and a commitment to rethink school choice policies.

The union’s House of Delegates, made up of hundreds of educators across the city, is scheduled to vote Wednesday on proposals crafted by the union’s various committees and developed as a response to what CTU members said they wanted to see in the next contract, according to the union.

Those proposals include a wide range of ideas, from pay raises and housing assistance for teachers to providing affordable housing and support for homeless students and their families.

While union officials acknowledge that things are different this time around, they have also emphasized that Johnson does not “have a magic wand” and pushed back against the idea that the union will get everything it asks for.

“I think it is ridiculous for anyone to think that the Black man on the fifth floor who comes from the progressive movement has fairy dust to sprinkle to end this quickly,” Davis Gates said in an interview with Chalkbeat last month. “There is an entire bureaucracy that has been hired and trained to tell the Chicago Teachers Union, ‘No.’”

Joe Ferguson, president of Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said the mayor can’t meet all of the union’s demands because “the money isn’t there for it.” He said the public deserves to hear from the board and the mayor on where they’ll draw the line.

“Where those boundaries are, nobody can say,” Ferguson said.

Past tensions between CTU and City Hall prompted strikes

Over the past decade, contract negotiations between CPS and the CTU have resulted in two strikes that garnered national attention and inspired education labor fights around the country.

In 2012, after months of simmering disagreement and the city skipping a raise for teachers, the union went on strike for seven days at the start of the school year. Emanuel had pushed for a longer school day and embraced education reform ideas sweeping the country at the time, including a new way to evaluate teachers, which the union strongly opposed. He also refused to bargain over issues like class size, which at the time, state law did not require CPS to do.

An 11-day strike happened in 2019 under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who the union had initially expected to align with more than Emanuel. The union was fighting for “common good” ideas that exceeded the scope of a teacher’s daily duties but were meant to improve students’ and families’ lives, such as ensuring that every school had a nurse, social worker, and librarian. The contract ultimately locked in some of those demands, as well as other wins, such as a $35 million fund to help reduce class sizes, but ultimately, the long strike left many teachers and families frustrated.

Those sour dynamics appear to be gone with Johnson’s election, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who co-wrote a book about CTU’s 2012 strike.

“Both parties believe that the other party understands and would be respectful of each other’s perspectives, which certainly wasn’t the case with the two previous mayors or even the previous CEOs — and we’ve gone through a few of them in Chicago,” he said.

Sharkey noted that Johnson’s priorities include many ideas the union agrees with and gave rise to, such as creating more sustainable community schools that provide wraparound services to families. His campaign platform also closely mirrored a document CTU first put out in 2012 titled “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve,” which was updated in 2018 and most recently, in 2022.

In general, the union has found that working with the district has been easier and more receptive since Johnson has taken office, according to Sharkey and Davis Gates.

But Davis Gates said she expects plenty of disagreement because she still feels that the agency has a bureaucracy “that cannot collaborate, that does not say yes, and has a difficult time understanding how to partner with us.”

Union again pushing ‘common good’ demands

The union is expected to push for cost-of-living raises that keep up with or exceed inflation and a more uniform overtime pay policy, according to proposals leaked to conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute, which a CTU spokesperson confirmed are real. The union also wants changes to the teacher evaluation process, including to codify that evaluations cannot be used for layoffs.

Proposals also include codifying health care policies, such as gender-affirming care, paid parental leave for employees, abortion coverage, and access to weight loss medical care, such as bariatric surgery.

In a more novel demand, the union will also push for housing assistance for its members, but the leaked proposal doesn’t include more details on how that would be done. Under Emanuel, the city offered assistance to police officers who wanted to buy homes in the areas they worked in, but few officers took advantage of the program.

In the classroom, the union is expected to renew a push to give elementary school teachers more preparation and collaboration time during the school day, Sharkey said. That was a major demand in the 2019 contract negotiations that largely did not come to fruition – and could again be difficult to secure this time around given the complicated logistics of tweaking a school day.

Union officials also expect proposals around bilingual services for students, including on attracting staff and expanding access to bilingual training for teachers, and retaining more special education staff. Both bilingual and special education are teacher shortage areas.

Davis Gates said they’ll continue demanding a librarian and nurse be staffed at every school.

Separately, union officials are expecting to push for more common good items, Davis Gates said. This will include creating a career and technical education program that would involve building houses for homeless students and their families, according to the leaked proposals.

Common good proposals will also include creating more sustainable community schools, Davis Gates said. The union is also interested in pushing for more “green” – or energy efficient – schools, such as by installing more solar panels. The district is already planning to purchase 50 electric school buses.

CPS’s budget deficit could complicate negotiations

Contract talks will begin as the district plans for its budget next year, which is projected to be $391 million in the hole. That could make costly union proposals a tough sell for the district.

District officials have for months publicized the budget deficit as federal COVID relief dollars run out. The district can either cut programming or find more money, which officials want to do by demanding more funding from the state.

Bruno, the labor expert, said it is a good sign the union agrees that Springfield should provide more money, because that means all negotiating parties agree on a solution to a significant problem.

However, Ferguson, from the Civic Federation, has little hope that more money is coming, in part because of what appears to be a “frayed” relationship between City Hall and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. Pritzker recently proposed a budget that provides the same increase to K-12 funding as last year. And because CPS’s deficit is driven by the loss of COVID relief dollars, this year’s negotiations are “a fairly unique stew,” he said.

“There have been deficits being faced in the past [and] constraints on funding sources, but none that have come in this particular context, where not only is there a question of, where is more money coming from, but it also comes at a moment when we all know that recent existing streams are going to end,” Ferguson said. “And it has also been made abundantly clear by Springfield, by the governor, that there is no money to be gotten from the state.”

Union officials said they don’t yet know the price tag of their proposals, and they don’t expect to propose “money-saving” ideas. But Sharkey said they’ll have ideas on how the district can fund their proposals “and would expect the board to try to work with us on that.”

Asked how the district’s financial picture will impact its approach to negotiations, a CPS spokesperson pointed to the district’s budget deficit and said the district must be “fiscally responsible.”

Even with financial challenges, Sharkey said he expects the union and the district to work out disagreements in a more timely manner, unlike past negotiations that were “unproductive for months.”

Davis Gates said CTU continues to see its contract as “leverage for the common good,” has “high expectations” for upcoming negotiations, and is hoping for more agreement that will finally deliver on the CTU’s push to get schools more resources.

At the City Club speech this week, in a room full of business leaders, educators, and philanthropists, Davis Gates said she expects people to be skeptical that the mayor is going to “give CTU everything it’s asking for.”

“I hope he does,” she said.

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

Chicago is getting an elected school board. What questions do you have?

2024-02-06T22:22:30+00:00

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Less than a year from now, Chicago Public Schools will swear in its first elected school board members.

Chicago’s elected school board is coming soon. Here’s what you need to know.

But even with a firm swearing-in date of Jan. 15, 2025, many unanswered questions still remain about the election on Nov. 5 that would usher in those new board members — and how the board will function once in place. State law says 10 members will be elected this year, but lawmakers are debating whether to elect all 21 now. (Mayor Brandon Johnson recently asked the legislature to ensure that just half are elected this year, the Sun-Times reported.)

The state legislature must also finalize district boundaries for school board members. Lawmakers appear to have agreed on a third draft of the map last November.

Once members are sworn in next January, what’s next? How will the board work in comparison to the appointed board it will replace?

Chalkbeat Chicago wants to hear your questions about the upcoming school board elections and the elected school board. We’ll aim to answer your questions through our reporting as we follow campaigns and elections this year.

Answer the survey here or fill it out below. We will not use 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.

Who’s the boss? Chicago principals report to many different people.

2024-02-27T20:48:12+00:00

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During Femi Skanes’ 10 years as a Chicago principal, her boss was primarily a district official known as a network chief, she said. Alan Mather, who was also a principal for a decade, says he answered to then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan.

Many principals in Chicago also feel their Local School Council, or LSC, is a boss, while others view the council as more of a partner.

Principals are the leaders of their schools and staff. But in Chicago, multiple entities have power over principals. Later this year, Chicagoans will begin electing school board members, marking another shift in control over the city’s school system, which has been run by the mayor and a hand-picked CEO since 1995 and by a decentralized system of elected LSCs since 1988.

The city’s principals have unionized in hopes of creating more job protections for a role that has seen high turnover in recent years.

“Right now it’s kind of the wild wild west,” said Cynthia Barron, program coordinator and assistant professor with UIC’s Urban Education Leadership Program. “We’re kinda all waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Barron, who spent more than three decades at CPS, said she doesn’t foresee immediate changes as a result of unionization or an elected school board. But, given that details around the future principals union contract and the elected school board are still being ironed out, she said there are “so many unknowns.”

How Chicago principals ended up with many bosses

Those unknowns — as the principals union takes root and the city moves to an elected school board — may disrupt an already complicated hierarchy.

As it stands now, a Chicago principal’s direct supervisor is the head of their network — the geographic area their school is organized under — and they are also accountable to their Local School Council, or LSC, a unique-to-Chicago elected body at most schools made up of parents, teachers, students, and community members, that can hire principals. Both have different hiring and firing powers.

Local School Councils were created in 1988 under the state’s Chicago School Reform Act, which gave LSCs the power to hire principals, approve school budgets, and approve annual school improvement plans.

The state amended that law in 1995 in an effort to centralize and improve the city’s school system. Lawmakers voted to keep LSCs but mandated training for them. The changes also gave the mayor sole authority over appointing the school board and replaced the superintendent title with “chief executive officer” — which stands today.

Today, LSCs can hire a principal and offer them a four-year contract. They can decide to keep the principal or fire them when their contract is up for renewal.

Network chiefs, on the other hand, work for the district and are tasked with ensuring that schools are complying with district policies and meeting academic and instructional goals, according to interviews with school leaders. Network chiefs answer to district leaders who report to the CEO, the Board of Education president, and the mayor. School leaders can also turn to their chiefs when they need extra support.

Both chiefs and LSCs use a similar rubric to evaluate principals annually. Only network chiefs can fire principals at any time for just cause.

Though LSCs hold power over principals, they do not have the same connection to district officials and the school board that a network chief does. It’s also not clear how they’ll interact with the school board once it expands and includes elected members.

Froy Jimenez is a member of the city’s Local School Council Advisory Board, which the state created to advise the Board of Education. Jimenez, a teacher and LSC member at Hancock College Preparatory High School, said he believes that LSCs and principals are “co-leaders” with the shared goal of supporting students.

“When we look at [the] budget, when we look at curriculum, when we look at any specific need of our school,” Jimenez said, “we’re doing it like we’re collaborating.”

Principals balance multiple interests

Principals’ responsibilities have grown over the past two decades and especially since the pandemic. Today, in addition to being instructional leaders, they’re expected to maintain relationships with students, families, staff, and sometimes elected officials, said Jasmine Thurmond, director of Local School Council principal support at CPS.

Some school leaders appreciate the variety of voices, but others often feel torn between conflicting demands.

One principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, was asked by parents who attended LSC meetings to “publicize or encourage things like picketing or public demonstrations” over a district decision this year to suspend bus service for 5,500 general education students, largely those at selective enrollment and gifted schools.

The principal agreed that the lack of busing has been challenging for many of her students. But she explained to parents and the LSC that publicly protesting the busing decision could put her in hot water with her other boss: the district.

“I have to figure out how I can advocate for the needs of my students and the needs of my families,” she told Chalkbeat, “but in a way that is very respectful of the people that are making these decisions — and that is a really difficult balance to strike.”

She has a good relationship with her LSC, which she said is “fair and reasonable” but also demanding. The council requests a lot of data and presentations. Meeting those needs and building personal relationships can be difficult along with all of her other responsibilities as a school leader, she said.

Ryan Belville, principal of McAuliffe Elementary School, said he has a close bond with his LSC that grew during the pandemic, when they worked hand-in-hand to make sure students and families had what they needed. Belville said the LSC has also held him accountable “to serve the school community effectively.”

“I really see why LSCs were developed and why they were put into action,” Belville said. “It’s something we’re very fortunate to have in Chicago.”

Sometimes the LSC wields its power, as Hancock College Preparatory High School did last year when it decided not to renew its principal’s contract in the face of student and teacher opposition.

But there are limits to an LSC’s authority.

At Jones College Prep, the LSC voted in 2022 to recommend the district fire then-principal Joseph Powers based on various allegations, including that he was ignoring problematic teachers and was not addressing issues around gender and racial discrimination. His contract was not up for renewal at the time, so the LSC could not fire him outright.

CEO Pedro Martinez declined to fire Powers, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence. Later that year, CPS put Powers on leave after a student dressed in a Nazi uniform was seen goose-stepping in the school’s Halloween parade. Powers then retired.

One Chicago elementary school principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said that contract renewal time can sometimes feel political. She must ensure that she’s keeping “these X number of people happy or satisfied” so that she can keep her job. At the same time, she wishes she had “more robust” feedback from her LSC, which she thinks is lacking at her school because people often don’t have time to participate — an issue many LSCs face.

On Chicago’s West Side, the LSC at Oscar DePriest Elementary School is working on ensuring enough participation on its council. It is also figuring out how it will work with the school’s new principal, whom it hired in November after interviews and a candidate forum, said Wallace Wilbourn, a teacher and LSC member.

He wants the LSC to have a greater voice on the school’s curriculum, its culture, and how it approaches assessments.

But he’s already seen that many people are trying to hold the principal accountable. Ever since being hired, Wilbourn said, his principal has had to spend a lot of time in meetings with the network.

Network chiefs, top CPS officials hold power

Barron, with UIC, said the relationship between a network chief and principal more closely resembles a typical employee-manager relationship: The two work together on a leadership plan that has goals to hit throughout the year.

Skanes, who was the principal of Morgan Park High School until 2022, always viewed her network chief as her main supervisor. Feedback from the network chief was sometimes “attached to next steps, even in terms of promotion and opportunities,” she said.

The Chicago elementary school principal said the network chief is looking for things at the school that parents or community members may not have expertise in, such as best teaching practices, she said. Her LSC is more interested in school uniform policies or community events for families, she said.

“I think both of those perspectives are super important,” she said. “It shouldn’t be all one or another.”

A former Chicago principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said most of his network chiefs were good listeners and open to his ideas of how to improve his school. But he also felt pressure from the network to boost certain metrics, such as raising attendance by 10 percentage points, including by visiting student homes.

Those efforts resulted in a lot of pressure on staff and kids at his school who were already experiencing “so much trauma,” he said. After hitting the network’s goal, the principal eased up those efforts, saying it didn’t feel “worth the squeeze and my time and emotional energy.” Attendance rates dropped.

In that case, he decided to “take the heat from the network” because it meant more “sanity” for his school, he said.

A small share of schools have Appointed Local School Councils, or ALSCs, which don’t have the power to hire or fire principals but can provide nonbinding input on who they want to lead their schools. In those cases, the CEO gets final say on hiring a principal.

That was the case for Alan Mather, now the president of the Golden Apple Foundation. He became the principal of Lindblom Math and Science Academy in 2005 when the school was reopened as a selective enrollment high school. Mather was appointed by then-CEO Arne Duncan and the new school, which drew high-performing students from across the city, did not have an LSC. It wasn’t until his last year at Lindblom that an ALSC was formed, Mather said.

Mather considered Duncan to be his boss and was given a lot of autonomy to craft Lindblom’s culture and academics, such as adopting a year-round schedule during his time.

“It was the CEO who could have removed me at any time,” Mather said. “I was not working under a contract.”

As principals unionize, a question about management

When the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, or CPAA, decided to unionize last year, its president Troy LaRaviere promised to fight for better pay, less focus on bureaucratic tasks, more job security – including the ability to voice opinions publicly without punishment – and more due process when principals face accusations of misconduct.

LaRaviere did not respond to multiple requests for an interview for this story. Another CPAA representative declined to comment, including to confirm whether the union has started bargaining, and deferred to LaRaviere.

The unionization effort could impact how network chiefs discipline and evaluate principals. But huge questions remain.

“We don’t know what is to come,” said Thurmond, from the district. She added that they’re “looking forward to deepening the collaboration” with CPAA to make sure principals are supported, versus the district “being perceived as an enemy.”

Some observers have wondered how a union contract might impact the authority of a network chief or LSC. For instance, will it be tougher for the LSC not to renew a principal’s contract?

Changes to an LSC’s powers, however, would likely require a change to the state law that created them, said Barron, the expert from UIC.

For the district’s part, Thurmond said CPS will continue “empowering LSCs and ALSCs” so that “communities continue to have control of their schools.”

One former principal thinks an elected school board could make LSCs feel redundant or powerless, since board members will represent different parts of the city.

LSCs were created when there wasn’t an elected board and are seen by some as mini-school boards at individual schools. But come January 2025, the Chicago Board of Education will be made up of 10 members elected by their communities and 11 members appointed by the mayor.

“If we have an elected school board of 21 and you have them passing resolutions saying we’re doing this, this and this,” he wondered, “then what does the LSC have the autonomy to say and do if it’s all coming from downtown?”

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 counselor focuses on building relationships to get students to share

2024-02-15T00:35:02+00:00

Marlita Ingram was an English teacher at Chicago’s Manley Career Academy High School in the early 2000s when she realized that she wanted to be a school counselor.

She noticed that students who struggled in class were often dealing with a problem outside of school. She learned that if she built a relationship with them, then they would sometimes open up.

Ingram, who has been a counselor for the past 18 years, helps students work through a range of problems – from issues with their class schedule to dealing with gun violence, which recently claimed the lives of four students near three Chicago schools.

Even as a seasoned educator, Ingram, a department chair at Foreman College and Career Academy High School, is still learning new ways to connect with students. Recently, as the school has welcomed many new migrant students, Ingram has relied on Google Translate, bilingual staff, and trusted friends of her Spanish-speaking students to facilitate conversations.

“I’ve had kids who are not even on my caseload [say], ‘Can I talk to you?’ I’m like, ‘OK, yeah, baby, you can talk to me,’ and it’s because one of their friends brought them,” she said. “The more approachable you are … I think they gravitate, and they are willing to tell you more than what you want to know, but they’ll tell you what they have on their mind.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a counselor?

Outside the classroom, I was doing a lot more community-based work with my students. They needed help with navigating different things in the community. They were having issues at home with family, and I started engaging with that work. And then one summer, I kinda helped out the school counselor at the school, and I was like, “I think this is what I want to do.” I still always tell people my passion or my niche is to teach or to help educate. I just do it in a different way with school counseling.

How do you get to know your students?

It varies. Kids say my presence is always “automatic” when I come in the room because I’m very boisterous. I’m very alive when I’m doing class instructions or class lessons with students. But I’m also a person who notices the small things.

If it’s a student I’ve never known before and they’re on my caseload, I might do a general introduction via email. We can see kids’ pictures; I just do a random look at the pictures so that I can start putting names and faces together. If I start seeing them in the hallway, I’m just like, “Hi, I’m Dr. Ingram, your counselor. What’s your name again?” I start that very general conversation, and then I build from there.

I try to be in the hallway during passing periods so I can observe how kids are interacting with each other. Do I see anything that’s not positive – bullying or something like that? I stay away from being security because that’s more punitive, and that’s not my role. But you will hear me in the hallway be like, “Ay!” Especially if it’s one of my kids that I’ve known for a while [like], “Uh-uh, Joshua, you already know where you’re supposed to be. I know your schedule by heart.” I don’t, but they think I do.

Every interaction builds to the next interaction. I’m in the middle of programming, so we sit one-on-one with our kids, and we start having conversations, like, “So what do you want to do? … Let’s start seeing where we need to plug in classes that might fit well with what you think you may want to do, and you can change your mind.” Kids flock to you when they know that you care.

Over the past month, multiple students in Chicago have been fatally shot near school, causing a lot of grief for not just the families, but also for students and staff. What are the first steps you take to support students experiencing grief?

On a school level, we may do some acknowledgment. We have these two groups, right, that don’t necessarily live by each other. They live in certain pockets of the city. One of our African American students may have heard about something in that particular area, whereas my Latino students may not know because they don’t live in that area. It’s sometimes challenging to be able to finagle what’s happened in what community, but when we do have that information, we do offer crisis services for students here at the school with our social workers. We have great outside partners, with Youth Guidance, with BAM and WOW. They chime in and help as much as needed. On a daily basis, in the counseling suite, we have a wellness room. It’s a space for students to utilize to kind of regulate their emotions. [One student was] dealing with the loss of her father. That was her saving grace when she transitioned back into school.

And then we are starting to help teachers get more involved in the regulation because sometimes kids won’t come to us. So we’re in the process [of] ordering different things that kind of help create a space, that if a kid just wants to take a timeout, and they don’t want to come all the way down to the counseling office, teachers can have these chair corners already established in their room that have gadgets and fidgets, meditating things, some breathing exercises, coloring, all the different things that can kind of help a student regulate and refocus.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your school?

We have [had an] increase in one part of the community of robberies. I’ve got a couple of kids who have been stuck up for shoes, jackets.

[Separately], we have an influx of our migrants that are coming in. Our bilingual numbers have doubled. So learning how to communicate with the students and make them feel welcome and safe.

I have learned over the years a few phrases, but I cannot hold a complete conversation in Spanish, but I utilize Google Translate. [Students learning English] become very resourceful, and they’ll find a peer partner to help translate. We have a list of staff that are bilingual or trilingual that I can reach out to like, “Hey, can you translate for me real quick?” especially with a parent and or a student. So we just try to maneuver, and I’m still trying to learn Spanish because I think I should just learn it anyway.

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach.

I had a student who didn’t know how to come out to his family. That transition was a very hard time for him. And this was early on in my career. It was the first time I had a student who came out to me, right? And the love and support that I saw from [his mother and aunt]. It really, truly made me understand the need for that full circle, for that student to be that courageous, to be able to say, “This is who I am, and this is why you know. I’m not going to hide it anymore.” So it made me very much more in tune to try and check to see if I had any biases, and if I did, to try to correct those to be a support.

What part of your job is most difficult?

The meetings. As leaders in the building, we are pulled into quite a few meetings, and balancing that with being available for students in need [is a challenge]. Our leadership, our administration, only allows students to see us during the lunch period. (If a kid is in crisis, it doesn’t matter when it is.) But trying to balance being a presence, providing our perspective, being in leadership roles in the building, and being available to students — sometimes that just totally throws off your day. I’ll have days where I’ve been in meetings most of the day and I feel like I haven’t been available for my students. I’m learning as a department chair that sometimes your impact may be indirect because you’re making decisions … that are going to affect students indirectly. So I’m servicing them, it’s just not the direct service. And my passion is the direct service, right?

The second part is student advocacy. If I’m advocating for a student, be it for an academic issue or social-emotional or something like that, that is part of my job. It sometimes makes that tension [with another teacher or administrator] a little strong, I’m gonna say. [Teachers] feel as though I’m taking the kid’s side — I’m not.

What was the biggest misconception that you initially brought to teaching?

In teaching, my biggest misconception was that I thought all kids wanted to learn. I figured, if you came to school, you want to be there. That’s not how it is. We got kids who come for other reasons. It took me a while to learn that. I believe that a lot of students come to school for socialization. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have kids who want to learn — that’s not what I’m saying. But I am saying, kids feed off of interacting with their peers and growing those relationships.

As a counselor, I think my misconception was that I would have more freedom and fluidity throughout my day, and I really don’t. It’s very structured. Like [people will say], “Oh, you don’t have a class, so what are you doing?” When I walked in the door, it’s literally boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, sneak in a lunch, boom, boom.

What’s the best advice you’ve received?

With school counseling, the best advice was for me to be transparent to students and families, to be vulnerable. If I can show them I was OK being transparent and I was comfortable being vulnerable with them, then they would do the same. If we can have that baseline of vulnerability and respect, we can go wherever we needed to go.

Chicago proposes later start date for 2024-25 school year due to Democratic National Convention

2024-02-01T19:58:07+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools has proposed calendars for the next two academic years, pushing next year’s start date back by a week to avoid overlapping with the Democratic National Convention.

The Board of Education is slated to vote on the proposed calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years at its Feb. 22 meeting.

The first day of school for the 2024-25 academic year would be on Aug. 26, about a week later than recent years. The move avoids starting school the same day Chicago is set to begin hosting the Democratic National Convention from Aug. 19-22. The convention is expected to bring in about 75,000 visitors, according to a news release from CPS.

“This shift not only accommodates the city’s logistical needs as they relate to the influx of Conventiongoers, but it also allows time for students to attend, volunteer, and participate in the civic process of hosting the Convention,” district officials said in a press release.

Because of the later start, the first semester next year would also end after a two-week winter break on Jan. 17, 2025. School would end on June 12, 2025, about a week later than this year.

For the 2025-26 school year, the first day would return to the third week of August – on Aug. 18, 2025 – and classes would end June 4, 2026.

Both proposed calendars would continue the recent practice of taking a full week off at Thanksgiving.

The district is asking parents, staff, and students for their feedback. A survey for parents, staff, and other community members will close at 5 p.m. Feb. 7. while a survey that CPS distributed Tuesday to students in grades 6-12 ends at 5 p.m. Feb. 2.

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.

Chicago Board of Education renews contracts for 49 charter schools

2024-01-25T23:01:29+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to renew agreements with 12 charter networks, impacting 49 schools. The decision followed months of pleading from charter school leaders, educators, and students.

The board extended contracts for all of the schools up for renewal. It renewed most of the contracts by either three or four years, starting this July. The maximum extension allowed under state law is 10 years.

Each renewal came with a set of conditions, ranging from monitoring services for students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language to improving facilities, financial compliance, and accuracy of teacher licenses. Those conditions were a result of “issues that were identified during our comprehensive review,” said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management.

The vote represented the first round of charter renewals under the current board. In the months leading up to Thursday’s vote, Chicago’s charter school community worried that the board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would make it more challenging for charters to get renewed. Johnson, who rose to power as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, has long been critical of charter schools, but has also said he doesn’t oppose them.

More recently, the board passed a resolution stating its intention to move away from school choice and focus on sending more resources to neighborhood schools. The resolution does not call for the closure of schools of choice, such as charters, but board leaders said they would be more closely scrutinizing charter schools.

The board’s vote to renew all contracts isn’t surprising: State law has barred school closures in Chicago until 2025. In July, a Cook County judge overturned the previous board’s decision not to renew its contract with Urban Prep Charter Academy after ruling that the state’s school closure moratorium applies to charters.

Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she appreciates the improvement she’s seen in some charter schools, but said that others have failed to keep up finances or follow federal laws.

“I still maintain that as a private operator getting public money, there should be a higher level of scrutiny,” Todd-Breland said.

District officials said they evaluate charter schools based on performance in three criteria: academics, finances, and operations, which focuses on 13 areas related to state and federal law, requirements in their charter contract, and CPS policy. Five-year extensions are awarded to schools that meet or exceed academic and financial standards and receive the highest rating for operations. Extensions beyond five years go to schools that exceed all standards.

Board President Jianan Shi said he wanted the district to continue focusing on the student experience portion of the operations category for charter evaluations. He said he was concerned to see schools not meeting expectations focused on students with disabilities, students who are learning English as a new language, and student discipline. No school met standards for all three of those categories.

“‘I’m elated that we have schools that are doing well academically and financially, but I want kids to enjoy going to school every day,” Shi said.

During several board meetings since the summer, charter school leaders have asked the board to renew their contracts for the maximum 10 years. While it was previously common for schools to receive five-year extensions, district leaders have more recently renewed charters for shorter terms. Last January, the previous board – appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot – handed out two-year extensions to nearly half of the charter schools up for renewal, while another two got five years.

On Thursday, no school received five years. Just over half were extended for four years, and just over 40% were extended for three years. The board approved a one-year extension for Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy Charter High School and a two-year extension for Chicago High School for the Arts.

Ebonie Durham, executive director of Great Lakes Academy, a charter school that received a three-year extension, asked the board to provide schools and families with more clarity on what it takes to get a 10-year extension.

Great Lakes met academic and financial performance standards, but did not meet benchmarks for operations, including for student discipline, students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language.

As conditions of Great Lakes’ extension, the board called for the school to implement the district’s recommendations for serving students with disabilities. The conditions also call for monitoring how the school is serving English language learners, its disciplinary practices, and how it tracks repairs to facilities.

“If the CEO’s recommendation is accepted and we receive three years, in two years I will be back in front of this board again pleading to be renewed,” Durham said.

Before the board vote, some teachers raised concerns about Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, which serves students ages 16-21 who became disengaged with school. The teachers at the school, who are part of the Chicago Teachers Union, have voted to strike Feb. 6 in response to concerns over several issues, including staffing levels for students with disabilities, “sanctuary protections” for immigrant students and employees, and compensation, according to the CTU.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, highlighted the fight at Instituto as one reason the renewal process should reflect “what the people, the stakeholders in that school community deserve.” One of her recommendations included creating Local School Councils so that charter parents have more of a voice.

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

Inspector general’s report prompts Chicago Public Schools to propose changes to device tracking policy

2024-01-17T23:39:41+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is working to improve how schools keep track of electronic devices and other items, in response to an inspector general’s report that found the district had lost more than 77,000 devices.

The proposed changes — some of which were outlined at a school board committee meeting Wednesday — include disciplining staff for failing to abide by the district’s policy for managing school assets, such as devices, and updating policy language to say that training is “mandatory” for staffers who are responsible for keeping track of devices. The district’s asset management team would also create an annual report about theft and loss of devices, according to the proposed changes.

Last week, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher released his annual report which, in part, found that the district had marked more than 77,000 devices lost or stolen in the 2021-22 school year. The district has found 12,000 of the missing devices, nearly all inside schools, district officials said.

Fletcher’s report cited a lack of training and an unreliable tracking system as some reasons for why so many devices were missing or unaccounted for. He also said staff and students were not held accountable for devices. Last year, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ investigation also found that the district didn’t have a structured system for tracking down devices and lacked a clear plan or vision for how to best use the technology in the classroom.

“The [policy] has been amended to reflect a more accurate description of the current process, eliminate sections of the policy which are obsolete, and overall improve CPS asset and inventory management practices,” said Rolando Hernandez, assistant deputy controller for CPS’ finance office, during Wednesday’s meeting.

The district’s asset management policy doesn’t just cover technology. It applies to any item that is not real estate, that is purchased by or donated to CPS, is valued at more than $500 but less than $25,000, and has a lifespan of more than a year. The current policy applies to schools, central offices, and network offices, which are responsible for managing their devices.

Each school and district office should have an “accountable official” who is responsible for keeping track of devices, the existing policy says.

Other proposed changes include:

All devices must be entered into CPS’ electronic inventory system once they are delivered – not just purchased – within 30 days.
Each person designated to track devices within their school or office will be responsible for complying with their annually required inventory and ensuring its accuracy.
Schools and offices will report potential loss, damage, or theft to the district’s asset management team. That team will share an annual report on such loss or damage to the district’s Risk Management team, the Department of Facilities, and Safety & Security team.
If a student or staffer transfers to a new school or department, any devices they’ve received from the district will follow them, which their old school or department must log into the district’s asset management system. Once students or staff leave the district, they must return devices and other “assets.”
Broken computers must be disposed of through a special process created by the Information and Technology department, though that process was not spelled out in the proposed changes. Items that are not computers will be disposed of by the Department of Facilities, including through contracted salvaging companies.

The board is expected to vote on the proposed changes in March after a month-long public comment period, which is slated to begin Jan. 26.

Separately, the district is also working on several other changes “to more accurately represent” what devices are in schools, district officials said Wednesday. That includes automating the process of recovering computers, which would involve freezing and sending notifications to devices that would ask students or staff to return them. The district is also considering replacing its current asset management system because of “functionality and data issues” that must be improved.

On Wednesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez disputed Fletcher’s estimate that the missing devices were worth $23 million. Martinez said many of those devices were old, bringing the total cost to about “a tenth” of Fletcher’s figure. However, he added that’s “not an excuse” to explain the lack of tracking at a time when the district added hundreds of thousands of devices to its inventory.

“It’s been great that now all of our children have access to devices [but] it is easy for us to not prioritize how we get rid of old devices, and it’s not always clear even to staff, and so I just want to call that out,” Martinez said.

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

Inspector General urges overhaul of Chicago Public Schools’ ‘flawed’ tracking system for tech devices

2024-01-09T06:01:00+00:00

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The Chicago Public Schools inspector general is raising red flags about potential waste and fraud — particularly in areas where the district has spent more than $2 billion in federal COVID recovery money.

In his annual report out Tuesday, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher also outlined eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students, and recommended more consistent training on sexual misconduct for vendors who provide services to schools.

The report — which details the inspector general’s work from the previous fiscal year, or July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 — highlighted the office’s investigation into lost or stolen laptops and other technology valued at at least $23 million and, for the second year in a row, detailed cases of fraud and potential mismanagement of extra pay for staff.

The OIG found that CPS marked at least 77,000 devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, often with little or no effort to find those devices, according to the report.

The OIG’s review comes after Chalkbeat and WBEZ found the district spent tens of millions of federal COVID relief dollars on technology without a reliable system for tracking those devices.

“CPS spends a couple of million dollars on software and other assets that try to monitor and keep track of their assets, and we found out that that system is just very flawed,” said Fletcher, in an interview Monday with Chalkbeat.

District officials are “concerned about the loss of any public asset,” and are working to improve their tracking systems and hold staff accountable to district policies in how to manage devices, a CPS spokesperson said.

At three dozen schools, all of the devices assigned to students were listed as lost or stolen, according to the OIG’s review of audits schools submitted of their technology inventory during the 2021-22 school year.

“When we followed up with the schools, we would talk to people who had an asset or a laptop or a Chromebook that was issued to them that was marked as lost or stolen — that in fact wasn’t,” Fletcher said. “There were a few interviews with people who reached into their desk and said, ‘Hey, I got this laptop, no one ever asked me for it.’”

Incorrectly labeling devices can lead the district to purchase replacement devices “at taxpayer’s expense,” the OIG noted.

During the time period the OIG investigated, the district spent $2.6 million on services meant to keep track of and recover the technology, the report said. Fletcher described the district’s tracking system as “very flawed,” mainly because there isn’t enough of an effort to find devices. In July, the district sent messages to 50,000 reportedly lost or stolen devices in order to recover them. As of Monday, the district has recovered more than 12,000 devices, a district spokesperson said.

Almost all of them were “in schools and were simply missed in the previous inventory cycle,” the spokesperson said.

There isn’t enough training for how schools should track their devices, leaving the district with flawed or incomplete data that’s not credible or enough to use to determine if criminal activity, such as theft, might have taken place, Fletcher said.

Between March 2020 and August 2023, Chalkbeat and WBEZ previously reported, the district spent more than $308 million on computers and other technology from its three main vendors — Apple, CDW, and Virtucom. The amount was roughly as much as these companies got paid during the previous two decades combined.

District officials said they bought nearly 311,000 laptops and tablets during that time, but more than 41,000 of the devices were sitting in a warehouse or yet to be shipped by a manufacturer. They also cited a lack of dedicated staff at schools to do inventory as an issue. According to district data, roughly 35% of schools had a technology coordinator.

The OIG’s office has recommended 16 changes to the district’s technology tracking system, including making principals accountable for their inventory audit results, making students and staff accountable for their devices, and requiring students and staff to be notified that they’re supposed to be in possession of an item that’s gone missing.

The district is now working to automate the process in which devices are recovered, a spokesperson said. Schools will be able to send messages to devices that are marked as lost or stolen, “urging people to return them.”

Devices that are not returned “promptly” will be disabled, the spokesperson said.

The district ultimately wants to create sensors in schools that would track mobile devices “and other high-value assets,” the spokesperson said.

‘Systemic problems’ tracking extra pay for staff

In addition to new technology, Chicago has spent millions in federal COVID recovery money on support for students beyond the normal school day — such as after-school programs, summer school, and tutoring — that existing school staff often help run.

As he did last year, Fletcher’s office raised concerns about how the district is tracking the recent spike in extra pay, which employees receive for working outside normal hours, such as to run an after-school activity.

According to the report, 67 employees each made more than $15,000 in extra pay in the 2021-22 school year, an amount that district officials consider excessive. The report says district officials plan to ask principals in late January to verify amounts for all employees whose extra pay was 50 percent or more of their normal work hours.

The OIG’s office noted a 74% increase in extra pay from 2017 to 2021. The district has since received $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief funding. The report notes that last school year, about $100 million of that funding was allocated to summer school, after-school programs, and professional development.

The OIG has pressed the district to monitor those payments more closely after detecting seemingly unchecked approvals of extra pay, such as pay granted without timesheets or without “supporting swipes” in the timekeeping system.

The district plans to create “new processes to ensure that payment reports are accurate and validated,” a spokesperson said, but did not provide more details.

Fletcher’s office highlighted two cases of fraud connected to programs operating outside the school day. Though both schemes allegedly began prior to the pandemic, Fletcher notes that they illustrate the “systemic problems” with how extra pay is tracked.

In one case, an elementary school assistant principal allegedly stole $195,000 over two years by diverting fees paid by parents for after-school programs into her personal bank account. Fletcher’s office first reported the alleged fraud, which dated back to 2011, in 2021 and referred the case to local authorities. In July 2023, a 17-count indictment came down against the former assistant principal, alleging she stole a total of $273,364.

“I mean, $200,000 is a lot more than a rounding error for an after-school program,” Fletcher said. “For that to go missing without any curtailment of the programming or anything like that raises concerns about what the parents are getting charged.”

In another case highlighted in the report, Fletcher’s office found a school clerk approved close to $70,000 in extra pay for hours she didn’t work. The alleged fraud took place at two separate schools dating back to 2017. She was able to log the payments for herself and an additional $15,000 for another clerk because “supervisors did not check to see whether they earned the extra pay they were claiming,” the report said.

CPS timesheets now have new language that says employees must swipe in and out of the timesheet system to receive extra pay for extended day and summer school programs. Because of pressure from the OIG’s office, timesheets detailing extra pay now also require employees to sign an attestation saying that they can be disciplined or fired for submitting false timesheets, the report said.

Sexual Assault Unit tackles 20% of all complaints

The OIG’s Sexual Assault Unit was created in the wake of a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found schools failed to protect students from sexual abuse. It has opened more than 2,188 cases since its creation and fielded more than 400 complaints in the past year.

The annual report includes details of eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students and dozens of other sexual misconduct cases that led to discipline, all of which the unit closed in fiscal year 2023.

One case led to criminal charges for a now-former security guard who the OIG found had sexually abused a 16-year-old student for five months, often inside the school building during school hours. The guard was charged with multiple counts of criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County Criminal Court, the OIG’s office said.

While sexual misconduct-related complaints made up one-fifth of more than 2,000 complaints filed with the OIG last fiscal year, most of those complaints — about two-thirds — are about allegations that don’t rise to sexual abuse or harassment. These “other concerning” allegations could represent grooming of students and involve allegations of staffers texting students or “liking” their students’ photos on social media, for example.

Separately, the OIG’s report raised concerns about inconsistent training on sexual misconduct and professional boundaries for outside employees who work with schools, such as vendors contracted to work with the district. The office found that some vendors and volunteers said they were trained on CPS policies while others weren’t. Of the 157 complaints reported to the Sexual Assault Unit about vendors or volunteers, about one-third were substantiated, according to the OIG.

The district has started training at least one subset of volunteers, the OIG reported.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Three things to know about the Chicago Board of Education’s resolution on school choice

2024-01-03T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education made waves last month when officials revealed a vision to move away from its school choice system and boost neighborhood schools.

The declaration, included in a resolution the board passed in December, lays out priorities for the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. Any resulting changes will depend on feedback from the community, board members said.

But the board’s new vision immediately sparked misinformation. Here are three things to know about the board’s resolution.

Will schools close?

No. Not yet, at least.

The resolution does not say anything about closing schools. State law put a moratorium on school closures in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025, the same day a new 21-member, partially-elected school is set to be sworn in. The current seven-member school board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would not be able to close schools of any type – charters, magnets, or neighborhood schools – until that time.

School board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland did indicate the board is scrutinizing charter school performance through the usual renewal process and questioned whether poor-performing operators should “continue to exist.”

But even a recent board decision to revoke a charter agreement with Urban Prep did not ultimately mean those schools closed. First, the district proposed operating the two campuses as district-run schools. But after a court order, the board extended Urban Prep’s charter until June 2024.

Will I have to go to my neighborhood school?

No. The resolution does not say anything about requiring families to attend their neighborhood schools.

The closest it comes to addressing enrollment policies is a bullet point about a “reimagined vision” that includes a “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.”

Any school-aged child living in Chicago is guaranteed a spot at their zoned neighborhood school. Additionally, board policy amended as recently as last summer, allows families to apply to a myriad of selective, magnet, charter, or other speciality programs that admit students from across the city. Some schools require a test for admission, while others are a straight lottery.

These policies have not changed, but could after community feedback sessions.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed,” Todd-Breland said. “The admissions and enrollment policy is on the table.”

Data shows half of elementary school students attend their zoned neighborhood school and only a quarter of high school students do. These numbers shifted over the course of the past 20 years, when roughly 75% of elementary school students went to their local school and half of high schoolers did.

What do parents and students think?

It varies greatly.

Chalkbeat Chicago 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. Five families shared more about how — and why — they chose their schools.

The wide range of responses could be a bellwether for the kind of debate or disagreement that could emerge during community feedback sessions.

The Board of Education was awarded a $500,000 federal grant to create socioeconomically diverse schools. The district said it plans to use the money to engage the community on how to draw more families into neighborhood schools. Their application included a goal to reduce the percentage of families attending a school outside of their regions by at least 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

The district is already collecting feedback on the next five-year strategic plan through an online survey and community meetings for the next Educational Facilities Master Plan. Officials have said they will host in-person and online meetings in February to gather feedback on the strategic plan.

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.

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 won’t bus general education students for the rest of the school year

2023-12-21T22:54:15+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the school year, officials said Thursday.

In a letter to parents, the district said a driver shortage persists and is preventing it from providing busing to general education students — largely those in magnet and selective enrollment programs. The district will continue to provide free CTA cards, valued at $35, to those roughly 5,500 families; about one-third of those children are using the passes, according to a CPS spokesperson.

“We fully understand how frustrating this news will be for many of our families, and sincerely empathize with the challenges and inconvenience that this situation has caused,” the letter said.

The update comes after the district announced in late September that it couldn’t provide busing to general education students this semester but would share an update with families before winter break regarding the second half of the school year. In November, the district cast doubt that it would be able to expand bus service this year.

Citing a driver shortage, the district announced in late July that it would limit busing to students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, call for transportation, as well as students who are homeless. Both student groups are legally entitled to transportation — and the district is on state watch to improve commute times for students with disabilities.

The district left open the possibility that general education students could get busing later in the year.

The district is currently busing 8,133 students with disabilities and another 146 students who are homeless, according to a CPS spokesperson.

Thursday’s busing update comes a week after the school board passed a resolution saying it wants to bolster neighborhood schools and move away from a system of choice where families travel outside their neighborhood for school. Asked if the district’s desire to move away from school choice informed their decision to sever busing for general education students, a spokesperson said the district is following state law and board policy by prioritizing students with disabilities for transportation.

Parents of children in selective enrollment and magnet programs have repeatedly shared frustrations with the Board of Education about the difficulties they’ve faced without busing to schools that are far from their homes, including difficulties balancing the school commute with their work schedules. Some parents have transferred their children to other schools.

Aria Haque, a sixth grader at Keller Regional Gifted Center in Mt. Greenwood, lives 20 miles from her school, and transferred to her neighborhood school after “so many hurdles and almost no time” to figure out the commute, Haque told the board at its meeting earlier this month. Her new school, however, was teaching material she said she’d learned two years ago.

Haque decided to re-enroll at Keller “even with the killer commute.” Her father now drives Aria and another Keller student whose family doesn’t have a car and lives 15 miles away from the school.

“That has been our routine ever since: An hour-and-a-half on the road for me, which isn’t bad, but over three hours for my dad, which is horrible,” Haque said.

Natasha Haque, Aria’s mother, said she’s been advocating with a group of parents to get busing reinstated for general education students in magnet and selective enrollment schools. She worries that students from low-income families at Aria’s school, Keller, will lose out on the chance to attend a great school. Roughly a third of Keller’s students were from low-income families last year.

“If the message to families is: ‘You cannot rely on us to transport your child to a selective enrollment school,’ it’s the lower income families that will be the first to say, ‘Yeah, I cannot afford to take my child to school. I cannot quit my job,’” Natasha Haque said Thursday after the letter to parents was sent out.

Limited busing has also helped the district comply with a state corrective action plan to keep commutes under an hour each way for students with disabilities. Last school year, about 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour. As of October, the district was busing an average of 7 students with disabilities per route, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

Commute times had improved this year as the district has limited busing, but have worsened in recent months: In August, 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour; that’s grown to 111 students as of Thursday, a slight dip from late November, according to the district.

CPS said another 115 students with disabilities are in the process of getting bus routes. The district has received 4,649 requests since the start of the school year, close to 900 more requests than last year. It is also continuing to hold job fairs to hire more bus drivers.

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 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.

A medida que entra en vigor la regla de refugio de Chicago para familias migrantes, aquí hay tres derechos de los estudiantes que deben conocer

2023-11-29T19:50:01+00:00

Esta historia fue traducida por Claudia Hernández de la Revista Borderless. Suscríbase al boletín de Borderless aquí.

Los educadores y defensores de Chicago están preocupados por cómo el nuevo límite de 60 días del alcalde Brandon Johnson de las estadías en refugios para familias migrantes afectará la asistencia y la estabilidad de los estudiantes migrantes.

La nueva regla llega en un momento en que la ciudad ha tenido problemas para albergar a los migrantes. Más de 22,000 personas han llegado desde la frontera sur desde agosto del 2022, muchas de ellas huyendo de la agitación económica y política en los países de Centroamérica y Sudamérica. Los funcionarios de la ciudad y el estado han prometido aumentar los esfuerzos para ayudar a las familias a reasentarse y encontrar una vivienda más permanente, un compromiso que se da justo cuando un programa de asistencia para el alquiler operado por el estado ya no se aplicará a los inmigrantes recién llegados que ingresan a los refugios, Block Club Chicago informó.

Unas 50 familias ya han recibido los avisos, y otras 3,000 los recibirán el 4 de diciembre.

Los defensores dijeron que perder el refugio podría significar más ausencias entre los estudiantes migrantes que no tienen hogar, formalmente conocidos como estudiantes que viven en situaciones de vivienda temporal. Esa designación incluye a los niños en refugios, que viven con otra familia o que viven en un lugar público. A partir del 31 de octubre, las tasas de asistencia promedio este año escolar para los estudiantes sin hogar son 5 puntos porcentuales más bajas que sus compañeros con vivienda permanente, según datos de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago compartidos con la Coalición de Chicago para las Personas sin Hogar.

La estabilidad escolar está relacionada con el éxito académico. Un estudio del 2015 que examinó a estudiantes de la ciudad de Nueva York encontró que los niños que se cambiaron de escuela tenían más probabilidades de ausentarse crónicamente o perder al menos el 10% de sus días escolares. Los estudiantes crónicamente ausentes que también se encontraban sin hogar tenían tres veces más probabilidades de repetir el mismo grado que los estudiantes sin hogar que faltaron menos de cinco días a la escuela, encontró el informe.

“Estamos hablando de niños que han estado aquí durante dos meses, que han entrado en una rutina, tal vez han hecho algunos amigos, tienen una sensación de control finalmente, donde pueden obtener dos comidas calientes al día, estamos hablando de enviar a esas familias de regreso al lugar de su llegada en autobús”, dijo Gabriel Páez, un maestro bilingüe en el West Side, sobre la nueva regla del alcalde.

Sesenta días es un “tiempo muy corto” para encontrar vivienda, especialmente para los recién llegados con barreras lingüísticas que están lidiando con casos de asilo o que aún no han sido autorizados a trabajar, dijo Patricia Nix-Hodes, directora del Proyecto de Ley de la Coalición de Chicago para las Personas sin Hogar.

Si las familias no tienen una vivienda permanente en puerta, pueden regresar a la “zona de aterrizaje”, el área del centro de la ciudad donde la mayoría de los autobuses dejan por primera vez a los recién llegados, y pueden solicitar una nueva ubicación en un refugio. Las familias pueden permanecer en su refugio bajo “circunstancias atenuantes”, como un problema médico, si hay frío extremo o si han obtenido un contrato de arrendamiento con una fecha de mudanza que comienza más tarde de cuando deben abandonar el refugio, dijo la oficina del alcalde.

Un portavoz del alcalde declinó hacer comentarios. En un comunicado, un portavoz del distrito dijo que está trabajando con la ciudad y las escuelas para “garantizar que los estudiantes recién llegados, la mayoría considerados estudiantes en situaciones de vivienda temporal (STLS), puedan tener acceso a una educación de Pre-K-12 dentro de nuestro sistema que ofrece los servicios adecuados, incluidos los servicios para aprender inglés”.

Los niños sin hogar tienen ciertos derechos consagrados en la ley federal destinados a mantener su estabilidad en la escuela, incluida la capacidad de permanecer en la escuela a la que han estado asistiendo.

Aquí hay tres derechos educativos que las familias que viven en viviendas temporales deben conocer a medida que entra en vigencia la nueva regla de refugio de la ciudad:

Los estudiantes sin hogar tienen derecho a permanecer en la misma escuela

Los estudiantes que viven en refugios temporales y que se han inscrito en la escuela local o en una escuela cercana tienen derecho a permanecer en la misma escuela, incluso si se ven obligados a abandonar el refugio después de 60 días.

Esto es cierto para cualquier estudiante que se quede sin hogar. La ley federal protege su derecho a permanecer en su llamada “escuela de origen”.

Al igual que cualquier otro estudiante de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago, los estudiantes sin hogar pueden inscribirse en la escuela local del vecindario en su nueva comunidad simplemente entrando. Además, como cualquier otro estudiante, pueden aplicar a escuelas selectivas o magneto, pero la fecha límite para aplicar a estas escuelas para el próximo año académico ha pasado.

Los estudiantes migrantes también pueden ser referidos por otras agencias de la ciudad, como el Departamento de Servicios Familiares y de Apoyo, para recibir ayuda para la inscripción de la oficina central del distrito, incluso en el Centro de Bienvenida Piloto de la ciudad en Clemente High School en el West Side.

En ese caso, el distrito inscribirá a los estudiantes en función del lugar donde viven, las necesidades de los estudiantes, como los servicios del idioma inglés, y “la capacidad y los recursos existentes en la escuela”. Si hay problemas de espacio en una escuela, el distrito “puede ayudar con una asignación escolar alternativa”, dijo un portavoz.

Una vez que 20 o más estudiantes con el mismo idioma nativo se inscriben en una escuela, la ley estatal requiere que inicien un programa de Educación Bilingüe de Transición. Dichos programas requieren instrucción tanto en inglés como en el idioma nativo, como el español.

El distrito ha presupuestado $15 millones para contratar más maestros bilingües, coordinadores de programas bilingües y “otros recursos para apoyar a los estudiantes de inglés”, dijo un portavoz.

Los estudiantes sin hogar tienen derecho a transporte

Los estudiantes sin hogar también tienen derecho a recibir transporte a la escuela, incluso si se mudan. Y, de acuerdo con las pautas de CPS, su escuela debe informar al estudiante y a los padres sobre los servicios de transporte. Si un estudiante encuentra una vivienda permanente, todavía tiene derecho a transporte hasta el final del año escolar.

De acuerdo con las pautas de CPS, los estudiantes sin hogar que necesitan transporte deben recibir una tarjeta CTA dentro de los tres días posteriores a la solicitud. Los niños de preescolar a sexto grado pueden recibir una tarjeta adicional para que uno de sus padres pueda acompañarlos en el transporte público.

Los estudiantes sin hogar no necesitan papeleo para inscribirse

Las escuelas deben inscribir a los estudiantes que no tienen hogar, incluso si no tienen los registros que normalmente se necesitan para inscribirse, como la vacunación o los registros escolares anteriores, prueba de tutela o prueba de residencia, según el distrito.

Es posible que las familias que huyen de la violencia doméstica o la agitación política no hayan traído documentos importantes, dijo Nix-Hodes.

Depende de la escuela identificar “sensiblemente” que una familia que busca inscribirse no tiene hogar sin violar su privacidad, agregó Nix-Hodes.

Reema Amin es una reportera que cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago para Chalkbeat Chicago. Ponte en contacto con Reema en ramin@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.

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.

Chicago Public Schools graduation rates hit record high, data show

2023-10-31T19:01:51+00:00

A greater share of Chicago Public Schools students graduated last school year than in 2022, reaching a new record, officials announced Tuesday.

The graduation rate of 84% — representing students who graduated in four years — was 1.1 percentage points higher than the graduation rate for the Class of 2022, when 82.9% of high school students graduated on time. The dropout rate for the Class of 2023 was slightly higher at 9.4% than it was for the Class of 2022, which saw 8.9% of students drop out between freshman year and graduation.

Chicago Public Schools’ five-year graduation rate for the Class of 2022 — which includes students who take extra time to finish their diploma either at a traditional or alternative school — was 85.6%, 1.6 percentage points higher than for the class of 2021 when it was 84%.

District officials announced the numbers with fanfare at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson and joined virtually by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Martinez said the rising graduation rate was a sign that the district is continuing to recover from the pandemic, reminding the audience that the students in the Class of 2023 were freshmen as the pandemic started in 2020, followed by two school years of remote and hybrid learning.

“When you think about their last year, their senior year, was probably their most normal year, I want you to take these results and put them in that context,” Martinez said.

Cardona described the graduation rates as “promising signs for the future of education in Chicago.” He highlighted the district’s use of federal COVID relief dollars, which CPS has put toward several purposes, including covering teacher salaries and hiring more instructional staff.

The announcement came one day after Illinois state education officials released statewide data, including graduation rates that had also increased across Illinois. (The state and Chicago Public Schools calculate graduation rates differently, so Chalkbeat is unable to provide direct comparisons.)

Chicago’s graduation rate has steadily increased over time, hitting a record high in 2022 even as students have faced academic challenges connected to the pandemic. Tuesday’s announcement comes on the heels of another report that found a rising share of CPS students are enrolling in college.

Racial disparities among graduates still remain, though they are narrowing. Graduation rates increased for Black, Hispanic and Asian American students, while dropping slightly for white students — by .4 percentage points — compared to the Class of 2022. Rates also dropped for multiracial students by 5.7 percentage points.

Nearly 75% of Black boys graduated in four years, up from roughly 65% five years ago, according to district data.

Despite higher graduation rates, SAT scores dipped for the Class of 2023, to an average composite score of 914. The average score for the Class of 2022 was 927, according to district data. Separately, the district also saw slightly fewer ninth graders — 88.7% — who were on track to graduate by 2026. That’s compared to 88.8% of the class that’s one year older than them.

As the pandemic set in, the district relaxed some grading policies, as did other school systems across the nation — raising questions about how such policies may have contributed to CPS’s rising graduation rates. Martinez argued that an increase in students completing college-level credits was a sign students were held to a high standard. Just under half of the Class of 2023 earned early college credits, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the district.

One of those students is Zaid Orduño, who said at Tuesday’s press conference that he took college-level courses at Daley College during his time at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, through the district’s Early College Program. His classes at Daley included English, math, sociology, and psychology, and he ultimately earned an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma.

Taking those classes, he said, inspired him to pass up his original plan of joining his family’s construction business and instead pursue a civil engineering degree at Illinois Tech, he said.

A wall at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts is dedicated to remembering a hunger strike held in 2015 to demand for the reopening of Dyett, which was closed at the time.

Dyett, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, saw its graduation rate tick up by more than 3 percentage points, to 86%. Johnson noted how far the school had come since he and other community members participated in a highly publicized hunger strike in 2015 to demand that Dyett, then shuttered, reopen. He also recognized fellow hunger striker Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who now represents the neighborhood nearby in City Council and serves as the chair of the Committee on Education and Child Development.

“A hunger striker can turn into a mayor and an alderman, and more importantly, a hunger strike can lead to the success that we are experiencing with our students right here at Dyett High School,” Johnson said.

He also used the moment to once again advocate for expanding the Sustainable Community Schools Initiative that Dyett and 19 other schools are a part of. The program partners schools with a nonprofit that provides wraparound services for students and families.

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

Chicago Public Schools could see a $391M budget deficit next school year, official says

2023-10-25T21:59:31+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is expecting a $391 million budget shortfall next year as federal COVID relief money runs out, officials said Wednesday.

The district has received $2.8 billion in COVID relief since the onset of the pandemic. The last $300 million of that will be spent in 2025, according to Mike Sitkowski, chief budget officer for CPS, who shared the figures during a Board of Education meeting. The current budget is $9.4 billion. Next year’s budget starts July 1, 2024 and will cover the 2024-25 school year.

By law, the school district must balance its budget, Sitkowski noted. That means district officials will either have to cut expenses or find a way to boost revenue. Board President Jianan Shi called for the latter.

“Our district needs more revenue, and this is a moment for all of us at every level to stand up and advocate for our teachers, our students, our families, for this board to advocate for more revenue at the state, local, and federal levels,” Shi said after the presentation.

The financial update comes as the City Council holds budget hearings for the city’s next budget, which is due by the end of the year but is typically finalized by Thanksgiving. The district’s budget operates on a different timeline, more closely matching the school year. The district will also hold budget community roundtables for the public throughout November. (Dates can be found here.)

Districts across the nation have been bracing for financial challenges as their pandemic relief dollars run out. Chicago officials have directed their relief dollars toward employee salaries, hiring more instructional staff and creating several new programs. About $670 million of federal relief was included in this year’s budget — representing about 7% of the current budget set to end June 30, 2024.

Asked on previous occasions about what CPS will do once the federal money runs out, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said district officials plan to ask the state for more support.

The $391 million deficit is the result of complicated collection of revenues and costs the district is projecting for next year: First, the district will have a $670 million hole in next year’s budget due to the loss of federal pandemic aid, according to Sitkowski’s presentation. That gap will be partially filled by the last bit of federal relief — about $300 million. However, the district is also expecting $123 million more in expenses it says it can’t control, including for teacher pension costs, debt service, health care costs, and inflation, Sitkowski said.

Those costs will be partially offset by rising revenues of $102 million, which include $23 million more from the state, as well as some rising tax collections, and more state support for pensions, according to Sitkowski.

The projections shared on Wednesday seem to outpace what a previous analysis warned of. A report issued under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned of a potential $628 million deficit by 2026 and predicted a neutral outlook for 2025. The report also noted that as the city has shifted more costs onto the district, it could shoulder more expenses as the board goes from mayoral control to an elected body.

District officials have been ratcheting up pressure for more money from state officials. This school year, CPS is projected to see a $23 million increase in state funding, for a total of about $1.77 billion this school year.

But on Wednesday, Sitkowski said that if the state fully funded districts under the Evidence-Based Funding Formula, CPS would have an additional $1.1 billion in funding.

Last month, the board highlighted the need for $3.1 billion to address critical repairs at school facilities over the next five years.

Sitkowski said direct funding at the school level has also increased by $1 billion since fiscal year 2019, even as enrollment dipped. More than 2,300 teachers were hired in that time, including classroom teachers, interventionists, and educators for the arts and physical education, he noted.

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

Chicago Public Schools reschedules High School Admissions Test

2023-10-18T21:27:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools announced a new testing schedule Wednesday for the High School Admissions Test, which was canceled last week after technical problems.

District students will take the test next week, on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 25. The district will assign one of those dates to each eighth grader’s school, according to a CPS letter to families. Students taking the exam in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Urdu, or simplified Chinese will test on Nov. 1.

Non-CPS students — whose testing window last weekend was canceled — can take the exam on Oct. 28, Oct. 29, or Nov. 5 at Lane Tech or Lindblom high schools, the district said. These students must sign up for an exam date in GoCPS, the city’s admissions application system, by 9 a.m. Oct. 23.

The exam will not be the same one as was planned for last week, and students who were able to access the test will not see the same questions, officials said.

Students who were able to complete the exam will be allowed to retake the test, and their new score will be used for admissions even if it’s the lower of both tests, officials said. Students who don’t want to retake the exam must opt out by filing out this form and returning it to their school by Oct. 23. However, due to last week’s glitches, district officials “strongly recommend that students take advantage of this opportunity” to retake the exam, they said in the letter to families.

CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were set to take the HSAT in school on Oct. 11. The exam is part of admissions requirements for selective enrollment high schools and for enrollment at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries.

But on test day, a technical problem broke out with the testing vendor, Riverside Associates, LLC, officials said. The company later discovered that backlogged servers caused the problem, according to an FAQ on the district’s website. Students were unable to log into the testing platform, and the company’s help desk could not be reached, educators told Chalkbeat. District officials instructed principals to stop exam administration for students who were unable to log in.

The district later canceled the exam for non-CPS students, who were scheduled to take it Oct. 14 and 15.

The company fixed the problem by “adding server capacity” and testing the system to ensure that it works, the FAQ said.

Students’ HSAT scores help determine which selective high schools they might be admitted. This year, students must submit their top choices in the district’s admissions system — GoCPS — by Nov. 9, a month earlier than usual. Students were originally allowed to re-rank their choices by Nov. 22, but given the rescheduled HSAT, district officials have extended the re-rank deadline to Dec. 1.

After last week’s glitches, the district plans to be “very cautious” about the new testing plan and is “putting some strategies in place” to eliminate potential issues, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova during a Wednesday Board of Education meeting to review the agenda for an upcoming full board meeting. Neither she nor district officials immediately elaborated on what extra steps they’ve taken to ensure the test will resume smoothly.

In the online FAQ, the district said that its team has “reviewed results of vendor testing to confirm preparedness for resuming the HS Admissions Test program.”

During the board meeting Wednesday, Chkoumbova apologized to families for the glitches and said she was “a little bit disappointed” by the problems, given that the district’s aim was to reduce anxiety for students. The district had shortened the test length this year to an hour, from a previous 2 ½ hours, and had offered it for the first time in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

“Our team went into the testing session with a lot of assurances,” Chkoumbova said. “We did triple check everything, but the platform failed.”

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.

Chicago Public Schools cancels this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for non-district students

2023-10-12T21:52:35+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is canceling this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for students who are not currently enrolled in the district but are planning to apply for the city’s selective and magnet high schools.

District officials cited ongoing technical difficulties with the vendor’s testing platform.

The cancellation comes after similar issues forced the district to pause testing Wednesday, when all CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were supposed to take the exam in school.

“We are working now to reschedule all students who were scheduled to test this weekend and will share updates to families as soon as possible,” district spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement.

The district said it is working with the vendor, Riverside Assessments, LLC, to solve the technical problems and to provide new testing dates “for students who were impacted by the vendor’s technical issues.”

In July, the Board of Education authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract with Riverside, in part to provide testing materials for the HSAT.

The vendor’s website Thursday included a note that it was aware schools in several regions were unable to log in or complete testing and that a team is “working around the clock to resolve this issue.”

Applications for next school year are currently due Nov. 9. In previous years, CPS has extended the deadline.

The glitches Wednesday prevented students from logging into the testing platform to take the exam, school leaders told Chalkbeat. Some students at one North Side school also encountered some Spanish words on their exam and needed teachers to translate, according to an administrator.

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.

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.

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

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 says $3.1 billion for ‘critical’ building repairs needed

2023-09-29T02:30:03+00:00

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years.

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction.

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan.

The district released the plan during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held in the auditorium of Austin Career and College Academy High School on the West Side and drew at least 200 observers. The changed location was the board’s attempt to address the longstanding criticism that the meetings, which are typically held during the day downtown, are inaccessible for many families and teachers who work during the day. (The last meeting held outside of district headquarters was in 2019, according to a district spokesperson.)

District officials said this summer that they had budgeted $155 million for facilities projects this fiscal year — roughly $600 million less than the previous year — and planned to ask for more capital funding this year.

Martinez used the plan to make another plea for more funding and “partnerships” from the city, state, and federal government. Martinez plans to press the state for more money as a way to address costs once COVID relief dollars run out in 2024.

“This plan will take coalitions and partnerships with our fellow officials at the city, state, and federal levels,” he wrote in his introduction to the plan. “It will take administrators, teachers, parents, students, and advocates pushing for the changes we need.”

Martinez said the facilities plan is a “critical” early part of its process to create a five-year strategic plan for CPS. That plan — which will build on Martinez’s three-year blueprint released last year to help the district recover from the pandemic — will be finalized next summer.

The district will also launch an advisory team that would make recommendations to Martinez on how to narrow academic disparities of Black students compared to their peers. Those recommendations would also inform a “Black Student Success Plan” and be part of the strategic plan, according to CPS.

Some advocates, however, immediately rejected that idea Thursday night. They had previously pressed officials to create a Board of Education committee that focused on Black student achievement.

“To have a strategic plan is not enough to say, ‘Oh, we hear you,’” said Valerie Leonard, a longtime West Side education advocate and the co-founder of Illinois African Americans For Equitable Redistricting. “I want to know that you see me; I want to know there is some action. At what point will Black children be prioritized?”

District officials are asking for community feedback as they develop the strategic plan. The public meetings to gather that input will be on:

6-7:30 p.m. October 17 at Kelvyn Park High School, 4343 W. Wrightwood Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. October 18 at Westinghouse College Prep, 3223 W. Franklin Blvd.
10 a.m. - noon October 21, virtual meeting
6 - 7 p.m. October 23, Little Village high school campus, 3120 S. Kostner Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. Julian High School, 10330 S. Elizabeth St.

Those wishing to attend should register here.

The facilities plan includes information like enrollment trends to highlight the district’s needs. District officials offered more analysis Thursday of enrollment this year.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment grows by nearly 1,200

Preliminary data on the 20th day of school — when district officials tally up students for the year — indicated that enrollment, at just over 322,500 students, is essentially flat compared to last year, Chalkbeat reported last week. On Thursday, officials revealed that 323,291 students were enrolled, or nearly 1,200 more students than last year.

It’s the first time since 2011 that the district’s enrollment has not dipped. Since that year, enrollment declines were driven by several factors, including population changes and dipping birth rates. Last year’s decline cost CPS’ title as the nation’s third largest school district.

The small enrollment bump was due to fewer students leaving and more new students, including a 7% increase in preschool students, officials said. Additionally, the number of students living in temporary housing increased by 47%, which could be one sign of an increase in migrant students who are living in shelters or other temporary circumstances.

The district does not track students’ immigration status. But another sign that the population of newly enrolled migrant students is growing is the increasing number of English language learners. About 7,800 more English learners enrolled this year than last year, officials said. CPS typically enrolls an average of 3,000 new English learners a year.

English language learners now make up nearly a quarter of the district’s students, up from 22% last year, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

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

Chicago Public Schools won’t bus general education students for the rest of the semester

2023-09-27T19:41:03+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the semester, officials said Tuesday.

District officials informed families of the decision Tuesday morning, said Charles Mayfield, CPS’ chief operating officer.

“We really wanted to give parents an early notice to let them know that you don’t have to come back and keep asking and hoping,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield said district officials will re-evaluate the decision in December before winter break and update families then on the state of transportation service.

Blaming a driver shortage, CPS has restricted bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are living in temporary housing, groups that are legally entitled to transportation. District officials say they have just 681 drivers — similar to figures last month and half of what they need, Mayfield said.

At the start of the school year, Mayfield said the district would try to provide busing to more children if it could hire more drivers, but the needle hasn’t moved on new hires since August.

“We’re continuing to do more outreach,” Mayfield said.

Over the past year, the district has hosted roughly two dozen hiring fairs, raised driver pay rates by $2, to $22 to $27 an hour, and added more bus companies in an effort to ease the driver shortage, officials said. Mayfield said it may be too soon to try new strategies, given that boosting hiring can take a while, and some of the steps, such as increasing pay, went into effect only recently.

The limited bus routes have enraged many families of general education students who have relied on busing in the past, including those in magnet and gifted programs, and they have expressed their concerns at Board of Education meetings. These families are eligible for free CTA cards, including a companion pass for parents. But of the roughly 5,500 children who are eligible, just under 1,600 have used that option, Mayfield said. (The district mistakenly said in July that 8,000 students were eligible.)

Some parents of young children have said they can’t send their kids alone on buses or trains and also can’t accompany their children because of their work schedules.

Alexis Luna said the lack of transportation could force her to keep her third-grade daughter out of school occasionally. Because of Luna’s inflexible work schedule, the girl’s father usually drives her to Inter-American Elementary Magnet School in Wrigleyville in the morning, about 45 minutes from her Belmont Cragin home. Luna typically picks her up.

But if her father has to travel out of town for work, Luna won’t be able to cover the morning drop-off. In that case, Luna said, “I will have to put her in day care, and she’s probably going to have to miss school.”

Tuesday’s decision comes in the middle of the district’s school application season, during which families apply for gifted and magnet programs. The application period ends in November.

Last year, bus transportation was available to any eligible student. But the district has struggled since 2021 to provide timely and reliable service. For example, thousands of students with disabilities last year had commutes longer than an hour — a problem the district has nearly eliminated this year as it has restricted bus service.

Currently, the district is providing bus service to 7,300 students who have disabilities or live in temporary housing. It has also offered stipends to families of these students who prefer other modes of transportation. The first round of those are expected to be mailed out this week.

As of last Friday, 324 students with disabilities were waiting for routes, Mayfield said, adding that new requests continue to come in.

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

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

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

Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for first time in more than a decade

2023-09-20T02:26:40+00:00

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Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data.

CPS enrollment has been in decline for 12 years, so this year’s shift is significant.

In the past decade, the district’s student body shrunk by 20%, with the district seeing multiple year-over-year declines of roughly 10,000 students. The dramatic contraction began after the 2011-12 school year, which was the last year CPS saw a bump in enrollment, from 402,681 to 404,151 students. Last year, Chicago lost its standing as the nation’s third largest district.

Enrollment now appears to be leveling off in Chicago. In the past year, the city has welcomed thousands of migrant families from the southern border and in July, a top mayoral aide suggested that newcomers were boosting enrollment in schools.

A district spokesperson, however, said enrollment changes are due to multiple reasons and cautioned against attributing the shifts to “any one group of students.”

“We will offer more analysis and context to our enrollment figures later this month,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement. “We are honored and privileged to serve each and every student.”

It’s too early to tell if this is the start of a new trend, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

“If it’s just a one-time pause in the trends of declining enrollment, it might not have a big overall long-term effect, but it’s really just hard to say right now since we don’t know what will happen in the future,” Allensworth said.

Thinning enrollment was driven by factors such as dipping birth rates and other population changes. With the onset of the pandemic, districts across the country enrolled fewer students, with more than 33,000 students falling off Chicago’s rolls since the fall of 2020.

Shrinking schools have left CPS officials and mayors to contend with how to best fund classrooms, especially as student needs grew during the pandemic. Enrollment has long been a determining factor for how much state and federal money a district gets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of tying enrollment to funding, but past mayors have funded schools within CPS based on how many kids they serve.

Even with fewer students, the district’s budget has grown to $9.4 billion. That’s roughly flat compared to last year’s budget, but up from a decade ago when it hovered around $6 billion. A new state funding formula and a wave of pandemic recovery money have helped offset enrollment declines. Though state money is increasing, the district has recently seen fewer dollars than expected due to lower enrollment and increased property wealth.

According to preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat, there are 5,767 more students learning English as a new language this school year than last year. That’s a sizable jump: CPS has historically enrolled an average of 3,000 new English learners annually, a district spokesperson said.

CPS officials said they do not track immigration status of students. They have pointed to the growth in English language learners as one sign of newcomers, but emphasized that not all English language learners are newcomers.

The district enrolls migrant students in three ways. First, like any student, migrant children can enroll directly at schools. They can also make an appointment at the city’s new welcome center housed inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School on the West Side.

Finally, enrollment teams are going to families’ homes, after receiving information from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services about those in need of help who can’t make it to the welcome center, said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

Schools across the district have historically struggled to meet state regulations for providing proper support for English learners. When finding a school with the right program for English learners, officials try to stay within a two-mile radius of the child’s home, Asaf said.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides extra support for kids and families at a handful of Southwest Side schools as part of the district’s sustainable community schools initiative, said they’ve noticed an increase in migrant families among the parents they serve who don’t have stable housing.

Last year, the organization placed a case manager part-time at a high school in Back of the Yards that needed extra help with parents as they enrolled more migrant students, said Sara Reschly, deputy director of the group’s community services division.

At Brighton Park Elementary School, case manager Lupe Fernandez said newcomer families currently have very basic needs, such as undergarments and help navigating the CTA. The school is planning to create a free “closet” where families can pick up things they need for free.

“If there are schools that have those strong community partnerships, you know, like that would be a place to start because then you can wrap services around the whole family,” Reschly said.

Asaf, with the district, said they are processing more school transfers among newcomers as those families find new homes or more permanent housing.

Preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat show this school year, nearly a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students are learning English as a new language — a figure that trumps other large districts. For example, 14% of students in New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, were English learners last school year.

The preliminary data signals the continuation of another trend over the past decade: a decline in the share of students from low-income households. Preliminary data indicate that number is 67%, down from 73% last school year.

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

Applying to Chicago Public Schools? Here’s a guide to the 2024-25 application process.

2023-09-13T15:22:45+00:00

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It’s that time of year again: Chicago Public Schools opened its application Wednesday for elementary and high school seats for the 2024-25 school year with a deadline of Nov. 9 — about a month earlier than usual.

Families use the application for entry to a variety of schools, including selective test-in schools and neighborhood schools outside of their attendance boundaries. Sixth graders can also use the application for seven advanced middle school programs.

For high schools, there are several changes to this year’s admissions process:

The High School Admissions Test, or HSAT, will last an hour instead of the previous 2 ½ hours. This shorter test “allows CPS to get the information needed on student performance for the admissions process while helping reduce anxiety for students and increasing accessibility,” a district spokesperson said.
In addition to English, the HSAT this year will also be offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.
The district has created a single admissions scoring rubric for all programs. Previously, there were multiple rubrics.
High schools will no longer have additional admissions requirements, such as interviews, essays, or letters of recommendation. Such a requirement “added to the complexity of the process and was burdensome for families,” according to a district spokesperson.

Students will find out their HSAT score in mid-November. After that, students can re-rank the programs they chose in GoCPS until 5 p.m. November 22, district officials said.

About half of elementary school students attend a school outside of their neighborhood, and roughly 70% of high schoolers do the same.

For the second year, families of preschoolers won’t have to apply until the spring. The city is working toward providing universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Last year, officials said there were enough seats for all children who wanted one.

For elementary school and the middle school programs, families can apply online or over the phone. For high school, they can also submit a paper application. Most charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, can also be applied to through GoCPS and students are offered spots via lottery.

The application process for all students, which can involve ranking school choices and taking entrance exams, can be cumbersome for many families to navigate. The later application deadline “may catch people off guard,” said Grace Lee Sawin, co-founder of Chicago School GPS, an organization that helps families navigate admissions.

“I think that will throw off a lot of people who think they had the month of November” to explore their options, Sawin said.

In recent years, CPS has extended the application deadline. Results are expected to be released next spring. The district will hold weekly online informational sessions about GoCPS in English and Spanish starting Sept. 19 at 9 a.m. The sessions will continue until early November. Families should register online here.

Here’s what you need to know.

Families can apply to several types of Chicago elementary schools

Families can use the application for entry into several types of elementary schools.

They can select up to 20 magnets and neighborhood schools outside of their own attendance boundaries. Families can also choose from more competitive, selective enrollment schools, which require a test to get in. Those include the city’s gifted programs and classical schools, both of which offer more accelerated curriculum.

The tests can be scheduled once you submit your application. For these schools, families can choose up to six programs. Families can choose up to three gifted centers that are specifically for English learners.

For neighborhood schools, families don’t have to rank their choices, since they will be entered into the lottery for each program on their list and may get multiple offers.

For the test-in schools, applicants must rank their choices. They are eligible if they score high enough on the entrance exams, but the district does not publish what the cutoff scores are. Thirty percent of seats are reserved for the highest scorers. The remaining offers go to the highest scorers across four socioeconomic tiers that are based on where students live, as an effort by the district to more equitably admit children to selective schools.

Each city neighborhood is assigned to one of four tiers, with the first tier representing the lowest-income areas, along with other factors, such as less education attainment. (You can look up your tier using this map.)

Students who choose magnet programs are entered into a lottery. Schools set aside remaining seats for students from each tier. There are also preferences given to siblings and in some cases, students who live within a certain proximity to the magnet school.

CPS offers admission to 7 accelerated middle school programs

Sixth graders can use the elementary application to apply to the city’s seven Academic Centers, which offer accelerated middle school programs. They are located inside of high schools — some of which are the city’s selective programs, such as Whitney Young — allowing these middle schoolers to take high school level courses.

Students must have at least a 2.5 GPA to apply and must take an entrance exam that can be scheduled through GoCPS. They can choose up to six school options, and must rank their selections. Students are admitted based on their score, with the highest scorers offered seats first. Last year’s cutoff scores can be found here.

All 8th graders encouraged to apply for a variety of Chicago high schools

The first step for eighth graders seeking a high school seat is taking the high school admissions test, or HSAT.

Due to a change last year, the exam is now given in school to all eighth graders at the same time. This year it’s scheduled for Oct. 11. Private school students can take the test on Oct. 14, 15, or 21, according to the district’s website.

Students can enroll in their neighborhood high school or they can use the application to rank up to 20 other high school programs. Schools may have multiple programs, such as one in fine arts and another in world language.

While many of these schools admit students via lottery, they may also have various preferences, such as for kids who live within the attendance boundary or those who earned higher math scores.

Students can also choose from the city’s 11 selective enrollment programs and can rank up to six of them. These schools are more competitive and admit students based on a rubric that includes their HSAT results and their GPA. Last school year, the first 30% of seats went to students with the highest scores on the rubric. The rest of the seats are split up among the highest scoring students across the four socioeconomic tiers. Last year’s cut scores for selective enrollment schools can be found here and for other high schools, they can be found here.

Selective enrollment schools have been criticized for enrolling larger shares of affluent, white, and Asian American students versus Black and Latino students who make up more than 82% of the district. Officials promised to overhaul the system last year in order to make it more equitable, but none of the promised changes have been made.

Students can receive up to two offers — one each for selective enrollment and CHOICE. If they get just one offer, CPS will automatically add them to waitlists at schools they ranked higher than where they got in. If the student doesn’t receive any offers, they can join waitlists for schools they want to attend or they enroll in their neighborhood school.

What is the application process for children with disabilities?

Students with disabilities can apply to any program. No matter which school they end up in, the district is legally required to provide any services that a student may need, according to their Individualized Education Program, or IEP.

For admissions exams, students should be afforded any testing accommodations listed on their 504 plans or IEPs, according to the FAQ page.

However, students with disabilities may face a more complicated school assignment process. For example, if a child is physically impaired and is offered a seat at a magnet elementary program that is not accessible, the district will offer transportation to a “comparable” magnet program that has the proper accommodations, according to a district FAQ about the admissions process.

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 Public Schools reverses policy that docked pay from teachers taking religious holidays

2023-08-31T18:42:54+00:00

Chicago Public Schools teachers will no longer be docked pay when taking a religious holiday.

The Board of Education approved the change last week, overturning a yearslong policy that deducted the cost of hiring a substitute from the teacher’s salary. Different types of substitutes are paid at different daily rates, ranging between $170 to $264, according to the teachers union contract.

“I have friends who couldn’t afford to take off for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur because they couldn’t afford to lose that money,” said Wendy Weingarten, a physical education teacher at Lasalle II Magnet School, who’s advocated for a change since 2016.

Teachers will still get three paid days off for religious holidays, such as the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur. But now, they must provide seven days advance notice before taking their holiday, instead of the previously required two days.

In a statement, district spokesperson Samantha Hart said the change was the result of feedback from teachers, school leaders, families, and others in the community.

“This is an important first step in ensuring that CPS’ holiday pay policy better reflects the values and diversity of the District and our staff,” Hart said.

During the board meeting, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said it was “shameful” that the policy had remained unchanged for so long.

Chicago’s public schools are off on seven federal holidays, including Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day and Memorial Day, according to the calendar.

Weingarten and Davis Gates noted that the district’s holiday schedule aligns with Christian holidays. While not denoted as an official holiday, Christmas is included in the district’s two-week winter break. Good Friday is typically included at the end of the weeklong spring break.

The district said the old religious holiday policy for teachers stretches back at least a decade. Weingarten, who has worked for CPS for 25 years, said she’s always been docked pay for taking off on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Eliminating that requirement will cost the district about $250,000 a year, a spokesperson said.

Weingarten said she began formally pressing the board for a change in 2021, when the start of the school year clashed with Rosh Hashanah. But she didn’t receive an explanation for why the district didn’t want to change the policy.

The next year, Weingarten said she filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates employee discrimination. She does not know the status of that complaint. She mentioned it to district officials during a joint meeting this April with the teachers union and CPS over the school calendar, after getting pushback about changing the religious holiday policy.

A district spokesperson did not directly say whether the policy change was sparked by the federal complaint. However, they said the change was a “preliminary step in remediating the inequities related to pay,” and that the district will review other board rules “to ensure our policies reflect the values of our diverse workforce.”

Correction: Sept. 1, 2023: A previous version of this story said Wendy Weingarten began advocating for a policy change in 2014. She began advocating for the change in 2016.

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

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago shortens bus routes for most students with disabilities, while others wait for service

2023-08-24T22:14:56+00:00

Just 47 Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, an improvement over last year when that figure was roughly 3,000 and 365 children had trips lasting longer than 90 minutes, district officials said Thursday.

“We are working to get that number down to zero,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The progress comes after more than 8,000 students who may have been eligible for bus service in the past, including those in selective and magnet schools, were told in late July they would not receive busing, but can instead receive free Ventra cards, including for one companion, such as a parent.

Martinez said again Thursday that the district was focused on providing busing to students who are legally entitled to it, such as students with disabilities and those in temporary housing.

CPS officials did not immediately share how many students are waiting to be routed as of Wednesday. As of the first day of school, 7,100 students were on bus routes, and another 3,100 chose the stipend, according to a Monday press release from CPS.

The district has blamed an ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. In late July, officials said they had just half of the roughly 1,300 drivers they needed.

At Thursday’s meeting, some parents whose children could not get busing, including Patricia Rae Easley, blasted the district. Easley lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side and has a daughter enrolled at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park on the South Side — a route familiar to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also lives in Austin and has a son enrolled at Kenwood.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” Easley said. ”Maybe we can get in on their carpool.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, suggested CPS is not far from shortening long rides for students with disabilities. Three-quarters of those remaining 47 students who are on rides longer than an hour are on routes that are 61-66 minutes long, he said.

The district’s recent transportation struggles stretch back at least two years. In order to spur more hiring of bus drivers, Mayfield said the district has hosted several hiring fairs and is planning to work with bus companies they contract with to raise driver pay by $2.25. Currently driver pay ranges between $20-25 an hour.

The district was able to accommodate all students with disabilities or those living in temporary housing who requested transportation by the end of July, after extending the sign-up deadline twice, officials said at the time. But they could not guarantee immediate service for families who signed up after that.

Families can opt for stipends of up to $500 a month until they get routed. On Thursday, responding to criticism from some families, Mayfield described the transportation changes this year as a “tough decision that we all needed to make.”

Easley, the parent whose child attends Kenwood, said she pulled her daughter out of a private school so that she could attend the sought-after South Side school as a seventh grader this year.

She was caught off guard with CPS’s announcement three weeks ago that she wouldn’t get bus transportation. Easley said she has no use for the free Ventra card because she doesn’t feel public transit is safe enough for her daughter. That commute would involve two buses and a train, she said.

So she drives her daughter 40 minutes to Kenwood.

“It’s definitely not only an inconvenience but an expense,” Easley said. “An unexpected expense when we’re paying for gas that’s $4.57 a gallon.”

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

First day of school: Chicago Public Schools reopens under a new era of leadership

2023-08-21T21:28:02+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is officially back in session.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the first Chicago mayor in recent history to send his children to public schools, kicked off the first day of classes by joining educators, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates outside Beidler Elementary School on the West Side.

Under a sweltering sun at 8:30 a.m., Johnson greeted parents and children in front of a chorus of reporters and cameras, before ringing the ceremonial bell to start the school year.

The joint appearance with Davis Gates, Martinez, and other district and union officials was unsurprising for the union-friendly mayor who came up through the CTU’s ranks, but still a break from the past when the union and City Hall officials would visit schools separately.

Despite the district facing a number of challenges ahead, including unreliable bus transportation, ongoing enrollment shifts, and an influx of immigrant students, Johnson focused on a new era of collaboration at the city’s public schools.

Later in the morning, after touring two other campuses, Johnson visited Kenwood Academy, where his son is now a sophomore.

Speaking to a history class, he likened the first-day icebreakers the teacher was doing to what he’s doing as the city’s new mayor.

“I hope that you will lean into the collaborative approach that your teacher is taking, because that is what we’re doing as a city,” Johnson told the students. “We’re building relationships, we’re collaborating so that we can make collective decisions together that ultimately can help transform people’s lives.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and other city hall, school district, and union officials pose for a photo inside a classroom at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

CPS claws back from enrollment losses

Visiting Beidler was a symbolic choice for the mayor. The school narrowly escaped closure about a decade ago and is now part of a program Johnson wishes to expand: the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, which aims to provide wraparound services and more programming for students and families.

But Beidler is among several other schools in the program that have lost at least a quarter of their enrollment since the initiative started.

The official enrollment count will not be known until after the 20th day of school in September. But last year, 80,000 fewer students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools than there were a decade ago and it is now the nation’s fourth largest school district. Chicago’s declining enrollment predated the emergence of COVID-19, but continued during the pandemic.

And for many parents and kids arriving at Beidler Monday morning, more pressing thoughts — like wishing for a great year — were at the forefront. Dondneja Wilson hoped that her daughter, who started preschool, would “grow, and learn, and have fun.”

“She likes kids a lot, so I feel like that’s going to be her favorite part,” Wilson said.

Dondneja Wilson and her daughter pose for a picture outside of Beidler Elementary School.

Last year, data from the last day of school in June obtained by Chalkbeat showed little change in overall enrollment. However, the number of English learners grew by more than 5,000 students. District officials have pointed to the increase as an approximation of how many migrant students have arrived on buses in the past year.

Chicago is seeing an influx of newcomers, many of whom are seeking asylum, arriving by bus from the southern border in Texas.

The number of bilingual teachers in CPS has dipped since 2015, even as the English learner population has grown, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis. While 6,900 teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements — more than ever before, according to the district — it’s unclear how many are actually assigned to teach bilingual education.

Educators and immigrant advocates have expressed concerns about whether schools can properly support these new students. Jianan Shi, president of the Board of Education, said the city’s new welcome center for migrant students on the West Side has enrolled “hundreds” of newcomer students. He’s requested more information on the system’s overall strategy for supporting newcomers.

A classroom door welcomes students in Spanish at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park.

Outside Beidler, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that “the biggest challenge” is ensuring that all newcomers are registered in school, but he said the district is well-positioned to serve them, noting that Chicago has one of the largest bilingual and dual language programs in the nation. About one-fifth of the city’s students are English language learners.

“The challenge we have right now is, again, keeping up with all the new asylum-seekers that are coming in, going to them, making sure that we’re able to register them, assess them,” Martinez said. “But we’re doing that as we speak now.”

Transportation woes continue on first day

Transportation woes that have plagued the district for the last few years also cropped up on the first day, as parents reported problems with bus routes and trips that took more than an hour.

Laurie Viets, a CPS parent of three children – two of whom have transportation written into an Individualized Education Program – said the district promised to have all transportation issues resolved by last Friday.

However, Viets found out on Friday that one of her children, a seventh grader, was not going to have transportation and another child, a first-year high school student, would have a long bus route. Today, it took 70 minutes to get to school; it’s normally a 12-minute car ride, Viets said.

Viets said she wished Chicago Public Schools would have given her more time to prepare for changes in the transportation plans. Now, she won’t have transportation for one of her children for up to two weeks and she is concerned that her other child will be on the bus without air conditioning in extreme heat until they shorten his route.

The district’s bus problems stem back to 2021, the first year back to full-time, in-person school after COVID forced CPS to close buildings in March 2020. Students were left waiting on the first day and beyond for buses that never showed. In emergency mode at that time, the district began offering $1,000 stipends for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. But the transportation troubles continued well into the school year.

Last year, some 365 students were waiting for bus routes the first week of school and in September, district officials said they were still working to reduce 90-minute rides for some students.

The district has blamed and continues to point to a nationwide bus driver shortage as causing the transportation troubles. It signed a $4 million contract with a longtime vendor and bus-routing software company to try to fix the issues.

But last month, on July 31, district officials announced that it would not be able to transport roughly 8,000 students on the first day of school. They offered $500 monthly stipends to families of CPS students with disabilities or those in temporary living situations. Both groups are legally entitled to transportation. The district said at the time that 3,000 students had chosen the stipend option.

Davis Gates called the transportation troubles “a disaster” and a “failure of privatization.” CPS contracts with private bus companies to provide students with transportation. Davis Gates said she would like to see the district bring busing “in-house” and experiment with having its own fleet of buses that could start small by covering field trips and sporting events and then grow.

“These are Band-Aid approaches. I have not seen anything transformative or revolutionary in this space. And again, three strikes you’re out,” she said. “This isn’t a good way to start the school year with respect to transportation.”

The district has previously increased pay rates for bus driver companies, and is hoping to do so again this year. Martinez said he hopes that will help fill the driver shortage.

Viets, the parent worrying about her children’s transportation, said more needs to be done.

“Next year, if CPS is going to start by Aug. 21, by Aug. 1 they should know what the routes are,” said Viets.

If Chicago finalizes plans the Friday before the start of school, she said, the district is “not giving parents any kind of respect at all. They’re not giving us an opportunity to make other plans when they mess up.”

As Viets noted, the extreme heat also adds to worries about long bus rides. The weather also raises concerns about conditions inside buildings once students arrive.

Air-conditioning, aging buildings prompt push for green schools

With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees this week, Martinez said his team worked “around the clock” to ensure classrooms are equipped with air conditioning this week.

Martinez said every classroom has at least a window unit, a key union demand during the CTU’s 2012 strike that was implemented a couple of years later by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Still, in some cases, hallways are not air-conditioned, Martinez said.

Johnson has touted “climate justice” as a key focus of his administration and reiterated Monday that includes schools.

“Having buildings that are retrofitted, as well as an economy that’s built around green technology, some of that is top of mind,” he said.

Davis Gates used this week’s weather forecast to illustrate climate change’s impact on the city and why it underscores the urgent need for a new CPS facilities master plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2018. She added that building greener schools will be one issue the union will bargain over ahead of its contract expiration in 2024.

The school calendar’s pre-Labor Day start is an issue Davis Gates would immediately bargain over, she said. The late August start date began in 2021, matching up with many suburban districts.

The union was not able to bargain over the school calendar in 2019, Davis Gates said. But the passage of a 2021 state law reinstating some of the CTU’s bargaining rights could allow the calendar to be back on the table. The union’s contract expires next June and it’s likely the district and new mayor will begin negotiations with the teachers this winter.

The larger issues that officials highlighted were likely not top of mind for many students, such as 5-year-old Pierre, who started kindergarten at Beidler.

Asked what he was most excited about this school year, Pierre replied, “Playing.”

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’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

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

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

2023-08-03T21:55:39+00:00

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.”

Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

The analysis looked at 44 elementary schools that joined ISP between 2016 and 2018. Those schools saw pass rates for state reading and math tests grow, on average, by about 4 percentage points more than similar schools that weren’t part of ISP, according to the study. (Comparison schools were chosen based on things like demographics and test scores.)

The findings suggest that schools can benefit from more empowered principals, who are “closer to the ground” and may have a better sense than district leaders of what their students need, said C. Kirabo Jackson, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern who conducted the study.

But there are some caveats, Jackson said. The ISP schools with the best test score results were also run by principals who are considered “highly effective,” as determined by teacher ratings and other evaluations. Less effective principals saw test scores grow at a slower rate. Other studies have found mixed results when giving schools more autonomy, Jackson noted in his study.

The benefits of such a policy depend on “the capacity of the leaders to manage on their own,” said Jackson.

Test scores don’t show the full picture of how well students are doing, Jackson said, and his study found mixed results in other areas. For example, ISP schools on average had better ratings for school climate. But he found no evidence that these schools saw better student or teacher attendance.

The ISP initiative was launched under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of an effort to pair principals with “more leadership and professional development opportunities,” according to the district.

Currently, district leaders identify veteran principals to apply for the program and then evaluate them based on several criteria, including their school’s test scores, their “five essentials” survey data and a series of interviews, according to the district.

A spokesperson did not respond in time for publication on whether there were minimum test scores that schools had to meet in order to be eligible.

Jackson noted that nearly all of the elementary schools he evaluated were highly rated by the state. In all, 86% of the city’s current 63 ISP schools — which also include middle and high schools and one early childhood education center — were rated either commendable or exemplary by the state, according to the most recently available Illinois Report Card information.

In addition to less oversight and more budget flexibility, ISP school leaders also have more power over professional learning for their staff and more flexibility over principal evaluations. In exchange, principals must meet several requirements, including maintaining or improving school performance, remaining compliant with district wide policies, and remaining as the school’s principal for at least two years.

Having more power over professional learning was among the biggest boons for Patricia Brekke, principal of Back of the Yards High School, who joined the ISP program in 2016. Her school, like others, used to spend time addressing student needs in ways that district leaders recommended.

While she considered those good strategies, her staff didn’t have extra time to focus on other issues they believed to be important, such as drilling down on students’ analytical and essay writing skills.

For the past seven years, she and other teachers have created their own professional development sessions to, in part, improve kids’ analytical skills. Her team draws on good examples from their own classrooms, including taking videos during the school day, so that teachers can see how their own colleagues are approaching instruction, Brekke said.

“I’ve got a lot of brilliant teachers, and their ideas really pushed me, I think, to be a better principal, you know?” Brekke said. “And it was really important for me to have them around the table and identify our problems of practice.”

Jackson only studied elementary schools, so he doesn’t know the program’s impact on high schools.

SAT scores at Brekke’s school were within five percentage points of the district’s. But Brekke said she’s noticed her students demonstrating “elevated” writing skills that go beyond a classic five-paragraph essay response.

“They’re really starting to think more deeply about text,” Brekke said.

Jackson found another bonus of the program: Principals “tend to remain in their schools” even after the two-year requirement. That is by design, said Jerry Travlos, a former ISP principal who now works as a district leader.

Travlos conducted a study, which Jackson cites, and found that ISP principals largely preferred the autonomy they got under the program. Extending more power to veteran principals is also a “retention strategy,” he said, at a time when school leaders are heading for the door.

Brekke, who has been an educator for 32 years, said she sometimes misses the camaraderie that comes along with a traditional network like most of Chicago’s public schools. But she loves being able to “geek out” and customize instruction for her students.

“Having those kinds of conversations are really just so refreshing and encouraging and motivating,” Brekke said. She paused and added, “Maybe it’s contributed to why I’m still here.”

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

8,000 Chicago Public Schools students won’t have bus service on first day of school, district says

2023-07-31T23:43:11+00:00

More than 8,000 Chicago Public Schools students will not have bus service on the first day of class on Aug. 21, a problem the district blames on an ongoing bus driver shortage.

With only half of the 1,300 drivers needed to transport students who require bus service, Chicago said it will instead prioritize transportation for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Both groups are legally required to receive transportation to school.

For some students with disabilities, bus service is a requirement on their Individualized Education Programs. More than 7,100 such students have signed up for bus service so far, officials said. (Siblings of students with disabilities can still receive bus service if they attend the same school.)

This is the third year in a row in which the return to class has been marred by transportation woes that have left thousands of students without transportation or with long commutes. The district, which contracts with outside companies to provide transportation, has attributed bus service snarls in previous years to nationwide driver shortages.

In an effort to help fix ongoing transportation problems, the district in March approved a $4 million contract with Education Logistics Inc., known as EduLog, to schedule bus routes, determine start times for summer school and assign bus vendors during the school year. The contract is set to run through June 30, 2026.

This year, in the face of continued bus service troubles, the district will instead offer Ventra cards to general education students and one companion, such as a parent, “for as long as they are without school bus transportation,” according to a news release from Chicago. These families may have the option to get bus service “at some point” in the school year but the timing for that is not yet clear, said Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer for Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, Chicago provided bus service to 17,275 children, or about 5% of students.

“There’s been a nationwide shortage, and I think that is not an easy thing for any K-12 [district] right now,” Mayfield said Monday in an interview with Chalkbeat. “Even if you Google search bus driver shortage, you get a number of school districts that have the same issue that we’re having today and they are making adjustments similar to where we are, to try to provide alternatives.”

As of Friday, the district said it could guarantee bus service on the first day of school for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness, after Chicago twice extended a sign-up deadline this summer, Mayfield said. But it can’t guarantee immediate service for families who sign up now. The district is required to link those families to bus service within two weeks of their request for transportation.

As an alternative, CPS is offering families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover transportation costs. So far, 3,000 students have chosen this option, officials said.

The continuing transportation issues have Chicago parent Laurie Viets bracing for yet another chaotic start to the school year. Two of her three children have district-provided bus service written into their Individualized Education Programs.

This year, she said the district has been more proactive since parents have raised concerns about bus services issues over the past few years. Over the summer, Viets received a couple of phone calls from the district asking if she would like to take the $500 stipend, but she declined. She said she prefers that the district provide bus service for her children.

Viets only learned the district had yet to figure out routes for students when she talked to a district representative last week.

“I have no hopes at all that transportation will show up,” said Viets. “I’ve got three kids, three separate schools in three different parts of the city. We’re going to be scrambling to get the two that need transportation to school because I guarantee we will not have transport on that first day.”

It is a familiar scenario for Viets – last year, she said she couldn’t get transportation for one of her children for about six weeks – and for thousands of other CPS families.

In the 2021-22 school year, when students returned to classrooms after COVID shuttered buildings, the district did not have bus services for 2,100 students on the first day of classes. At the time, the district provided families with $1,000 to help with transportation and even reached out to ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft for support.

At the start of the next school year, the district was able to route 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students to classes but hundreds of students with disabilities dealt with long commute times. At the time, the district reported that 365 students with disabilities had to deal with commute times of 90 minutes or longer and could not arrange transportation for 1,200 students.

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

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.

Chicago schools with mostly Black student bodies share less information about LSCs: report

2023-07-27T21:17:13+00:00

Chicago families on the South and West sides were less likely to have access to information about their Local School Councils, compared with their North Side neighbors, according to a new analysis about the 2021-22 school year.

The report, released this week by advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, also found that most schools — 61% — had at least one parent vacancy on their Local School Councils, or LSCs. These school-based elected bodies, made up of parents, other community representatives, and students, can make school-level decisions, such as evaluating and selecting principals and voting on the annual campus budget.

The findings suggest that white and more affluent parents are more likely to have access to accurate LSC information and LSCs without parent vacancies. On top of the neighborhood disparities, schools with mostly Black student bodies were less likely to have updated information online about their LSCs, compared with schools citywide. They were also more likely to have at least three parent vacancies on their LSCs.

Last year, following LSC elections with significant voter turnout, more than 1,400 vacancies remained, mostly on the South and West sides, Chalkbeat found at the time.

“Vacancies make it impossible for the schools that need LSCs the most to have effective LSCs,” the just-released Raise Your Hand report said. “This means student needs are ignored, budgets are cut, and more.”

On the city’s North Side, schools were more likely to list basic information on their websites about their LSC, the report found. That information includes a mention of the LSC’s existence, meeting times, agendas, minutes, a list of current members, and contact information for those members.

For example, an average of 67% of schools across the Far North, North, and Northwest sides had LSC meeting times listed on their websites. In comparison, meeting times were listed for less than a quarter of schools, on average, in neighborhoods across the South and West sides, according to the report.

“This lack of transparency and accessibility is unacceptable and leaves parents feeling frustrated and powerless,” the report said.

Other findings include:

About one third of all schools have an LSC meeting time posted online, while the same is true for 14% of schools with student bodies that are at least 90% Black.
32% of all schools have three or more parent vacancies. The same is true for 36% of schools on the South and West sides, and 23% of schools on the North sides as well as the Loop.
42% of schools with more than 90% of Black students have three or more parent vacancies.

Raise Your Hand said that school websites have not changed even after they raised some of their findings with Chicago Public Schools “months ago.” The group has urged CPS to ensure websites have updated information, including meeting times and locations, a list of current LSC members, and contact information for the LSC.

After Raise Your Hand members revealed some of the study’s findings at a Wednesday Chicago Board of Education meeting, Board President Jianan Shi said the district “has to do better.” Shi is the former executive director of Raise Your Hand.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Evan Moore noted that the district saw a record-breaking 6,145 people apply for LSC positions last school year. He touted district efforts to raise awareness about LSCs, including roughly 100 “engagement sessions.”

Still, Moore acknowledged the need to improve and said officials are reviewing Raise Your Hand’s study.

“As a District, we are committed to continuing to work to improve awareness and access to this important democratic process,” Moore said.

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

Chicago school board to shift when it meets to increase public participation

2023-07-26T18:05:30+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education announced Wednesday that it will meet the last Thursday of the month going forward to avoid meeting on the same day as City Council.

The board currently meets on the last Wednesday of each month.

The shift is one of a slew of changes made by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new hand-picked school board that are meant to make meetings more accessible to the public. The board will also expand the number of public speakers and members said they intend to periodically host meetings in other neighborhoods.

The speaker slots will increase from 20 to 30 both at the agenda and regular monthly meetings. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the board allowed 60 public speakers to register.

Officials will announce the schedules for meetings outside of The Loop office “at a future board meeting,” according to Samantha Hart, a spokesperson for CPS.

“We all want to create more opportunities for the public to access our meetings, provide input on decisions, and help shape a district and board that reflects the core values and beliefs of our communities,” Board President Jianan Shi said during the meeting.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez praised the changes, saying they will “help build trust with our communities.”

Some advocates have long pushed for such changes in order to make meetings more accessible to working parents.

Cassie Creswell, executive director of Illinois Families for Public Schools and a CPS parent in Hyde Park, said she’s hoping board meetings will be held outside of working hours, too. Many parents and teachers “are rarely going to be available” to attend weekday meetings unless they take a day off, Creswell said.

She noted that this is a good time for the board to increase transparency.

“We have no idea who is going to be elected to the board once it’s fully elected, and I think making transparency and real engagement the norm and the standard the public can expect is really important,” she said.

The other changes include:

Allowing the board’s honorary student member to organize student roundtable discussions to “help ensure Board decisions are guided by students’ lived experiences.” Chalkbeat Chicago spoke to this year’s student member ahead of her inauguration.
Creating a Special Education Advisory Committee, led by board member Mary Fahey Hughes. She previously served as a parent liaison for special education for education advocacy group Raise Your Hand. The first meeting will be on Aug. 1 at 6 p.m. at Wilma Rudolph Learning Center. Five speakers and 100 observers can register in advance, according to the Chicago Board of Education website.
Making public any follow-up information that board members receive after the monthly agenda review committee.

The tone of the new board’s first regular meeting was in some ways different from the past. Nearly every seat in the board room was filled. Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates opened her comments with a laugh and said she was trying to hold back tears as she addressed the new board.

“When it’s this many CTU members and community members in a room, we are not usually here to be nice,” said Davis Gates. “We have an unbelievable responsibility before us. And I use the plural pronoun because if someone could do it by themselves, it would have already been done.”

But speakers still lined up to urge the school board to seriously consider a number of issues, including support for migrant students enrolling this fall; staffing more school nurses and psychologists; and inequities in neighborhood school locations.

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

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

Chicago swears in new members to city’s last fully appointed Board of Education

2023-07-19T19:58:21+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education ushered in a new era of leadership Wednesday by swearing in five of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointees.

The new members, who include vocal critics of the system, took an oath of office during a meeting to review agenda items ahead of the board’s full meeting next week. They will be part of the last fully appointed board before it shifts to an elected body in 2025.

As board members introduced themselves, Mariela Estrada, director of community engagement at the United Way of Metro Chicago, recounted being a “fierce” parent advocate. New board president Jianan Shi, former executive director of influential advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, noted that he is the first educator appointed as board president.

“I am used to sitting on your side of the glass fence,” new board member Mary Fahey Hughes told the audience at the meeting. Fahey Hughes formerly worked for Raise Your Hand as a parent liaison for special education and is an outspoken advocate for students with disabilities.

The inclusion of board critics at the decision-making table is in some ways similar to Johnson’s path, who rose to power through his teachers union ties.

Earlier this month, Johnson nearly cleaned house by appointing six new board members, who come from advocacy, philanthropy, and business backgrounds. In addition to Shi, Estrada, and Fahey Hughes, the mayor also tapped Michelle Morales, Rudy Lozano, and Tanya Woods (read more about each here). Lozano and Morales were not present at Wednesday’s meeting; a spokesperson for CPS did not explain why but said they will be sworn in at the board’s July 26 meeting.

The only holdover from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is Elizabeth Todd-Breland, who will be the board’s vice president.

All seven members’ terms end Jan. 1, 2025, when the city’s partially elected, 21-member school board will be seated. Several members highlighted that shift. Todd-Breland called her term a “bridge” to that elected board with “so much hope and optimism for Chicago Public Schools.”

Wednesday’s agenda review meeting was the third of its kind, allowing board members to publicly ask questions about agenda items ahead of the meeting where they’ll vote.

During the meeting, members reviewed and asked questions about a slew of agenda items expected to come up for approval next week, including a new agreement for marketing services, the opening of a comment period for a new parental leave policy for CPS employees, and a renewed contract for math tutoring.

One agenda item — about X-ray machines in school — signaled a possible shift in approach that Johnson’s appointees may bring to the board.

Shi asked a school safety official whether there is research that such machines, which are meant to detect weapons, make schools safer. The official said it’s hard to determine exactly what makes schools feel safe, but that such machines have found weapons in the past. Last month, the old board approved a slightly costlier contract for campus police.

Shi asked that district officials engage in “actual community dialogue” on school safety policies as the district continues work on its Whole School Safety initiative. The CPS official said it’s the district’s goal to get more “buy-in” from the community.

Board members like Shi have also previously expressed interest in making meetings more accessible to the public, such as working parents who can’t attend the meetings that are held downtown during weekday mornings.

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

Calling all youth: Chicago’s Mayor Johnson wants your ideas for his first city budget

2023-07-14T19:22:46+00:00

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is looking to the next generation for help on his first city budget proposal.

The former middle school teacher and union organizer is holding a budget roundtable discussion exclusively for Chicagoans ages 13 to 24. The July 25 event on the ninth floor of Harold Washington Library is an addition to the usual round of July budget engagement meetings.

The city is offering a perk: Five young people who participate, who are at least 16 years old, will be randomly chosen to win two four-day Lollapalooza passes.

In a statement, Johnson said the roundtable “allows our young people the opportunity to chart their own path in fulfilling that vision for hope, and become stewards for their own futures and eventual leadership of our city.”

The invitation comes as Johnson is stepping up efforts to get young people more involved in government decision making. His transition team recently recommended the creation of a paid youth council — which would resemble an existing youth commission created by his predecessor Lori Lightfoot.

City officials are inviting youth to share ideas directly with the mayor on various elements of the city’s budget, including affordable housing, homelessness, community development, arts and culture, mental health, safety, and infrastructure. But schools are not included on that list.

The Chicago Public Schools budget, which must be approved by July 1, already has been passed for the upcoming school year. The school board last month approved a flat $9.4 billion, with roughly half going directly to schools.

But financial challenges loom, with school district officials expecting a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year with the depletion of federal pandemic relief funds. As Chicago shifts to an elected school board, the district may also have to pick up more costs currently paid by the city.

The next city budget will cover the 2024 calendar year. The City Council is required to pass a budget by Dec. 31 — but historically does so before Thanksgiving, and planning starts in summer. From June to September, the city’s budget office reviews departmental expenses and solicits public feedback. Mayors submit their budget proposals to the City Council by Oct. 15, which also includes a public hearing.

Typically, the mayor’s office releases a budget forecast in August. But in a rare move before leaving office, Lightfoot and her financial team released a midyear budget forecast that projected a relatively small shortfall of $85 million.

Doors to the youth budget discussion will open around 4:45 p.m., and the event will start at 5:30 p.m. City officials said there will be limited seating for adult chaperones, who cannot participate in the discussion. Youth can register here.

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

NYC’s budget deal restores some education programs

2023-06-30T19:16:58+00:00

This story has been updated to reflect new information.

A tentative New York City budget agreement announced Thursday restores funding to a handful of initiatives that Mayor Eric Adams initially nixed, including one focused on student mental health and another that provides child care subsidies to undocumented families.

The final agreement, which is being voted on Friday, holds the education department’s budget roughly steady at $31.5 billion. That’s a significant shift from the mayor’s April budget proposal, which called for a $30.6 billion budget for the city’s schools, nearly a $1 billion cut.

Officials said the final budget reflects several sources of funding that were not accounted for in the mayor’s April proposal, including $416 million in additional money from the state and $246 million in federal stimulus money that was initially set to be spent in a subsequent year. The budget deal also added $275 million for holding initial school budgets steady even if their enrollment drops and to pay for a slew of other “new needs.”

City officials did not immediately provide a full explanation of what the funding shifts will cover and official budget documents were not yet available.

Still, officials touted a number of programs that were spared from the chopping block. After an unusually chilly “handshake” agreement Thursday, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams expressed frustration that negotiations centered on saving various initiatives.

“The council’s focus this year was to restore cuts to essential services,” she said, calling the mayor’s approach counterproductive and the result bittersweet.

The mayor downplayed the tension, saying negotiations are often contentious and the resulting budget is a “win for working-class New Yorkers.” The city’s overall spending has grown in recent years, with the latest agreement reaching about $107 billion.

Negotiators agreed to maintain funding to a few education-related programs, including one that connects students to mental health support and another that subsidizes child care for undocumented families. City officials credited higher-than-expected revenue, but cautioned that they believe tax growth may slow in the coming years.

The City Council must pass the budget by Saturday, the first day of the new fiscal year.

Here’s what to know:

Still unclear how individual school budgets will be affected

Although the education department’s overall budget is dipping, city officials pledged to keep individual school budgets steady — at least at first. Typically, funding depends on campus enrollment, which has been declining systemwide. But in recent years city officials have plugged school budget holes with federal funding.

Still, some schools’ budgets may shrink or grow, as the city takes back or adds money to campuses in the middle of the school year if their actual enrollment differs from projections. City officials have not made midyear cuts since the onset of the pandemic but have declined to say what they will do in the upcoming school year.

In response to a question Thursday, Mayor Adams said there is “no desire” to surprise school communities with midyear cuts but added, “there’s no guarantees in life.”

That uncertainty may lead some school leaders to tighten their belts if they anticipate anemic enrollment. Overall, the city is projecting a relatively small enrollment drop of 0.6%, suggesting deep cuts are unlikely on most campuses.

Funding restored to child care for undocumented families

The budget will include $16 million for Promise NYC, which covers up to $700 a week in child care for hundreds of low-income undocumented immigrant families. Adams had proposed cutting Promise NYC despite touting it in December when it launched.

The program used $10 million in six months to fully cover child care for about 600 children. Hundreds of more families are on waitlists, according to organizations running the program. Some newly arrived mothers told Chalkbeat that Promise NYC has allowed them to work and pursue education.

The $16 million included in the budget deal falls $4 million short of what immigration advocates and elected officials had sought. But it’s expected to continue covering the 600 children currently enrolled, city officials said.

Mental health support program saved at last moment

The budget includes $5 million for partnerships between schools and mental health clinics, creating a streamlined process for referring students to counseling. The money was initially left out of the mayor’s budget proposal.

The program, known as the Mental Health Continuum, includes just 50 schools. But amid growing concern about a slide in student mental health, advocates had pressed to save it and pointed out that the mayor’s own mental health plan highlighted the initiative.

The Mental Health Continuum is also meant to reduce 911 calls from school staff by training them to address students experiencing emotional crises. Those calls disproportionately affect Black students, and can result in handcuffing or unwarranted trips to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluation.

City to pilot extended hours for pre-kindergarten

The budget will include $15 million to change 1,800 to 1,900 seats for 3-year-olds so that they offer extended hours.

Many working parents need child care beyond 3 p.m. A survey by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, found one-third of more than 1,000 respondents said they were looking for child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. However, there were 11,000 unfilled pre-K seats that had longer hours year-round, education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer told Chalkbeat in May.

The pilot program will also extend beyond the school year, according to Speaker Adams’ office.

Caregivers “need preschool programs that align with their work days,” Mayor Adams said.

No plans to expand pre-K for 3-year-olds

The final budget reflects the mayor’s decision to halt a two-year $568 million expansion of preschool seats for 3-year-olds, instead opting to move seats to places with more demand, city officials confirmed.

Education officials have pointed to vacant seats: nearly 23,500 3-K seats are so far unfilled for next school year, according to department figures. The mayor’s decision has drawn backlash from City Council members and advocates, who say the city is not effectively recruiting families or funding early childhood education programs.

Questions remain about the mayor’s savings plan

As broad reductions to city agencies, the mayor required the education department to find hundreds of millions in cuts. It found $305 million, one of the largest savings, by recalculating spending on fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. City officials have said those cuts would not reduce benefits to educators but reflected lower-than-expected growth in those costs.

But advocates worry that the city had already been using those savings to pay for other things, such as transportation, special education services, and charter school costs.

“We are concerned about where the DOE will find funding to pay for these expenses in the coming year and the impact on other programs and services that students need,” Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, wrote in an email.

City officials did not say whether other programs will face cuts.

Looking ahead: Concerns loom as federal dollars dry up

Future budget cycles are likely to be even more contentious, as federal relief funding dries up and city officials have to make difficult decisions about whether and how to continue programs that depend on those dollars.

Perhaps the most contentious decision will be whether to slash school budgets on campuses that have seen enrollment plunge but have been kept steady by temporary relief money. Mayor Adams had previously argued that school budgets need to be incrementally reduced to be brought in line with their current enrollment, but after instituting one round of cuts he faced intense criticism and has since backed away from making further reductions — for now.

The federal money supports a slew of other efforts including hiring more social workers and psychologists; expanding summer school programs; adding preschool seats for students with disabilities, a chronic shortage area; and increasing the number of schools that host wraparound services such as food pantries and health clinics. It’s not certain how these programs will be funded after this year.

Correction (Friday, June 30): A previous version of this story said the education department’s budget would likely decline by roughly $1 billion, a cut that was included in the mayor’s budget proposal in April. A City Hall spokesperson initially indicated that there were no major changes in the final budget deal. But after this story was published, officials said the final budget includes several funding streams that were not initially accounted for in the mayor’s earlier proposal, meaning the overall education budget will hold steady rather than face a cut. The headline has also been changed to reflect that.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Salary disparity: Teachers, directors in NYC’s free pre-K program push for more money

2023-06-28T21:23:17+00:00

In her own words, Joanne Derwin was “not a runner.”

Then last year, as Derwin embarked on her annual quest to raise money for the preschool she oversees in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood, a parent persuaded her to train for the Brooklyn Half Marathon with a large group. Since then, they’ve used the race to raise tens of thousands of dollars that are crucial, in part, for covering teacher salaries.

Derwin’s center is one of hundreds that contract with New York City for its free prekindergarten programs, expected to serve roughly 63,000 3- and 4-year-olds this fall. But these centers — which have offered seats to about 60% of the children in the city’s program — have faced a long-standing issue that is gaining renewed attention: Their city funding covers the salaries for their veteran teachers at the same rate as new teachers in city-run public schools. That makes it tough to retain staff, providers say, unless directors like Derwin find a way to close the salary gap.

“We literally have to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon to be able to have our program,” Derwin said.

Boosting wages for teachers, directors and other support staff will be a central sticking point in upcoming contract negotiations between the city and unions who represent community-based preschool staffers, with the hope that the city extends benefits to non-unionized staffers, too.

On the campaign trail, Mayor Eric Adams said he wanted to pay these teachers for their years of experience, and he promised a path to salary parity within two years of his first term.

“It’s almost humiliating what we are paying these professionals,” he said at the time.

Whether he follows through on those promises remains uncertain. Spokespeople for City Hall referred Chalkbeat to the city’s labor relations office, which did not immediately respond for comment.

The brewing battle comes four years after the city boosted teacher pay in community-based programs to match their public-school counterparts, eventually including non-unionized employees, in what was heralded as a huge achievement. Pay grew to $61,070 by 2021 for teachers with bachelor’s degrees and $68,652 for those with master’s degrees, with a one-time 2.75% raise for other staff.

That agreement, however, didn’t pay teachers according to their years of experience, nor did it address salary parity for directors or other support staff, such as assistant teachers or custodians — all issues that unions and providers plan to advocate for.

The negotiations will happen against the backdrop of a chaotic year for the city’s early childhood education system, including late payments to providers and a controversial decision by Adams to not expand preschool seats for 3-year-olds. The City Council has called for $46 million to address pay parity issues. It’s unclear if that will meet the unions’ demands, as the Day Care Council said it does not yet have cost estimates.

Preschool workers eye contract set by teachers union

Wage increases could make the difference between keeping workers or losing them in an industry that’s already burned out from the pandemic, said Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents many providers.

Community-based preschool programs, like many industries, have faced hiring shortages since COVID, leaving them scrambling to find staff, Moran said. Programs are not just struggling to hold onto teachers; directors are also leaving. Many of these employees work longer hours and throughout the summer.

Acknowledging a need for better pay, Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced up to $3,000 in retention bonuses for 150,000 childcare workers, with unused federal stimulus dollars.

Without better pay, Moran said providers will be in a “dire situation,” ultimately impacting families who need preschool but can’t afford private programs.

“That sounds dramatic, but it’s true,” Moran said. “The compensation has become such a sticking point for folks.”

DC 37, which represents 7,900 early childhood workers, and the Day Care Council, which represents providers, are expected to begin negotiations with the city once their contract expires this fall. DC 37 also represents workers at federally funded Head Start programs, whose contract expired last January.

Separately, the city’s Council for Supervisors and Administrators, or CSA, is expected to restart their push to raise salaries for the 180 community-based preschool directors they represent. Pressure will likely mount in July, when the union begins court proceedings in a lawsuit that alleges the city is discriminating against community-based preschool directors, who are largely women of color, by not paying them at the same rate as directors of city-run sites.

Unions will be looking to the tentative contract deal reached between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, or UFT, which represents educators and other workers inside of public schools. Under that tentative agreement, starting salaries for new teachers with bachelor’s degrees will jump from $61,070 to $72,349 by November 2027.

Pay gap angers teachers and other support staff

Veteran teachers in New York City’s community-run preschool programs can make 53% of their counterparts with similar years of service in public schools, according to the Day Care Council.

To close such gaps, Derwin’s school, called One World Project, relies on multiple fundraising events, as well as income from their other programs that charge tuition, such as after school.

Derwin said she’s proud to pay her teaching staff as well as teachers who are covered by the teachers union. But that also means her teachers must receive raises annually as they gain more experience and with new contracts, leaving Derwin to close a larger gap every year without any additional help from the city.

“Every year, it’s a more precarious situation for us,” Derwin said.

About 10 miles east at the Howard Beach Judea Center Preschool in Queens, site director Lisa Pearlman-Mason said they struggle annually with enrollment, leading to tight budgets. Their two teachers each make just under $69,000 annually, or the same as a first-year teacher in public schools, as required by the 2019 agreement, even though one has about 15 years of experience and the other about 10.

They host an annual fundraiser, but the proceeds aren’t enough to cover salary bumps. (Last year, they used the money to buy an outdoor toy for their playground.)

Their teaching assistants make roughly $25,000 a year. The starting salary for the comparable title of a paraprofessional will be $34,257 by 2027, according to the tentative teachers union agreement.

“I don’t get to keep them for more than a couple of years because they realize what’s going on and they leave,” Pearlman-Mason said.

Salary disparity for directors pushes them out

Separate from teachers, the CSA is hoping to see pay boosted for about 180 directors of community-run preschools over a three-year period, for a total cost of $16.7 million, according to union officials.

Pre-K directors with master’s degrees at city-run programs make at least $133,375 with one year of experience, according to CSA. Under the expired contract for directors at private programs that are publicly funded, however, the city is only required to pay $63,287 to directors with master’s degrees.

Henry Rubio, the CSA’s president, said directors will sometimes take other jobs to make ends meet, or their centers might raise money to pay staff more. Still, the union sees directors leave their jobs “on a weekly basis” for better paying positions, including within the education department.

The union’s plea for raises traces back to at least 2019. At the time, when New York City agreed to boost teacher pay under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, officials promised to negotiate a similar “path to parity” for preschool directors, Rubio said. But since then, he said, the city has declined to do so.

Negotiations over a new contract stalled in 2021. That December, CSA filed its discrimination lawsuit, which states that community-run programs are overseen by directors who are 92% women of color, compared with the 31% at city-run sites who are Black or Latino.

“I think this is an opportunity for the mayor to really right a stark wrong here,” Rubio said. “For Black and brown women who have been dedicating their lives to the city, I think it’s an opportune time for both the City Council and the mayor to make a statement about his values.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New York wants to revamp how schools are evaluated. Here’s what could change for now.

2023-06-22T16:45:25+00:00

How does the state determine whether schools are doing well or if they are struggling and need extra support?

Before the pandemic, state officials relied on standardized tests and high school Regents exams to figure out how well students were doing, along with other factors, such as graduation rates. But the public health crisis paused state testing and affected school performance metrics in other ways.

Now, education department officials are seeking a new, temporary evaluation system for the next two school years, with the hopes of creating something more permanent for the 2025-26 school year.

If a school is found to be struggling, it is required to develop an improvement plan that must be approved by local and state officials. Schools that don’t make progress for five years could face state takeover or closure — but it’s a route that state officials rarely took even before developing the current accountability system, which is meant to be less punitive for schools.

In the short term, over the next two years, state officials want to exclude certain science and social studies exams, as well as measures for student growth and college and career readiness, when deciding which schools need improvement. These changes are necessary, officials say, because schools are still missing a trove of data, such as enough student participation in state tests, because of the pandemic.

Already, the conversation is sparking some controversy. Some groups focused on education reform believe the move represents a step backward just as schools need more help as they recover from the pandemic. Other observers believe the state’s proposed plan is reasonable.

Ultimately, the federal government must sign off on these proposed changes, since the state’s accountability system is required by federal law and is written into New York’s federally required Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, plan.

“They’re doing a decent job of balancing what’s of interest in the state and the federal ESSA requirements, and incorporating all the instability and uncertainty that came with the slowdown of testing during the pandemic,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College and an expert in testing.

But Education-Trust New York, an advocacy organization focused on equity issues, worried that several of the proposed changes could mean masking “bright spots and disparities,” according to their written public feedback to the state.

“I think these next two school years are incredibly important for kids coming out of the pandemic,” said Jeff Smink, the group’s deputy director, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We have to both give them all the support they need but also hold them to high standards, and I just don’t feel like we’re doing that right now.”

What metrics would still be used?

Under the state’s proposal, schools will still be measured on English language proficiency (based on a state language exam for English learners), graduation rates, how well students are doing in core subjects based on Regents and state test scores, and chronic absenteeism. In New York City, chronic absenteeism has been a pressing issue, with 41% of students last school year absent for at least 10 school days.

What do state officials want to ditch (for now)?

The state wants to put a pause on measuring academic progress based on certain goals for student scores on state English and math tests.

State officials say they want to update these goals — first set in the 2017-18 school year — before they use them to determine whether schools are struggling.

The state’s proposed plan would also pause the use of “Measures of Interim Progress,” which more broadly measures whether schools are meeting goals for academics and other things, like their graduation rates.

For elementary and middle schools, officials want to pause how they’ve been measuring student growth, largely because of the lack of testing data. Typically, they calculated student growth using three years of testing data, but the pandemic caused big disruptions: For example, just one in five New York City children took state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when most children chose to learn from home.

For high schools, officials won’t consider college, career, and civic readiness metrics, which include advanced coursework or extra credentials in specialized jobs-based courses. That’s because the pandemic may have hampered students’ access to some of these programs or courses, officials said. They also worried that the pandemic’s impact on learning may have caused students to perform worse academically than they otherwise would have, such as on AP exams.

What will the state do with data, even if it’s not being used to evaluate schools?

State officials still plan to provide all of this data to schools for “informational purposes only” for the next two school years, they said.

Why do state officials want to exclude elementary school science exams and high school social studies assessments?

Science tests would be excluded because the state has changed who must take those exams. Traditionally, students in fourth and eighth grades take the state science test. However, only eighth graders took the test this school year, as the state prepares to offer the exam next year to fifth graders instead of fourth graders. That means they won’t be able to compare results equitably across elementary and middle schools that have different grade configurations.

Fifth graders will take the exam next spring. Asked why those scores won’t be taken into account for the 2024-25 school year, a spokesperson said that it allows districts to have “consistency and predictability” for now, as they attempt to rebuild the accountability system.

While calling it a “logical” move, Ed-Trust argued that excluding science tests “undermines the importance of science education” and worried schools will have less reason to focus on it. The organization suggested that the state should instead work with local districts to “ensure a smooth transition” to the new science assessments without entirely removing it as one way to measure student performance.

On the high school level, officials want to pause using social studies tests because of multiple exam cancellations in recent years. The state looks at cohorts of students, such as the graduating class of 2023, when considering how they performed on these tests, namely the Regents exams for Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government.

But students who will graduate this year couldn’t take Regents exams in 2021, when they were in 10th grade, because of the pandemic. U.S. History and Government exams were also canceled last year, when these students were juniors, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, with the state education department claiming there was material on the exam that could “compound student trauma.”

State officials have emphasized that this plan “in no way diminishes” the importance of science or social studies instruction.

How will schools be labeled if they need support?

The lowest performing schools are known as schools in need of Comprehensive Support and Improvement, or CSI. But the state won’t list new CSI schools until the 2025-26 school year because they identified a group of such schools this year under a tweaked system, and that process only happens every three years, officials said.

A total of 139 New York City schools were identified this year as in need of some level of improvement, with 83% of them listed as CSI schools, according to state data.

However, New York will identify schools for Targeted Support and Intervention, or TSI, next year, which must happen annually per federal law. Those are schools that aren’t meeting goals set for specific student groups, such as by race, economic status, and those with disabilities.

In one recent — and perhaps confusing — change, schools that are meeting or exceeding their goals are no longer called “Schools in Good Standing” and instead are now labeled by the state as schools identified for Local Support and Improvement, or LSI.

What will happen for the 2025-26 school year?

State officials plan to revamp the accountability system for the 2025-26 school year after collecting feedback from the public. The new plan will also incorporate any changes to the state’s graduation requirements, which could come as soon as the end of this year. The education department is rethinking the role of Regents exams in graduation, among other considerations.

Pallas said that the plan for the 2025-26 school year and beyond would still have to meet federal ESSA requirements and earn the buy-in of school district leaders — meaning that it likely won’t be “a dramatic break from the past.”

“It’s gotta be something that feels progressive but also comfortable,” Pallas said.

Thomas Wilburn contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

PLACE-endorsed candidates win nearly 40% of seats on NYC’s parent councils

2023-06-17T00:26:37+00:00

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Candidates endorsed by a polarizing group that advocates for screened school admissions won the majority of seats on about half a dozen parent councils this year, according to election results released Friday by the New York City education department.

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, endorsed 147 candidates across the city for local district council seats, with 115 of them winning their races. The group’s preferred candidates will make up nearly 40% of the Community Education Council members across the five boroughs, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Established in 2019, PLACE supports the status quo when it comes to academic screening policies that have resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. That includes keeping the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and expanding gifted and talented programs. The group generally opposes lottery-based admissions and paring back screened admissions to the city’s middle and high schools.

The Community Education Councils, or CECs, have the power to approve or reject school rezoning plans, pass resolutions about various school-related issues, and work with district superintendents. The 32 councils, which each have 10 elected members and two appointed by the local borough president, hold monthly public meetings.

There are also citywide councils for high school students, English learners, students with disabilities, and those enrolled in the city’s District 75 programs, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities.

This was the second CEC election where voting was open to parents citywide. To many watching races across the city, this year’s elections seemed more divisive than ever, with some candidates localizing culture wars playing out across the nation. CEC 2 winner Maud Maron, who co-founded PLACE and was previously on the District 2 parent council, told THE CITY, “Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” referring to lessons about Indigenous people who inhabited land before European colonialism.

With her victory Friday, Maron will again sit on a CEC that represents one of the most affluent swaths of Manhattan.

Some of PLACE’s ideas have found favor with schools Chancellor David Banks, such as expanding gifted and talented seats. The organization had Banks’ ear at the very start of his tenure, appearing on his schedule last March.

Some education advocates have grown concerned about PLACE’s influence, pointing to the views of some of their members, including comparing critical race theory, an academic framework about systemic racism, to Nazi ideology, as reported by THE CITY. Several candidates endorsed by the group backed away from that support during the election season.

PLACE wasn’t alone in endorsing candidates. A group called Parents for Middle School Equity, based in Brooklyn’s District 15 (which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and part of Sunset Park), appears to be ideologically opposed to PLACE. The group’s interest is in preserving the district’s middle school integration plan. But its influence fell far below PLACE’s: Less than a quarter of its endorsed candidates won seats across the city, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

A few districts appeared to be PLACE strongholds: Every person elected to the CEC in Brooklyn’s District 20, which spans Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, and part of Sunset Park, was endorsed by PLACE. All of the group’s preferred candidates also won seats on the CECs representing two large Queens districts — nine people in District 26 (which covers northeast Queens, including Bayside) and seven in District 28, where a controversial push to integrate its middle schools from Forest Hills to Jamaica was derailed by the pandemic.

Still, the Equity group’s preferred candidates outnumbered PLACE’s endorsed candidates in a handful of districts, including East Harlem’s District 4, Harlem’s District 5, Williamsburg’s District 14, and District 15.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that District 26 includes northeast Queens, including Bayside.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

College felt impossible to this student in foster care. Then NYC offered to pay.

2023-06-15T16:14:05+00:00

At the age of 16, Marowa, a Bangladeshi immigrant, entered New York City’s foster care system, after her parents had physically abused her for much of her life.

Two years and five foster homes later, Marowa fled to California to build a new life but returned to New York City by the age of 19, in search of stable housing and a familiar community. (Marowa said she does not have a legal last name.)

After she reluctantly re-entered foster care, a social worker asked Marowa if she knew that Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, could help her pay for college and other expenses.

“I was just thinking about surviving,” Marowa said. “I wasn’t really thinking about college.”

Last week — five years after that conversation — Marowa graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brooklyn College, with the help of the financial assistance that her social worker had described.

Marowa is one of 300 students who used the College Choice program this year to fund up to $15,000 of tuition, room and board, and $60 in daily stipends, according to ACS officials, who said that no eligible student who applied on time was turned away.

The program, announced in October, combined with other state and federal grants, covers all tuition and living expenses for these students. It was similar to other programs that preceded it when Marowa first entered college with some updates that aim to ease the burden on participants: College Choice doubles the daily student stipend and allows them to live on the same campus as where they go to school.

For the 2023-24 school year, the Adams administration has proposed keeping this $10 million initiative.

A more stable future for students in foster care

The program attempts to set up a stable future for students like Marowa, who might otherwise be unable to pay for college or incur student loan debt, even with federal and state grants. In New York City, the cost of higher education is not the only barrier: Last school year, 45% of students in foster care graduated from high school on time, compared with 84% of students not in foster care, according to state data. In 2019, before the pandemic and the loosening of certain graduation requirements, just one-quarter of youth in foster care graduated on time.

The city’s Fair Futures program, which advocates pushed the city to create in recent years, attempts to improve those graduation rates by linking students in foster care ages 11 to 26 with academic, career, and life coaching.

Even children who make it to college can find it financially impossible to stay enrolled, said Jess Dannhauser, commissioner for ACS. Dannhauser, who previously oversaw foster care agency Graham Windam, said he’d hear about students who dropped out of college because they couldn’t afford pricey textbooks or even doing laundry regularly.

“The things that came up both were expensive, and it was hard to be nimble to meet all those needs,” Dannhauser said of students’ experiences. “And it sends a message that they don’t belong there.”

In order to be eligible for College Choice, young people must currently be in foster care, earn a minimum GPA of 2.0, and apply for financial aid grants, such as the federal Pell Grant and New York State’s Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP.

Larger stipends and more places to live

Before Marowa used College Choice this year, there was “The Dorm Project,” which used a total of about $7 million to provide housing and tuition help to about 200 students in foster care last year who attended CUNY schools. ACS also provided $31 daily stipends to college students in foster care.

Marowa pictured on her graduation day at Brooklyn College.

College Choice ironed out a few wrinkles with the previous program, officials said. Unlike previous years, the program helps cover costs for students who attend any college, not just CUNY. Students also receive a $60 daily stipend — and will now receive that money for six months after graduation.

The old program provided year-round housing at certain CUNY dorms where the city had purchased space but not necessarily where students were attending school. In what felt like a particularly important change for children, College Choice allows them to live on the same campus where they’re enrolled.

“We heard from young people that they really wanted to live and go to school in the same place, that they wanted that choice, that they wanted to have the opportunity to go out of state,” said ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser in an interview. “And the College Choice program allows for that.”

The program is a positive start at helping students access college, but broadening the eligibility requirements would help many more students in need, said Chantal Hinds, a researcher focused on students in foster care at the Next100, a policy think tank based in New York City. Hinds noted that the program doesn’t benefit students who aren’t in foster care anymore but might still be struggling financially and mentally from their experience in the system.

She noted that Marowa could have been one of those teens had she not re-entered the foster care system after her time in California.

“If you’re in the foster system for a month or 12 years, you’re still impacted,” said Hinds, who was once an attorney for ACS. “There was still a significant portion of your life that was changed because of this experience.”

Marowa began receiving financial support through the old college aid programs and then switched over to College Choice this past school year, which meant her daily stipend doubled in size.

In college, Marowa changed majors twice before landing on English literature, which she fell in love with after being forced as a newcomer immigrant years ago to learn the language.

Marowa was one of the students who pushed ACS for better college assistance, and she continues to advocate on behalf of foster youth, both she and an ACS spokesperson said. She’s considering a teaching job offer, and has qualified for subsidized housing.

Once she becomes more financially stable, she’s hoping to fulfill a longtime dream: to become a foster mom.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC teachers union and Adams administration reach tentative deal on 5-year contract

2023-06-13T20:12:43+00:00

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New York City reached a deal with the teachers union for a five-year contract that includes annual raises, expands opportunities for virtual learning, and allows some remote work for certain employees, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The tentative deal for the United Federation of Teachers’ 115,000 full-time and 5,000 part-time education department employees includes 3% wage increases for the first three years, followed by a 3.25% increase in the fourth year, and 3.5% in the fifth year. The full contract would cost the city $6.4 billion, city officials said.

Starting salary for new teachers will jump from $61,070 to $72,349 by the end of the contract. In five years, the most experienced teachers will earn $151,271. The deal also proposes to cut in half the amount of time it takes teachers to reach a $100,000 salary — from 15 to eight years.

It also includes annual retention bonuses that will grow to $1,000 in 2026, for as long as an employee is an education department employee, and will be built into the system going forward. It’s the first time the union has negotiated such a payment, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, during a press conference announcing the deal.

“We’re saying to all of our titles and every member, whether you’re in the first year or your 25th year, New York City is saying that we appreciate you, we recognize the challenges that you take on every day and you will receive $1,000 every [year] for that,” Mulgrew said. [Mulgrew initially misspoke, and his statement has been clarified.]

The retention bonus is “a good strategy” for keeping teachers, said Melissa Arnold Lyon, assistant professor of politics and policy at the University of Albany, who has been following the UFT’s contract negotiations. Teacher turnover rates in New York City and elsewhere hit an unusual high after last school year, potentially exacerbated by the stresses of the pandemic.

“There are a lot of costs of trying to find and hire new teachers,” Lyon said. “If $1,000 helps you to keep a teacher, at least on the micro level, that’s worth it.”

The agreement is retroactive to Sept. 14, 2022, and runs through Nov. 28, 2027, city officials said. The wage increases follow the pattern of raises set by the February agreement with District Council 37, which includes cafeteria workers, parent coordinators, and crossing guards.

Many teachers expected that their union would follow suit and had expressed concerns given that the previous deals were not keeping pace with inflation, which has moderated somewhat in recent months but reached 6.5% last year. Teachers had complained that their responsibilities have only increased since the pandemic, as they continue to catch up students academically and socially from years of interrupted learning.

A virtual learning program to expand

The contract would expand a pilot remote learning project that allowed small schools to offer virtual courses — such as AP Chemistry — that they otherwise couldn’t because of staffing issues. This year, the program used federal funding to grow, reaching about 1,500 students across 58 schools, with 23 separate online courses outside traditional school hours.

Under the tentative deal, high schools, as well as schools that serve grades 6-12, could offer virtual courses after school and on the weekends starting in the next academic year, union officials said, though nothing would bar schools from creating tutoring programs, too. Those programs would be available to students who volunteer to participate, and would be staffed by volunteer teachers. A quarter of high schools would be allowed to participate next year, growing to all high schools by the 2027-28 school year. High schools must apply to participate, education officials said.

Courses might be offered at individual schools or through the central education department, and high schools must apply to participate, education officials said. Part-time remote teachers can apply to be part of their school-based remote program and work before or after the school day; there will also be full-time, centrally hired teachers for the other program.

Programs could vary, Gendar said. For example, a school could offer evening courses, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., for students who are missing classes because they’re working day jobs, she said.

Schools could offer non-traditional schedules for students and teachers who want them. If a teacher volunteers to work a virtual program in addition to their regular work day, they will be paid overtime, Gendar said.

During a press conference, schools Chancellor David Banks said the virtual learning agreement gives students more flexibility, noting that some benefited from remote learning during the pandemic.

“Students who were at risk of dropping out were able to continue their coursework on a schedule that works best for them,” Banks said of remote learning during the start of the pandemic. “This expands those types of opportunities across the entire system.”

The contract would also allow some employees, who don’t work directly in schools, to work remotely for up to two days a week. It was not immediately clear which employees that would include.

Another sticking point was over how teachers would get to spend an extra 155 minutes each week after school. The deal would allow them, as they did this year, to do professional development and parent outreach, and it added a new option for teachers to do other classroom work of their choice in that time.

Teachers have mixed feelings

The contract is not yet final. First, the union’s negotiating committee, composed of 500 members, along with its executive board and delegate assembly will decide whether to send the tentative deal to all union members for a vote. Union officials did not immediately provide dates for those votes.

Some teachers took to social media to criticize the deal, but pushing back against it could be an uphill battle. The union cannot easily pull off a work stoppage because a teachers strike would violate New York’s Taylor Law, which imposes significant financial penalties for public sector unions that strike.

Robert Effinger, a union chapter leader at the Bronx High School of Business, said the pay increases surpassed his expectations.

Although some educators hoped that the salary increases would exceed inflation, the union was hemmed in by the pattern set by unions that negotiated contracts earlier this year. But Effinger said he was glad to see the union negotiate a quicker path to higher pay, an issue he hopes will help retain more educators.

“One of the reasons people burn out in education is they feel like they’re doing a lot of labor that is not appropriately compensated,” he said. “Having an accelerated early track is better for keeping people in.”

Still, he said he’s eager to hear more details about other elements of the contract including increased teacher autonomy, a major part of the union’s campaign, which focused on burdensome paperwork requirements educators face.

The union plans to hold a virtual town hall for members on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

How to support LGBTQ students: New York education officials update guidance

2023-06-12T13:00:00+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ legislation, New York state education officials have moved in the opposite direction, issuing new guidance on Monday on how schools should support transgender and gender-expansive students.

The 42-page document includes a slew of information for schools, including the correct terminology to use for gender identity, or how to support students who are coming out at school or want to transition. It has information on students’ privacy rights — including in relation to their parents — and research about LGBTQ students’ experiences at school. It also outlines the laws that prohibit discrimination against students on the basis of their gender.

Many of these laws were created after the state’s initial guidance from 2015, said Kathleen DeCataldo, assistant commissioner of the state education department’s Student Support Service office. One of those laws is the GENDA Act, which in 2019 added gender identity and expression as a protected category to New York’s Human Rights Law.

The document also includes more information and resources for schools than the 2015 guidance. For example, the guidance released Monday includes 26 words schools should know in relation to LGBTQ students, such as misgendering. The older document had just eight words.

The document opens with results from a 2021 national survey conducted by Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, which found that nearly 82% of the LGTBQ student respondents reported feeling unsafe at school. More than two-thirds of those students said they felt unsafe was because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Two-thirds of the respondents said they heard homophobic remarks at school, and roughly 40% said they “often or frequently” heard transphobic words, such as “tranny” or “he-she.”

As other states pass laws that seek to curb the rights of LGBTQ people, officials in New York “understand the climate right now,” DeCataldo told Chalkbeat.

“That makes it even more important to be clear about what the law requires of schools, so this is the perfect time to really have this update,” she said.

As one of the first states to release guidance nearly a decade ago, New York was ahead of the curve on pushing schools to create safer spaces for LGTBQ students. But members of New York’s Democratic committee recently signaled that the state is not doing enough. In May, the committee passed a resolution that called for elected officials and the governor to create a statewide LGTBQ curriculum for public schools. Efforts to do so in the past have failed.

New York City’s education department has a social studies curriculum supplement that centers the voices of LGTBQ people. On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order that, among other things, prohibits the city from cooperating with out-of-state investigations into gender-affirming care.

State officials developed the new guidance with the help of a roughly 30-person advisory committee that included representatives from advocacy groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, and the Trevor Project, which focuses on preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth.

Allie Bohm, policy counsel for NYCLU and advisory committee member, praised the committee’s array of voices, including parents of transgender youth, lawyers who work in this subject area, school psychologists, and adults who had the experience of transitioning as children. She was especially glad that state officials asked transgender students themselves about their experiences to help shape the updated guidance.

The document quotes some of those students anonymously. For example, one student shared that it took about eight months to get a legal name change at school. “They will let you put in a nickname in the system,” the student said, “but teachers never really use it, especially in the beginning of the year.”

The state’s guidance cites a 2016 study that says LGBTQ students who felt discriminated against for their sexual orientation and gender expression got worse grades than students who reported fewer instances of harassment. Those students were also roughly three times as likely to miss school.

Bohm said her organization hears about different ways schools across the state have discriminated against transgender youth, such as people who were told they couldn’t use a bathroom that matches their gender identity. It’s less common to hear examples in New York City but not unheard of, she said.

“This is a document that really, clearly says from the state’s highest education agency, ‘We see you,’ to trans youth, and, ‘We support you,’” Bohm said. “To feel like your state has your back is incredibly powerful.”

Creating this guidance may also mean that students might not have to constantly explain themselves, said Kraig Pannell, director of the Office of LGBTQ Services for New York’s state health department and another advisory member.

“Regardless of how you identify or regardless of what your gender expression is, if you have to go in and explain and teach somebody something, that gets burdensome,” Pannell said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC failed to provide full services to 9,800 preschool children with disabilities last year: report

2023-06-06T09:30:00+00:00

More than one-third of New York City’s preschool children with disabilities did not receive all of the extra support they’re entitled to in the last school year, according to a report released Tuesday morning.

The report, by advocacy organization Advocates for Children New York, analyzes the most recently available city data for the 2021-22 school year. The figure represents an increase from the 2020-21 school year, when 30% of children, or about 7,800, didn’t receive all of their required services.

The data means that a child may have received some of their required speech therapy, for example, but no required physical therapy — services that are spelled out in an individualized education program, or IEP.

Among the 9,800 children — or close to 37% — who didn’t receive all of their required services:

About 6,500 children who required speech therapy — or about a quarter of children who needed monolingual speech therapy and a third of children who required bilingual services.
Nearly 28%, or 5,300 children, who required occupational therapy.
About 2,000 children, or nearly 26%, who needed physical therapy.

The report showcases a yearslong problem with the city’s public preschool system, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds: Programs struggle to provide all children with the services they need, as they are legally required to do. Young children’s access to these services might be more crucial now, since some of these students may have missed out on necessary services as infants and toddlers early in the pandemic, like tens of thousands of kids nationally.

The greatest disparity in who received services was based on language: Sixty-nine percent of children who required only English instruction received their services, versus 53.5% of those who needed to be taught in another language.

The racial and socioeconomic disparities were smaller. While 69% of white students fully received services, the same was true for 67% of Hispanic children, 65.5% of Black children, and 62% of Asian children. Sixty-seven percent of permanently housed students received services, versus 61% of homeless children.

The city’s data might actually “significantly” underreport the problem, the report said. The education department considers a child “fully served” if they received at least one session of all of their required services, the report said.

“A child whose occupational therapist quits in November and is never replaced, or a preschooler who waits six months for mandated speech therapy to begin because the DOE is unable to find a provider, is not fully served from the perspective of their parents and teachers, but they are left out of the counts above,” the report said.

In December, Mayor Eric Adams vowed to open hundreds of additional seats for preschool children with disabilities to ensure that all children get the seats that they’re entitled to. Advocates have praised that commitment, but it already is being tested. While the city has opened 700 new seats this school year for students with more challenging disabilities, about 300 preschoolers are still waiting for a spot, the report noted.

Having access to seats is a perennial issue. Last year, just over 1,000 preschool children who required a small special education class did not have access to those seats by the end of last school year, according to the report.

“We agree with the concerns of our parents and advocates that for far too long students with disabilities were excluded from programming and services,” Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city’s education department, said in a statement. “This administration is committed to righting this wrong.”

But the city’s commitment to open more seats doesn’t address the ongoing shortage of staff who can provide extra required services for these children, one significant reason why children are missing out on services, said Betty Baez Melo, director of the Early Childhood Education Project at Advocates For Children. The city contracts with outside organizations to provide many of these services, so Advocates For Children is calling on Adams to spend another $50 million to increase pay for those service providers and hire their own staffers.

Brownstein noted that the education department has expanded its own teams who provide services to preschool children, including hiring an additional 24 speech therapists, 23 occupational itinerant therapists, and 12 physical therapists.

The $50 million request from Advocates For Children would also go toward speeding up evaluations for children, another weak area the report cited. Nearly 16% of children, or 1,974, who were eligible for preschool special education services waited more than 60 days — the legal deadline — for a meeting to determine what extra services they should receive, according to the organization. That’s a similar rate to last school year.

Over the last three years, the education department has opened 21 Preschool Regional Assessment (PRAC) teams, which provide evaluations in addition to state-approved agencies that the city contracts with. This school year, staffers on PRAC teams had the option of working overtime, allowing more students to get evaluated — something they plan to do again next school year, officials said.

Still, education department officials said there are not enough agencies to meet the evaluation needs of preschool students, as more children have been referred for services since the pandemic. They plan to work with city, state, and federal government officials to ensure there’s enough funding to link students with necessary services.

While data for this school year is not yet available, the organization reported that it’s received many calls from families who have struggled to access services for their young children. One of those calls was from Terese, a mother in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn who asked to use her first name only for privacy reasons.

Her 4-year-old son required the help of a special education itinerant teacher, or an SEIT, who helps children like hers with disabilities inside of a general education preschool class. But in February, that teacher left her son’s preschool with no replacement.

Terese spent a month emailing the main special education contact in her district about a replacement teacher with no response, even taking days off work to deal with the issue, she said. Meanwhile, her son was talking less at home.

“The teacher started reporting to me that he was not communicating in the classroom,” Terese said.

Terese’s problem was not unique. According to the report, roughly 1,300 preschoolers, or nearly one in five children did not have an SEIT all last school year, even though their IEP required one.

Eventually Terese contacted Advocates For Children, which advised her to lodge a complaint through 311. After that, a special education official with her district responded, blaming the lack of a teacher on a staffing shortage. By mid-May, her son once again had an SEIT, she said.

“I felt all alone,” Terese said. “The DOE just left me to fend for myself with my child with special needs.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Diwali gains support to become a school holiday in New York and across the U.S.

2023-05-26T19:30:03+00:00

Efforts to make Diwali a New York state and federal holiday gained traction this week.

Such a change, which many of New York’s Indian Americans have hoped for, would impact school calendars every fall.

On Thursday, New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said his chamber plans to pass legislation that would make Diwali a state holiday. Also known as the “festival of lights,” Diwali is observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and some Buddhists as a celebration of light over darkness and good over evil.

Heastie said he expects the bill to pass before the end of the legislative session on June 8. The legislation also designates Lunar New Year as a holiday. (New York City schools already recognize Lunar New Year, though schools did not observe the holiday this year because it fell on a weekend. Absences were excused for children who celebrated on the following Monday, the education department told NY1.)

There is no set annual date for Diwali; it is dictated by a lunar calendar and falls in October or November. (The holiday falls on Sunday, Nov. 12 this year.)

“It is important to recognize New York’s rich and diverse culture,” Heastie, a Democrat from the Bronx, wrote in a tweet.

And on Friday, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, a Democrat who represents Queens, announced legislation that would make Diwali the nation’s 12th federal holiday. She was joined by many local officials, including New York City Council member Shekar Krishnan, the council’s first Indian American legislator, and schools Chancellor David Banks, who called the effort a “righteous fight.”

“The diversity of our city and country is what strengthens us, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the members of our community who are Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhists,” Banks said during Meng’s press conference. “And I think it’s really important that we show them through our actions that we value their heritage, not just with words and lip service.”

New Yorkers have pushed for years to make Diwali a school holiday along with other religious holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah and Eid al-Fitr. While the U.S. Census Bureau does not ask people what religion they practice, the agency estimated in 2021 that roughly 262,000 Indian Americans lived in the five boroughs. (That figure may include people who practice religions that don’t recognize Diwali and, inversely, could be missing people without Indian heritage who celebrate Diwali.)

Officials have so far declined to recognize Diwali. One complicating factor: The state requires districts to offer at least 180 days a year of instruction.

Mayor Eric Adams vowed on the campaign trail to make Diwali an official school holiday. Once in office, however, Adams and Banks decided in October to support state legislation that would make Diwali a school holiday in New York City by getting rid of Anniversary Day, or Brooklyn-Queens Day, which children get off in June.

It’s still unclear how state legislation would impact school calendars and whether it would compel employers to add it to their list of company holidays.

Heastie said the Assembly is still talking to “stakeholders as to how this affects the school year calendar.” A spokesperson for his office did not immediately respond to offer more information about the legislation they plan to pass or whether they expect the Senate to approve.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s Summer Rising program rejected 45,000 applicants, launching scramble for child care

2023-05-24T21:50:38+00:00

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Roughly 45,000 children have been shut out of New York City’s free, popular summer program, education department officials said this week.

The program, which runs between six to seven weeks for most students, provides academics during the morning and enrichment activities in the afternoon for children in grades K-8 across the five boroughs from July to August.

Like last year, a total of 110,000 seats were available this year, with a portion held open for students mandated to attend summer school. During a City Council hearing this week, the education department’s Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehra said there are 94,000 seats available for 139,000 applicants. Officials initially reported that 30,000 families did not receive spots.

It’s possible that some of the rejected applicants will have to attend the program anyway for academic reasons and will get a seat that has been set aside. Still, many of those families, who were notified earlier this month that they didn’t get seats, are likely scrambling to find summer programs for their children before the school year ends on June 27.

“The basic challenge is that demand outstripped supply pretty dramatically,” Vadehra told City Council members. “And so there’s different ways that could have looked, but we just didn’t have enough seats in the program for the number of kids and families that really wanted this program despite the fact that it is the largest summer program we’ve had – and the largest in the country.”

Two of those unsuccessful applicants were Alejandra Perez’s 5- and 10-year-old sons, who should have been prioritized for seats because they attend an after-school program run by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, through a community-based organization that helps oversee Summer Rising.

Perez, a lifelong East Harlemite, paid $2,250 last summer for six weeks of child care, which she can barely afford again this year.

But in mid-May, about three weeks after applying, she was informed via email that her sons, who attend a charter school in East Harlem, didn’t get in. While she can probably rely on a relative to care for her older son, she is scrambling to find free or affordable care for her 5-year-old.

“I am still trying to find a program,” she said. “By the act of God, maybe I’ll get an email like, ‘Hey, we found you a spot!’”

Some children with priority did not get spots

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio established the program two years ago with federal relief dollars as the city clawed its way out of the pandemic, attempting to provide children with a bridge back to school after remote learning. It differs from summer programs in the past: It’s open to any child, including those in charters and private school, not just those who are mandated to attend summer school.

The program, though bumpy with its initial roll out, has grown in popularity. This year, city officials made a couple of key changes to the application process. While still open to the same number of children, applicants were allowed to rank choices for Summer Rising sites instead of the first come, first served process last year. Additionally, students who attend after-school programs subsidized through the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, were supposed to be prioritized for seats, like Perez’s children. That’s in addition to students living in temporary housing, children in foster care, and children with disabilities who must have services year round.

Perez had ranked three Summer Rising sites close to her home. Perez said the application did not ask if her kids were in an after-school program. According to an education department spokesperson, Perez’s children didn’t receive a spot because there was likely a lot of demand at the sites she chose.

When she asked someone from the after-school program why her sons didn’t get into Summer Rising, they didn’t have an answer — except that none of the kids in the program who applied got in, Perez said. (A representative for their SCAN-Harbor Beacon after-school program did not return a request for comment.)

During the City Council hearing this week, officials said that just over half of the seats that have been filled went to students in the priority groups. Of those, 29,000 spots went to students who were in DYCD-run after-school programs, 16,000 went to students in temporary housing, 3,000 seats to children with 12-month individualized education programs, or IEPs, and another 1,000 to students in foster care. (Last year, Summer Rising had 12,000 students in temporary housing, 2,700 students with 12-month IEPs and 1,000 students in foster care.)

New seats won’t be added, but filled seats might open up

Vadehra said they’re not planning to add seats — emphasizing that this program is being supported by federal dollars that are set to run out next year — and there is no wait list for seats. But they are expecting an unspecified number of spots to open up, either because fewer students will be mandated to attend summer school or because families may decline a seat they’ve been offered. The education department is working with DYCD to figure out how to make families aware of empty seats in June and how they can apply for those, she said.

In the meantime, parents are scrambling to find options that seem few and far between — and too pricey.

Perez’s rejection email from the education department included a link to other DYCD programs that might be available. She said she has called every local community-based organization near her home for some type of programming with no luck.

“At this point I am just emailing everyone,” she said.

Tia Jackson, who lives in Central Harlem, knew she would potentially need to scramble for summer options if her son didn’t get into Summer Rising, so she signed him up for a YMCA program near her home. Her planning came in handy: Her son did not get a Summer Rising seat.

While he doesn’t fall into any of the priority groups, her son, who is autistic, also has an individualized education program. The YMCA program has staff who can assist him if he needs extra support, Jackson said. She will be reimbursed up to $2,250 for summer care expenses through the state’s Office of People With Developmental Disabilities, but that only ensures four weeks of summer programming for her son. He’s planning to visit his aunt in Florida for one week, and she will pay out of pocket for child care for an additional week.

She feels thankful for having a “Plan A and Plan B.”

“I feel like the way they rolled out the program to start was very late, and it wasn’t the best for working parents, typically because when you think about summer camps most applications for summer camp start in February and March,” she said. “We didn’t get the Summer Rising notification until April.”

The department spokesperson did not explain the timing of the Summer Rising application, except to say there are several factors that impact the timeline.

Both of Loretta Bencivengo’s children got into Summer Rising last year, likely because she submitted her application as soon as it opened during the previous first come, first served model. This year they didn’t get spots, said Bencivengo, who lives in Windsor Terrace.

The most affordable alternate option she’s found so far is with the local YMCA for a $5,000, eight-week program for both of her children, which she equated to two months of rent. Many places don’t have space this late in the spring, she said.

“All those slots are filled up in January and February,” she said of private programs. “If that’s the case, why not put this application out in November and December so that you can open an appropriate amount of slots?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC won’t slash school budgets at first, but mid-year cuts are still possible

2023-05-22T22:33:01+00:00

New York City schools won’t have to brace for budget cuts next school year — at least at first.

All schools will receive the same amount of money or more at the start of the 2023-24 academic year as they did this year despite some of the “fiscal challenges” facing the city, Chancellor David Banks announced on Monday during a City Council hearing about the education department’s proposed budget for next fiscal year.

But school budgets may not need the extra cushion this year. Unlike the significant drops over the past few years, the education department is projecting enrollment to largely hold steady next year, dipping by less than 1%

The move represents a shift from what happened last summer, when budget cuts tied to declining enrollment, sparked severe backlash, including a lawsuit, and forced schools to shrink staff and programming.

It also comes as Mayor Eric Adams has proposed cutting the education department’s budget by 3% next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That $30.5 billion budget is expected to include less spending on fringe benefits and cut a previously announced expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds.

The decision to start the new school year with steady budgets, however, doesn’t mean schools are completely immune from cuts. Banks said the city hasn’t yet decided whether schools will see cuts during what’s known as the “mid-year adjustment”— a practice put on pause this year using $200 million in federal COVID relief dollars.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s enrollment projections, and when the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, schools could lose money mid-year if they’ve enrolled fewer students than projected — or get extra money if they have more children.

“If a school has 500 students, but by the middle of the year, they’ve dropped down to 200 students, we’re not going to make the commitment today to say, ‘No matter what, there’ll be no adjustment even at that point,’” Banks said during the hearing.

That might leave some school leaders with tough decisions. While principals might get the same amount of money as last year, they may be hesitant to hire more teachers or create more programming in anticipation of losing money during the school year.

One the one hand, some city principals said they understand the city’s desire to bring funding more in line with enrollment to avoid big disparities in per-student spending between schools.

“There are schools that are serving many fewer students than they were five years ago, and the city can’t afford to just fund those schools endlessly,” said a Brooklyn principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

But on the other hand, the principal wishes that the education department would make it easier for schools to plan by promising budgets will not be cut more than a certain percentage in a given year rather than having to make educated guesses.

And even if a school does not have to return money later in the year, it can be difficult to use before the spending deadline, especially to hire staff. If a school has an unexpected surplus in January, “all of a sudden there’s a spending spree and it’s not effective and efficient,” the principal said. “It doesn’t help to get money in November or January if you needed to hire a teacher in September.”

Schools are expected to receive their budgets by the end of this month, said Emma Vadehra, chief operating officer for the education department. When principals receive those budgets, Vadehra said, they might notice cuts to individual funding streams, such as Fair Student Funding, which is the city’s main school funding formula. (Schools with higher needs and higher enrollment get more money under the formula.)

Such drops will be backfilled with “other funding streams” to hold budgets steady, Vadehra said. However, officials did not clarify how schools will be able to use those funds. While Fair Student Funding can be used to hire teachers, money from other pots can sometimes be restricted for other uses.

The education department plans to use funding from multiple sources to keep budgets level at the start of the school year, Vadehra said. That includes a $160 million in federal stimulus funds that had been announced previously, as well as money from the state, which has boosted dollars for districts through its own school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid.

Several council members raised concerns about education department programs that are relying on expiring federal stimulus dollars, including preschool programming and expanded summer programming. Vadehra acknowledged that the education department does not yet have a plan on how to fund these initiatives once the money runs out in 2024.

“This is a major challenge,” Banks said to council members. “I mean, there’s a lot of great programs — even as we came on board — that have been built off of access to these stimulus dollars. The stimulus dollars are going away. We’re going to have to work very closely together to try to figure this out.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC drafts plan to shrink class sizes, but changes won’t start next school year

2023-05-19T22:43:25+00:00

Many education advocates cheered when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last September a five-year plan to reduce class sizes in New York City’s public schools.

For the first year, however, the city’s education department plans to make no changes, according to a draft plan shared with reporters on Friday.

Under that plan — which is supposed to spell out how the city will meet the law’s new requirements — class sizes will remain the same in September. That’s because the education department says that enough of its core classes — an average 39% — for K-12 exceed the requirements in the law for the first year of the plan. (The plan only affects city-run schools, not charters.)

But, for future school years, education department officials are bracing for some big expenses to comply with the law. They estimate it will cost $1.3 billion a year for new teachers when the plan is fully implemented as well as about $30-$35 billion in capital expenditures to construct new spaces or reconfigure old ones.

The education department said it would gather feedback from the public and educators to determine the best way to shrink class sizes by 2028, when state law requires that the entire school system meet the new requirements.

The city teachers union — one of the entities that must approve the plan — blasted the education department’s effort, emphasizing that they will work with the state to ensure the city “fulfills its obligations” of the law.

“Meeting the new class size standards is going to require a real plan — and so far, the DOE hasn’t managed to create one,” said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “This document is missing a strategy for implementation and a targeted proposal for where and when new seats should be built.”

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer responded in a statement that the draft was created after consulting “extensively” with the unions, and they will continue to be able to share feedback.

“The tradeoffs involved in implementation are too important to be made behind closed doors and our entire community must be involved in informing these decisions,” Styer said.

The education department will begin collecting public comment on the plan, which is posted online, in June. Within two weeks of the end of that process, officials must submit the plan to the state education department for approval.

Here are seven things to know:

What are the new class-size caps?

Kindergarten through third grade should have no more than 20 children.

From grades four through eighth, classes should have no more than 23 students, while students in ninth through 12th grades can have up to 25 students.

That’s down from a previous cap of 25 students for kindergarten, and 32 students in the rest of elementary school grades, according to the teachers union contract agreement. Middle and high schools were supposed to be capped previously at 33 and 34 students, respectively, with a 30-student limit in Title 1 middle schools (where at least 60% of students are from low-income families).

What will change next year in terms of class-size reductions?

Nothing. State law requires 20% of the city’s classrooms be in compliance with the new state law each year, reaching 100% by 2028. According to the education department, an average 39% of classes meet the new requirements, meaning they expect to meet the state’s requirements for next school year. This includes elementary school homerooms, where children receive their core instruction, and core subject classes for grades 6-12 — meaning math, science, social studies, and English courses, including gifted and talented, integrated co-teaching, which includes a mix of students with and without disabilities, and accelerated courses.

Ninety-one percent of performing arts and gym courses are in compliance.

In year two, 40% of classes must comply, then 60% and 80% until the final year when all classes are expected to meet the targets (unless they get exemptions).

How will the education department shrink class sizes by 2028?

We don’t know the details yet, but the education department offered some clues in its plan.

From May to October, the education department plans to meet regularly with a working group that it convened this spring to gather feedback on how to meet the law’s new requirements.

Officials wrote that they will identify additional classrooms for space; work with the city’s School Construction Authority on the next capital plan, which lays out building plans for the school system; and would focus on high-poverty schools not meeting requirements, as required by the law.

Starting in November, officials will begin changing policies “and reprioritization of programming” in order to meet the class-size mandates. Officials did not immediately explain what sort of policies or programs would change. But before the law passed, Chancellor David Banks warned that the law could mean a cut in school services or programming because of the cost of creating more classes.

Who will be exempt from the class-size law?

Any exemptions must be approved by the chancellor, as well as the heads of the teachers union and the union representing principals and other administrators. Disagreements will head to arbitration, the law mandates.

Schools might be exempt because of space limitations, but the education department will have to show that they are working to resolve the issue through their capital budget plan. Schools that are overenrolled or ones in which they would face severe economic hardship to comply might get exemptions. (The plan offered no other information on this.) There might be exemptions for schools where they have insufficient numbers of teachers in subjects that are hard to fill, like bilingual math; the teachers union can negotiate higher class sizes for electives and specialty classes if the majority of a school’s staff approves the increase.

Does the law prioritize any particular schools in regards to meeting the new class-size mandates?

The law requires the education department to start with schools with high shares of students living in poverty. In its plan, the education department said that schools with the highest numbers of low-income students are more likely to have smaller class sizes.

Fifty-nine percent of classes meet the new requirements at schools with the most students from low-income families, according to education department data shared in the plan. In contrast, schools with the fewest students living in poverty have just 23% of classes meeting the new requirements.

Where else are schools more — or less — likely to meet the class-size mandates?

Schools with larger classes also hew closely to racial demographics. Roughly 54% of classes already meet the class-size targets at schools with the highest percentage of Black students compared to schools with the highest percentage of Asian and white students, where only about a quarter of classes meet the targets.

Three Brooklyn districts — Ocean Hill/Brownsville’s District 23, Crown Heights’ District 16, and District 18 in Canarsie/East Flatbush had the greatest share of classes at or below the caps, according to the education department data. These three districts have among the highest shares of Black students in the city.

Two Queens districts — Bayside’s District 26 and Flushing’s District 25 — along with Staten Island’s District 31 have the lowest share of classes that meet the targets. District 25 and 26 have the city’s highest share of Asian students, while District 31 has the highest share of white students.

Of the five boroughs, the Bronx might have the easiest time meeting the class-size caps, with 50% of its schools already hitting the targets. Staten Island could have the most challenges, with only 22% of its schools meeting the class size requirements.

Schools that have grades 6-12 or 9-12 are more likely to have smaller class sizes, the figures show, with about 44% of these schools already meeting the new class-size mandates. Only 30% of standalone middle schools meet the targets, followed by K-8 and K-5 schools.

What happens next?

The education department must collect public comments on the plan and then submit it to the state education department for final approval. The teachers and principals unions must also sign off on the plan, which must go into effect in September.

Next month, city officials are holding online public hearings for each borough via Zoom on the following dates, starting at 6 p.m.:

Staten Island: Friday, June 2

Queens: Tuesday, June 6

Brooklyn: Thursday, June 8

Manhattan: Tuesday, June 13

The Bronx: Thursday, June 15

The city will have two weeks to analyze the public comments before submitting its final proposal to the state.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

600 children would lose child care with end of free NYC program for undocumented families

2023-05-18T21:27:57+00:00

Angela and her family left their home in Colombia after her husband, a police officer, received multiple death threats amid rising violence in the South American country.

Along with thousands of asylum seekers, her family arrived in New York City in September. They made ends meet through her husband’s sporadic construction gigs, but Angela, unable to find affordable private child care, stayed home to watch her toddler son.

Then, through tips from other newly arrived Colombian mothers, Angela discovered a new city pilot program called Promise NYC, which in January began covering up to $700 a week in child care for low-income, undocumented immigrant families. In late March, Angela’s son, just shy of 2 years old, became one of about 600 children who received vouchers to enroll in subsidized day care or after-school programs that are otherwise unavailable to those without legal immigration status.

Angela has since started a part-time job cleaning, is taking courses that would allow her to work in construction, and is figuring out how to obtain legal immigration status. But that could all end on July 1, if the City Council approves Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget, which slashes the pilot program for next fiscal year.

“My child wouldn’t be able to share or he wouldn’t be able to learn and grow with other children in the day care that he is part of, and I would have to resort to finding alternatives that I’m not yet prepared for,” Angela said through a translator.

The move has confused program providers, advocates, and some City Council members, who described Promise NYC as successful and netting more demand than they expected. The mayor himself touted the $10 million initiative in his vision for early childhood education last year, but in recent months, advocates became worried that Adams would cut the program. Spokespeople for City Hall and the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, declined to explain the mayor’s decision.

”To take that away would mean, you know, possibly the family loses employment or a kid has nowhere to go during the day,” said Kimberly Warner, deputy director of legal, organizing, and advocacy services for the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, or NMIC, a nonprofit organization tapped by the city to help enroll children in Manhattan and the Bronx. “It would be very destabilizing.”

The mayor has proposed cuts across many city agencies, including about 3% of the education department’s budget, citing in part rising costs as more asylum seekers come to the city.

A group of about a dozen elected officials, including some City Council members and state lawmakers have called for the city to provide $20 million for the program next year, which would cover the same number of slots for a full year. Some are hoping for even more funding, as thousands of newcomer immigrants are expected in New York City.

In a statement, Queens Council member Tiffany Cabán, one of the lawmakers who pushed to create Promise NYC, said the program has been a “game changer.”

Without legal immigration status, undocumented immigrants have limited options for work, often turning to low-paying, under-the-table jobs. Nearly 29% of undocumented New Yorkers were living in poverty as of 2017, compared to 18% of naturalized citizens at the time, according to city estimates.

That means many likely struggle to pay for child care, but undocumented children typically don’t qualify for state or federally backed programs because they must be legal residents of the United States. HeadStart programs are an exception, but there are a limited number of seats, providers said.

Private care is pricey: In 2022, the median annual cost of toddler care in Manhattan was just over $17,800, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Three and 4-year-old children can attend many of the city’s free preschool programs, regardless of immigration status. But there are some programs within the city’s sprawling system, run through centers and by organizations outside of brick-and-mortar school buildings, that require children to be legal residents, including those that offer care past 3 p.m., advocates pointed out.

“That is the exact problem that Promise NYC was trying to resolve,” said Betty Baez Melo, director of the Early Childhood Education Project at Advocates for Children New York.

After advocacy from elected officials last year, City Hall agreed to launch the program. Adams even touted Promise NYC in his “Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City,” saying it would allow families to seek care “without compromising the confidentiality of their immigration status.”

The program was publicly announced in December 2022 and launched one month later, in mid-January. The four organizations charged with doing outreach and connecting families to child care are responsible for making sure families are eligible.

Warner, from NMIC, said she and her team were overwhelmed and “surprised” by the calls that immediately flooded in, mostly seeking care for kids ages 2 to 7 years old. They’ve enrolled 245 children across Manhattan and the Bronx and have roughly 150 people on a wait list. According to an ACS spokesperson, 600 children — the agency’s target — enrolled across all five boroughs by the end of April. Costs were fully covered for all but three children, the spokesperson said.

The Chinese-American Planning Council, which was tapped to oversee enrollment in Queens, has about 170 people on a waiting list, said Sumon Chin, the organization’s director of early childhood learning and wellness services.

Besides handling high demand, Chin’s organization also struggled to find child care options for infants and toddlers in certain pockets of Queens that are known as “child care deserts,” such as the Corona neighborhood. Along with keeping the program, Chin hopes the city will provide more funding so that each organization can hire more help, due to the demand and difficulty of the work.

Soneyllys, a mother from the Dominican Republic, enrolled her toddler son in day care through Promise NYC in February. Since then, she has noticed he’s talking and is generally more active at home. It also allowed her to work for the first time since coming to the United States two years ago, she said through a translator.

She worries that losing child care will make it difficult to get legal immigration status.

“I cannot afford day care, and I will not be able to give my child a better life because I don’t have the opportunity to find a full-time job that I can provide for my child,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Better pay and more hours: NYC Council leaders push for changes to 3-K, pre-K programs

2023-05-10T00:30:12+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

Leaders of New York City Council charged Mayor Eric Adams with failing to address problems that have plagued the city’s public preschool programs, and they made several demands to improve the system.

Speaking in the playground of a Lower East Side 3-K and prekindergarten center Tuesday, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, several of her colleagues, and advocates listed several items they want. That includes higher pay for workers in programs run by community-based organizations, paying preschool providers on time, improving outreach to encourage more families to enroll, and allowing community organizations to directly enroll families.

The push comes as budget negotiations are underway between the council and the mayor, whose $106.7 billion proposed budget would cut funding for the education department by 3%, or $960 million. That slashes a plan under former Mayor Bill de Blasio to further expand preschool for 3-year-old children, with the Adams administration pointing to at least 16,000 unfilled seats.

Speaker Adams blasted the mayor’s approach, describing the city’s early childhood education system as “broken” and “in full crisis mode.”

“As my colleagues in the council and the advocates here today have pointed out repeatedly, the city needs to correct its course to address the gaps in our system so we provide stability for this very critical sector,” she told reporters outside the program run by Grand Street Settlement.

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, flanked by council members and advocates, discusses changes they’ll demand of Mayor Eric Adams in order to improve the city’s public preschool system.

Mayor Adams’ first year in office has been marked by changes and sometimes chaos in the city’s early childhood education system. In addition to the cancellation of plans to expand 3-K, many providers have reported that the city has not paid them on time, which has left some programs in financial crisis and caused others to close. Despite the city’s promise to fix the problem, multiple council members said Tuesday that they’re still hearing of issues at centers across the city.

When the education department announced a bureaucratic overhaul, including moving hundreds of early childhood workers to other offices, those workers were left in limbo without clarity about what their new jobs would entail; the department later pulled back on that plan.

At the same time, the mayor has vowed to ensure the city offers enough seats to preschool students with disabilities, an issue that his predecessor failed to solve.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer credited the city’s outreach efforts, noting that applications for 3-K have increased by more than 20% compared to last year. The city, he said, has shifted 3,500 3-K and pre-K seats from “unfilled areas to areas of demand, which also includes shifting the types of seats offered to meet actual need.”

Styer added, “there is a misalignment of seats that we are tackling head on.”

Boosting worker pay at community-based organizations

For several advocacy organizations, boosting pay for teachers and other support staff is the most important issue to tackle. Better pay would mean retaining quality staff instead of losing them to programs or jobs that pay better, they argue.

Pay disparities are in part the result of the patchwork of programs that make up the city’s preschool system. Some programs are run by the education department, such as inside schools, while community-based organizations run others. Department staffers are unionized and are generally paid more than their counterparts working in community-based organizations, who tend to be women of color.

Four years ago, the city agreed to boost salaries for teachers at community organizations with a certified masters degree, to $69,000 a year by October 2021, matching the salary of a first-year teacher at the education department. The agreement didn’t include raises after that date, and it also meant a veteran teacher at a community-based organization made the same as a new education department teacher, said Gregory Brender, chief policy and innovation officer with Day Care Council.

Tara Gardner, executive director of the Day Care Council, shared an example of one disparity that still exists: An assistant teacher at a community-based organization earns 53% of their counterpart in public schools. Advocates like Gardner want pay for teachers at community-based organizations to match their years of service, as well as comparable pay for other support staff, such as paraprofessionals and custodians.

“They do the same work as staff at the DOE; the only difference is the building,” said Ayana Reefe, Head Start director for Grand Street Settlement, the community organization where Speaker Adams visited on Tuesday.

Council members will also push for $15 million to provide a longer school day and year for 1,000 3-year-olds. That funding — which would convert existing seats instead of adding more — would also include signing bonuses “to help attract and retain the necessary staff,” officials said.

Currently, many 3-K seats are only available between 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., which advocates argue don’t work for parents who work outside of those hours. In a recent survey conducted by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, one-third of more than 1,000 respondents said they were looking for child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Styer noted that there are 11,000 unfilled seats with longer hours that go beyond the school year.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said a survey from the Citizens Committee for Children included 160 respondents due to incorrect information. In fact, there were more than 1,000 respondents.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools grasp for support as some migrant students miss out on mandated English instruction

2023-05-09T10:00:00+00:00

Miriam Sicherman looks at her Google Translate app or her pocket translator an average of 25 times a day while teaching fourth graders at the Children’s Workshop School in Manhattan’s East Village.

For a recent lesson on internet safety, she translated her presentation into Spanish and Russian ahead of time for her five newcomer immigrant students who speak those languages, but then used her phone to look up words like “password” or “email address” to respond to their questions. In an eight-hour school day, she repeats this process over and over again.

On top of the translation apps, Sicherman takes Duolingo Spanish lessons in her own time and accepts occasional help from a bilingual student and a Russian-speaking teacher at another school in her building.

Still, it sometimes feels impossible to explain in-depth concepts in a language other than her own.

An estimated 14,000 asylum-seeking immigrant students have enrolled in New York City public schools, city officials said last month. Teachers are finding that many of these children are learning English at the most basic level, and some hadn’t attended school regularly before arriving in the United States. The students are legally entitled to extra support, but some schools are struggling to provide it.

Failing to meet the needs of English language learners is not a new problem. Since 2016, the state has placed New York City on a corrective action plan because the district has failed to adequately support English learners, including not providing required services for those with disabilities. The plan, which has been extended multiple times over the past seven years, requires the city to gradually provide more of these services.

For Sicherman, it’s crucial that her English language learners get the support to which they are entitled. But there is just one part-time English-as-a-new-language, or ENL, teacher who provides this support to dozens of students at her school. That means Sicherman’s newcomers are getting a fraction of the extra help they should receive, she said.

“I can make them feel comfortable and safe — that I’m doing my best with, and I think I am achieving that — but they really are entitled to much more than that,” Sicherman said.

Sicherman’s concern is one that potentially many educators share, as thousands of new immigrant families have sought refuge in New York City this year, from Central and South American countries, as well as from Ukraine and Russia.

In anticipation of students’ arrival, the city launched “Project Open Arms” in the fall to send a total $12 million to schools that enrolled six or more newcomer students living in temporary housing. Officials also said schools that have enrolled more students than expected have received another $98 million this year.

Still, some teachers say their schools don’t have enough funding to hire more staff who are equipped to work with newcomer English learners. Some schools have the money, but have struggled to find teachers due to a long-standing shortage of bilingual teachers. That leaves teachers like Sicherman feeling overwhelmed and at times unequipped to properly help these students.

As the city expects another wave of newcomer immigrant families, teachers and advocates are worried it will become even more challenging to support English learners without more help from the city.

The New York Immigration Coalition has heard complaints throughout this school year that students aren’t receiving their required services, said Andrea Ortiz, senior manager of education policy.

“We shouldn’t be allowing students to be just housed in places where they’re not gonna be given the types of supports that they’re legally entitled to,” Ortiz said.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said officials are working closely with schools to “assess any gaps in resources and to provide solutions as expeditiously as possible.”

‘It’s kind of demoralizing’

Sicherman’s school has been waiting months for more help.

Over each of the past five years, her school enrolled between six and 13 English learners, according to demographic records. This year, roughly 60 English learners enrolled, Sicherman said.

School leaders volunteered in January to accept more asylum seekers, the spokesperson said. A crush of newcomer immigrant students began coming in February, but even after the principal requested more staffing help from the education department, the school still had just one part-time ENL teacher, Sicherman said.

Budget records show that the school received about $64,600 in funding from Project Open Arms, which can be used to pay teachers overtime, cover teacher prep periods, and pay substitutes, among other uses related to communication with parents. It’s not clear when the school received those funds. The principal did not respond to a request for comment to discuss the school’s challenges this year or explain how that money was used.

As beginner-level English learners, Sicherman’s five newcomer students should each be receiving 360 minutes a week of extra help building English skills, per state regulations for grades K-8. But they are only getting 135 minutes, since the part-time ENL teacher can only work with them for 45 minutes during each of her three days at the school.

Officials did not answer why the school hasn’t received more staffing help. Superintendent Carry Chan, who oversees Manhattan’s District 1, where the Children’s Workshop School is located, has appealed for the school to receive another full-time ENL teacher, a spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that the school also has a classroom teacher licensed to work with English language learners, and suggested they could tweak programming and use that person so that students are getting more services.

Sicherman said she’s constantly trying to balance those students’ needs with those of the 16 native English speakers in her class. She translates many lessons and uses other tools, including donated Spanish flash cards. But it’s difficult to explain topics in-depth, such as the Irish potato famine, or have a conversation about it. She relies “completely” on Google Translate for her Russian student, with whom the language barrier is so thick that Sicherman worries the child won’t be able to tell her if she’s feeling unwell.

Even lighthearted moments are hard. Sicherman recently pulled up Google Translate to tell a few of her Spanish-speaking students that they were “being silly.” Her bilingual student stopped her: Using the app’s suggested word “tonto” would be like calling the children idiots, he said.

“It’s kind of demoralizing,” Sicherman said. “I wish I could be teaching these kids, and I’m really not teaching them.”

There don’t appear to be immediate consequences for schools or districts who are not providing legally required services to English learners. J.P. O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state education department, said the corrective action plan requires the district to submit multiple reports a year about how they’re improving support for these students. In response, state officials share “direction and guidance” on where city schools need to improve and meet regularly with district staff.

Some experienced ENL teachers are struggling this year

Even experienced ENL teachers say they’re overwhelmed by the arrival of thousands of new immigrant students.

Brooklyn ENL teacher Melanie is usually paired with middle schoolers. But this year, as more English learners enrolled at her Bay Ridge school and one of her ENL colleagues went on leave, she was also asked to work with children in grades 2-5.

Melanie, who asked only to use her first name because she was not authorized to speak with the press, found she was “really struggling” to help younger students, since she’s used to helping older children who know how to read and write at more advanced levels.

The school couldn’t find a replacement for the ENL teacher on leave, who returned a few weeks ago.

For most of this year, Melanie served roughly twice as many children in the “beginner” level as she usually does, many of whom haven’t attended school in a while and are learning various skills, such as how to use an iPad. She was providing the legally required amount of support to these children, but she doesn’t think they received enough individual help, she said.

“I know going into it, I am not meeting their needs,” she said.

One Brooklyn high school enrolled about 30 new immigrant students between February and April, causing classes for beginner-level English learners to fill up to the legal limit of 34, said Nathan, an ENL teacher at the school who asked only to use his first name.

The school, which is used to serving many English learners, is staying afloat for now. They’ve created new classes with existing staff, and they’re using some funding to pay one person overtime in order to be a “migrant students coordinator,” who is charged with creating resources for newcomer families.

But if they get another similar wave of students, he’s unsure if the school has enough funding to add another class for beginner-level English learners or even meet legal mandates.

“That would require a lot of creative budgeting,” Nathan said.

Asylum seekers are a ‘blessing’ for one Brooklyn school

Some schools, such as those with dual language programs, seem better set up to welcome newcomer immigrants.

Asylum-seeking families have “been a blessing” for one Spanish dual language program in Brooklyn, where the number of English language learners has doubled this year, said F.C., a teacher at the school who requested only her initials be used because she was not authorized to speak to the press. Typically, the school doesn’t attract many native Spanish speakers. This year, the surge in enrollment has given both English and Spanish speakers a chance to learn from one another.

As a former newcomer immigrant herself, F.C. has used her experience to connect with students. She comforted a student who would occasionally cry because he was struggling in class and missed home. She told him once, “I used to cry, too, because I didn’t understand what everyone was saying, and that motivated me to learn.’” He gave her a hug.

Most schools don’t have dual language programs. There are 245 such programs across all grades for general education students, covering 13 different languages.

While those programs are “set up well” for English learners, they don’t exist everywhere, said Councilmember Rita Joseph, chair of the council’s education committee, who used to be an ENL teacher. Looking ahead, she thinks the education department will have to “pivot” as more asylum-seeking families make New York City their new home.

“We’re gonna have so much that we can no longer have part-time [ENL] teachers,” she said. “That’s the only way you can stay in compliance.”

Sicherman’s school recently launched an after-school program for English learners, which doesn’t count toward their legally required support but is helpful, she said. Her principal also bought each teacher a pocket translator, which Sicherman has found more useful than Google Translate. Sometimes students use it to talk with each other while she uses her phone app.

Five days after Chalkbeat reached out to the education department about the issues at Sicherman’s school, she discovered that their part-time ENL teacher would soon be working with them full time.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New York state budget boosts school funding and allows more charter schools

2023-05-03T19:44:20+00:00

New York’s state lawmakers approved a budget this week that will usher in record funding for schools and a controversial plan allowing 14 charter schools to open in New York City.

The budget, finalized more than a month past the April 1 deadline, will increase aid for schools by $3 billion compared to last year. That brings the total state support for schools to $34 billion, with more than a third of that going to the nation’s largest district, New York City public schools. (Even so, because of city and federal funding cuts, Mayor Eric Adams is proposing to slash the education department’s budget by nearly $1 billion.)

The late budget caused frustration among local lawmakers and education organizations. Even though there was no dispute over school funding this year, local leaders were still waiting to know final details, such as how much they could expect to receive, said Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy and communication at the state’s Council of School Superintendents.

“It’s been aggravating that it’s dragged on without any apparent urgency,” Lowry said.

Unlike past years, funding was not a hot-button issue since lawmakers had previously agreed to significantly boost dollars for schools. However, in a surprising twist, charter schools emerged as a sticking point in final budget negotiations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to open more than 100 charter schools across the five boroughs was one of the final issues that lawmakers picked apart. They reached a deal last week to open just a chunk of the schools Hochul had proposed.

The day after the deal was struck, Hochul announced that she and Democratic leaders had conceptually agreed to a final budget.

Here’s a look at two big education highlights from the state budget:

‘Zombie charters’ allowed to open in the city

In 2019, New York City reached a state-imposed cap of how many charter schools could open across the five boroughs. That cap included 14 “zombie” charter schools, which have either closed or never opened.

As part of the budget, 14 of those zombies will be allowed to open in New York City, while another eight will be allowed to open elsewhere. The city schools can only open in districts where the total charter school enrollment is 55% or less than that of education department-run school enrollment, according to budget records.

Hochul’s original proposal was pared down in the face of significant pushback from teachers unions, lawmakers, and advocates, who argued that the state needed to prioritize more resources for traditional public schools, which have struggled with declining enrollment.

Many charter advocates applauded the compromise, allowing the sector to expand its footprint in the city. Some operators, who were pre-approved to open schools in 2019 after the city had reached the cap, are expected to receive priority if they reapply now for a zombie charter, according to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, one of two entities that can authorize charter schools to open. (The other is the New York State Board of Regents.)

Opponents to the proposal, including some local New York City officials, shared frustration.

“It took a month to convince the governor not to lift the cap on charter schools, which would pull vital funds from the traditional public school system, and even a month later, the governor insisted on reviving zombie charters,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said in a statement.

The city typically must cover rental costs for charters, but as part of the deal, Hochul agreed to use state funding to cover that cost.

School funding rises to record-high levels

The state’s $34 billion school funding plan includes a final, planned increase to Foundation Aid, the state’s main school funding formula that sends more money to higher need districts.

For years, boosting Foundation Aid was a contentious matter in Albany. While funding for schools increased under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he declined to fund Foundation Aid at the level the formula calculated for each district’s needs. After years of advocacy from policymakers, advocates, and lawmakers, Cuomo agreed in his final months in office to fully fund the formula over a three-year period.

Hochul agreed to stick to that plan, which was originally expected to boost Foundation Aid by $4 billion over that three-year period. That figure has grown by $800 million because of inflation.

New York City — which sends much of its Foundation Aid dollars directly to schools — will receive an increase of 5.5% in those funds compared to this current school year.

In total, New York City will receive $12.9 billion in funding for schools from the state — equivalent to 42% of what the mayor has proposed for the education department’s operating budget next year.

The mayor’s budget office projected receiving close to that from the state — about $12.7 billion — next year for city schools. But with drops in city and federal funding, Adams has proposed a nearly $1 billion smaller education department budget for next year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

14 ‘zombie’ charters would open in NYC under Albany budget deal

2023-04-27T18:59:58+00:00

After a four-year halt on new charter schools in New York City, state lawmakers have reached a deal to open 14 “zombie” charters.

The deal, struck Wednesday night between Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic leaders, would allow charter school operators to open 14 zombies — schools that closed or were never opened. Additionally, the state would cover rent for these schools, relieving New York City of the cost, said state Sen. John Liu, who is the chair of the state senate’s New York City education committee.

Since the city is required to pay rent for charter schools, this deal would leave little incentive for the city to co-locate these zombie charters with traditional public schools. Such co-locations often drum up opposition from the public and the schools involved.

The deal is not yet law; it is expected to be part of the state’s final budget approval, which is now 27 days late. The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The state education department and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute have the authority to award charters to prospective operators in New York. Spokespeople for both said they needed to review the final proposal.

SUNY approved charters for six schools in 2019 that couldn’t open because the city had reached a state-imposed cap on charter schools in the five boroughs, said spokesperson Michael Lesczinski. If the deal goes through, SUNY would open a new request for proposals for newly available charters. While those six already-approved schools would have to submit updated materials including “budgets and evidence of ongoing community outreach, support and demand,” they would be first in line for consideration, Lesczinski said.

“I’m glad that the governor and the legislature were able to find some common ground on this,” said Arthur Samuels, who co-founded MESA Charter High School in Bushwick. The organization won pre-approval in 2019 to open a second high school in Brooklyn, but were blocked by the charter cap.

While overall enrollment in the charter sector has increased, many individual schools, including some of the biggest networks, are logging fewer students — meaning that opening more charter schools could lead to smaller budgets or even closures among traditional district schools and existing charters alike.

But Samuels said he will move to open a second school if possible and is waiting for guidance about how the approval process will work.

“There is a demand for the type of education we’re offering, which is responsive and community-centric,” he said. “We see that as something that people want even as the number of school-age children in the city declines.”

Hochul’s push for more charter schools in New York City emerged as one of the last items holding up the overdue state budget — and her keen interest puzzled many following the issue, given the significant opposition she has faced from the start. Her pitch, which was part of her budget proposal in January, came four years after the city hit the charter cap. At the time, a handful of charter operators were approved to open schools if the cap was ever increased, including the six by SUNY.

At first Hochul’s original proposal, which could have allowed more than 100 charter schools to open in New York City, seemed dead on arrival. It drew immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers, unions, and advocates, who argued that city resources should be spent on traditional public schools, which are seeing enrollment declines and are still facing pandemic-related challenges.

Hochul has argued that she wants more school choice for parents, particularly those who are on waitlists for charters. She has also received campaign contributions from supporters of charter schools, and indirect support from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Times reported last month.

Hochul has also received donations from teachers and principals unions, which have strongly opposed the expansion of charter schools. In a statement, Michael Mulgrew, president of the city teachers union, accused Hochul of listening “to the demands of a handful of billionaires,” despite the charter sector’s enrollment challenges.

Last month, the state Senate and Assembly formally rejected the proposal in their response to Hochul’s budget plan, and even three weeks ago, the topic wasn’t a part of budget negotiations, according to multiple state lawmakers, who said the focus was on other hot issues, such as bail reform.

But this week, Hochul presented Democrats with a compromise: allow just the 22 existing zombie charters to open. Liu opposed that plan, too, largely because several of those charters were issued outside of New York City but would have been allowed to open within the five boroughs.

But on Thursday, Liu said he agreed to this latest deal because the 14 zombie charters in question all exist in New York City, and it would not involve lifting the charter cap.

“The firm agreement is no increase or no elimination of the New York City cap, which is clearly the right policy going forward because you have to strike the balance between the desire for some charter choice and the need for the city to keep public schools open,” Liu said.

In a statement, City Hall spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said, “As all New Yorkers, we are still awaiting final budget details, but we always appreciate and welcome Albany’s support to meet the needs of New York City’s children and families.”

Charter school advocates applauded the deal, which is significantly pared down from what Hochul originally proposed.

“[Hochul] understands that having both a strong and growing charter sector makes all of our public schools stronger and better able to meet the complex needs of our students and families,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, in a statement. “For years, leaders, including many of color, have been on hold to open innovative new schools in NYC communities – this deal will finally allow 14 of them to open their doors.”

Crystal McQueen-Taylor, president of StudentsFirstNY, said in a statement that “the Governor’s tenacity and persistence made all the difference.”

But not everyone was pleased. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the city’s largest charter network, called the deal a “travesty,” in a statement. Albany has “bargained away … access to high-quality schools,” for low-income students of color since the deal would open just 14 schools, she said.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

NYC’s education budget could drop by $960M next year under mayor’s proposal

2023-04-27T00:19:25+00:00

The city’s education department budget would drop by nearly $960 million next school year under a more detailed budget proposal released by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday, though city officials did not offer specifics about the impact on individual campuses.

Two-thirds of that cut, or $652 million, is the result of Adams’ decision to reduce the city’s contribution to the education department. Another $297 million is from a drop in federal funding, which is drying up as pandemic relief programs end.

Part of the city’s cut is tied to a mandate from the mayor earlier this month calling on city agencies to cut spending, including at the education department. That raised questions about whether schools would take a hit, but on Wednesday, Adams vowed that this specific cost-saving measure “will not take a dime from classrooms.”

Instead, that reduction — totaling $325 million — will largely come from recalculations on how much the city spends in fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. (Officials emphasized this would not result in a loss of benefits or other services.)

“We had to make tough choices in this budget,” Adams said Wednesday. “We had to negotiate competing needs. We realize that not everyone will be happy but that is okay because that is how you get stuff done.”

The education department’s operating budget would total about $30.5 billion next year under the mayor’s plan, down by about 3%.

Some of the cuts were previously announced, including the elimination of a planned expansion of prekindergarten for 3-year-olds. Other impacts of the cuts may come into focus in the coming days as experts and journalists pore over reams of budget documents, which were released late Wednesday afternoon.

Adams has argued school budgets should reflect falling enrollment, but city officials declined to say what overall change they expect to individual school budgets next year. That question is likely to draw intense scrutiny after the City Council was heavily criticized last year for approving a budget that resulted in cuts to many campuses.

After the pandemic hit, Mayor Bill de Blasio used federal relief money to keep school budgets steady even as enrollment plunged. But as the spigot of federal money is drying up, Adams has started reducing budgets to line up with the number of students enrolled at each school, resulting in cuts on the majority of campuses. (Since the start of the pandemic, enrollment dropped about 11% in K-12.)

Next year, Adams plans to use $160 million of federal money to avoid deeper cuts to school budgets. Officials anticipate a much smaller enrollment decline than in recent years, which could insulate schools to some degree.

The budget is not final and must still be negotiated with the City Council. A final deal is due by July 1.

The proposed budget also includes funding for various other items, including services that advocates had been pushing for the mayor to include. Those are:

$3.3 million for keeping a chunk of the city’s new shelter-based coordinators, who are supposed to help families and children who are homeless navigate school enrollment and transportation. The funding for these coordinators was set to run out this June.
$9 million for a telehealth program for high school students who need mental health support.
$2 million for training up to 1,000 teachers in climate education.

The mayor’s budget received a mixed reception from advocates, union officials, and budget experts. Kim Sweet, executive director at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, praised the funding for shelter coordinators, but raised alarms about broader spending cuts — including to a program that provides extra mental health services to students at 50 high-need high schools, and another that provides free child care for undocumented families.

“We are concerned that the Mayor is proposing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from our City’s schools at a time when there are so many unmet needs,” Sweet said in a statement, including high rates of chronic absenteeism and shortages in services for students with disabilities.

Still, Adams has argued that the city needs to tighten its belt due to costs associated with serving an influx of asylum seekers and potential economic headwinds.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the budget watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, said her organization is worried the city isn’t properly planning now for big budget shortfalls that are expected in future years. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars of federal relief funding for the education department that will disappear in 2024 and could leave several programs and services unfunded.

“From our point of view there is still a major challenge fiscally for the city that’s not far off,” Champeny said. “We really should be taking action now.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Charter schools emerge as key issue holding up New York’s state budget

2023-04-25T22:14:53+00:00

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s controversial proposal to open more charter schools in New York City is one of the final issues holding up the passage of a state budget, officials said Tuesday.

The budget is nearly a month overdue.

Originally, Hochul wanted to allow more than 100 new charters to open in the five boroughs, by lifting a cap on such schools and releasing “zombie” charters for defunct or never-opened campuses.

After pushback from state lawmakers, Hochul floated a scaled back version, reviving just 22 zombie charter schools for the city, said Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who is the chair of the state senate’s New York City education committee. Half of those zombie charters are located outside of the city, he said.

(Politico reported that the proposal also calls for the state to cover rent for newly released zombie charters.)

Even that proposal has been met with opposition. Hochul told reporters Tuesday that charter schools remain a difficult topic.

“I’m trying hard to overcome the objections, but this is a very challenging issue because of the emotions on both sides of the debate,” she said.

Lawmakers, union officials, and many advocates and families have argued that opening more charters will add to expenses for the city when it should be investing more in traditional public schools, which have lost enrollment. In March, both the Senate and the Assembly officially rejected the proposal.

Charter supporters, who have long pushed for the state to lift the cap in order to expand their footprint, cheered her idea. Hochul has emphasized that she’s attempting to offer more school options to families, including Black and Latino families who are on waitlists for charters.

Overall enrollment in the charter sector has ticked upwards, but it has dropped at many individual schools, including some of the biggest networks. That means opening more such schools could lead to smaller budgets or even closures within the charter sector.

The budget, which was due April 1, has been unresolved for weeks due to disagreements over various hot issues, including bail reform and affordable housing. Charter schools were not a focus of negotiations even three weeks ago, according to both State Senator Shelley Mayer, who chairs the Senate’s general education committee, and Assemblywoman Jo Ann Simon.

In an interview Tuesday, Liu said his committee reviewed Hochul’s new proposal, but it remains “a non-starter.” It would be reasonable “if there were absolutely no charter seats available in New York City,” he said, adding there is “no rationale” for it now.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Timeline fast tracked for rethinking Regents exams and other grad requirements

2023-04-17T21:21:26+00:00

The fate of New York’s storied Regents exams — and other changes to high school graduation requirements — may be decided sooner than anticipated, state education officials confirmed Monday.

After years of discussing how New York’s graduation policies should change, officials launched a special commission last year to present recommendations to the Board of Regents by the spring or summer of 2024. Their findings are now expected in November, Deputy Commissioner Angelique Johnson said at Monday’s monthly Board of Regents meeting.

That moves up the timeline by at least a few months, though a spokesperson for the state education department did not immediately say how long the board would take to deliberate over the recommendations or when new diploma requirements might go into effect.

The state’s reconsideration of graduation requirements is perhaps its most high profile effort in recent years. It has caused substantial debate and discussion over what students should be required to know before they leave high school.

The big question is what officials will decide to do with New York’s Regents exams, which have been offered since the 1870s and are required of most students to earn their diplomas. New York is in the minority of states that still require such exit exams, and research has found little evidence that high-stakes graduation exams improve student achievement.

The 64-member commission, which includes educators, district leaders, advocacy organizations, and some researchers, has been discussing other things they think should factor into graduation requirements, including what skills employers are looking for.

The commission began meeting in fall of 2022 and were told a few months later to fast track their recommendations, but multiple commission members told Chalkbeat they didn’t recall the reasoning behind the change. The commission is expected to meet over three days in July to begin finalizing their recommendations.

Dia Bryant, executive director of Ed-Trust New York and a member of the commission, said she’s concerned that her fellow members and others advising the commission, such as students, parents, and educators, will feel pressed for time and may forgo sharing feedback about potential policy changes that will be floated.

She’s also concerned about how the public will get to review recommendations before the Regents consider changes.

“There is depth to each of those spaces that I think needs room to breathe so that we can actually develop recommendations that will sort of be both relevant and important, not just in 2023 but in the future, because these policies are so important,” Bryant said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Summer Rising applications are now open. Here’s everything you need to know.

2023-04-14T20:30:55+00:00

Applications open Monday for New York City’s free, sprawling summer program for children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The program was first launched in 2021 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, using federal COVID relief money, as a way to help children ease into school following remote learning. The rollout of the program was bumpy, but for the first time, it provided a mix of academics and enrichment activities to many children beyond those who are mandated to attend summer school.

In its third year, the program will again have 110,000 spots and will be open to any child in New York City, including children who are home-schooled or attend charter or private schools.

But a couple things will be different from last year, including the application process. Spots won’t be assigned on a first come, first served basis this year; instead, parents will rank multiple choices. In another change, students who already attend a school associated with a Summer Rising site will be added to the list of groups receiving priority in selection for that site.

Parents who want to apply should visit this website when the application opens on Monday.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s Summer Rising program:

Where are the programs, and when will Summer Rising start?

Programs won’t be in every school. Rather, each school will be associated with one of 374 sites across the five boroughs.

The program length will depend on a few things. Programs will run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 5 to Aug. 18 for children in kindergarten through fifth grade and until Aug. 11 for middle schoolers.

Students with disabilities who have yearlong individualized education programs, or IEPs, will attend programs from July 5 to Aug. 14, from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Students at District 75 schools, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities, will attend programs that run from July 6 to Aug. 15, also from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Students in Nest and Horizon programs, which serve students with autism, who have 12-month IEPs, will attend a monthlong program from July 5 to Aug. 1, from 8 a.m. to noon.

What will my children do?

Generally, students will spend the morning on academics and then in the afternoons participate in enrichment activities, such as sports, arts and crafts or going on field trips. Elementary-age children will spend the last week of their program on enrichment activities and trips, according to the education department website. (Enrichment activities are run by community-based organizations.)

Students with disabilities will receive extra services that are mandated in their IEPs, including services from health and behavioral paraprofessionals, according to the department’s website. For these students, their school will create an accommodation plan for the summer that will be provided to their parents and the Summer Rising site before their program begins.

Students with disabilities are supposed to receive services “as needed” during the enrichment portion of the day, according to the department’s website. If a family doesn’t want the enrichment portion, they should contact their child’s school instead of using the online application. These children can choose on the application to participate in extended-day enrichment programming until 6 p.m.

Last year, several families reported that their children did not have special education support by the start of Summer Rising, said Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children. She said it’s “important that planning begin early” so that students aren’t left without the services they need.

Will my child get transportation to the program?

Generally, students who are already eligible for busing during the school year — typically in grades K-6 — will receive busing to their summer program but not past 3 p.m. This includes students with disabilities whose IEPs recommend busing, as well as students in temporary housing and students in foster care who are more than a half-mile away from their Summer Rising site.

For children who want to participate in programming until 6 p.m. and need transportation, families will have the option of a prepaid rideshare service. However, a caregiver must take the rideshare service to and from the summer site to pick up their child, which some advocates have said is not manageable for working parents.

Eligible students who receive MetroCards during the school year can also get MetroCards from their Summer Rising site, or if their site is more than a half-mile from their home.

Students who are not eligible for busing during the school year could receive transportation if their regular school is not open for Summer Rising and their site is more than a half-mile away.

How will the application work?

Seats rapidly filled up last year, quickly elbowing out many families who wanted to apply, according to some advocacy and community-based organizations.

This year, instead of the first come, first served model, families will be asked to rank up to 12 choices for program sites, “ensuring that more families receive placements that work for them,” according to a news release.

Like last year, priority will be offered to students in temporary housing, in foster care, who are mandated for summer school, and with disabilities who have year-round individualized education programs. But also, students who have a “local connection” to their school will also be prioritized, such as if they attend the school during the year. Last month, city officials said students who attend city subsidized after-school programs will also be prioritized.

Asked how these groups will be ranked, an education department spokesperson said they’re aiming to give every child in a priority group access to their first choice.

The application will close May 1, and families should be notified the following week of where their child will attend the program, according to the department website.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC is expected to spend $38K per student, budget watchdog calls for prioritizing ‘critical services’

2023-04-11T04:01:00+00:00

Buoyed in recent years by billions in federal stimulus dollars, New York City is slated to spend about $38,000 per student next school year — the most in recent history — as enrollment is again expected to drop, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The report, from Citizens Budget Commission, or CBC, a budget watchdog group, comes as the education department faces 3% in cuts for next year. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council are in the middle of budget planning for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Many of the CBC’s findings focus on the period from fiscal year 2016 through 2022, since the current fiscal year, 2023, isn’t over yet. Some of the report’s highlights include:

In that time period, the education department’s spending per pupil has increased by 47%, in large part due to the $7 billion in federal COVID aid the district received as enrollment has dipped. Three school years from now, in fiscal year 2026, CBC projects the city could be spending as much as $44,000 per student.
Spending grew the most in three areas: early childhood education, at 65%, covering private school tuition, such as for students with disabilities, by 79%, and for charter schools, by 84%. This was fueled by enrollment growth in these specific areas.
Spending related to schools, such as for instruction, grew by about 34%. Spending on school services, such as transportation, food, and safety, grew at a similar rate.
Spending on school support, such as special education instructional costs, grew by about 15%. And spending on central costs, including central administration, fringe benefits, pension contributions, and debt service, saw the slowest growth – by 8%.

CBC called for officials to prioritize programs and services for next year that are most effective and shed others. It also notes that the city faces financial pressures over the next several years, which the Adams administration has also emphasized as they’ve imposed stricter savings targets on city agencies. Those challenges include labor costs that will stem from new union contracts, including with the United Federation of Teachers, and a potential recession.

“We can’t do everything for everyone, so we need to start focusing on the most impactful interventions,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City spends the most per pupil among the nation’s largest school districts. That cost grew as federal dollars were poured into the school system and enrollment dropped significantly after the onset of the pandemic. Dips in enrollment are likely due to several factors, including demographic changes and the cost of living in New York, which are leading many families to find homes elsewhere.

Roughly one-third of the department’s spending growth between 2016 and 2022 was due to federal pandemic aid, which is set to run out by 2024, CBC’s report found.

Advocates and educators have decried the potential cuts to the education department — amounting up to $421 million — as students continue to struggle with a host of challenges, including mental health, chronic absenteeism, and recovering academically after remote learning. Cuts to school budgets this school year resulted in some schools losing teachers, having larger class sizes, and cutting some programming, such as art and music classes.

Research has found that more money usually leads to better schools. New York, however, is in a puzzling situation: Despite being the leading state in spending per pupil, students score in the middle of the pack on national math and reading tests.

It’s possible to make cuts through central or support costs, such as through transportation contracts, and “avoid cuts to school budgets,” the CBC report notes.

While CBC doesn’t make specific recommendations, Champeny said such cuts could mean negotiating cheaper transportation-related contracts. The department could also look for ways to reduce private school placements for children with disabilities, commonly known as “Carter Cases,” a cost that ballooned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues to grow.

More immediately, however, the group called on the department to be “transparent” about the future of a slate of programs that are currently relying on federal pandemic relief, which other organizations and advocates have also pressed for. These programs include expanded summer school, new prekindergarten seats for students with disabilities, and screening for dyslexia and other literacy programs – an area that Adams is increasingly making one of his signature projects.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said, “This Administration has been open and honest about the long-term combined challenges of declining enrollment, programs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars, and rising costs tied to unfunded mandates from the State.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC officials pause school device tracking project

2023-04-07T11:00:00+00:00

New York City’s education department is hitting pause on a sprawling effort to count up electronic devices in all schools and central offices, officials confirmed this week.

The yearlong project, launched last June, had reached just half of city schools before it stopped on March 20. The effort involved 26 teams of five people each who were supposed to visit all district and charter schools and central offices to count up all kinds of technology. That included tablets, laptops, desktop computers, printers, and smartboards.

The novel effort — known as the Central Inventory Project — came after the city had purchased an estimated 725,000 devices over the course of multiple years for remote learning during the pandemic, costing about $360 million.

The ultimate goal of the project was to help schools conduct annual inventories on their own, officials said. But they halted the project last month because of feedback from schools and a decision to review the information they’ve collected so far, according to a department spokesperson. The spokesperson added that the project would not be done by the end of the school year, as originally planned.

She did not immediately share what sort of feedback they received from schools. In a recent newsletter to its members, the Council for Superintendents and Administrators, or CSA, wrote that they shared school leaders’ “negative experiences” from the project with the education department, and “ensured that principals would not be disciplined or penalized for missing devices.”

“Since the project was announced, we escalated school leaders’ concerns about the potential disruptions these visits might cause and shared our opinion that the time and money involved would be better spent elsewhere,” said Craig DiFalco, a spokesperson for the union.

Officials will review the data they’ve collected so far “before determining how and when the project may proceed,” the education department spokesperson said.

Educators who previously spoke with Chalkbeat praised the effort to find schools devices — a key concern of former City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who noted in multiple reports that the department failed to have a centralized tracking system for computer hardware. Many of the 725,000 devices purchased for remote learning during the pandemic have been difficult to account for or track down, as they are supposed to follow the student from school to school, those teachers said.

However, they also shared that the project had hiccups. For example, students forgot to bring their iPads or laptops into school on the day of the scheduled inventory visit, and those devices were then marked as missing. One teacher in Brooklyn said a team that visited his school failed to count up any of the printers in his room.

Both teachers also noted that leaving the inventory process to schools can be hard on staff, especially when there is no technology coordinator on site.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC extends deadline for youth jobs program. Here’s what to know.

2023-03-31T17:58:09+00:00

This story was updated to reflect the new deadline.

New York City extended the deadline for its Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which provides paid jobs and career exploration programs for young people ages 14-24.

Young people have until April 14 to apply, officials announced Friday.

This year marks the $236 million program’s 60th year and will again be open to 100,000 young people – making it the largest public youth jobs program in the nation. The program will run between July 5 to Aug. 12 and from July 12 to Aug. 19.

One new feature this year is an effort to pair LGBTQ youth with affirming jobs, though specifics are scarce. Officials said they’re still working on the details based on how much interest they get, which can be marked on the application.

City officials also plan to nearly triple the number of slots for a small program that offers paid opportunities for youth who are undocumented.

How do I apply?

Youth can apply online here.

The types of programming and pay depends on the participant’s age. Dozens of community-based organizations oversee programming and find work sites that are willing to host youth workers.

What kinds of opportunities are available?

Younger youth, who are 14 to 15 years old, spend 12.5 hours a week gaining work readiness skills and learning about different careers. They also participate in project-based learning, which often involves finding a problem in the surrounding community and creating solutions. These teens are paid up to $700.

Youth ages 16 to 24 are paired with jobs through one of dozens of community-based organizations. Those organizations line up work sites, such as retailers or local businesses, that are willing to host youth workers for the summer. These young people are paid the city’s minimum wage rate of $15 an hour and work 25 hours a week – meaning they can make up to $2,250 by the end of the program.

Work sites range between public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Last year, a majority of jobs – 45% – were in the nonprofit sector. Private jobs were most commonly in retail, followed by day cares and camps, hospitality, tourism and health care, according to a report on last year’s jobs program published by the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP. Other opportunities included jobs in media and entertainment, business and finance, arts and recreation, real estate and technology.

In the public sector, about 4,600 youth worked last year for the education department, such as working with staff, in school kitchens, and in maintenance. In the public sector, nearly 4,000 youth last year worked for city agencies or mayoral offices. Nearly 120 youth worked for City Council members.

Applicants are asked to list their top three career choices and the provider they want to work with.

Am I guaranteed a spot?

No. The program has 100,000 open slots, but applications typically exceed that number. DYCD has received more than 126,000 applications so far, according to an agency spokesperson. Last year, the agency received roughly 167,000 applications.

Once applications are submitted, youth are chosen through a lottery system.

However, some young people who might be facing certain barriers to employment don’t have to go through the lottery system and can be directly referred to the jobs program through a city agency they’re working with. This includes youth who are homeless, in or aging out of foster care, are involved with the court system, and in families that are receiving preventative services through the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, such as support for mental health needs, substance abuse, and domestic violence.

Just like other young people, these youth also participate in either career readiness programs or are paired with jobs through a program called SYEP Emerging Leaders.

I am undocumented. Am I eligible for this program?

Generally, no. The program is only open to New York City youth who are legally eligible to work in the United States — an issue that has caused some advocates and lawmakers to push for more opportunities for undocumented immigrant youth. As of 2019, 77,000 undocumented youth ages 16-24 lived in New York City, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute.

However, a fraction of undocumented youth will have access to a small DYCD program this summer. Last year, the city agency quietly offered stipends to 282 high schoolers who “face obstacles” in applying to SYEP. The program, called SYEP Pathways, provided up to 60 hours of a paid work readiness and project-based learning program for students attending a handful of schools that already offered CareerReady, which is a year-round program that helps students gain career readiness skills.

This year, officials are hoping to expand that program to 750 children. Community organizations directly recruit youth for this program.

Because of federal regulations that limit how much you can pay someone without work authorization, students who participated in this small pilot were paid $552. Officials did not immediately explain how students can sign up for this summer.

Children’s Aid was one organization that oversaw programming for 25 teens in last year’s pilot program. They developed projects, “listened to presentations from a variety of professions, went on educational trips, and presented what they learned at the end of the summer,” said Sandino Sanchez, director of workforce development programs at Children’s Aid, in a statement.

While advocates have praised DYCD for offering some sort of opportunity for undocumented young people, they’ve also raised concerns that the pay is inequitable compared with other youth participating in SYEP. But there might be other, private options for undocumented youth where they can receive more money.

For example, an organization called Oyate plans to pair 60 undocumented youth this summer with jobs at local college campuses, said Lymarie Francisco, a project manager at the organization who works with young people. Those youth will get $500 Visa gift cards each week.

Oyate received 312 applications for the program, prompting them to recently close the application, according to organization officials.

Eilen, a 15-year-old girl who participated in Oyate’s inaugural jobs program last year, said her job at Fordham University helped her become more disciplined about forming a daily routine. Additionally, the $500 gift cards allowed Eilen — who moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic two years ago — to help buy things around the house as her mother prepared to move them to a new home. She was also able to buy a new cell phone and pay for a gym membership.

“I didn’t have to ask my mom for anything,” she said in Spanish.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC education panel approves mayor’s proposed $30.7B schools budget after lengthy debate

2023-03-23T04:05:20+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed $30.7 billion budget for the education department got the green light Wednesday night from New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy.

The vote by the city’s 23-member board — largely comprised by mayoral appointees — is not the final step for the agency’s budget. Next, the mayor will release an updated version of his budget proposal, and he will then negotiate with City Council over a final plan for the new fiscal year, which starts July 1.

That means that the education department’s budget could change by the time the full city budget is adopted.

The proposed budget for the nation’s largest school system, first shared in January, is close to $340 million, or roughly 1%, less than its operating spending plan this fiscal year. The mayor called for eliminating 390 non-educator vacant positions and diverting $568 million in federal funding originally planned for expanding preschool for 3-year-olds. But Adams tried to soften some of the blows by canceling previously planned cuts to school budgets totaling $80 million.

Nearly two dozen people — mostly educators and parents — spoke out against the proposed plan on Wednesday night, with several people urging the panel to push for reversing all of the cuts to school budgets.

But perhaps the most heated issue of the evening was over what wasn’t reflected in the budget: $90 million more for the Fair Student Funding formula, which is used to distribute money to schools.

In January, Chancellor David Banks and Adams proposed adding $90 million to the formula to cover new ways to calculate how much schools should get for homeless students on their rosters and for schools serving a disproportionate share of students with disabilities, English learners and those living in poverty.

The changes, which grew out of stunning criticism of the formula from the education panel last year, would impact 300 schools. The new formula is expected to come before the panel for a vote in May.

The idea of voting on those changes after the budget did not make sense to some panel members or city Comptroller Brad Lander.

“We haven’t approved the funding formula yet, so if we are talking about using a formula that we have not yet approved for calculating a budget then we are literally putting the funding cart ahead of the budget horse,” said Tom Sheppard, a parent-elected panel member from the Bronx. “I think we need to postpone this vote.”

The mayor’s panel appointees disagreed with those concerns. Several said they trusted that any changes to Fair Student Funding would be included in the final budget.

The panel’s budget vote came early because of a heated lawsuit last summer over how the budget was passed last year. In at least 11 out of the past 13 years, chancellors have bypassed the panel’s vote using an emergency declaration, according to the lawsuit. After the city cut school budgets last year, drawing intense criticism from the public, two parents and two teachers filed a lawsuit seeking to force a new vote over the budget by claiming that Banks improperly used an emergency declaration last year.

While the lawsuit wasn’t successful in forcing a new budget vote, multiple courts agreed that city officials violated state law. Because of that, the education department’s general counsel Liz Vladeck said the city decided to hold the vote early this year “to err on the side of caution.” Vladeck added that in her interpretation of the court’s decision, the panel needed to pass a budget before the mayor proposed his updated budget, known as the executive budget, in April. That schedule complicated the timing of the panel’s vote.

Lander said it was “irresponsible” to have the panel vote on the budget before a vote over Fair Student Funding, in part because city officials had not yet explained how they would pay for the additional $90 million. He suggested moving the budget vote back to May – leaving enough time for more public comment before the council has to pass a budget by July 1.

Emma Vadehra, the education department’s chief operating officer, noted that even though the budget may change by July 1, the city is bound to implement any changes to Fair Student Funding that the panel approves.

Sheppard put forth two separate motions to delay the vote over the budget until the panel’s April and May meetings, but the panel voted against them.

Multiple panel members said they didn’t have enough details on what the budget looks like for individual schools and districts. Sheree Gibson, a panel appointee for the Queens borough president, said she’s asked for several details about the budget with no clear answers, such as “how this budget impacts Queens … how it impacts our districts,” to no avail.

“In the hood, we call this balling,” said Geneal Chacon, the Bronx borough president’s appointee to the panel. “It seems like we have a bunch of money, and we just throwing it away, and we don’t even know what we spending it on.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s Summer Rising program gets admissions overhaul

2023-03-22T21:41:27+00:00

As summer approaches, New York City families should expect changes in the sign-up process and who will be given priority for the city’s sprawling public summer enrichment program, which will again be open to 110,000 children.

Summer Rising — launched under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the summer of 2021 with the help of federal COVID relief dollars — offers academic and enrichment programs to elementary and middle school students, even if they’re not mandated for summer school.

Last year’s program was offered on a first come, first served basis — leading to a mad rush of applications that filled up most school sites within a week of enrollment opening. In response to concerns about enrollment, this year the city will ditch the first come, first served model, said Keith Howard, commissioner of the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, during a City Council hearing on Wednesday.

Families, who will also be able to rank their preferences for school sites, can sign up during the whole enrollment period, which will open in early April, said Howard, whose agency partners with the education department on running Summer Rising. This suggests that there will be a lottery process though city officials declined to confirm that or share more details with Chalkbeat.

“We’ll have more to share in the coming days, and we are prioritizing getting the needed information to our families and school communities,” said Mark Zustovich, a DYCD spokesperson, in a statement.

In another significant change, students who are already attending one of the city’s hundreds of DYCD-run after-school programs will also receive priority at the schools where their after-school provider runs Summer Rising. This move is meant “to accommodate families who are accustomed to year round programming,” Howard told the City Council.

Like last year, seats will be prioritized for students in temporary housing, students mandated for summer school, and those with disabilities, though officials did not immediately share how many of these seats would be set aside or if the seats for students with disabilities would be separate from those who are mandated to attend school for 12 months on their individualized education programs, or IEPs.

Neither DYCD nor education department officials immediately shared how all of these priorities would be ranked.

Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children, said her group was happy about the end of the first come, first served enrollment process. She said many families who “needed more support to apply” didn’t get spots, including the very people who were supposed to be prioritized, such as children in shelters.

“We heard from families living in shelter and immigrant families that they did not know about Summer Rising in time to get seats for their children and heard from staff at shelters that when they went to help families enroll, the seats were already gone.”

At the same time, under the enrollment system last year, there weren’t many seats left for students who attended the school if they weren’t in one of the priority groups, said Erica N. Oquendo, division director of youth and family services for Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which expects to oversee Summer Rising programs in at least eight schools this summer and also runs eight DYCD after-school programs.

Another issue for Oquendo: Sometimes last summer, she saw children sign up for seats but never show up. To her frustration, her organization didn’t have control over unenrolling that child and offering their seat to someone else in need — an issue that must still be addressed, she said.

While the changes announced Wednesday could mean more seats for students already attending a given school, Oquendo craved more details about how the various priorities would be ranked.

“That’s the hard part — I wouldn’t necessarily say I would want to prioritize an after-school student over a child in a homeless shelter,” Oquendo said. “How do we measure the level of care that’s needed?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Hochul’s NYC charter school proposal rejected by Albany lawmakers

2023-03-14T23:22:27+00:00

New York’s state legislature formally rejected on Tuesday Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to allow more charter schools to open in New York City, an indication of the uphill battle ahead for proponents of expanding the sector.

In their official responses to Hochul’s January budget proposal, both the state Senate and Assembly called to remove the governor’s charter school proposal to allow New York City to open more than 100 new charter schools.

The rejection does not mean Hochul’s proposal is dead, since lawmakers will now negotiate with the governor’s office over the final budget, which is due April 1. However, the unified disapproval from both houses shows there is little support for her idea.

Hochul’s charter school proposal was unpopular with some lawmakers and teachers union officials from the start. While charter school advocates have long pushed the legislature to lift the New York City cap — which was reached in 2019 — there has been little support for it in the Democratic-controlled legislature.

“The Assembly’s focus really is about — has always been about — trying to take care of the needs of the traditional public schools,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, told reporters in February.

Hochul’s proposal calls for lifting the cap on charters in New York City, making operators eligible for remaining charters that have yet to be issued across the state. It also involves releasing so-called “zombie” charters, which are charters that were issued to schools that later closed or never opened.

The governor argues that allowing more charters to open in New York City is “common sense,” as the schools have historically been popular with Black and Latino families who have faced waitlists to enroll. The charter sector, which now educates more than 14% of the city’s public school students across 275 schools, has grown during the pandemic — far outpacing enrollment declines among district schools.

But a large swath of charters is also seeing enrollment sag, including some of the biggest networks, complicating the argument that there is still massive demand for new schools. Opening new campuses comes with tradeoffs, as a significant expansion of the sector would likely put pressure on existing schools, potentially leading to smaller budgets or even closures.

Still, charter school advocates contend that creating more school options is worthwhile.

Lawmakers “missed another opportunity” to support charters, said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, in a statement. With the session ongoing, he noted that budget negotiations will continue.

“We strongly urge them to listen to the voices of NYC families who want nothing more than an opportunity for their kids, and work with Governor Hochul to lift the regional cap and revive zombie charters,” Merriman said.

The state and city teachers unions cheered the legislature’s rejection.

“Parents, educators, and community leaders were very clear that they did not want more charter schools opening and draining resources from their local public schools,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in a statement. “Legislators heard those concerns and protected our public schools.”

In her run-up for the governor’s race last fall, Hochul received donations from the city and state teachers unions, as well as the national American Federation of Teachers — totaling just over $191,000. She also received support from charter-aligned groups, including $40,000 from New Yorkers for Putting Students First, a political action committee, or PAC. The Great Public Schools PAC, created by Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz, gave Hochul another $30,000.

Assembly and Senate reject high-dosage tutoring

Separately, both chambers also rejected Hochul’s proposal to fund and require high-impact tutoring in schools by setting aside $250 million in Foundation Aid – the main formula used to provide state funding for New York school districts.

Research has found that students perform better in school when they’re tutored frequently in small groups. Hochul framed the proposal — meant for children in grades 3-8 — as a solution for pandemic-fueled academic recovery, after some New York students saw steep drops in math and reading scores on national tests last year.

It’s possible the proposal is unpopular among school leaders because it doesn’t add more money to budgets; rather, it would use a chunk of funding that’s already planned to go out to schools and mandates how they should use it.

Both houses also proposed adding $1 million to the budget for studying how to change and update Foundation Aid, an idea first floated by the state education department and its Board of Regents.

The governor and both houses did agree on one thing: increasing Foundation Aid overall by $2.7 billion next fiscal year, sealing the final planned increase to fully fund the formula.

Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat, and Heastie did not immediately return requests for comment.

Asked for comment on their rejection of both proposals, Hochul spokesperson Katy Zielinski said the governor “looks forward to working with the legislature on a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

With greater access to devices, NYC teachers are folding more tech into instruction

2023-03-13T18:49:10+00:00

Before the pandemic, U.S. history teacher Travis Malekpour hesitated assigning his students work in the classroom that required a computer. He knew not every student had a laptop or tablet.

Three years later, Malekpour, who teaches in Queens, doesn’t think twice about assigning and grading in-class work that requires a device.

After COVID shuttered campuses in March 2020, forcing schools to pivot to remote learning, the city spent more than $360 million to buy 725,000 iPads and Chromebooks. That seismic shift made devices more accessible to students than ever before — and has now pushed some teachers to fold technology more often into their lesson plans.

“Having students who now have tablets and laptops they bring to school definitely changes the game a little bit,” Malekpour said.

The city’s education department has embraced some virtual education models, including a hybrid high school program that mixes virtual instruction with in-person activities. They’ve also used federal relief dollars to fund virtual courses for students at small schools that can’t provide such classes. More recently, schools began using computer programs to prepare students for upcoming state English and math tests, angering some educators and families who want children to be interacting directly with instructors, Gothamist reported.

But there appears to be little official guidance from the department for schools navigating a post-remote learning world. A spokesperson said they encourage using “21st century teaching practices” and provide students with “personalized, flexible learning.”

Officials also offer professional learning for teachers on teaching in remote or hybrid environments.

Some students find reliance on technology frustrating

There is some evidence that older students prefer instruction that doesn’t lean on technology. Sixty-five percent of American teens ages 13-17 said they preferred returning to full in-person instruction after the pandemic, while 18% preferred a mix between in-person and online, according to a survey last year from Pew Research Centers.

Most of those surveyed didn’t seem to struggle profoundly when required to use technology: Of the 22% of teens who said they sometimes had to complete homework on their phones, just 1 in 5 said it made finishing assignments “a lot harder.”

But for some children, technology can make learning frustrating.

About half of Eva Lang’s classes at a Manhattan high school require using laptops daily. The 15-year-old said she finds it distracting when her classmates are playing video games instead of doing the assignment.

Submitting assignments online can be convenient, Eva said. However, when her teachers post homework to Google Classroom without first discussing it in class, she sometimes has to ask questions via email, which can go unanswered. Some teachers make online assignments due the night before the next class — meaning she can’t complete it on the way to school if she wanted to focus on more complicated homework the night before.

Other times, the due date is a Friday night.

“It’s never, like, a really long assignment, but you know Friday nights are when you’re done from school or [ready] for the weekend, and you don’t want to be worrying about homework,” Eva said.

Many parents, too, have expressed concerns about increased screen time during the pandemic. One 2021 study of more than 5,400 children, which looked at screen use during the pandemic, saw a link between more screen time and worsening mental health, including feelings of stress. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy noted in 2021 that while some studies have found that online platforms can lead to worsened mental health, there is not enough robust research to make a conclusion.

Some teachers find creative uses for technology

With more devices in students’ hands, Malekpour, the Queens teacher, feels comfortable asking them to complete online assignments for a grade while in class, such as answering a sample U.S. History Regents exam question using Google Form or typing up a short essay response to a prompt.

But if he’s teaching about political cartoons, he’d have them draw their own examples on paper.

Even before the pandemic, one Brooklyn science teacher knew of free, interactive lab activities available online that seemed useful when the school couldn’t afford materials for hands-on experiments, or for understanding more dangerous concepts, such as radioactivity.

But the teacher, who requested anonymity because she was not free to talk to the press, couldn’t always use those virtual labs because not all students had a laptop or a phone.

Now, for the first time in her two decades of teaching, she has a laptop cart in her classroom, meaning her students can do virtual labs in addition to hands-on experiments, she said. This week her students used a virtual lab to study different states of matter. With the click of a button, they could change matter from gas to liquid to solid by controlling the temperature.

“Before, you would just teach it,” she said. “This way, they find out for themselves — rather than just being told, they explore.”

Tom Liam Lynch, vice president of education at the United Way of NYC and a former education technology professor, said a “fundamental conversation” that needs to happen around the role of technology in schools must start with what high-quality instruction looks and feels like for students.

Frustrations like Eva’s, the Manhattan student, represent a situation where it might not be working well, Lynch said.

“In those moments [the teacher’s] focus is on getting an assignment up and getting into the classroom, and they’ve lost touch around the fundamental question of, ‘Why am I doing this in the first place? How is this going to make a child feel?’” he said.

For some teachers, remote learning didn’t impact how they teach now. Despite the education department’s investment in technology, there are still students who don’t have access to devices or the internet. The city is currently attempting to count up all devices that schools have in their possession.

Not every student has access to a laptop during the school day at the Bronx high school where Steve Swieciki teaches social studies. His use of computers in class has, in part, relied on whether he’s in a room with a laptop cart during that period.

When he does use computers, it’s for simpler work, such as reading a news article in class. He may toggle between having students read and discuss an excerpt from a textbook or providing that excerpt in Google Classroom and requiring students to answer questions about it as homework.

But that’s how he taught even before COVID.

He shared a recent example of how he lightly folds technology into a lesson: For an intro-to-law class, Swieciki recently had students use laptops to read two news articles about artificial intelligence. To pique their interest, he first had them read a New York Times story that detailed a conversation between a reporter and a Bing chatbot, who told the reporter it was in love with him — shocking and hooking the students to the topic.

Then, he had them pull up an Axios article about how lawmakers are seeking to regulate artificial intelligence.

Students spent the next class participating in a Socratic seminar, where they debated the role of government in regulating artificial intelligence.

The lesson went so well that Swieciki pivoted from what he had planned to teach in his following lesson.

“I’m actually putting off what I initially had planned for tomorrow and extending the discussion another day,” he said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As 3-K expansion pauses, NYC hires consultant to study where to move seats

2023-03-06T22:30:28+00:00

As Mayor Eric Adams has backpedaled a plan to expand free preschool for New York City’s 3-year-olds, officials have hired a consulting firm to figure out how many seats should exist in each of the city’s neighborhoods next year.

The city will pay consulting firm Accenture just over $760,000 to “map out needs and seats” because of thousands of vacancies in the program, Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, said during Monday’s City Council hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget.

While Jiha said the city has about 19,000 empty seats this year, education department officials have pinned the number in recent months closer to 16,000. (Spokespeople for City Hall and the education department did not immediately clarify which number is correct.)

The study, which Jiha said has been underway for about a month, comes after Adams decided earlier this year not to expand the program for 3-year-olds as planned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio wanted to model the program on his universal preschool for 4-year-olds, estimating the city would need about 60,000 seats.

The city currently has about 55,000 seats, thousands of which sit empty. Adams administration officials argue that the system needs a close study to determine whether seats are currently in neighborhoods that need them.

“Once that study is completed, OK, we will have more insight in terms of how to allocate those seats and in which area to allocate them,” Jiha said during the hearing. Under de Blasio, city officials estimated that providing free preschool for 3-year-olds would save families about $10,000 in child care costs.

Officials did not immediately share the duration of the Accenture contract or when the study’s findings will be complete. Jiha said they’re pushing Accenture “hard” to issue its recommendations before the start of next school year — and in time for the city to incorporate changes in the upcoming budget, which must be adopted by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Many city lawmakers and early childhood advocates have criticized the mayor’s decision not to add more seats to the program — a plan that relied heavily on COVID stimulus funds, which are set to run out next year. Some have argued that the city is not doing more aggressive outreach in many neighborhoods with vacancies — many of which are in low-income communities — thus failing to reach families who could benefit the most from free preschool programs. Advocates have also blamed the lack of enrollment on a cumbersome application process, Politico reported.

“My district is one of the areas and we had a huge vacancy issue, and there was no real outreach done,” Councilwoman Althea Stevens, who represents part of the Bronx, said during Monday’s hearing.

Revamping the city’s 3-K system is just one thorny early childhood education issue facing the Adams administration. The city had failed to pay preschool providers on time, leading some to shutter, while a separate plan to move hundreds of early childhood workers into new positions has been paused after it initially caused confusion and chaos across the division.

At the same time, the city announced an ambitious effort to provide preschool seats for every student with a disability, an issue that former Mayor Bill de Blasio was unable to solve.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

To boost enrollment, CUNY waives application fee for NYC high school seniors

2023-03-03T17:37:54+00:00

In an effort to encourage more students to apply to college, CUNY has waived the application fee for all New York City public high school seniors until April 15.

Students typically apply to college in the fall of their senior years. CUNY distributes a number of fee waiver codes to New York City public high schools, which school officials give to students, said Giulia Prestia, a spokesperson for CUNY. Just over 46,000 students used those codes between last spring and fall.

But the blanket waiver announced this week would benefit students who still haven’t decided whether to apply to college.

“We are trying to motivate seniors who may still be undecided about applying to college to take this important step toward their future at no cost,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez in a statement. “We are also removing a financial roadblock that has deterred many students from applying.”

The move could also boost enrollment at CUNY’s 23 undergraduate schools and programs as college enrollment remains below pre-pandemic levels. Enrollment at CUNY dropped by roughly 10% in the fall of 2022 compared with 2021, helping to fuel a hiring freeze. Nationally, college enrollment has dipped during the public health crisis, but has started to stabilize, with just a 0.6% drop in fall undergraduate enrollment in 2022 compared with the previous year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which collects enrollment data.

Across New York, undergraduate college enrollment — which was already dropping pre-pandemic — was down by 2% compared with 2021, according to the Clearinghouse.

The fee waiver comes as the cost of attending these schools could go up. Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed tuition hikes at both CUNY and SUNY campuses, a move that is supported by both systems’ chancellors. At CUNY, in-state undergraduate students pay $3,465 per semester at four year colleges. At community colleges, New York City residents pay $2,400 per semester. At SUNY, in-state residents were expected this school year to pay $7,070 for tuition at four-year colleges and $5,130 at community colleges.

Students can apply for state tuition assistance for up to $5,665 a year.

Some believe fee waivers can make a difference by removing one barrier to the college application process. Juanmy Moscoso, who graduated from a Brooklyn high school in 2021, said he used a school-issued CUNY application fee waiver. It saved him money, but it also saved him time in figuring out how he would pay the fee.

“I think it would have discouraged me a little, just because having to pay to get an education is something that is discouraging,” said Moscoso, who is now a sophomore at Brooklyn College.

However, the initiative is coming too late in the school year, said Carrie McCormack, a college and career counselor at East Bronx Academy for the Future. Nearly all of her school’s 76 seniors have already applied to college, using up the roughly 50 fee waiver codes the school received.

A blanket fee waiver may have been more beneficial in the fall when most students apply to school, McCormack said. Students who decide to apply this late in the process probably won’t get a spot at CUNY’s more high-profile schools, such as Hunter or City College, she said.

A more effective program might be to waive fees for students who previously applied to CUNY, but decided not to enroll, she said. For example, only 16 of her students who applied to college last year actually enrolled, McCormack said.

In general, McCormack has found a waning interest in college among her students since the pandemic. For example, she knows a handful of students who she would have expected to pursue college, but are more interested in various trade schools, she said.

“Our higher level, so to speak, students — the ones you think, ‘Oh, you’re definitely going to college,’ are not so excited about it,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mental health safety net for youth: Adams outlines vision to catch kids in crisis

2023-03-02T22:07:21+00:00

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please dial 988 for the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

As New York City continues to grapple with youth mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams laid out a sweeping vision on Thursday to help schools better recognize student mental health needs and create a safety net for kids in crisis.

The needs are high: About a fifth of children ages 3 to 13 had one or more mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problems in 2021, according to health department data provided in the mayor’s new plan, called Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for New York City.

Rates of suicidal ideation jumped to nearly 16% from about 12% over the past decade, with more than 9% of the city’s high school students reporting they attempted suicide over the course of 2021.

“We’ve all seen the isolation and trauma that children have experienced over the past several years, along with the results: disappearing into screens, behavioral issues, and even suicide,” Adams said while revealing the plan.

Addressing the mental health needs of young people and their families was one of the three major focal points of Adams’ blueprint. The plan calls for several things, including opening more school-based mental health clinics, creating suicide prevention trainings for educators, and assessing the impacts of social media as possible “toxic exposure.”

Though most of the ideas lacked details in terms of timeline and cost, the mayor did add a price tag of $12 million for a previously announced telehealth hotline for high school students, which the city says will be the largest of its kind in the nation.

City officials said they will track certain data points to determine whether the plan is working, including the number of contacts made by or on behalf of youth through NYC Well (the city’s free, confidential support, crisis intervention, and information and referral service), and the percent of young people reporting feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

Here are four highlights from the plan that relates to youth and schools:

City taps telehealth to fill treatment gaps

The mayor initially announced in January that the city would launch a telehealth program for high schoolers, though has not said when the program will launch and how students can access it.

Officials said Thursday they are still working out details.

“Telehealth can improve access to care for young people and their families who cannot easily get around or meet the strict time or expenses of traveling to in-person appointments, especially when mental health provider locations might be far away from the child’s home,” the mayor’s plan stated. “In addition, many youth feel more comfortable using technology to connect, and technology offers new ways to stay connected outside of traditional therapy sessions.”

Other cities are leaning on telehealth for young people, as well, including Los Angeles.

Experts previously shared cautious optimism with Chalkbeat about the plan when Adams first announced it, while also raising questions about how it would work, including whether school staff will be monitoring sessions and get involved if a student’s needs are more serious.

School-based mental health clinics to expand

As of the 2020-21 school year, 162 schools had on-site mental health clinics, while another 238 had health clinics that offered some mental health services, according to a 2022 report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The mayor’s plan calls on expanding mental health clinics that exist inside of school buildings through a partnership with the city’s education department, health department, the state’s Office of Mental Health and community providers.

Asked how many more clinics the city wants to open and an estimated cost, a health department spokesperson said these “are active and ongoing discussions.”

Creating school-based mental health clinics, however, can be complicated, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which partners with schools to offer counseling services. It involves getting approvals from the state, finding space inside of schools that would be eligible for such clinics, and setting up a financial structure to get reimbursed by Medicaid for the services, he said.

An easier lift, he suggested, might be to get more community organizations like his to offer services in schools. Those groups often operate with grants, thus cutting out complicated funding issues.

A push to train school staffers on suicide prevention

Adams wants schools staff to be trained on suicide prevention so that they can “respond appropriately to the needs of students,” the plan said.

Dahill-Fuchel praised such training, noting they could potentially help more students realize they need help.

“I think one of the things that is really gonna be useful is this idea of a public health approach to suicide prevention, which at its core really means demystifying it,” Dahill-Fuchel said. “It tends to be a word that, around children, people don’t like to use and that becomes part of the problem.”

City officials also plan to launch a program, called “Caring Transitions,” that would focus on preventing youth ages 5-17 in the Queens and Bronx who have been to the hospital for a suicide attempt from re-entering. Teams would be responsible for connecting these young people to follow-up services in their neighborhoods as well as “additional supports” for up to three months after they leave the hospital.

The plan also says it will launch a suicide prevention pilot program for young people of color ages 5 to 24. The goal is to bolster interventions that more effectively meet the needs of Black, Asian American, and Latino youth who face suicide-related risk “that includes or is intensified by racial inequities,” the plan said. The plan did not specify what those interventions might look like.

An attempt to address cyberbullying

Concerned with social media’s impact on youth mental health, the Adams administration plans to create a task force to study the issue and develop a public health approach to reduce exposure to harmful online content.

The plan noted that “there are few rules or regulations” on how social media companies interact with young people.

“We’re also going to examine the potential risks of social media to our children’s mental health and work to make sure tech companies are required to keep online spaces safe for our kids,” Adams said during his speech.

The group would include youth and families, according to the plan. It didn’t specify when the group would launch.

Federal officials have called for more rigorous research on how social media impacts youth mental health. In a 2021 advisory released by the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officials note that while several studies have linked worsening mental health to online platforms, other researchers have argued that there is no clear relation between the two.

Seattle Public Schools recently filed a lawsuit against leading social media companies, alleging that students and schools were harmed by worsened mental health that stemmed from social media.

The surgeon general’s advisory also called for technology companies to make sure they were fostering “safe digital environments” for their youngest users.

Some of the pressure seems to be working: Tik Tok announced earlier this week it will set the default screen time limit to 60 minutes for users under 18, though kids can continue using the app with a passcode.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC to match LGBTQ+ youth with ‘supportive’ summer jobs, officials say

2023-03-01T23:06:43+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ+ laws, New York City is moving in the other direction with plans to offer “safe and affirming” jobs to LGTBQ youth through its sprawling summer employment program.

The effort will be part of the city’s now 60-year-old Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which last year provided about 100,000 paid jobs and career exploration opportunities to young people, ages 14-24.

Mayor Eric Adams has shown special interest in the summer jobs program — with hopes that it would help reduce gun violence among young people — and expanded it last year by adding 25,000 more slots. As part of his annual State of the City address in January, the mayor’s office noted plans to create “supportive work opportunities” for LGBTQ+ youth.

Details are so far scarce on what the initiative — dubbed “SYEP Pride” — will look like, or what will define a safe and affirming workplace. Officials are hoping to reach “a few hundred young people,” but the ultimate program will depend on how many LGBTQ+ youth apply through March 31, when the SYEP application period closes, said Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP.

“SYEP Pride will connect young people who identify as LGBTQ+ with supportive, safe and affirming work and career exploration experiences,” Valerie Mulligan, deputy commissioner for Workforce Connect at DYCD, said during a recent City Council hearing focused on youth services. “The program will also allow employer partners to offer unique employment and learning opportunities that will support and empower LGBTQ+ youth through the SYEP program.”

City officials did not immediately say why they’ve decided to launch this program now. But it comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights have taken center stage nationally, as conservative states have proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including banning discussion of sexuality and gender identity in classrooms.

Discrimination in the workplace has long been an issue for this community, including youth. Just over one-third of young people reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace, with higher rates among transgender and nonbinary youth, according to a 2020 survey of 40,000 LGBTQ+ youth, ages 13-24, conducted by The Trevor Project, an organization that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ young people.

More than 80% of youth who reported discrimination said it came from co-workers, while half said it came from supervisors. Youth who said their employer was LGBTQ+-affirming also reported slightly lower rates of attempting suicide compared with those who didn’t feel their workplaces were welcoming.

“Further, our data indicate an urgent need for companies to develop diverse and inclusive hiring strategies as well as to create workplaces that are affirming and supportive of LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those who are transgender and nonbinary and/or youth of color,” the Trevor Project survey brief noted. “Doing so will not only require companies to train all staff on diversity and inclusion but also to create a culture in which diverse identities are appreciated and celebrated.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NY’s budget has $100M for academic and mental health programs. Schools still don’t have the money.

2023-02-24T23:07:54+00:00

With growing concerns over youth mental health and academic recovery, New York’s state lawmakers included $100 million in the state budget last year for schools to spend on mental health resources or after-school programs.

But, with the majority of the school year now over, school districts haven’t been able to apply for the money.

“It is very disappointing that the money that was allocated for desperately needed services by children and adolescents is not getting to them,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children. “There is a lot of trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations that we continue to hear about from family after family.”

The idea was to let school districts apply for a chunk of the money, which would match whatever other dollars they planned to spend on such programs. Half of the money was to be used during this school year and the other half for the 2023-24 school year. Lawmakers envisioned the funds going toward hiring mental health professionals, expanding school-based mental health services, and creating summer, after-school and extended day and year programs.

State education officials, who are charged with planning the grant program, have blamed the delay on a lengthy process that involves getting approvals from the state’s budget division — which has not yet given its final sign off.

Justin Mason, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, said the process has been complex because it involves both mental health and education components. They now expect the money to be available for next school year, but declined to answer whether schools will get to use the money for any additional school years.

Asked whether Hochul finds the delay acceptable, Mason said it’s the result of a longstanding process that exists to “ensure state funding is allocated in a fair and transparent manner.”

Hochul proposes grant funds to bolster pandemic recovery

As calls grew nationally to address a youth mental health crisis fueled by widespread loss and grief from the pandemic, Hochul proposed last January to add $100 million to the state budget for this fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2022 to this upcoming March 31, and touted the money in a press release when it made it into the final budget.

At the time of Hochul’s proposal, students had returned to campuses full time for the first time since the pandemic. Many educators had reported students struggling with behavioral, social, and mental health issues. Social workers and counselors reported being inundated with student referrals.

In New York City, one in every 200 children has lost a caregiver to COVID. More than 40% of students nationally reported feeling persistent sadness in 2021, compared to about 25% ten years before that, according to a recently released survey.

Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy and communication at the state’s Council of School Superintendents, said his organization has seen a need for more dedicated mental health resources in New York’s schools since at least 2017, based on an annual survey of superintendents across New York.

They were thrilled when Hochul highlighted it as a priority. He said that they are “surprised” and “disappointed” that this $100 million has still failed to reach schools.

It’s possible many districts are still busy spending billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief aid, potentially making this grant less of a need at the moment, advocates said.

Still, districts likely would have jumped at the money had it been available, Lowry said. Those matching funds could have helped districts launch or expand initiatives that they’d already been working on, such as New York City’s pilot effort to pour more mental health resources into 50 high-need schools in order to minimize the use of police intervention, Yuster said.

Getting grant money to school districts can take almost a year

Education officials said it usually takes nine to 10 months to issue a request for proposals, or RFP, which lays out the parameters of the funds and is what districts must respond to when applying for grant money.

For grant programs, education officials are typically tasked with creating the RFP, which other agencies, such as the state’s budget division, must then approve. That can lead to monthslong delays from when the money is available to when schools can use it, advocates said.

“I think mental health was something that was underinvested in prior to the pandemic [and] the pandemic exposed this is actually a high-need area,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that has pushed for more school funding. “We needed to double down, and the delay in that process just kinda signals how we don’t take our children’s mental health needs as a priority.”

A timeline provided by the education department shows how the process played out with this $100 million pot of funds: Education officials first sent a summary of a possible RFP last June to the budget office. They spent July reworking their proposal in response to feedback from the budget and governor’s offices, but by August budget officials asked the education department to create an RFP based on what they had originally proposed.

In November, two months after the school year had started in New York City, education officials sent over a completed draft of the RFP. They received more feedback right before winter break, which required “substantial” changes, according to education officials, who sent another revised version back to budget officials earlier this month.

As of Friday, the education department was awaiting final approval to release the RFP to school districts.

“The field is looking at us and saying, ‘We desperately need this,’” State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said during a legislative budget hearing earlier this month, where she was asked about the delay in distributing the funding.

“We have to streamline it,” Rosa said of the RFP approval process. “We have to get to a point that… we do it and make sure that if they have 27-30 questions, let’s sit at the table, let’s get the questions done, let’s get this money into the hands of our school districts and our schools and our agencies, where it’s needed,” Rosa said.

Hochul is still interested in these issues: Her budget proposal this year calls for making mental health services more accessible for students and directing a chunk of Foundation Aid, the state’s main formula for school funding, toward high-dosage tutoring.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.