Chalkbeat

In some Chicago neighborhoods, almost half of all teens and young adults are not going to school or working

2024-05-20T01:38:16+00:00

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The portion of young Chicagoans neither going to school nor working is returning to pre-COVID levels — but it’s an uneven recovery that has left behind Black teens as well as adolescents in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Overall, about 45,000 16- to 24-year-olds in the city are disconnected from both school and work, accounting for roughly 12% of the city’s residents in that age group — a rate just slightly higher than pre-COVID.

“In the aftermath of the pandemic when things looked really shaky, these overall numbers are very encouraging,” said Matthew Wilson, associate director at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute and one of the authors of a new study on youth disconnection.

That was until researchers zeroed in on Black teens, he added: “When I saw these numbers, I thought, ‘Wait a minute.’”

The new report found the number of Black 16- to 19-year-olds who are not in school, college, or the workforce more than doubled from 2021 to 2022, the most recent year for which U.S. Census data is available.

Statewide, roughly 163,000 teens and young adults are not in school or working — a number that would make it Illinois’ third-largest city, the report’s authors note.

Chicago continues to lag behind the state and the country in getting young people reconnected to school and work since the height of the pandemic.

The Chicago-based nonprofit Alternative Schools Network commissioned the report for the second year as part of a push to ask Illinois lawmakers to allocate $300 million to a new youth employment program statewide. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has also championed youth jobs, vowing to double the number of opportunities open to teens and young adults, though his administration made more limited headway in boosting that number by 20% last summer, his first in office.

Experts believe that re-engaging young people who are neither working nor going to school is key to addressing poverty, racial disparities, and gun violence. Even short stints of disconnection can have a lasting effect on a person’s earning potential, health, relationships, and odds of becoming incarcerated, research has shown.

The disconnection rate dipped for Black and Latino 16- to 24-year-olds overall in 2022 while continuing to rise for their white counterparts. Nevertheless, that rate still remains much higher for young people of color. Almost a quarter of Black youth that age were out of school and out of work compared with 11% for Latinos and about 7% for whites.

The disconnection rate for Black 20- to 24-year-olds declined markedly. But the rate for 16- to 19-year-olds shot up from about 9% to more than 17%.

Wilson believes Black teens might still grapple with disconnection at a higher rate because that age group bore the brunt of the pandemic’s learning disruption and social-emotional toll during their all-important high school years.

“Being a high school student during COVID times was just a really bad place to be,” he said. “Your chance of having a meaningful attachment to school and being on a good trajectory after high school was diminished.”

The report also highlights dramatic differences in the rate of youth disconnection among Chicago neighborhoods and between the city and its north suburbs. That rate is less than 2% in some Cook County communities — and more than 48% in the West Side neighborhoods of Austin, North Lawndale, and Garfield Park.

“If every other young person is not working and not in school, that’s a crisis,” Wilson said.

The Alternative Schools Network helped craft legislation to launch a $300 million program to hire some 80,000 young people statewide and enlist the network and other nonprofits to prepare them and support them in those jobs.

“Lower-income kids just don’t have the connections to the labor market and to jobs that middle-income and upper-class kids have,” said Jack Wuest, the network’s executive director.

“It’s a terrible loss of potential.”

Damon Revels stopped going to high school as a junior and spent much of last year jobless, navigating a lot of family instability and a sense that his life had gotten irrevocably off track. “I was failing badly,” he said.

But after re-enrolling at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School, an alternative campus in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, he got to participate in the Illinois Youth Investment Program, a state initiative that connects 16- to 24-year-olds with internships, career training and other opportunities. He worked overseeing activities at a Boys & Girls Club and laying tile on home renovation projects.

He said the opportunities gave him practical skills and helped him land a summer job at the YMCA after he graduates this June.

But also, Revels said, “I learned to trust people more and have a lot more confidence in myself rather than just feeling sorry for myself.”

Correction: A previous version of this article used the incorrect figure for the number of out-of-work and out-of-school teens and young adults in Illinois. There are roughly 163,000, not 136,000.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

With COVID relief spending deadlines looming, Chicago suburb moves ahead with uncommon technology plan

2023-08-04T15:58:03+00:00

At a Dolton-Riverdale school board meeting in the spring, district leaders and two technology vendors pitched a $3.3 million tech overhaul.

They told the board in the high-poverty district in Chicago’s south suburbs that the project would “future-proof the classroom” and “catapult Dolton into the next generation of learning technology.”

A couple of members balked. They said they felt rushed to approve the deal and questioned why it had not been put out for a bid. But deputy superintendent Sonya Whitaker urged them to back the project that March evening, insisting that the district was staring down a deadline to spend a portion of its federal COVID relief money.

Out on Capitol Hill, she warned, the feds are “itching to take this money away from us.”

The board approved the deal 4-2. As a result, the district’s 1,900 elementary students will return later this summer to classrooms outfitted with multiple touch screens, motion-tracking cameras, and microphones — part of an uncommon plan to embrace hybrid learning.

Officials say the technology will boost attendance by allowing students who are sick or traveling to virtually join classmates, and will help with teacher shortages by letting an educator or a substitute teach two or more classrooms at a time.

The pressure felt by the Dolton board is hitting districts across the state as they face a Sept. 30 deadline to commit dollars from the second of three stimulus packages — and a year later, another deadline to spend the third, largest, and final installment of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, the unprecedented federal infusion of money to help schools recover from COVID.

In Illinois, districts have spent about 82% of the second relief package and almost 40% of the third one, said the Illinois State Board of Education.

With the clock ticking here and across the country, technology companies and other vendors are pushing products and services they claim can help speed up student recovery — and urging districts to invest in them now.

Data the state maintains on recovery spending does not explicitly break out technology, with more than half of expenditures so far categorized under the broad umbrella of “instruction.” But other districts have also spent heavily on devices, tech education products and more, including Chicago, where tech companies have loomed large in its outside vendor spending.

Jennifer Reczkowicz assists a student during a typing lesson at Lincoln Elementary School.

At least for now, Dolton-Riverdale Superintendent Kevin Nohelty said, the district will not move forward with a vision he had shared with Chalkbeat last year in which all students would learn remotely for a part of each week — one that some parents and experts have said they find concerning. Instead, the district will “start small,” allowing teachers to get the hang of the technology and letting students log in virtually only as needed.

In a district that, like many others, has struggled with absenteeism post-pandemic, the possibility of harnessing technology to address the issue sounds enticing. But simultaneously teaching students who are in the classroom and virtually is challenging, especially in the elementary grades Dolton serves.

Dolton officials wanted to prepare for another upheaval

Denise Sanders stopped by Riverdale’s Washington Elementary this week — and was surprised to see large interactive boards getting set up in all classrooms. Sanders’ younger granddaughter attends the school, where Sanders also helps out classroom teachers as part of a statewide parent mentor program.

“What’s this all about?” she asked a staffer in a hallway.

“We’re doing hybrid learning,” the staffer responded.

Dolton-Riverdale, whose student population is overwhelmingly Black and low-income, had been hit hard by the pandemic, with a steep jump in absenteeism and dip in state test results. Citing COVID fears and an online program officials felt worked well, the district had made the decision to remain fully virtual during the entire 2020-21 year, putting it in the minority of districts nationally.

Sanders says like other children, her granddaughters struggled to stay engaged during that virtual stretch. She recalls spending a good part of that 2020-21 year by her middle schooler’s side, making sure she remained focused on lessons and schoolwork on her laptop. She taught her younger granddaughter her ABCs and numbers, skeptical that the girl would get much out of virtual pre-kindergarten.

“It was really hard,” Sanders said. “A lot of kids are still behind.”

Nohelty, the superintendent, argues the pandemic was so disruptive because districts were unprepared for the abrupt shift to remote learning. And he believes the technology used for virtual instruction holds possibilities post-COVID.

So during the 2021-22 school year, as the district was returning to normalcy, Nohelty started eyeing a plan to embrace hybrid learning in the long run.

At one point, Nohelty envisioned dedicating the bulk of the district’s roughly $21 million in federal COVID relief to a hybrid technology plan, though he said more recently that he is earmarking about $5 million for it in the short term.

He said he wanted to ensure the district was ready for the next major upheaval. He also wanted to reimagine learning, with students perhaps attending in person three days and virtually two days each week.

That’s where Velocita Technology and ViewSonic came in.

Last year, the district hosted focus groups with representatives of Velocita, Dolton’s Joliet-based technology consultant, and ViewSonic, the prominent maker of touchscreens and other technology. They set out to show how ViewSonic’s interactive screens and its “COVID child” — a software platform that allows virtual students to interact with educators in the classroom, collaborate on assignments with in-person peers, and more — could help teachers deliver a new and improved version of hybrid learning.

District emails show Velocita reps nudging Dolton officials to move ahead briskly with the plan as leaders pushed back their presentation to the school board several times.

At the board meeting in March, Velocita and ViewSonic reps unveiled the “Flexible Classroom Learning & Alerting Solution,” which they said they had developed with district officials. The $3.3 million would cover touchscreens, cameras, microphones and speakers, as well as laptops and training for teachers. But the district would only get that price if it made the purchase by the end of the year’s first quarter.

A student works on a typing lesson at Lincoln Elementary in Dolton, Illinois.

Amid heightened concerns about school shootings, the reps also noted the technology would give administrators the ability to communicate with classrooms in a non-disruptive way. They could send all teachers a silent message about a lockdown or other campus emergency.

Member Shalonda Randle said that between the technology project and another $2.4 million proposal for COVID relief funded security upgrades, the district was throwing a lot of information and big price tags at the board — and asking for approval on the spot.

Nohelty countered that the district had vetted the project and invited board members to do some research to learn how “cutting edge” it was. Whitaker implored the board to trust district leaders, saying she didn’t want to be forced to give back the federal money.

Following the board’s approval, Larry Lawrence, its president, did not respond to requests for comment. Randle said it is board policy to refer all media inquiries to Nohelty.

Frank Brandolino, the president of Velocita, did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, ViewSonic said the company had engaged teachers and administrators, provided them with clear information through the focus groups, incorporating their feedback into the plan. The project is in the final phase of installation this summer, and staff training, which started in the spring, will continue this fall.

Superintendent says students will use new technology daily

Sanders, the Washington grandmother, says the school’s educators have worked hard to help students bounce back from COVID’s academic and mental health fallout. They’ve tried to build more one-on-one and small group help for struggling students into classes, she said.

She hopes the new technology will allow students who cannot attend for any reason to keep up with schoolwork. Giving students who, say, get diagnosed with COVID a chance to join classmates virtually until they are cleared to return to school sounds like a good thing.

But she wonders how many families will take advantage: Shouldn’t sick kids just stay in bed and rest until they feel better? And she believes the district should be focused on ensuring as many students as possible are in the classroom.

“I think in-person beats virtual any day,” she said.

Gerald Ardito, an education technology expert at Manhattanville College in New York and a former middle school teacher, said the district could be on to an out-of-the-box solution to the student attendance challenges that are still plaguing many districts.

But because this is a novel approach, it’s hard to say whether students who are missing school would actually log on remotely using the new technology.

The district needs to do much more beyond providing that technology, Ardito said. It needs a clear protocol for how and when students join their classrooms virtually and a plan to help them if they run into issues logging in — a significant undertaking to avoid a “chaotic” rollout.

And it needs to provide extensive professional development on effective hybrid and remote teaching beyond merely showing teachers how to use the new screens and software. Teaching online or in a hybrid format is “a profoundly different experience” from teaching in person, he noted.

That’s a heavy lift — and Ardito questions whether having a smaller group of hybrid teachers on each campus would have been more practical than outfitting each classroom and training each teacher.

“We’ve all seen ed tech providers with all the buzzwords about ‘21st century learning’ and ‘global learning communities’,” he said. But, he added, “Technology is just a tool. It doesn’t do anything in and of itself. It’s about how it’s used by teachers, students and parents.”

Darlene McMillian, the teachers union president in Dolton, declined an interview but said in a statement that teachers are excited to learn more about the district’s technology plan.

“While we were provided quite a bit of information during our professional development training in the spring,” she said, “we are looking forward to additional guidance this fall when we actually put the new equipment into practice with our students.”

Based on data reported to the state, Dolton has committed all of its second COVID relief allocation and spent almost a fifth of it as of July, the Illinois State Board of Education said. Though the district has until Sept. 30 to obligate the funding, it has until the end of January to actually spend the money.

In its most recent COVID relief spending plan to the state, Dolton said it would also use the money for expanded after-school programs, some professional development and personal protective equipment, and new Chromebooks for students.

Students in Mr. Kealy’s second grade class use I-Ready to learn math at Lincoln Elementary in Dolton, Illinois.

The state board said that while its officials have reached out to some districts about the slow pace of spending, state officials are confident that all districts are on track to make use of their dollars by the upcoming deadlines. The state credits the federal money with graduation rate improvement, some headway in addressing teacher shortages, and growth on state tests, though proficiency levels remained well below pre-pandemic results last year.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Nohelty said training for staff started this past spring and will continue for years.

He said the shift to permanent hybrid learning he envisioned earlier would be “a little premature” this coming school year; the district would have to secure permission from the state.

But he expects students across the district will be using the new technology daily, logging on from home when they can’t make it to school or from their classrooms when their teacher is absent and a colleague takes on their class from a nearby room.

Nohelty also said he has been hearing from other Illinois superintendents who are potentially interested in replicating what Dolton is doing.

“This technology further enhances and supports the way we deliver our curriculum now,” he said. “We’re unstoppable.”

At Washington Elementary, Sanders says she is eager to find out more about the plan from her school’s principal and teachers. She is giving it the benefit of the doubt — though she feels strongly that parents across the district would oppose any move to require some virtual or hybrid learning.

“It’s bad enough that we put kids through that and messed them up,” she said, adding, “I want to see how this is going to play out.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago’s early state test results, encouraging gains and some areas of concern

2023-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Chicago Public Schools students made encouraging gains on the Illinois state test this year, with reading proficiency almost back to pre-pandemic levels and a more modest recovery in math scores, according to preliminary, unofficial scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

The portion of Chicago students in grades three through eighth who met or exceeded state standards based on the required Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which was administered this past spring, dipped in both subjects during the pandemic. This year’s rebounding on the English language arts test extended to all racial groups in the district, even as the gaping pre-pandemic disparities in proficiency Black and Latino students face persisted.

Overall, 26% of students who took the reading test this year met or exceeded state standards — just two percentage points lower than results on the 2019 test, the last one before COVID upended learning. In math, 17% of students scored proficient, compared with 24% in 2019.

The results were obtained by Chalkbeat ahead of the state’s formal release of district-level and statewide results in late fall and could shift as officials vet them.

Some experts who reviewed the scores said the gains are heartening, particularly against the backdrop of testing data nationally that has pointed to a slow or stalling recovery from the pandemic’s profound academic damage. They voiced concern about lower reading scores for Chicago’s third graders — a year considered a crucial predictor of later academic success — and for the district’s English language learners, a student group hit particularly hard by the shift to remote learning.

Experts caution that the results do not offer an apples-to-apples comparison to the eve of the pandemic. Based on participation data, many fewer students took the test this year in Chicago, which saw major enrollment drops during the pandemic. Experts note it’s possible that the district lost some of its most vulnerable students amid COVID’s upheaval.

District officials said this spring that they were encouraged by various academic data and feedback from campuses suggesting that the 2022-23 year saw more momentum in the district’s efforts to help students bounce back academically. They have credited new programs, including an in-house tutoring corps and intervention teachers who work with struggling students one-on-one or in small groups, as well as a push to roll out quality curriculums and teacher professional development on all its campuses.

“Now, early signs in our state assessment data are also showing positive results that our community can be proud of,” the district said in a statement. “While assessment results will not be finalized until later this year, preliminary data show that our investments in intentional supports for educators and students are yielding results.”

The district noted it considers helping students recover from the pandemic’s social and emotional fallout just as important as supporting their academic recovery, and it touted $35 million it is spending this coming school year on a social-emotional learning curriculum, mental health services, and additional social workers and counselors.

The state test score gains come after a challenging 2021-22 school year, when COVID surges, staffing shortages, and other disruptions hampered recovery efforts. In 2022, Illinois proficiency levels in the district dropped to 15% in reading and about 20% in math, amid statewide dips in the portion of students meeting standards.

Experts such as Marianne Perie, the director of assessment, research, and innovation at the nonprofit WestEd, say that across the country, the pandemic damage has been deeper and the recovery slower in math than in reading. That’s not surprising, Perie said.

“If you are a parent at home with your kids, it’s easier to sit down and read a book,” she said. “It’s much harder to do math with them.”

On National Assessment of Educational Progress results released last year, Chicago Public Schools saw a decade of math gains on the test vanish, even as scores dipped only slightly in reading — a change not considered statistically significant. The makers of that exam, known as the “the nation’s report card,” work with a sample of students designed to minimize the effect of demographic and enrollment shifts.

On this year’s Illinois Assessment of Readiness, 17% of Black students scored proficient in reading and 7% in math — compared with 54% in reading and 52% in math among Asian American students, the district’s highest-performing group on the state test.

Among students with disabilities, proficiency levels looked comparable to those pre-COVID: Only 4% met state expectations in math and in reading. Among English language learners, 9% met reading standards and 6% did so in math — proficiency levels that remained farthest behind from pre-pandemic results among student groups.

The portion of students who scored in the lowest of five categories — “did not yet meet expectations” — remained markedly higher in both subjects compared to pre-pandemic results, with 27% of students in reading and 30% in math falling in that group.

Officials at the Illinois State Board of Education have previously cautioned against publicizing local state test results, which it shares with districts in the spring, ahead of their formal release in late fall. They have noted that these results are still subject to vetting, and lack important context without statewide data. Last year, preliminary Chicago Public Schools results Chalkbeat obtained and published were identical to data the state eventually released.

Perie noted that few states have released 2023 achievement data, so it’s hard to say if Chicago’s results signal a broader uptick in recovery, or if the district is something of an outlier. Overall, national data so far has been troubling, suggesting the country is years away from helping students recover academically.

“These results are encouraging,” she said. “It’s great news that Chicago students appear to be recovering.”

Paul Zavitkovsky, an assessment specialist at the Center for Urban Education Leadership at the University of Illinois Chicago, also said the district’s scores show bracing gains across most grades. But like Perie, he flagged third grade scores, where both reading and math proficiency remained significantly lower than pre-pandemic. For this year’s third graders, the years when the bulk of reading skills are normally acquired were upended by the pandemic.

“The one really worrisome thing is the slowness of recovery efforts in grade 3,” he said. “Rising achievement levels in the primary grades are historically what’s driven overall achievement gains in grades 4 through 8 and beyond.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago eyes dramatically expanding its Sustainable Community Schools program

2023-07-31T11:00:00+00:00

On a recent July morning, students at Brighton Park Elementary prepared chicken tenders and honey mustard sauce with a visiting chef in the Southwest Side school’s gleaming kitchen. Later, some went to a boxing class, pairing off to spar on blue mats.

Next door, about 20 students on the school’s student voice committee huddled to brainstorm ideas for a campaign to reopen Chicago’s shuttered mental health clinics. They were getting a $1,000 stipend to participate.

And in a room downstairs, school moms enrolled in a free arts and crafts class folded colorful strips of paper into ruffles to decorate star-shaped piñatas.

The robust summer program is one upshot of the elementary’s status as a Sustainable Community School, a joint initiative of the Chicago Teachers Union and the district, in which 20 high-poverty campuses receive up to $500,000 a year. In tandem with local nonprofits, the schools offer additional after-school and other programs, steer families to services in the community, and seek to engage students and parents in school decisions.

Jade Maldonado, 9, center, gets pointers from her boxing instructor at Brighton Park Elementary on July 20, 2023, in Chicago.

Now, Mayor Brandon Johnson and his transition team want to expand the program, to as many as 200 of the district’s roughly 500 schools — a centerpiece of his promise to give a boost to the city’s often shrinking neighborhood schools. That’s even as proponents recognize that such growth would come with a major price tag, at a time when the district faces a murkier financial outlook.

A Chalkbeat analysis showed that through the turbulent past few years, this group of schools saw graduation tick up and attendance dip largely in lockstep with other high-poverty neighborhood schools, though the community schools started with lower baseline averages. So far, the overwhelming majority of those 20 campuses have not staved off steep districtwide enrollment losses, and many have been particularly hard hit — even as its proponents hope the model might help stabilize enrollment in the longer term.

School leaders such as Brighton Park principal Sara Haas say the initiative has been game-changing, paying for key staff, improving campus cultures, and forging stronger bonds to families and neighborhoods. Some are also upfront that their campuses have a way to go to become true neighborhood hubs with broad family involvement and a wide array of services.

Sara Haas, 39, is the principal at Brighton Park Elementary. She has served at the school for nine years, overseeing the rollout of the Sustainable Community Schools initiative.

Several evaluations of Sustainable Community Schools point to encouraging headway in implementing the program despite the pandemic’s upheaval — as well as difficulties in jibing with nonprofit partners and sometimes uneven buy-in from staff.

Chicago is part of a recent national push to expand what’s more commonly known as full-service community schools, led by teachers unions and other proponents. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is also a fan.

Studies of the model nationally have shown promising gains in attendance, academics, and students’ sense of belonging at school. Others have yielded underwhelming results, drawing an unsurprising conclusion:

It’s all about how the model is implemented.

At Brighton Park Elementary, school leaders say thinking differently about what school can be is key.

“So much of community schools is about shifting your mindset and about how you approach the model,” said Haas.

Chicago eyes a community school expansion

In some ways, said Brighton Park’s Haas, the predominantly Latino campus was a great fit to join the pilot group of Sustainable Community Schools in 2018.

In keeping with the model’s emphasis on embracing restorative justice, the school had already started shifting away from punitive discipline. Over more than a decade, the campus had forged a close relationship with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council — the nonprofit that would become its partner agency in the new initiative. The organization had run after-school and summer programs at the school and funded a part-time clinician position.

The council also offered input as Sustainable Community Schools was conceived, inspired by the 2015 fight and hunger strike that warded off the closure of Dyett High School on Chicago’s South Side. The initiative was ultimately enshrined in the teachers union contract.

Dyett and the 19 other participating campuses were chosen among open enrollment schools in communities where at least 80% of students qualified for subsidized school meals.

The program was built on the idea of supporting “the whole child” — and transforming schools into “community hubs designed to provide wraparound academic, health, and social support for the entire community beyond the traditional 9 am to 3 pm school day,” as the teachers union overview of the program puts it.

Each school paired up with a partner agency, which among other things staffed a resource coordinator to connect families with anything from rental assistance and local food pantries to adult education opportunities. Many schools would also use the added funding to bring on other key support staff: mental health and crisis response counselors, parent or community engagement coordinators, and restorative justice coaches.

The program was not the district’s first foray in building full-service community schools. Many of the pilot schools, including Brighton Park Elementary, were already receiving 21st Century Community Learning Center grants — federal dollars passed on by the state that have helped power the district’s separate Community Schools Initiative, which started in 2003. With roughly 200 schools, that longer-standing program is considered one of the largest community school networks in the country.

But schools receive up to about $150,000 through that older Community Schools Initiative – a fraction of the up to $500,000 funding boost in the union-district Sustainable Community Schools program. As a result, the scope of that earlier initiative is more limited, focused largely on expanding after-school and summer programs and services, and increasing family engagement.

“There’s just not enough money in the Community School Initiative model to address foundational issues of equity,” Patrick Brosnan, the executive director of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council said. “In a perfect world, we need to move toward an expansion of both models.”

Students on the student voice committee at Brighton Park Elementary participate in an icebreaker activity as part of the school’s summer program in 2023.

For Chicago’s new mayor, the focus is on expanding the Sustainable Community Schools model. In fact, Brandon Johnson’s mayoral transition committee, on which Brosnan served, called for making that a district priority in a July report that did not mention the Community School Initiative.

Jen Johnson, the deputy mayor for education, youth, and human services, said in a recent interview with Chalkbeat that the administration’s vision is to work toward a “Sustainable Community Schools district,” even as she acknowledged the major cost of converting all or most campuses into full-service community schools. At current levels of funding, adding 180 schools to the initiative would cost $75 million to $90 million.

Sustainable Community Schools draw praise — and nuanced evaluations

Jhoanna Maldonado, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer and its Sustainable Community Schools point person, says the pandemic brought disruption — but also vindication for the model.

The schools and their community partners were better prepared than most to respond to families’ emergency needs — from food and housing assistance to internet access and laptops for remote learning. They were also often in better positions to address the heightened mental health needs of students and parents.

“That made really difficult work other schools were scrambling to figure out easier,” said Maldonado, a former teacher at Yates Elementary, one of the campuses in the program.

Chalkbeat compared some metrics at the 20 Sustainable Community Schools and at other neighborhood schools that had a poverty rate of 80% or more in 2018. Generally, these campuses have seen similar trends play out since 2018 amid the pandemic’s upheaval: Attendance dipped and chronic absenteeism spiked at comparable rates. Graduation at the high schools participating in the initiative ticked up at a slightly lower rate than at other high-poverty neighborhood high schools.

With the exception of Dyett and Richards high schools, the Sustainable Community Schools have not avoided the enrollment declines that the pandemic accelerated across Chicago. A number — including Brighton Park, Beidler, McCormick, Morrill, and Yates elementaries as well as Farragut and Uplift high schools — were particularly hard hit, losing a quarter or more of their enrollment since the initiative started.

Maldonado, the teachers union organizer, said the district needs better measures of students’ sense of belonging and pride in their school — rather than traditional metrics such as attendance — to capture the value of community schools.

“You walk into a school, and you feel a different vibe,” she said. “You see that people are having those tough conversations.”

Local and national evaluations of community school initiatives offer a nuanced picture, suggesting that smart and careful implementation is paramount to see payoff for students.

On the eve of the pandemic, an analysis of almost 20 rigorous studies of the model found some showed learning and school culture gains, and others showed little effect. Evaluations of Communities In Schools, a national program that works with about 200 schools in Chicago, found it led to academic and other gains in Chicago and in Wichita, Kan., but not in two other cities.

William Corrin, the director of K-12 education at the think tank MDRC, says research so far has not pinpointed why some schools appear more successful in rolling out the model. The mixed evidence likely reflects the heavy lift of getting that model right — and the fact that it takes time to see results.

“A school is a really complex system on its own, with many different players doing different work,” he said. “When you shift to a community school model, you are increasing the number of stakeholders working with students.”

In Chicago, evaluations of Sustainable Community Schools by the American Institutes for Research and the University of Wisconsin — largely based on interviews and surveys of staff at schools and partner agencies — found positive feedback as well as uneven implementation across campuses, though all studies stress the challenges of a pandemic-era rollout.

Educators, school leaders, and other staff reported embracing more culturally responsive teaching practices and offering more social-emotional and mental health support for children. The evaluations also captured pushback against restorative justice in some schools or a sense that educators needed more training and other help to introduce them.

Three principals told researchers that they felt their partner agencies were out to further their own missions rather than understand the needs of the schools and team up on pursuing them.

Campuses strive to get rolling out the model right

Carlos Reyes, a seventh grader on Brighton Park’ student voice committee, says the school’s emphasis on student wellness and leadership has shaped his experience there.

He felt better this past school year after he opened up about the death of his dog in a talking circle with sympathetic classmates. This summer, he also spoke at a City Hall protest as part of the mental health clinics campaign.

“I feel really accomplished when I get to speak out,” he said.

Carlos Reyes, 12, serves on Brighton Park Elementary’s student voice committee and is a member of the local school council. He was voted to the position by fellow students.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Concepcion Alonso, the mom of a Brighton Park Elementary first grader, got a job as a college mentor at nearby Kelly High — her alma mater and another Sustainable Community School — while she attended Harold Washington College. More recently, she tutored at Brighton Park Elementary, and come fall, she will work in its after-school program.

“Sustainable Community Schools has had this compound community-building effect,” said Brosnan, the head of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. “We are hiring from the neighborhood, and it becomes an engine for economic development in the community.”

Brighton Park Elementary made its part-time mental health clinician and parent coordinator full-time positions. It set up a “peace room” for talking circles and installed a washer and dryer to ensure clean uniforms for students.

Still, principal Berg says the rollout in some ways remains a work in progress. She wants the stable of student leaders the school is cultivating to be more involved in weighing in on school decisions. And while the school leans on a handful of active parents, she wants to see broader parental involvement.

At Richards High School, another Sustainable Community School on the Southwest Side, principal Ellen Kennedy says the program has been one of the most influential initiatives in her six years at the helm. It pays for a youth intervention specialist, parent engagement coordinator, a full-time clinician, after-school clubs, and tutoring. It has allowed the school to step up outreach to families and shift neighborhood perceptions of the campus — efforts that Kennedy credits for a 12% increase in enrollment since the program started.

“For us, Sustainable Community Schools is not this extra initiative,” said Kennedy. “It’s the way we want school to function and run on the regular.”

But Kennedy said that as a growing nonprofit with a citywide and national reach, Youth Guidance — the school’s partner agency, known for providing the Becoming a Man mentoring program — didn’t feel as connected to the local community and didn’t have the neighborhood presence the campus had sought. And she said “accountability issues” with programming Youth Guidance provides on campus also affected a decision Richards made this spring to replace it with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council as its lead partner agency.

Two other Sustainable campuses had previously switched nonprofit partners.

In a statement, Youth Guidance noted it will continue to work with its other four partner high schools in the program and to provide mentoring at Richards, citing “an unwavering commitment to the city’s youth, families, and schools.”

Miguel del Valle, who stepped down as Chicago’s school board president in June, recently called for a closer look at the district’s nonprofit partners in both community schools programs. A former member of the Federation for Community Schools board, he says he is a passionate believer in the model. But he said he doesn’t believe all the partners involved in the district’s community school programs are delivering, though he declined to name specific nonprofits or share details about his concerns.

“I really feel we should have higher expectations of our community partners,” he said. “CPS has to keep track of how they are doing rather than leaving it up to principals.”

He also said many of the district’s community schools are not providing enough classes and services for parents and other residents to truly serve as a community hub.

Students play outside Brighton Park Elementary on July 20, 2023, in Chicago.

Some students on Sustainable Community School campuses said their schools need to work harder to make students feel involved in decision-making and to break with punitive discipline — central tenets of the model.

Rose Flores, a junior at Kelly High, said her school did not factor in student input before recent unpopular dress code changes. And she feels the campus has taken a harder line on student behavior post-pandemic. She recently got an in-school suspension for walking to class a few minutes late after she scrambled to change following gym class, she said.

Maldonado said the pilot campuses are “trying to break the mold of what school is from within the system.”

They are still expected to administer what the union considers too many standardized tests. They have contended with staffing shortages. And they have sometimes struggled to embrace the central idea of collaborating on key decisions with partner nonprofits, families, and students.

Still, she said, “This is the way forward for public education. It’s not perfect. It’s not easy.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago opens school enrollment center for migrant children and families

2023-07-17T20:28:56+00:00

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Recently arrived migrant families on Chicago’s West Side will get help with enrolling in school, receiving free school supplies, signing up for public benefits, and getting vaccinated at a new “welcome center” run by Chicago Public Schools and the city.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and city and district officials unveiled the new center at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, a high school in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, on Monday. Officials said the center is a pilot effort — possibly the first of several such facilities across the city.

They also called it a centerpiece of a broader plan they have promised for better serving migrant families across the city, though the center will only help smooth the transition into the district for those living in the Humboldt Park and West Town neighborhoods.

The center, which will work with families by appointment only starting later this week, is estimated to cost roughly $750,000, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who described it as a “very small investment” from the district’s operating budget.

More than 10,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August, many sent on buses from Texas by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Roughly half are staying in temporary shelters, including police stations. Hundreds of school-aged children are among the new arrivals, though the school district has not shared exact numbers. Helping these families find permanent housing and easing children into local public schools are key challenges facing the Johnson administration.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which helped carry Johnson — a former union organizer — to victory in April, had criticized district officials for not doing more to support newly arrived migrant students. Union leaders said some schools were overwhelmed by an influx of such students and scrambled to provide translation and other basic services.

District leaders have said they were working on a detailed, comprehensive plan for helping migrant students, to be released before the first day of school on Aug. 21. That bigger plan is still to come, Martinez said Monday.

Johnson said the area around Clemente was one of the city’s most densely populated with newcomer immigrants.

“We’re going to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, and we’re going to bring people closer together to make sure that the families who have been here have the full force of government and families who wish to call Chicago their home also have the full force of government,” Johnson said at the Monday press conference.

Martinez balked at saying exactly how many migrant students enrolled in the district this past school year — it’s in the thousands, he said — or how many the district expects to serve in the fall. That latter number is too fluid, he said, but he promised to have an update at the start of the school year.

Johnson said his office will track “outcomes with this center” in order to improve how it operates and also use it as a model to potentially expand to other neighborhoods.

At the new “welcoming center” on the high school’s second floor, families will make their way through several classrooms to get a string of services, officials said. Children will get an English language screening, receive free supplies, and get assigned to a school.

Martinez said the high school students will be assigned to Clemente while younger children will be enrolled at one of eight nearby elementary schools — Chopin, De Diego LaSalle II, Mitchell, Moos, Pritzker, Sabin, and Talcott.

“These are migrant families who come here to seek their dream, and we’ll be part of that dream,” said Martha Valerio, the community coordinator at Clemente, standing in front of a table piled with coats, running shoes, and backpacks. “We are all going to receive them with a warm smile.”

Families will meet with a social worker and get help signing up for medical, dental appointments, and public benefits, such as food assistance and Medicaid.

“These are the types of services we have to provide across the entire city,” Johnson told journalists in front of the center.

According to WBEZ, some migrants are now living in tents, rather than police stations or crowded shelters, as they wait for permanent housing. School-aged migrant children are eligible to be classified as Students in Temporary Living Situations – a status that protects children without permanent housing.

Meanwhile, some teachers have been volunteering their time this summer to get students ready for school.

Earlier this month, the police department opened an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against officers, including one accused of impregnating a recently-arrived teen, at a west side police station. The investigation prompted city officials to move migrants out of police stations.

Johnson said at the Monday event that the investigation is ongoing, with an update slated for Tuesday.

Reema Amin contributed.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition team releases its recommendations for schools

2023-07-07T15:38:52+00:00

Create a paid youth council to guide school decisions.

Help about 20,000 homeless students find housing.

Grant full college scholarships to Chicago students looking to become teachers, as a way to cultivate more Black and Latino educators.

These are just a few of the recommendations made by a transition committee convened by Mayor Brandon Johnson to help set his administration’s priorities. The 223-page document released Thursday includes an ambitious progressive education agenda for the former middle school teacher and union organizer who took office in May.

Two of the mayor’s new appointees to the Chicago Board of Education — its new president, Jianan Shi, and member Michelle Morales — served on a subcommittee that set goals for improving the city’s public schools and other services for children and youth.

Many of the committee’s recommendations, such as providing affordable housing for student families, echo bargaining table demands and other goals of the Chicago Teachers Union, which helped carry Johnson to victory in this past spring’s mayoral race. The recommendations also include ending district budgeting based partly on campus enrollments, staffing all district schools with librarians and clinicians, and reviewing whether custodial services, which the district outsources to Aramark, should be brought in house.

Some recommendations reflect more recent goals that educators and in some cases district leaders have laid out. Amid a shift away from a “four-year college for all” mindset in Chicago and elsewhere, the transition report argues that all schools, including International Baccalaureate high schools and middle schools, should offer some trade and vocational programs.

A few of the recommendations are ones that the district is already pursuing, such as regularly surveying students and staffing counselors in all buildings.

Although the report does not attempt to estimate the cost of the school district transformation it envisions, the recommendations almost certainly involve major new spending. At a time when the district is bracing for more financial uncertainty, the report urges the Johnson administration to aggressively explore new funding sources to pay for a costly agenda that calls for significantly expanding the academic, social-emotional, and other services that schools provide to students.

“This new and holistic approach is more important than ever in a district that continues to see BIPOC students disproportionately impacted by violence, the school to prison pipeline, economic disparities, and dropping enrollment,” the report said.

Here are five messages the transition committee conveyed in its report:

1. Give students more of a voice in their education — and pay them to weigh in

The report calls for creating a permanent youth council, with paid members, to offer input on district decisions. Such a council would resemble an existing advisory body that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched, made up of teens who receive a stipend for their service to the mayor’s office. The city should also host regular youth summits and survey students to get feedback on their educational experience, the report argued.

“I am a huge proponent of youth voice,” Morales told reporters this week. “We know that youth who are civically engaged, feel their voices are heard, and feel part of the decision-making at school then feel ownership over their schools.”

The report also suggests paying school board members. That recommendation comes ahead of the city’s transition to an elected school board, and would require a change to state law. The report also suggests changing state law so undocumented residents can serve on Chicago’s elected board.

2. Rapidly increase the number of full-service community schools to 200

On the campaign trail and since his election, Johnson has vowed to dramatically expand the district’s Sustainable Community Schools program, a partnership with the teachers union in which community-based organizations provide after-school and other wraparound services at 20 schools. The transition committee report echoes that goal — and puts some numbers to it.

It says the city should aim to expand the program to 50 of the district’s roughly 500 campuses in the near term — and to 200 in the long term, with an eye to eventually having all district schools function as community hubs through partnerships with local nonprofits and other organizations. And, the report says, the district should create a department to oversee that rapid expansion.

3. Provide free Wi-Fi, laptops, and public transit to students

Following widespread complaints about busing amid a national driver shortage, the report says the district must take a close look at how it provides transportation to its students, including bus driver pay and best practices in other districts. The goal is that no child should have to commute longer than 30 minutes. This past school year, some students experienced commutes of more than 90 minutes one way.

In the long term, the report says, public transit should be free to all students, and all should receive free computers and access to the internet.

4. Replace federal COVID relief dollars that are running out

The mayor’s education agenda and the recommendations of the transition committee will require major new investments — at a time when the district faces rising employee pension costs, declining enrollment, and a looming deadline to spend its federal pandemic recovery aid.

The city must figure out how to keep its finances stable as that federal money goes away, the report stresses. Some possibilities: a cannabis tax, donations from major corporations and other businesses, and tax changes to ensure “the wealthy pay their fair share.” And, the report says, the city should reverse a move by Lightfoot to make the district pay millions of dollars in staff pension costs that the city used to cover.

In media interviews this week, Shi and Morales said the new board will do a deep dive into district spending, with an eye on finding possible savings in administrative costs and other expenses.

“We want to dismantle a learning system built on scarcity,” Shi said.

5. Provide more help for homeless and migrant students

The report charges the mayor’s office with making a plan to find housing for some 20,000 students who don’t have a stable place to live. That’s a goal that the Chicago Teachers Union tried to enshrine in its contract with the district during tense negotiations in 2019 — one that Lightfoot criticized as being outside the district’s scope.

The transition committee, by contrast, said the task should be a top priority for the new mayor. It suggests looking at strategies used in other cities, such as Boston, which the report said has gotten involved in the push to secure affordable housing for families. Roughly 1 in 4 Black students experience homelessness while attending school in the district, the report said.

The district also needs a specific plan with measurable goals for better serving newly arrived migrant students, the report said. Johnson administration officials have said they are planning to open a “welcome center” for newly arrived migrant students at Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School.

The report also suggests granting students and district employees excused absences to attend immigration appointments and formally factoring the language and other needs of migrant students into the city or district budget.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson appoints new school board members

2023-07-05T20:47:19+00:00

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced his appointees to the Chicago Board of Education Wednesday, naming Jianan Shi of the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand to lead the board and replacing all but one of the members appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Shi, a former high school teacher in Boston and Chicago, will replace former state lawmaker Miguel del Valle. He is resigning from Raise Your Hand to take on the new role.

The lone Lightfoot appointee who was reappointed, history professor Elizabeth Todd-Breland, will serve as the board’s vice president. The other new members are: Mary Fahey Hughes, Mariela Estrada, Rudy Lozano, Michelle Morales, and Tanya Woods.

Their terms will run until Jan. 1, 2025, when a new 21-member, partially elected school board will take over.

Shi, who has a master’s degree in education from Boston College, taught high school science in Boston and later at Solorio High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side. He stepped in as Raise Your Hand’s executive director in 2019.

In a statement, Shi vowed to be “the hardest working board member CPS has ever seen.” He noted that all newly appointed board members bring experience working with local school councils and have been district parents, educators, or both.

“As stewards of the transition toward an elected school board, we have much to add to and change over the next year and a half,” he said.

Johnson was elected this past spring after working for a decade as a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. He defeated former Chicago Public CEO Paul Vallas and ran on a progressive platform buoyed by the CTU, which has argued for a broader approach to school improvement focused on tackling issues outside classrooms, such as affordable housing, food insecurity, and gun violence.

His school board appointments offer another glimpse of his vision for the country’s fourth largest district as the city nears a high-stakes transition away from longstanding mayoral control of its school district to an elected school board. The new board takes over as the district also faces a more precarious financial picture, with federal COVID recovery dollars running out next year and rising costs related to employee pensions and other debt.

In the run-up to the appointments, some parent and disability rights advocacy groups argued the Johnson administration should have done more to clearly spell out its criteria for board members and solicit applications more broadly.

Fahey Hughes, who formerly served as Raise Your Hand’s parent liaison for special education, has been an outspoken advocate for students with disabilities in the district. She leads 19th Ward Parents for Special Education.

Estrada is currently the director of community engagement at the United Way of Metro Chicago; she also formerly worked at the city’s Inspector General’s office and at the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, a nonprofit that partners with the district. Lozano is a vice president at J.P. Morgan Chase; he formerly worked for the community group Enlace Chicago and taught in alternative high schools.

Morales is the president of the Woods Fund Chicago and formerly led the Mikva Challenge, a youth advocacy organization. And Woods is a practicing attorney who currently serves as the executive director of the Westside Justice Center.

Morales and Lozano both taught at alternative public high schools, according to their online profiles, while Woods and Estrada list community organizing roles in their past work experience.

“It’s my honor to bring together such a diverse group of people from community, business, philanthropy and elsewhere to collaborate around a vision for our schools that ensures every student has access to a fully resourced, supportive, and nurturing learning environment,” Johnson said in a statement.

Johnson’s school board picks follows his appointment of teachers union leader Jen Johnson as his education deputy. The teachers union’s foundation has contributed financially to Raise Your Hand and some of the other community-based nonprofits, such as Enlace and Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, where Johnson’s board picks have worked.

Education advocates sought a voice in board choices

Last month, about a dozen education advocacy groups appealed to Johnson to ensure a more open and transparent process for selecting board members. The groups representing parents and other advocates — including some of the city’s most prominent disability rights nonprofits — urged the Johnson administration to clearly spell out its selection criteria and to solicit nominations from the public.

Following longstanding concerns about the district’s services for students with disabilities, they argued that the board must include members who understand the needs of those students and have a track record advocating for them. They asked for a meeting with the mayor.

In a statement to Chalkbeat in June, the mayor’s office said the mayor is “a partner to many of these individuals and organizations seeking education justice,” and his selection would reflect their values.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland (center, in gray dress) will be the only appointee of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot who will continue to serve on the school board under Mayor Brandon Johnson.

But members of several of the advocacy groups that signed the letter said they never got a formal response from the mayor’s office — or any more insight into the process for picking board members. After one of the groups, Activate Chicago Parents, tweeted that the administration had not engaged with families about what they would like to see in board appointees, a Johnson spokesperson responded: “We haven’t asked because we already know.”

Cassie Creswell, a district parent who leads Illinois Families for Public Schools, one of the groups that signed the letter, said the appointment process could have been more transparent in a district where many families still deeply mistrust its leadership.

“That trust deficit isn’t as easy to quantify as the fiscal shortfalls, but it is also crucial to strengthening CPS in the long term,” Creswell said in a statement.

In his statement, Shi said the new board has the “tremendous responsibility” to improve services for students with disabilities, empower Local School Councils, grow career and technical education programs, and expand efforts to provide more services to students, such as the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, a partnership between the district, teachers union and community-based organizations.

“We will be advocating for more funding at every level and set up the future 21-seat school board for success,” he said.

The school board positions are unpaid volunteer posts, so Shi said he will focus on transitioning into his new role before starting to look for a new job. Natasha Erskine and Joy Clendenning will jointly lead Raise Your Hand on an interim basis following Shi’s resignation.

New board members will be elected in 2024

In November 2024, Chicago voters will get to elect 10 members of a new 21-member school board. The remainder of the board at that point, including a board president, will be appointed by the mayor.

The board will be fully elected by January 2027. State lawmakers this spring gave themselves more time to create a new electoral map for the school board election amid disagreement over how to fairly divide the city to yield a board that reflects the district’s demographics. The deadline to draw that map is now next April.

Del Valle, whose term expired in June, told Chalkbeat in a recent interview that he was not interested in continuing to serve on the board or in running for a seat next year. He voiced concern about the large size of the future board and about the fact that undocumented residents of Chicago would not be allowed to vote in the school board election under the current law.

“You’ll have labor versus business and charter schools in terms of funding,” he said. “Parents won’t stand much of a chance of getting elected.”

Several of Lightfoot’s appointees have been serving on the board for only a short period of time. She shook things up in June 2022, when she appointed three members, ousting one, Dwayne Truss, who vocally opposed the construction of a $120 million high school on the Near South Side. In March, after failing to secure a second term, Lightfoot appointed a former charter school official to the seat vacated by the former vice president, Sendhil Revuluri, last December.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago grapples with reengaging youth who are not in school or the workforce

2023-06-29T11:40:00+00:00

Last winter, Alonte Wilson had written off ever getting a high school diploma. He was 18, woefully short on credits and full of uncertainty about his future.

Then he got a series of texts from an outreach worker at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, a nonprofit on Chicago’s West Side:

“Here’s something that can help you so you’re not just sitting in the house doing nothing.”

Wilson could get another crack at finishing high school, the texts promised. He could also receive therapy, mentoring, and job readiness training — and get paid $250 a week while he was at it.

Wilson was skeptical, but intrigued.

In Chicago, an estimated 45,000 teens and young adults like Wilson are not in school, college, or the workforce. That’s roughly 15% of the city’s 16- to 24-year-old residents. City leaders and experts have long seen reengaging these young people — whom they call “Opportunity Youth” — as crucial to addressing poverty, racial inequities, and gun violence.

But the task has bedeviled the city for at least the past decade.

The pandemic triggered a renewed sense of urgency as the number of disconnected youth grew. Reconnection Hubs run by nonprofits in Roseland and Little Village added in-house therapists and street outreach. The school district launched Back to Our Future, which it sees as a first-of-its-kind program to reengage the toughest-to-reach dropouts with help from nonprofits such as Breakthrough.

But overall, Chicago’s programs are often fragmented and lack the big-picture vision and coordination between nonprofits and government agencies that experts say are key to success. Data on young people’s longer-term outcomes is scarce. And programs tend to reel in youth who are still somewhat connected — going to community college or working part-time, for example — not the most difficult to reach.

Now, newly elected Mayor Brandon Johnson, who pledged to double jobs and invest in programs for young people, has become the latest city leader hoping to solve the youth disconnection issue.

The stakes are high: Disconnected teens and young adults suffer a long-term toll on their health, social-emotional development, and relationships. In Chicago, more than 90% of young gun violence victims are not enrolled in school, the University of Chicago Education Lab has found. And according to one often-cited 2012 Columbia University study, each disconnected youth carries on average an almost $940,000 lifetime cost to society in lost tax revenue, higher government spending, and other costs.

“These are the most vulnerable youth in our community,” said Yolanda Fields, Breakthrough’s executive director. “What we’re trying to communicate is, ‘You’re worth it. We’ve come for you.’”

Chicago has grappled with youth disconnection for years

Wilson was in third grade – often viewed as a critical predictor of academic success – when the issue of out-of-school, out-of-work youth first loomed large in the national conversation. He was growing up on the West Side, in an area that has long struggled with disinvestment and gun violence.

In 2013, many Black families were leaving Chicago, and the city was in the midst of shuttering almost 50 elementary schools on the South and West sides, the largest mass school closures in the United States.

The Great Recession had left a lingering toll on youth employment. The Obama administration made reengaging out-of-school, out-of-work young people a signature initiative, spurring national campaigns and the birth of new organizations devoted to the issue. Chicago pledged to reckon with disconnection as well.

Advocates and city leaders at the time often cited a striking number: More than 50,000 youth ages 16 through 24 were not going to school or working.

While officials have tied the goal of reconnecting them to preventing gang recruitment and crime, many of these young people were derailed instead by poverty, parenthood, mental health issues, and a lack of jobs in some swaths of a segregated city.

In 2013, the school district opened Student Outreach and Re-Engagement Centers in Little Village, Roseland, and Garfield Park — its first attempt to track down and cajole back thousands of dropouts. But the centers could not help disconnected youth who had aged out of school or those who already had a high school diploma, which more than half of disengaged 16- to 24-year-olds do.

In the following years, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration helped launch Thrive Chicago, an organization meant to connect nonprofits and agencies who worked with disengaged youth. With grants from the city, Thrive helped start two Reconnection Hubs, in Roseland in 2018 and Little Village in 2019.

The Hubs, which share space with two of the school district’s reengagement centers, were designed to be a one-stop shop for youth grappling with disconnection — helping them with basic needs such as housing and transportation, and offering leads on jobs or job training programs.

Government investment in reconnecting youth can mean “the difference between a life of poverty and a life of prosperity,” Emanuel said in announcing a 2017 Opportunity Youth Summit that the mayor’s office co-hosted with Thrive.

By the eve of the pandemic in 2019, Thrive had also compiled a trove of U.S. Census data shedding new light on these young people. That year, their numbers had dropped to 37,000, but the decrease was not necessarily a sign of success. Mainly, there were fewer teens and young adults living in Chicago overall, while a resurgent national economy had given youth hiring a boost, said Matthew Wilson at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.

In Chicago, the rate of teens and young adults not in school, college, or the workforce had remained relatively steady at 12%. For Black youth, it was almost 25%.

And the highest concentration of such youth is in the area where Wilson grew up on the West Side.

Chicago launches another new program amid disconnect

The tenuous relationship Wilson had with school unraveled completely after the COVID pandemic hit. At Orr High School, “Zoom school” failed to hold his attention and gave him license to tune out altogether.

He failed a string of classes and fell short on credits. Gun violence in his neighborhood and across the city claimed friends, he said. Then in 2021, Wilson himself was shot, and his family sent him to live in Florida for a time, where he attended an alternative high school.

He returned to Chicago early the following year. Seven months later, according to a police report, Wilson was arrested on the West Side and charged when officers responding to a gathering of young people noticed he had a gun — illegal in Illinois for people under age 21 — which he later told police he carried for protection.

In the months that followed, as the city crawled back to normal after two years of COVID restrictions, Wilson sat in home confinement and took stock of his murky prospects.

“My life was paused, and I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” he said.

Wilson’s experience reflects a larger truth: Young people — especially Black youth — were hit harder by the fallout from COVID and, here in Chicago, they have been much slower to recover, according to a recent University of Illinois Chicago report. The jobless rate for Black women in their early twenties doubled from 2019 to 2021, climbing to almost 60%.

Nationally, experts and advocates hoped the pandemic would bring new energy and federal money to address the issue of out-of-school, out-of-work youth, as it did in the aftermath of the Great Recession, said Louisa Treskon, senior associate at the think tank MDRC. Largely, that hasn’t been the case.

“So many young people now have heightened needs and are struggling,” Treskon said. “That has overshadowed the more specific needs of opportunity youth.”

Chicago, however, set out to try a new approach. The district’s new Back to Our Future program launched last year aims to do “relentless engagement” — intensive outreach to persuade youth disengaged from school for more than a year and their families to give the program a chance.

During the initial 12 weeks of the program, they would get more services than the district’s Student Outreach and Re-Engagement Centers had ever offered: mentorship, mental health services, “soft skills” training, help with finding a job, and a $15.40 an hour stipend.

The catch: A price tag of $18,000 per student, along with the novelty of the approach, meant the district would start small. It would aim for reaching 1,000 students in 15 neighborhoods on the South and West sides during the program’s first year.

With funding from the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention at the Illinois Department of Human Services, the district signed one-year contracts last spring totaling almost $20 million with three nonprofits to run Back to Our Future, including Garfield Park’s Breakthrough, a faith-based organization that runs housing, violence prevention, and other programs.

Fields, the executive director at Breakthrough, says the nonprofit has long offered local public school students arts, sports, and other enrichment programs. But it had never before provided services for dropouts.

The contracts task Breakthrough and the other partners with targeting youth at high risk of becoming victims of violence or getting involved with the criminal justice system.

“This is where our investment should be,” school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said last summer after district officials touted the new program. “Not on the back end in criminalizing, in caging — but on the front end.”

Reengagement work happens one student at a time

Wilson started coming to Breakthrough for Back to Our Future in January, enticed by the texts from the outreach worker. The program put Wilson on the GED prep track, for students who are older and shorter on credits.

Other participants start on an online credit recovery program. For some, the program might lead to a return to a more traditional high school setting, but not until months down the road.

As the weeks went by, the staff chipped away at Wilson’s initial skepticism.

He started seeing a therapist. When his cell phone company blocked his account, the program covered his unpaid bill — what Breakthrough staff call a “sticky factor,” or help with day-to-day life challenges that shores up relationships with the students, factored into the cost of the program.

When he skipped days — something he had always felt caused barely a ripple in high school — staff texted and called right away, coaxing him back.

“It’s like a family, but it’s cool,” he said.

This spring, Wilson sat in a hushed room on the second floor at Breakthrough’s sleek, modern complex, off a hallway with yellow and purple lockers. There was a smattering of desks, a whiteboard, and a list of “rules and regulations” on the wall that proclaimed the space a “no judgment zone.”

Wearing a black shirt with “Born to Hustle” emblazoned along the sleeve, Wilson stared at a math problem on a laptop screen: If a painter rented a wallpaper steamer at 9 a.m., returned it at 4 p.m., and paid $28.84, what was the rental cost per hour?

Tamaya McGowan, 19, and her son at Breakthrough FamilyPlex on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, in Chicago. McGowan is working on completing her GED in the school district’s new Back to Our Future program. “It helps that I get to spend time with my son while pursuing my education,” she said.

A couple of young women holding toddlers by the hand rushed in and were handed their own laptops. One of them, Tamaya McGowan, was also working on her GED and eyeing a construction training program at Malcolm X Community College this fall.

To Myisha McGee, Breakthrough’s director of high school and postsecondary education, Wilson became a cross between resident recruiter and teacher’s aide. Half a dozen friends joined the program as well. When other teens showed disrespect, he would raise his voice so McGee didn’t have to, or he’d pull them aside to say, “Hey, we don’t do that here.”

Thanks to the job readiness training students receive, Wilson learned how to present himself to potential employers. He crafted a 30-second “elevator speech.”

“Hey, how you doing? My name’s Alonte Wilson, and I go to Breakthrough to get my GED, so I can go to trade school and start to change my jam and become an architect or engineer.”

Advocates say the latest efforts to connect with disengaged youth are paying off.

Sidney Johnson, a soft-spoken, avuncular therapist hired by the Reconnection Hub in Roseland during the pandemic, urges clients to “focus on what you can control” and “create your own narrative.” He says almost all the young people the Hub serves have experienced childhood trauma, and unmasking how it’s shaping their self-esteem and behavior now can be powerful.

Chicago Public Schools officials also say Back to Our Future is off to a promising start. So far, 465 students have taken part — short of the program’s Year 1 goal of 1,000 students spelled out in its contracts. Attendance has ups and downs, but most teens have stuck with the program.

Some of the 86 students Breakthrough has served dropped off after the end of the first paid 12 weeks. Three have gotten arrested. One 19-year-old was shot and killed in the neighborhood earlier in June.

But most are engaged, said McGee, and her hope is that some will have earned enough credits to return to traditional school this fall.

Are Chicago’s efforts reconnecting young people? It’s tough to say.

At the Reconnection Hub in Little Village, many young people walk in seeking something specific: help with removing a gang tattoo, finding child care, or getting a public transit pass.

Director Pedro Mendez says his team has specialized in trouble-shooting these hurdles to reengagement. Staff at the Hub — an area with cluttered desks and a couple of classrooms in the back of a nonprofit above a shopping center — try to build a longer-term relationship with youth they help, steering them to, say, an in-house GED, photography, or coding classes, or job training.

Sidney Johnson mentors Ti’Shawn Clark as part of Roseland Reconnection Hub’s services for youth ages 16 to 24 at Phalanx Family Services in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago.

But here and in Roseland, staying in touch longer term is a challenge. And it’s hard to come by data on education and employment outcomes for participants in Chicago’s patchwork of programs.

Data Chicago Public Schools provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act shows its Student Outreach and Re-engagement Centers — the program the district started a decade ago to reengage dropouts — have seen the number of students they serve shrink dramatically, from 3,245 in 2016 to 655 in 2022, even as the district launched a new center in Englewood in partnership with City Colleges of Chicago in 2021.

About a quarter of the students who visited a reengagement center in 2022 graduated that year, district data shows. But the district doesn’t track how many graduate beyond the year they make contact with the program — or what happens afterwards. The district did not respond to questions about the centers, except to say that officials will reassess the program in the fall.

This year, Thrive Chicago completed an evaluation of the Reconnection Hubs program, but did not make it public. Several former employees who have seen the report and spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously said it echoed what staff at the Hubs told Chalkbeat: The Hubs have provided important services for almost 3,000 young people.

But there is no data on how they have fared in helping youth complete their education or find jobs.

According to the former employees, the report also said that the Hubs veered from a vision for the program in which they would size up young people’s needs, make a plan — and then refer them to nonprofits or government agencies that can best serve them. That vision was an awkward fit for a nonprofit ecosystem in which local and state funding is based on the number of clients on the Hubs’ own caseloads.

Then in May, Thrive shut down abruptly. The group’s board president, Timothy Schwertfeger, did not respond to requests for comment.

The state did not respond by the time of publication to a Chalkbeat request for attendance and other outcome numbers for Back to Our Future. The University of Chicago’s Education and Crime Labs is slated to produce a more formal evaluation, with some findings set to come out later this summer.

Nationally, the relatively small number of reengagement programs that have been rigorously studied have generally yielded modest increases in high school completion and earnings.

“There’s been this thread of, ‘Nothing really works,’” said Treskon, the MRDC expert.

In fairness, she notes, these programs work with youth with extremely high needs, many of whom have experienced trauma and other hardships. Programs are often too short-lived to effectively bend the trajectories of young people’s lives. Few cities have perfected what experts believe are all-important “smooth handoffs” — partnerships between the nonprofits and government agencies that together can meet this group’s complex needs, free of competition for grants and other funding.

In Back to Our Future’s first 12 weeks of intensive support, Treskon says, the program seems to deliver the gold standard: engagement with families, trauma-informed mentoring and counseling, a stipend, and “soft skills” job readiness training. The big test is what happens after that.

On his first day in office in May, Chicago Mayor Johnson signed an executive order directing his team to come up with a detailed plan for how to double the number of youth jobs, starting with opening more positions for young people in city government. His deputy for education, youth, and human services, Jen Johnson, recently told Chalkbeat that cross-department and agency collaboration will be key in tackling disengagement — and touted the Back to Our Future program as a promising approach.

Alonte Wilson, 19, takes a GED practice test at Breakthrough FamilyPlex in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood.

For his part, Wilson, now 19, has continued to show up at Breakthrough even though he stopped receiving his stipend weeks ago.

No longer on home confinement, he said he now has a part-time job at Walgreens and is close to taking his GED exams.

“I’ve learned how to switch my ways,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s post-GED game plan is still “all over the place,” says McGee, Breakthrough’s education director. But the program has a “Trades Day” coming up, and McGee hopes to take him on some college tours.

In the meantime, Wilson has a job interview outfit picked out: white button-down shirt, black slacks, black dress shoes. “You gotta look like you really want the job,” he said.

And he has kept practicing his elevator speech, tweaking it with input from staff and peers to swap out his dream job of architect for mechanic.

“I have soft skills like communication skills, listening skills, time management, and teamwork,” he recited during a mock interview day at Breakthrough one recent Friday. “I am very interested in discussing my skills and would like to schedule an interview with you at your earliest date.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board backs funding for campus police — and an initiative to reduce reliance on it

2023-06-28T21:24:10+00:00

The Chicago school board approved a contract Wednesday with the Chicago Police Department that will be slightly costlier than last year’s, even as some members urged the district to keep decreasing its reliance on campus police.

The contract approval also comes as Mayor Brandon Johnson, who criticized having police in schools while on the campaign trail, pivoted to adopt his predecessor’s view that local school councils should decide whether their campuses staff officers.

District officials touted an initiative that encourages campuses to consider replacing officers stationed with restorative justice coordinators, social workers, culture and climate coordinators, or other staff devoted to promoting safety.

Since the district launched the Whole School Safety initiative during the pandemic, its police contract has shrunk to less than a third of the roughly $33 million it paid in 2019. The number of police officers stationed in schools has also been cut nearly in half. Next year, the district will staff 57 police officers at 39 high schools, down from 108 officers at 53 high schools in 2020.

But Chicago’s push to pull police officers from campuses has lost momentum in the past couple of years. This spring, the local school councils at just two schools voted to change the status quo: Austin College and Career Academy went from two officers to one, and Marshall High School did away with police presence on its campus altogether.

Because of contractual salary increases, the contract with the police department approved Wednesday is going up by $180,000, to $10.3 million.

Now, some school board members say the district’s efforts to reduce the police presence need fresh ideas. That’s especially important because the majority of schools that continue to staff officers serve predominantly Black students, board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said.

“We are disproportionately policing Black students in our schools,” she said last week during a board meeting to review the agenda for Wednesday’s monthly meeting.

Todd-Breland voted no on the police contract, and board member Joyce Chapman abstained.

But Jadine Chou, the district’s safety and security chief, told school board members that she sees the stable number of police on high school campuses as a good thing after several years of pandemic upheaval and rising concern about school safety. The district largely receives positive feedback on the role officers have played, she said.

Chou said she believes that campuses where officers have been successful in cultivating relationships with students have actually disrupted the school-to-prison pipeline, though she did not offer data to that effect and acknowledged that might not be the case in all schools.

The district will study the impact of officers — and of removing them — this year, using both discipline data and surveys of students and families.

“You see it as a plateau,” Chou said. “We see it as a stabilization for the time being coming out of the pandemic.”

The district has released few details about the impact of the Whole School Safety initiative so far. Last year, Chicago Public Schools denied Freedom of Information Act requests from Chalkbeat for school-level data on officers, disciplinary referrals, support staff, and funding for safety alternatives. It deferred a request to city hall and the police department.

District officials and community groups touted safety initiative

The board also approved Wednesday $3.9 million for staff and programs aimed at improving school climate in 39 schools that have pulled one or more of their police officers in recent years. Employees at these schools will also receive professional development from five community-based organizations that have teamed up with the school district on the Whole School Safety initiative.

A shift the district is considering toward more mobile police patrols might encourage more campuses to move away from stationing officers, Chou said. “We don’t want to push people before they are ready.”

Chou also told the board that this summer the district is doing away with a contractual requirement that all part-time security officers on its campuses be off-duty Chicago Police Department officers.

After a string of high-profile school shootings over the past year, some districts have revisited their efforts to reduce reliance on police officers — even as some advocates have continued to question their effectiveness in improving overall safety. Following a March shooting at a high school that injured two educators, a divided Denver school board voted to permanently lift a ban on school police enacted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis.

Johnson, who had said police have no place in school during the election campaign, said last week that it should be up to those local school councils to decide whether to station officers on campus. That’s even though the Chicago Teachers Union, where Johnson worked as an organizer until his election, had harshly criticized his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, for saddling the councils with that decision.

Asked about the contract with the police department last week, Johnson said, “I think it’s important that as a city, we recognize that our priorities have to be the development of the full child, and a budgetary decision that ultimately will come down to whether or not a local school council believes that’s the best pathway forward.”

Board members and officials stressed the importance of allowing students to weigh in and even take the lead in driving school safety solutions. Some students and staff with the district’s community-based partners on the Whole School Safety initiative addressed the board on Wednesday as well.

Natalya Miner, a rising senior at William Howard Taft High School, said she was involved with her school’s Whole School Safety push over the past two years. She was the only student in the room, often wishing the effort had involved more peers.

On her campus, Miner said, the initiative had been successful because the administration and educators already had forged strong relationships with students, including an open door policy by its principal.

“The most important thing for school safety is the school environment,” Miner said. “It should truly be about the students, and how students feel.”

Board members urge expanding the district’s safety efforts

Sean Price of Build Chicago, a nonprofit that helped coordinate the initiative at Austin College and Career Academy, said that the school’s leadership focused on bringing in student and parent voices. In place of the police officer the school decided to pull, it will get a climate and culture coordinator and is also setting up a meditation room.

“This is about creating a culture of safety,” he said. “The punitive approach hasn’t worked. We’ve all seen it.”

Some board members such as outgoing president Miguel del Valle wondered if some of the lessons of the district safety initiative, including its collaborative approach, can be applied to improving safety in schools’ surrounding areas — and across the city.

Chou said she is excited about Johnson’s interest in collaborating, touting a push by the mayor’s office to team up with the district and nonprofits to provide safe activities for young people this past Memorial Day weekend.

The district opened seven school buildings that weekend, and more than 2,000 youth participated in enrichment, sports, and other activities there, even as the highest number of shootings since 2016 marred the weekend elsewhere.

Chou said the district and its community-based partners will host a Whole School Safety conference in the coming months. The district will also pilot the initiative at three elementary schools in the fall. Elementary campuses do not staff police officers, but officials felt some could also benefit from exploring ways to strengthen their climate and safety.

“There are a lot of people out there who feel this is not moving fast enough,” she said.

But, she stressed, “This process, Whole School Safety, is something we really believe in, that our schools believe in, and that we’re doubling down on.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Jen Johnson, Chicago’s new deputy mayor for education, has a long to-do list. First up: Youth jobs, migrant families.

2023-06-22T19:51:17+00:00

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy for education, youth, and human services Jennifer “Jen” Johnson has a packed agenda for the coming months.

Her first two orders of business since stepping into her new role in May: Boost the number of teens landing jobs through the city’s summer youth employment program. Help spearhead a more collaborative city response to the arrivals of migrant families, connecting some children to summer school and other programs.

But Jen Johnson, the former chief of staff for the Chicago Teachers Union (no relation to the mayor), says she is also eager to dramatically expand the district’s Sustainable Community Schools program, a partnership with the teachers union in which high-poverty schools team up with community-based organizations to beef up services for students and transform campuses into neighborhood hubs.

Expanding these types of schools was a campaign promise of Mayor Johnson’s, himself a former teachers union leader.

And as the district and union tackle negotiations over a new labor contract, Jen Johnson will find herself on the opposite side of the table from where she sat during highly contentious contract talks in 2019 and later over reopening school buildings during the pandemic.

In an exclusive interview with Chalkbeat, Jen Johnson, a former high school history teacher, spoke about the promise and pressure of attacking that high-stakes to-do list.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What excites you about your new role in the mayor’s office?

I am incredibly honored to have been asked to take this on. My passion comes from working with young people. I’m most excited about those additional levers that I get to push — and the additional collaborators across departments and agencies — to impact the lives of young people. I’m a classroom educator at heart. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher from when I was very young. I come from a family of educators. And I have a deep belief that young people are incredible. Their leadership is something that I’m excited to continue to cultivate.

What keeps you up at night?

It’s just the anxiety of all of the challenges and problems that the city is facing. My portfolio is very wide. I work with eight departments or agencies. The problems that we’re trying to address are systemic. Every day, I’m trying to move the chess pieces in the right direction because the challenges are so deeply impacting families. We need an investment in our schools and in our communities. I am trying to approach the work with a lens of accessibility. The mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities also falls within my office. Every community is touched by the agencies that I’m working with, and every single one has critical work to do. So the anxiety is, “Can we get it done? How quickly? What resources do we need to identify to do so?”

During the election campaign, Mayor Johnson talked about his interest in expanding Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools model as a way to bring more resources and support to students in high-need schools. How many such schools do you envision, and how can the city scale up this model?

I think the vision and the dream is to work toward a Sustainable Community Schools district. That obviously will take enormous resources. So we are going to have to be sober and honest with our finances. We are going to have to work closely with Chicago Public Schools and ensure Chicago Public Schools is working closely with the Chicago Teachers Union. I’m hopeful that we can get to a phased approach where we are ramping up, but it’s too soon for me to predict an exact number. But the vision is to continue to grow that model where parents, students, community members, staff, and administration are working in partnership to make decisions in a just way that brings resources to students and families and makes schools a community hub. We think that that strategy builds confidence, it builds trust, and it will help school communities with enrollment ultimately.

Speaking of Sustainable Community Schools, Miguel del Valle, who is stepping down as school board president, recently called for evaluating and holding more accountable the district’s community partners in the Sustainable Community Schools program. Do you see a need for that as well?

Look, we live in a world where people expect and deserve data. They expect and deserve transparency in what is happening in their school communities. So I’m fully in favor of ensuring that students, families, educators, and the community understand what resources, programs, and supports are being put into schools, including the Sustainable Community Schools. I don’t think it’s fair to single out just Sustainable Community Schools. We have to be more transparent with how we’re talking about what investments are going into schools wholesale because that will help us tell the story of where more investment is needed. What I’m not in favor of is continuing to have to justify providing programs, resources, staffing, and services that all of our students deserve. Our young people deserve a librarian. Our young people deserve an after-school program. Our young people deserve a health clinic in their school. I’m not interested in revisiting the 25-year history of research on whether community schools work, but research is very clear that this model is the way we should do school.

Why were youth jobs one of the first orders of business when Mayor Johnson took office last month? How will this administration achieve his goal of doubling them?

The mayor is a parent. He has three active children, and he and his family ensure that they are engaged in high-quality programs that keep them busy and happy. The mayor understands that not all young people have access to programs and jobs that do the same for them. He knows that young people who have opportunities to have paid work will be occupied and have fun; they will learn skills that will transfer back into the school and hopefully will transfer into interest that drives them forward with their future plans. He understands that it’s an important lever on curbing young people from engaging in behavior that is destructive.

We have been working very quickly and closely with the Department of Family & Support Services, with our budget department, with our sister agencies and departments. One Summer Chicago is a critical program. We think that it can do more. So all of those partners are working together right now to increase the number of students who are placed in slots. We also have corporate partners working with our departments to identify opportunities for young people to work. So this is really an all-hands-on-deck moment. We do expect to see a bump this summer, and then we’re going to be working really hard to maintain and continue that increase.

Chicago Public Schools is going into contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. How will the Johnson administration ensure the two sides arrive at a contract that meets the needs of educators, students — and taxpayers?

The mayor has been clear that he is an educator, so he knows how critical investing in our Chicago Public Schools is. He is also a parent, and he is the mayor for the entire city. So we’re going to balance all of the priorities we have to balance, in terms of investment and fiscal responsibility, but we’re going to do it in a collaborative manner. We will be able to have more honest, upfront conversations with the union and with the district about the needs and about the barriers. And with Mayor Johnson in office, he has excellent relations across all levels of government. So I am hopeful that the process will be less painful, more inclusive, and driven by a shared set of goals.

How will the school district and the city step up services for newly arrived migrant students?

The issue of supporting our asylum-seekers is one that cuts across many departments in this city. I have continued to support making sure that young people who are part of our migrant families are connected to their school communities as soon as possible. There are young people who have been connected with summer programming this summer. But the solutions don’t just live in one department. There is increased, deeper collaboration across the schools, the Department of Family & Support Services, the mayor’s office, and myriad others. There’s a lot of evaluation going on of what’s working right now. I also expect we are going to bring on a new deputy mayor who will be fully focused on this issue.

Typically, newly elected mayors have replaced appointed members of the Chicago Board of Education. Four of seven members’ terms are expiring this month. Do you have any updates about Mayor Johnson’s school board appointments?

We’re working on it, and you’ll know as soon as we’re ready to share.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

School board, community members weigh in on Chicago Public Schools budget

2023-06-21T23:02:24+00:00

At a pair of hearings ahead of the city school board’s vote on the Chicago Public Schools budget, advocates raised concerns over the time frame given for individual schools to respond to their campus’s spending plan and board members asked questions about strategies to allocate funding equitably.

City officials presented details of the proposal at hearings Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon. Community members also had the chance to weigh in on the specific capital budget Tuesday afternoon, but no speakers showed. Two more hearings on the capital budget are scheduled for 6 p.m. on June 21 and 12 p.m. on June 23.

Under the proposed plan, the CPS budget would remain steady at $9.4 billion, though more funds will be funneled directly to schools. Ninety percent of schools would see an increase on a per-pupil basis, with 39 schools slated to receive budget cuts, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Three of those schools have a majority white student body, 24 are predominantly Black, and eight are majority Latino. Overall, schools with a predominantly Black enrollment would have the most significant per-pupil increases.

The district said proposed cuts were primarily driven by significant enrollment losses. But Dulce Arroyo, a community organizer and former CPS teacher, said enrollment losses should be taken as a sign of needing more support, not less.

“The youth have been demanding everything they need to feel safe, heard, and valued as human beings, not as dollar signs,” Arroyo said during public comment at the Tuesday night hearing. “Instead of keeping schools fully staffed and funded and making them safe spaces for these committees, the board continues to take away funds and resources. It makes zero sense that the district wants stellar enrollment rates, while it also takes more funds and resources away every year.”

Though enrollment remains a factor, the district has been moving away from mostly enrollment-based allocations. CPS uses an “opportunity index” — a formula based on community and student characteristics — to identify schools with high needs and to direct funding accordingly.

Of the school-level funding, about half — or $128 million — would go to hiring staff to support students with disabilities. This comes as the Illinois Board of Education found CPS violated state law in restraint and seclusion practices, an issue particularly impacting students with disabilities.

The budget would also continue to invest in nurses, social workers, and case managers, bringing staffing levels of each of these categories to what officials say are all-time highs.

Other staffing highlights include:

$15 million to provide additional district-funded counselors at 131 highest-need schools
50 advocates for students in temporary living situations
$15 million increase of funding for bilingual instruction, $8 million of which district officials say would go to schools with recent influxes of migrant students

Every school in CPS will be required to have a social worker by 2024, according to a contract between the district and Chicago Teachers Union. Ben Felton, chief talent officer at CPS, said at Wednesday afternoon’s budget hearing that the district is up 50 social workers, 50 nurses, and 80 additional counselors from this time last year.

In fiscal year 2024, the district will look to hire an additional 60 social workers, according to its proposed budget book.

“There’s opening the positions and budgeting for them, but there’s actually finding the human beings to do this work,” said Felton at Tuesday night’s hearing. “For the first time, as far as I can tell in CPS history, we’ve got a devoted school social worker recruitment team that’s in our office and we just launched that team a couple of weeks ago.”

Felton told Chalkbeat that it’s generally more difficult to fill social worker positions, so the district is hoping this effort will help. CPS instituted a similar recruitment team for nurses a few years ago, he added.

The school board is expected to vote on the budget at its June 28 meeting.

Push for more planning in future budgets

Two people at the Tuesday night hearing said there was not enough time for local school councils to review their individual school budgets before being asked to approve or appeal them in May. Principals received draft budgets in mid-April.

Natasha Erskine is the local school council director at education advocacy group Raise Your Hand. She said at the Tuesday night hearing that her organization sent a request signed by nearly 200 independent LSC members asking for more time to review these budgets.

“What I would hope that the board can really lean in on is making sure that the budget next year gives adequate time to local councils,” Erskine said. “That way we can make sure that all of these gaps that we’re talking about real time get the adequate support and accountability that it deserves.”

At Tuesday night’s budget hearing, school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland also stressed the importance of planning for the loss of federal COVID recovery money, which must be spent by September 2024.

Michael Sitkowski, deputy chief of Office of Budget and Grants Management of CPS, said the district will need to seek additional funding to avoid cuts in the future.

“CPS is the only district in the state whose full teacher pension cost is not essentially covered by the state of Illinois,” he said at Tuesday night’s hearing. This coming school year, the district is expected to make a $700 million payment to the Chicago teachers pension fund.

The state uses an “evidence-based funding formula” to calculate how much each school district needs to educate the students it serves. For example, districts receive more money if they serve more students who are low-income or who are learning English.

CPS receives only 75% of what the evidence-based funding formula says the district needs to be adequately funded, leaving CPS with a shortfall of nearly $1.4 billion, Sitkowski said at Tuesday night’s hearing.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to decrease inequities here,” said Todd-Breland Tuesday night. “Hopefully we can have ongoing conversations with our state and other partners about how we can move forward in a way that is equitable.”

Proposed school construction budget smaller for now

The district also hosted the first of three public hearings on its $155 million facilities plan earlier Tuesday afternoon. Registration for public comment at these hearings has closed, but community members can attend the final capital budget hearings Wednesday and Friday.

The scaled-down proposal — a fraction of last year’s $644.5 million capital budget — is only an initial plan to cover what officials described as the district’s most pressing building needs through the summer and early fall. District leaders will unveil a more complete capital plan for the school year by the end of 2023, following a comprehensive review of its facility needs that’s now underway.

At the Tuesday afternoon hearing, no public speakers turned up to provide input on the capital budget proposal. Officials offered a brief overview of the plan and answered several questions submitted ahead of the hearing. For instance, they explained that the district took into account the urgency of repair needs and its “opportunity index” to decide on priorities for the plan.

The capital budget drew a livelier discussion during a Wednesday morning school board meeting to preview next week’s monthly meeting agenda. Board members wanted to know what new information the wholesale review of facility needs would yield — and how the district would address climate change in its planning, among other questions.

District officials explained that the new review will look more closely at whether campuses meet students’ educational needs, including whether there is a gym and a cafeteria. It will also evaluate what it would take to modernize district buildings, which are 83-years-old on average, and to make them accessible for people with disabilities.

They said the district is looking at ways to improve campuses’ energy efficiency, including piloting solar panels and adding electric vehicle charging stations to new parking lots.

Applications for the Chicago Mayor’s Youth Commission are open

2023-06-14T20:13:40+00:00

Chicago teens looking to give advice to Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration can apply to serve on an advisory group that provides input on key issues affecting the city’s young people.

Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, launched the Mayor’s Youth Commission in the fall of 2019. She made it a formal advisory body as part of a flurry of executive orders in the days before she left office in May.

In its upcoming term, city officials say, the 32-member commission will focus on four areas: education, public health, public safety, and neighborhood development.

Members will meet monthly to weigh in on city initiatives, plan youth outreach campaigns, and more — adding up to a commitment of five to 10 hours a month. In exchange, they’ll get public transit passes and a stipend, though the amount was not immediately clear.

The application deadline is July 1. Any Chicago resident ages 14 through 19 can apply on the city’s website.

The application site says the mayor’s office is seeking teens who have “a strong connection to their community, a passion about issues that impact youth, and interest in collaborating with City leaders to impact Chicago’s future.”

The current advisory group, whose term will end in August, recently released its annual New Ideas report.

Youth commissioners serve up to two years. Interested teens can email mayorsyouthcommission@cityofchicago.org with questions.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools proposes flat budget for next year

2023-06-13T20:12:57+00:00

After years of steady increases, Chicago Public Schools unveiled a proposed $9.4 billion overall district budget Tuesday that would hold the line on spending in 2023-24.

Roughly half — or $4.8 billion — would go directly to schools. District officials said it’s an additional $240 million compared with last year and about $90 million more than they reported earlier this spring, when they unveiled some preliminary school-level numbers ahead of an appeals process for principals. Roughly half of the increase — $128 million — would pay for additional teachers and support staff dedicated to students with disabilities.

Despite the touted increases, about 10% of district schools — or about 50 campuses — would see their overall budgets shrink, cuts district officials said were driven by significant enrollment losses on those campuses.

The proposed budget, up $22 million, or a fraction of a percent compared with last year’s, is the first under Mayor Brandon Johnson, who came into office this spring vowing to boost funding going to neighborhood schools.

The overall district budget would remain in line with last year’s budget despite the school-level funding hike in part because it includes a scaled-back capital spending plan. Officials are budgeting $155 million for what they described as pressing facility projects, compared with $765 million last year. But officials said they plan to request additional capital funding later this year after reviewing building needs and crafting a master facilities plan.

The remainder of the district budget would cover districtwide programs and central office staff, employee pensions, and expenses tied to its substantial debt.

The budget plan for next school year comes as Chicago continues to grapple with enrollment losses and a more uncertain longer-term financial picture. The district is required to spend down its federal COVID relief allocation by the end of 2024.

“This proposed budget is a step toward fulfilling CPS’ commitment to providing resources for every school community so that our students are healthy, safe, engaged, and on the path to long-term success,” Johnson said in a statement Tuesday.

The school board is slated to vote on the proposed budget less than two weeks from now, at its June 28 meeting.

A Chalkbeat analysis of school-level budget data the district released Tuesday shows that on a per pupil basis, 39 schools, or about 8% of campuses, saw budget cuts. Of those schools, 24 were predominantly Black, eight were majority Latino, and three were predominantly white. But schools serving predominantly Black students also saw the most substantial per pupil increases overall.

Roughly 80,000 fewer students are enrolled in Chicago schools than there were a decade ago. The district has not released enrollment projections for next year.

On Tuesday, district officials once again hailed a continued shift away from budgeting predominantly based on student enrollment, with student demographics, programming needs, and other factors playing a larger role.

Other proposed increases, according to a district press release, include:

$32 million more for additional teaching positions
$15 million more for bilingual education, including some dollars for schools seeing an uptick in enrollments from newly-arrived migrant students
$5 million more for the district’s “equity grants,” which buttress schools grappling with severe under-enrollment

The district will host two budget hearings to solicit feedback on the proposed budget — at 6 p.m. June 20 and at 4:30 p.m. June 21 — at its headquarters, at 42 W Madison St. downtown. Public speakers must register in advance via the school board website or by calling 773-553-1600 before 5 p.m. June 15. The hearings will also be livestreamed on the district’s YouTube page and the school board web page.

The district will also host virtual hearings on its capital plan at noon June 20, 6 p.m. June 21, and noon June 23.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago special education chief steps down amid reports that the district violated state law governing restraint, timeout

2023-06-09T17:46:54+00:00

Stephanie Jones, the chief of Chicago Public Schools’ special education department, left the district on Friday, amid criticism for her role in the district’s failure to fix violations involving the use of physical restraint and timeout on students.

Jones’ leadership has faced scrutiny from the district’s teachers union, parents, and advocates for students with disabilities over concerns about high staff turnover on her team, recovery services for students during the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body passed a vote of no confidence in Jones in late May and called on the district to fire her for “dismal failures to protect the district’s most vulnerable students, continued violation of special education laws and the creation of a toxic workplace.”

Chicago named Richard Smith as interim chief while the district conducts a nationwide search for a new department lead, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Smith is a former CPS school principal, chief network officer, and chief officer for the Office of Special Education and Supports (now known as the Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services).

This week, Chalkbeat Chicago reported that Chicago Public Schools is under watch by the Illinois State Board of Education because the district has been violating state laws governing the use of restraint and timeout in classrooms.

In a letter dated April 18, the state board cited Jones for not properly fulfilling her role as the designated official responsible for restraint and timeout policies and incidents. The official is supposed to maintain a copy of records, be notified of every incident by the end of the school day on which it occurred, and receive documentation or any evaluation of any incident that exceeds 15 minutes of physical restraint or 30 minutes for timeout.

Jones told the state board on Dec. 23, 2022 that she had delegated the responsibility to another person on her team but that person left in March 2023. Without anyone monitoring restraint and timeout incidents across the city’s public schools, the state said the district was not in compliance with state law.

“We sincerely thank Dr. Jones for her commitment to serving students in Chicago with diverse learning needs, and we wish her well in her future endeavors,” a spokesperson for Chicago said in a statement on Friday.

Earlier in the week, at a Wednesday press conference, CEO Pedro Martinez said in response to a question about the state’s restraint and timeout concerns that improving services for students with disabilities is a top priority for his administration. He vowed that the district will meet all state requirements around training and compliance with restraint rules before the start of the school year in August.

He noted that the district is increasing funding for disability services by $100 million in the next school year’s budget and said schools will staff more teachers and aides working with students with disabilities.

“This is an area that has been a challenge in our district for the last two decades,” he said. “But we’re going to fix it.”

At the Wednesday event, Martinez sidestepped a question about who will be held accountable for the restraint issues.

In recent months, Jones has emerged as a candidate for leadership jobs in other districts, including Kalamazoo Public Schools in Michigan, where she was named finalist for the superintendent position. Another candidate was selected for that role.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@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 class of 2023 earned $2 billion in college scholarships

2023-06-07T20:58:07+00:00

The Chicago Public Schools graduating class of 2023 earned more than $2 billion in college scholarships — a record amount, district leaders and the city’s mayor announced in a Wednesday press conference on the city’s West Side.

That’s compared with about $1.5 billion that graduates pulled in last year. Officials said 9,945 of roughly 22,000 seniors have landed scholarships; about 76% have gotten at least one college acceptance letter.

In a first for the district, every high school reported earning scholarship dollars, according to a district spokesperson.

The 2023 graduates began their high school careers the school year the pandemic struck and have weathered the abrupt shift to remote learning and an eventual return to in-person instruction disrupted by COVID surges, staffing shortages, and other upheaval.

At Orr Academy High School on the last school day of the year, Mayor Brandon Johnson also nodded to the mass campus closures on the West Side in 2013 that played out as some of the students gathered Wednesday were starting elementary school.

“To the class of 2023, you are making a difference already,” Johnson said. “You are why we will have a better, safer, stronger Chicago.”

Amid a “college for all” push in the 2010s, the district saw marked increases in the portion of students who graduate and go on to higher education institutions. But the district has recently focused its efforts on boosting the portion who actually earn college degrees, which has not budged significantly even as college enrollment spiked.

According to the most recent analysis by the University of Chicago’s To & Through Project based on 2021 data, 82 of every 100 district freshmen graduate from high school on time. Of those graduates, 37 enroll in a four-year college right away and 13 enroll in a two-year college. Six years later, only 27 of those 100 freshmen earn any college credential.

Significant college completion disparities by race and gender have persisted. While 67% of Asian American female students — the district’s highest-performing group — will go on to earn a college degree, about 12% of their Black male peers will do the same.

District graduates are headed to Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and campuses around the world. Some will instead go on to training and apprenticeship programs in skilled trades from culinary arts to construction, amid a district shift toward rebuilding and strengthening its career and technical education offerings.

“They closed out their freshman year when this whole country was shut down,” Martinez said. “And yet, they never lost a beat.”

He argued that students are graduating better prepared than ever, pointing to a record number who took college-credit courses.

The district credited the scholarship increase to better outreach to students. Its Office of College and Career Success held live information sessions on Instagram, gave schools additional training on helping students navigate the application process, and sent seniors weekly emails with scholarship leads.

The exact number of students who graduated this spring will be available in the fall, the district said. Last year, roughly 21,200 students graduated, with the four-year graduation rate ticking up to a record 82.9%.

Five members of this year’s graduating class — Paul Adekola of Air Force Academy High School, Alanah Martin of Kenwood Academy, Kevin Reyes Vega of Chicago Military Academy, and Jaylen Brown and Sammi Yee of Whitney Young High School — won the prestigious Gates Scholarship, which will cover their tuition in full at top-ranked universities.

Orr also doubled its total scholarship amount from last year to roughly $2.2 million.

Dmariya Haggard, a newly minted graduate who spoke at the press conference, said he struggled in high school as the city grappled with the pandemic and a rise in gun violence.

But he is heading to Northern Illinois University in the fall, with plans to study biology and $192,000 in scholarships.

“I wanted to do better for myself and have a better future,” he said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago students can start earning community college credit and get paid this summer

2023-05-30T11:00:00+00:00

The City Colleges of Chicago is doubling the number of slots in a summer program for incoming students who are looking to get a head start on earning credits — and get paid while they’re at it.

The City Colleges of Chicago’s Summer Start program, now in its third year, offers recent Chicago Public Schools graduates a chance to take a free class, get help with passing the system’s English and math placement tests, and earn a $1,000 stipend.

“For students who are feeling unsure about college and doing the whole, ‘Should I, or shouldn’t I?’ this program can be make or break,” said Peggy Korellis, the system’s vice chancellor of high school strategy.”

The pandemic-era effort is an attempt to counteract “summer melt” – the loss of students who express interest in attending college in the spring but never follow through with plans to enroll in the fall. Like community colleges across the country, City Colleges’ seven campuses saw steep enrollment drops after COVID hit, and despite a rebound last fall, enrollment is not back at pre-pandemic levels.

All seven colleges are offering Summer Start, targeting students who might not feel fully prepared for college yet, including tackling the system’s core English 101 course. Korellis called it “a soft launch into college” — a small piece in a larger puzzle of boosting the number of Chicago students who make it to campus and to a college diploma

Of the 50 teens who participated in the summer of 2021, about 45 returned for the fall semester. About 100 students attended an in-person session in 2022. This year, City Colleges aims to enlist 200 students, but has room for more.

Students get to take the system’s placement tests after receiving added support in English and math — a chance to avoid taking remedial courses, which research has implicated in many students’ decisions to drop out.

Among Chicago Public Schools graduates who enroll in a two-year college, little more than a quarter go on to earn a postsecondary degree — a statistic that has remained fairly consistent over the years, even as the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll in college has increased markedly.

The deadline to apply for Summer Start is June 12. The program, which runs from June 20 to Aug. 4, is open to students who graduated from Chicago Public Schools last fall or this spring. It also provides free books, mentoring and tutoring, campus tours, and social events.

Korellis said the program sprang out of a workshop for incoming students that City Colleges hosted virtually in the summer of 2020, months after COVID abruptly shuttered school buildings.

“We were really concerned about the high school seniors who hadn’t had a strong ending to their senior year and hadn’t solidified their college plans,” she said.

The system got positive feedback from students, but some suggested they would have loved a chance to earn some college credit as part of that summer introduction to college.

So in 2021, City Colleges expanded the virtual program to include a free class as well as writing and math support for students. That year, the system first offered students a stipend: $500 for students who showed up to the event, and another $500 after they registered for fall courses.

Officials knew the program would compete with summer jobs to squirrel away money for college, Korellis said. So the stipend was important to make students feel those weeks off work were truly worth their while.

“For the students who do come, it’s a great motivator,” she said of the money.

Besides the free class and the stipend, students have said that they really appreciated the chance to meet faculty and fellow students, check out their campus, and get a feel for the college experience ahead of the fall, Korellis said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools tapped hundreds of academic interventionists to catch students up after COVID. Is it working?

2023-05-25T11:00:00+00:00

In a classroom on Chicago’s West Side one morning last November, Teresa Przybyslawski sat side by side with a soft-spoken sixth grader. She read a script off her computer screen while he peered at his own tablet.

“On your screen, you will see some addition problems,” read Przybyslawski. “I want you to do as many of them as you can in one minute.”

She glanced at the sixth grader, John. His back was taut, his face tense.

Down the hall, the boy’s classmates at Brunson Math and Science Specialty School, a high-poverty elementary school, geared up to tackle dividing fractions. But here, alongside Przybyslawski, one of the district’s new interventionists tasked with helping students who fell behind during the pandemic, John was about to work on math normally taught in first grade.

“Are you ready? Three. Two. One.”

Numbers flashed on John’s screen: “2 + 7. 5 + 10. 10 + 4.”

At the start of this school year, John, whose real name Chalkbeat is not using to protect his privacy, read at a first grade level and did second grade level math. It would be Przybyslawski’s job to get him caught up – fast.

School districts around the country are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage: expanding literacy tutoring in Detroit, cutting class sizes in New York City, and buying science-backed reading curriculums in districts across Colorado.

Instructional materials are seen inside Brunson Elementary School in Chicago. School districts around the country — including Chicago Public Schools — are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage.

Chicago Public Schools has turned to academic interventionists — a cadre of hundreds mostly classroom teachers already on the district’s payroll, tapped this year to turbocharge the learning of struggling students one-on-one or in small groups.

These newly-minted catchup specialists are tackling three years of COVID fallout layered upon pre-pandemic learning gaps and traumas, at schools that experts and educators agree should have been staffing interventionists all along.

Research has backed Chicago’s intervention approach, and emerging data here and in other cities shows school districts are making headway. But experts say the effort is in its infancy: A recent study by nonprofit test maker NWEA found students are rebounding, but schools are likely a few years away from returning to pre-pandemic achievement, especially for younger learners.

Meanwhile, educators face their own version of Przybyslawski’s countdown.

Three, two, one. Before children like John arrive in high school unprepared, lowering their odds of graduating, starting college or careers, and escaping poverty.

Three, two, one. Before districts like Chicago run out of federal COVID relief dollars.

Three, two, one. Before society at large moves on, and the energy required to remain in full-on recovery mode fades.

As Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, put it at an academic recovery event this past fall: “If we fail to act differently to catch students up, to ensure every student graduates with everything they need, we will have failed this generation and future generations of students.”

One school on Chicago’s West Side tackles academic recovery

Brunson Elementary is in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Of Brunson’s 400 students, almost 90% are Black, and almost all are poor. Almost 60% were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed roughly 20 or more days. This year, Brunson has deployed “attendance heroes” — teachers, paraprofessionals, and cafeteria workers — who check in daily with truant students. But across the district, attendance and disruptive behaviors continue to interfere with learning.

“It’s heartbreaking what kids here carry on their backpacks that we can’t see,” principal Carol Wilson said.

Principal Carol Wilson at Brunson Elementary School on Friday, February 24, 2023 in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The school was one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, Chicago Public Schools — like districts across the country — has seen drops in the portion of students meeting reading and math standards on a required state assessment. The district’s latest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” showed nearly a decade of growth in math had been wiped out while reading results held fairly steady.

When Chicago schools tested students this past fall to gauge where they stood, two-thirds of John’s sixth grade peers districtwide did not hit grade-level benchmarks in reading. A third were flagged as needing urgent interventions. The picture was similar in math.

Przybyslawski used to teach a classroom of 25 students math and science. Now, her focus is on 15 or so struggling middle schoolers at Brunson.

She set out to create an orderly, efficient operation, using new digital platforms that constantly size up how students are progressing in mastering skills they should have learned in earlier grades — and dictate what they work on next.

In her role as an interventionist at Brunson Elementary, Teresa Przybyslawski works with struggling students one on one or in small groups. She also “pushes into” classrooms to help fellow educators build academic interventions into their routines.

In reading, the school piloted an artificial intelligence program that gave students passages to read back to it based on their level and flagged mistakes they made.

She wanted John to divide fractions along with his peers eventually. But in the meantime, Przybyslawski, who also supervises the school’s new team of three tutors, all Brunson grads, measured progress in small increments.

During that session in November, John hesitated briefly before answering 6 + 5.

He was stumped on 3 + 8.

But on the rest, he rattled off the correct answers before Przybyslawski had even finished reading them out.

“We got to the third row,” she told the boy when the minute-long assessment was up. “Very nice work!”

After students left, she logged in their results into Branching Minds, a new platform used for tracking interventions.

Wilson, the principal, and district officials lean on the technology to monitor the progress students are making. Soon, Wilson would also get a second round of standardized tests — administered around the middle of the school year — she hoped would tell her if the school’s efforts were paying off.

‘How can we reach more kids?’

In the bid to speed up students’ academic recovery, Chicago leaders have bet on an arsenal of strategies. They’ve expanded after-school programs, started an in-house tutor corps, and poured millions in teacher training and a new in-house lesson bank called Skyline.

They also tapped some 250 educators to serve as new academic coaches. There are more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

All in all, the district earmarked $730 million in COVID recovery dollars this school year for its recovery efforts.

Academic interventions — by tutors, classroom teachers, or the new interventionists — are at the heart of the strategy. The district budgeted for at least one interventionist on each of its roughly 500 campuses, though not all schools used the money for such positions, and some schools combined the duties with existing positions. And it required all schools to use the same digital platform to track interventions that Przybyslawski is using.

Across the district this past fall, new interventionists chipped away at catching up tens of thousands of students. One math problem and one sounded-out word at time.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” -Teacher Elizabeth Battaglia

At Moos Elementary on Chicago’s West Side, where most of the 430 primarily Latino students enrolled needed intervention in the fall, Elizabeth Battaglia and the tutors she oversees could reach about 60 students across all grades — not nearly enough.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” she kept asking herself, even as she was encouraged by her students’ growth.

In reading, Battaglia tried a blitz tactic: 20 minutes each day over two weeks when stronger readers are paired with struggling peers to read passages to each other and help correct each other’s mistakes. It helped.

At Sadlowski Elementary on the Southeast Side, where most of the school’s 620 students were flagged as needing intensive help at the start of the year, Emily Gasca has 38 students on her caseload — some of them third and fourth graders reading at kindergarten level.

She enlisted fellow teachers to build interventions into daily classroom instruction, but some colleagues felt she was laying more work on already full plates.

Interventionist Teresa Przybyslawski at Chicago’s Brunson Elementary School combines technology and old-school methods such as flashcards in working with students who are behind grade level in math or reading.

Gasca tried to remind herself she was helping build from scratch a sort of academic safety net that the district has needed all along.

Even before COVID, many Chicago students made it to high school unable to read well. The pandemic just made it harder to look away.

To experts and educators such as Gasca, it’s clear that trauma and social-emotional challenges — that invisible load in students’ backpacks — complicate academic catchup. But struggling to keep up in the classroom is also a daily source of stress, eroding students’ confidence — baggage they carry back home.

Educators search for signs interventions are working

By February, John’s sessions with Przybyslawski were a well-worn routine.

“On your screen you will see a story to read,” Przybyslawski read off her screen to him one morning that month. “I would like you to read this story for me.”

“We’ll begin in three, two, one.”

John looked relaxed in a black face mask, hoodie, and Nikes as he read a passage about a family visit on a farm. At the one-minute mark, a bell dinged, and Przybyslawski smiled broadly. John’s reading had been largely free of mistakes — a huge leap from the start of the school year when he struggled to make it through a sentence or two during those fleeting 60 seconds.

“Good job overall,” she said. “I’ll get your score in a few minutes.”

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks. We’re catching kids up constantly.” -Principal Carol Wilson

Przybyslawski’s students were making headway. But now, her caseload looked different.

A few students “graduated.” They still need added help, but should be able to get it in the classroom. A few left the school, part of the customary churn at a high-needs neighborhood campus. And some were no longer on Przybyslawski’s caseload after being identified as needing services for students with disabilities.

Around this same time, Wilson, the principal, had gotten the school’s midyear test results.

Students in all grades were showing solid growth except eighth graders, on that all-important cusp of high school, who were flagged across the district for making little midyear progress.

Wilson was encouraged. Still, these tests predicted that fewer than 10% of Brunson students would meet state standards this spring.

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks,” Wilson said. “We’re catching kids up constantly.”

Districtwide in the early grades, there were double-digit increases in students scoring at grade level. Overall, Chicago Public Schools’ scores were in line or better than other urban districts. But much work remained: In the second grade, for example, more than half of students remained one grade level below in math, and a quarter were still two grade levels below in both math and reading.

Paul Zavitkovsky, an expert on testing at the University of Illinois at Chicago,

“If the kids at the lower levels of achievement are only making expected gains, that’s not moving the needle for them. Average gains are not going to be enough.” -Paul Zavitkovsky, assessment specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Education

said standardized tests are a helpful snapshot of how students are doing, but he cautioned against relying on them to drive recovery efforts. Remediating one skill at a time based on test results must happen alongside engaging, grade-level instruction — a tough balance to strike, Zavitkovsky said.

Based on an analysis of results on a standardized test named STAR 360 many Chicago elementary schools are giving three times a year, Zavitkovsky found almost all schools made four months of gains in the first four months of the year in math — an encouraging return to a pre-pandemic pace of growth.

But, he said, “Average gains are not going to be enough.”

Dan Goldhaber, who leads the University of Washington’s Center for Education Data & Research, said it’s not clear how long schools can remain in full recovery mode, which requires resources and sustained effort.

When the COVID money runs dry, Chicago’s army of interventionists hired in recent years could land on the budgetary chopping block, leaving classroom teachers to pick up the difficult work of recovery.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s education chief, says the district is encouraged by testing, grading, and other data; it will cover interventionists at each school and grow the tutor corps next year.

That’s because there’s more work to be done, Chkoumbova recently told the school board. Data show 20% of students have gotten some intervention, and of those, only about a third are on track to meet their goals — an improvement over earlier in the year.

But, as district leaders have noted, a lot of intervention work is not captured by the data. At Brunson, a girl recently asked Przybyslawski for help with multiplication and division off the screens. The interventionist set up stacks of flashcards, quizzing her the old-fashioned way.

“Confidence!” she told the girl. “Just be confident.”

Behind them, in the back of Przybyslawski’s classroom, a bulletin board was covered with certificates of achievement.

One was John’s. It showed a figure looking over a wheat field, a mountain peak rising in the background.

“Congratulations!” the certificate read. “Your reading POWERS are getting stronger, and it’s time to celebrate your hard work.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools wants more students in summer programs. They’ll even pay some to attend.

2023-05-24T22:20:53+00:00

Chicago freshmen at some high-poverty high schools will earn money to attend a summer orientation program — part of a broader district push to boost summer school participation amid the pandemic.

The district saw lackluster enrollment in its summer orientation and academic catchup programs in 2022, even as school-based enrichment programs drew record numbers of students. In an update to the school board Wednesday, district officials said they will offer the paid version of the freshman orientation, called Earn and Learn, at more than 30 high schools in a partnership with the nonprofit After School Matters. Students will get free transportation and a stipend for completing the program.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland applauded the move, saying it can entice students who otherwise might choose to work through the summer.

“We know our young people want to make money for themselves and to be able to be involved in our programming,” she said.

The district did not immediately respond when asked how much the stipend will be.

Some board members said they want to see more central office support for schools trying to get the word out about programs as the district is poised to continue a major summer school expansion this year.

“We can always do better,” board president Miguel del Valle said. “We should be aggressive to maximize the level of participation in all our programs during the summer.”

Teachers union and other officials also voiced concern about a more than two-week gap between school and summer offerings. Chicago Public Schools’ last day is June 7 and the start of both school district and Chicago Park district programming June 26. With just two weeks left before summer break, the district is working on offering some enrichment and other activities during that stretch with philanthropy dollars, officials said.

City leaders have previously held up summer enrichment programs and job opportunities for youth as key in warding off a rise in gun violence during the summer months.

Like other districts, Chicago has boosted the dollars and energy it pours into summer programs, seen as a key strategy to recover from the pandemic’s academic and social-emotional damage. In 2022, the district spent an unprecedented $40 million on summer programming, 50% more than the previous summer.

District data showed about 73,000 students, or a fifth of the district’s overall enrollment, signed up, many for multiple programs. That included a record 42,500 students enrolled in enrichment, or Out of School Time, programs designed at the school level, sometimes in partnership with local nonprofits.

But Chalkbeat’s reporting has also found that the district has struggled to track enrollment and attendance in summer programs. It relies on three separate systems for reporting enrollment numbers with sometimes overlapping data, and doesn’t have a good way of capturing actual attendance — making it harder to gauge if these investments have paid off.

District officials told Chalkbeat earlier this year they are stepping up efforts to track summer participation.

Meanwhile, some summer programs — such as ones that help students catch up academically or make the transition to kindergarten and high school — have been plagued by low enrollment. District officials said Wednesday that the district will offer such transition programs — Preview to Pre-K, Kickoff to Kindergarten, and Freshman Connection — at more schools this summer.

Referring to under-enrollment in some programs last summer, Todd-Breland asked officials how they are ensuring schools are filling those summer seats. Ali Muhammad, deputy chief of the office of college and career success, said campuses are largely handling outreach to families, with his office playing backup.

“We are really relying on the schools to make sure students know about these programs,” he said. The district will have a central hotline for summer school inquiries during the weeks after school ends but before summer school begins.

In previous years, the district faced some criticism from families who say they get information on summer programs too late in the spring, with some half-day options that can be a tough fit for working parents.

Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, voiced concern at the board meeting about the weeks-long gap between the end of the school year and the start of summer programming.

With money raised through philanthropy, he said the district and union are working on offering some programs during that stretch.

He noted that such opportunities might be especially important as the district continues to welcome dozens of newly arrived migrant students. Potter suggested that schools such as Zapata Academy, an elementary on the Southwest Side, that have seen new arrivals in recent days could remain open during those two weeks to offer enrichment and other activities as students adjust to their new district.

Del Valle, the board president, also encouraged the district to ensure there are more summer job options for students, about 20,000 of whom landed positions through a city program called One Summer Chicago in 2022.

“There are ‘Help Wanted’ signs everywhere,” he said. “I just want to make sure we are stepping up our efforts to identify those job opportunities.”

Programs run from June 26 through Aug. 4. Families can review all summer opportunities at www.cps.edu/summerprograms.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

About 50 Chicago high school students earned associate degrees. The district wants to boost that number.

2023-05-23T14:15:59+00:00

Thien Vo, a senior at Uplift Community High School on Chicago’s North Side, became the first in his family to earn a college degree this month, leapfrogging his older brother who attends DePaul University.

That milestone made Vo the first and — so far — only Uplift student to earn an associate degree before high school graduation.

Across town at Corliss High on the Far South Side, Vincent Smith also earned a college degree weeks before graduating as his school’s valedictorian. Like Vo, he was the first on his campus to do that — a full decade after the city remade Corliss and a handful of other campuses into so-called “early college high schools,” promising students a chance to land college degrees before graduation.

In recent years, the number of Chicago campuses that offer college-level classes — and the number of students who earn credit and degrees — has grown rapidly. But only a small number of students such as Vo and Smith, both 17, complete a two-year degree while still in high school — roughly 50 students this spring out of about 22,000 district seniors, compared with 900 last year in Dallas, about 10% of that district’s graduating class.

Although Chicago was an early adopter of the early college high school model, not enough coordination between the district and the city’s community college system existed until more recently, experts say. A college coursework placement test and other requirements have put these programs out of reach for some students.

The district’s CEO, Pedro Martinez, has said he wants to see more students earn two-year degrees before graduation as part of a broader push to strengthen Chicago’s career and technical education offerings. The district is counting on these efforts to help address a key larger challenge: While Chicago has seen major increases in the number of students who graduate and go on to college, it has not significantly moved the needle on the number of students who earn college degrees.

Research has shown that students who attend early college high schools are much more likely not only to graduate and go on to college, but also to complete four-year degrees.

As he gears up to start college in the fall, Smith said, “I feel prepared. I am definitely ready for the college experience — the true university experience.”

City Colleges partnership boosts college credit in high schools

Vo’s Uplift High School became an early college high school in the thick of the pandemic. Administrators encouraged Vo to take advantage so he took a placement test in summer 2021.

He enrolled in English 101 class at Truman College, a campus of City Colleges of Chicago that’s down the street from Uplift. On the cusp of his junior year, Vo was one of only two high school students in the virtual classroom. The course was a shock to his system.

“I had never done a three-page essay before,” Vo said. “It was always five paragraphs, and I’m done.”

He wrote his first essay about COVID’s impact on student learning. His instructor returned the draft riddled with criticism — grammar mistakes throughout, the citations all wrong. It was Vo’s first D.

Thien Vo earned an associate degree from Truman College weeks before his graduation from Uplift Community High School on Chicago’s North Side.

He did not stay discouraged for long. He taught himself how to do MLA style citations and met with the professor to get more feedback, never disabusing her of her impression that he was a regular college student, even though he was only 15 at that time. He earned a B in the class.

Chicago currently has 12 early college high schools that partner with seven campuses of City Colleges — a number that’s grown since the model first rolled out a decade ago.

Corliss was among the first early college high schools launched by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration and modeled on New York City’s P-TECH high school programs, campuses affiliated with specific industries that aim to graduate students with an associate degree or a certificate.

Smith’s mom, Dameron Compton, a Corliss alumna who had just finally finished paying off student loans, knew her son could rise to the challenge.

“We always say, ‘You can get your college degree for free here,’” said Phylydia Hudson, Corliss’ early college STEM specialist. “But the parents cue in more than the students.”

So Smith took the City Colleges placement test and signed up for a slew of virtual classes at Olive-Harvey College his junior year. He learned to step up his grammar and citation game in English 101, to tap primary sources for research projects in African American Studies, and to learn math at a much faster clip in Calculus.

But for most Corliss students, which serves a predominantly Black and low-income population, the college placement test has proved a steep hurdle.

The school designed a couple of courses that students can take without passing the test, giving them a taste of college-level coursework. But, said Hudson, “That’s where it all stops for a lot of our students.”

This May, the district and the City Colleges of Chicago saw 600 students graduate with at least 15 college credits, up from 460 last year. That number doesn’t include credits earned in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes — data that will be available later this summer. It’s the equivalent to a semester of college and the number research has found boosts students’ odds of earning a degree, leading district leaders to talk about the “Power of 15.”

Of the 53 students who earned associate degrees this year — up from 11 two years ago — 41 are Latino, 11 are Black, and one is Asian American. Only one does not attend an early college high school — a statistic district officials say they hope to change by opening up more opportunities at non-early college campuses, such as Brooks College Preparatory Academy and Kenwood Academy High School, both on the Far South Side.

“We don’t want just pockets of student access,” said Megan Hougard, the district’s chief of college and career success. “We want to make advanced coursework available to all students.”

The district recently signed a five-year, $2.6 million contract with DeVry University to renew the longstanding Advantage Academy program, which allows students to earn an associate degree in network systems administration or web graphic design.

Taking college classes in high school pays off

Chicago is not alone. Texas and North Carolina, which have backed such efforts at the state level, are frontrunners, but other states are also expanding early college programs, said Kristina Zeiser, a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

Zeiser looked at outcomes for students at early college high schools backed by a now-defunct Gates Foundation initiative. The research found that students at these schools were much more likely to graduate, go to college, and complete their college degrees than peers at schools with similar demographics. More than three-quarters went on to enroll in a four-year college program, and roughly 57% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years.

Zeiser, who is now studying the long-term employment and earnings for these students, notes some critics have argued that earning an associate degree in high school might hurt students by pigeonholing them into a field of study too soon or discouraging them from pursuing four-year degrees. She says she hasn’t seen solid evidence of such downsides.

Arriving on a college campus as a junior at 18 might be tricky socially, Zeiser says, but, “Academically and monetarily speaking, you are in a very good place.”

Jenny Nagaoka, who studies early college programs at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research, said a tangle of factors have kept the number of high school students earning associate degrees here small as some other districts have pulled ahead.

The district’s high-needs student population and GPA and placement test requirements have all played a part. Setting the right bar for student access to these programs is important, Nagaoka said, though she questions if the City Colleges test is the best predictor of which students would be successful.

“You don’t want students taking these courses, doing poorly, and deciding they are not college material,” she said.

At Uplift, principal Tyrese Graham previously served as an assistant principal at Sarah Goode STEM Academy, the first in Chicago to graduate a student with an associate degree after the 2013 early college high school rollout. He said he wants “early college” to be a wholesale overhaul of the campus culture, not just another program.

Graham doesn’t want students merely to earn some college credits that postsecondary institutions might or might not accept. He wants clear pathways to college degrees.

“We would love for all students to head out with an associate’s degree,” Graham said. “But we know that’s not what all students want or need.”

Schools work to help more students earn degrees

At Corliss, Smith tore through the courses required to earn an associate degree. It wasn’t until this past fall that he felt “the true pressure” of what he’d set out to accomplish.

He was juggling a demanding course schedule, college applications, and the school’s drone program — an uncommon opportunity for students to get a commercial drone pilot license. For the first time, he found himself questioning, “Am I really going to be able to do this?”

At Thanksgiving, his family got a call from a great-aunt who had helped raise him that his great-grandfather had died. The news and the funeral arrangements afterward sidetracked him, and he turned in essays late for an English 102 class with a zero tolerance policy for late assignments.

Hudson tried to talk the professor into giving Smith a break, arguing he had been able to maintain a 4.0 GPA despite a grueling high school schedule. Still, Smith failed the class.

Hudson was not even done trying to reason with his professor when Smith signed up to retake it this spring. He is, after all, an unflappable “teacher-strike baby and pandemic baby,” Hudson said.

“This kid did not stop,” Hudson said. “He didn’t show he was unmotivated or troubled. I was more crushed than he was.”

While Smith is the only student at Corliss graduating with an associate degree, the school has seen the portion of students graduating with a college semester’s worth of credits rise to 20%. A recent partnership with Chicago State University at Corliss has added two additional courses students can take without passing a placement test. The school is also exploring more opportunities for students to earn industry certification, including in nursing and aviation maintenance.

Smith is headed to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which will accept all but two of his college classes, lopping off three semesters on the way to the master’s in computer engineering he hopes to earn. Vo will attend the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus, where he is on track to get a bachelor’s degree in two years. He has become known as a “tech guru” at Uplift, where created a working ukulele and guitar on the 3D printer in the school’s Makers Lab. But he wants to earn a PhD in psychology and help people dealing with mental illness.

Administrators at their schools say they hope the two students will inspire others to aim for earning a college degree before graduation.

“I’ve always said it was possible, but I’d never experienced it,” said Hudson at Corliss. “Now, I can push students beyond where I would have pushed them before because I know it’s real.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Four award-winning Illinois educators weigh in on how COVID reshaped schools

2023-05-17T21:49:26+00:00

COVID-19 is no longer officially a national emergency, but there is little doubt the pandemic left a permanent mark on schools. From a more prominent role for classroom technology to wider disparities by race and income, COVID’s impact will continue to be felt in the coming years as schools continue to grapple with its academic and social-emotional fallout.

For Anquineice Brown, a fifth grade teacher at Chicago’s Marquette School of Excellence, the pandemic ushered in classroom yoga and meditation — part of a greater appreciation for the importance of tending to students’ mental well-being. For Rachel Werderits, a sixth teacher at Saint Andrew School, the COVID era brought a new grasp of classroom technology’s power and pitfalls.

Helen Chan, who teaches at Chicago’s South Loop Elementary, found greater empathy for her students and stronger bonds with their families. And Scott Saffer, a science teacher at Piper City’s Tri-Point Junior High School, became more flexible in planning his lessons — and conducted a science experiment with a student traveling in Florida.

These four Illinois educators are coming out of the pandemic’s upheaval at the top of their game.

Along with six other colleagues who teach grades four through eight across the state, they just received the coveted Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. The ten winners were chosen from among more than 570 nominations. They will receive a $5,000 cash prize and a spring sabbatical provided by Northwestern University.

Chalkbeat spoke with four of the winning educators about how the past three years reshaped their work, what lessons schools drew from the pandemic — and what changes they hoped it would bring that have proved elusive.

Anquineice Brown is a fifth grade teacher at Marquette Elementary School in Chicago.

Anquineice Brown, fifth grade teacher, Marquette School of Excellence in Chicago

How did the pandemic permanently change your work as an educator?

Post-pandemic teaching has created opportunities for my classroom community to explore the world of mental health. Students are beginning to understand how complex the mind is and how what they listen to, watch, and consume plays a role in their mental, physical, and emotional health. I implemented yoga and meditation in my class as a means of stress relief and management. By modeling for students when Mrs. Brown reaches a point of needing a break, students begin to understand the importance of brain breaks, meditation, and stressors that may lead them to hit the pause button for a moment. In cases where student mental health requires more support than a brief meditation, I support them in their efforts to connect with qualified professionals.

Did COVID’s upheaval bring about any positive changes to how you, your school, or your school district serves students and families?

Absolutely. Remote learning alone, whether teaching or learning, showed us just how much patience and grace we should be extending to one another. Personally, being able to connect so intimately with families reminded me daily why we do this work. Now, I am even more intentional about sharing information with families and ensuring they are informed and connected to what takes place in our classroom and school building. Seeing a higher number of families back inside our building during conferences and school wide events is a positive sign that we’re all in this together.

Does technology play a larger role in your classroom or school? If yes, how?

Technology is a crucial tool to ensure that our students can access programs that support their academic growth and personal development. Our district uses the Google Suite so students are able to regularly practice digital citizenship and professionalism, especially when sending emails. Across our school, students use Chromebooks and iPads daily. Even in third grade, we have learned to leverage the use of Docs, Slides, Forms, and Classroom to help facilitate teacher-student, as well as peer-to-peer engagement.

Were there changes you were hoping the pandemic might trigger that did not come to be?

I won’t say they didn’t come to be. Instead, I believe there is space to rewrite policies and procedures that are old and support an antiquated way of being. While we know the best way for most students to learn is in-person, the world was reminded that the role of educators is much more complex than simply teaching skill-based content inside a classroom. There is progress being made, but not at the pace in which our current education systems need.

Rachel Werderits is a sixth grade religion, language arts, math, and science teacher at Saint Andrew School in Chicago.

Rachel Werderits, sixth grade religion, language arts, math & science teacher, Saint Andrew School, Chicago

How did the pandemic permanently change your work as an educator?

Before the pandemic, I had no idea what a Zoom meeting was. In cases of inclement weather, the school would call a snow day. When the pandemic hit, this all changed. Teachers had to learn how to teach from their homes using new platforms, video calls, and features of virtual classrooms. My school reopened in August of 2020 while other school districts continued to teach entirely remotely. Although we were conducting in-person learning, there were still students whose families chose to continue having them learn from home. That meant the teachers had to learn how to simultaneously teach in-person and virtually and provide the same learning opportunities for all students in the class. We had to find creative ways to include students in a classroom environment even when they weren’t physically present. When all schools returned to in-person learning, we had to reestablish good learner behaviors in the classroom and combat much shorter attention spans the students seemed to have.

Did COVID’s upheaval bring about any positive changes to how you, your school, or your school district serves students and families?

Students and teachers have become more savvy with technology and communication methods. If students forget a textbook at school and have to study for a test the following day, they know how to access the text virtually to be prepared for the assessment. Another positive change that has come from the pandemic is heightened awareness about germs and ways to stay healthy. We saw reductions in the spread of communicable illnesses in schools because everyone was practicing better health and safety measures. It’s also much easier to communicate progress with parents and students. Parents don’t have to leave work for parent-teacher conferences because teachers can easily set up short virtual calls to discuss student growth and make plans for improvements.

Does technology play a larger role in your classroom or school? If yes, how?

Technology does play a large role in the classroom because nearly all of the student curriculum is available online, many student assignments are completed in digital form, and students are very savvy with technology so using it in the classroom is second nature to them. This gives opportunities for students to creatively demonstrate understanding and application of content knowledge. However, one fear I have about excessive use of technology is that it contributes to diminished empathy and patience in the students. Because information is instantly available at their fingertips, students become less patient in situations where it doesn’t work immediately. That is why it is so important for teachers to limit technology use in the classroom and be sure when it is used, it is purposeful.

Were there changes you were hoping the pandemic might trigger that did not come to be?

I hoped that after the pandemic, and after being forced to shelter in place and only see friends and teachers on screens, students would have more gratitude for school in general. I hoped that the pandemic would reduce some of the feelings of apathy students have toward school. We are so lucky to live in a place where education is free and accessible to all children, and I wished that students had heightened appreciation for that after the pandemic.

Scott Saffer is a middle school science teacher in Piper City.

Scott Saffer, middle school science teacher, Tri-Point Junior High School in Piper City

How did the pandemic permanently change your work as an educator?

I think we all ended up with new “bags of tricks” for teaching: new skills in technology, improved awareness of students’ mental health and social-emotional needs, and enhanced ability to innovate. Planning has become more fluid. I never missed much school, but after getting COVID twice last year and missing two weeks each time, I have had to change plans more often. Kids are absent more often, and we have to figure out how to keep them on track. My plans for next year will allow for a couple of weeks for absences.

I’m also much more appreciative of seeing our kids in our classrooms, getting to interact with them in person, and getting them involved in learning.

Did COVID’s upheaval bring about any positive changes to how you, your school or your school district serves students and families?

Our emergency planning ability has greatly improved, and our ability to go remote has made us err on the side of caution when taking remote days instead of risking travel in inclement weather. We do quietly mourn the end of snow days: An unexpected mid-winter day off was always a thrill. Remote learning has largely ended that, but the trade-off of ending the school year on time is definitely appreciated by everyone in late May.

Does technology play a larger role in your classroom or school? If yes, how?

Google Classroom has become the standard for doing work, which has made it much easier to read the kids’ writing — even when spell check misses a lot. We’re much better at supporting kids who are absent, and have been able to do more with online meets and presentations. Last week, one of our kids was on vacation in Florida, and she did an experiment on Google Meets with her class back home in Illinois. We measured the sun’s shadow on vertical sticks there and here. We’re using the difference in those measurements to determine the circumference of the earth – just like Eratosthenes did in Greece back in 240 B.C. Being able to do science live across the country is amazing.

Were there changes you were hoping the pandemic might trigger that did not come to be?

The pandemic brought to the forefront issues of healthcare access, accountability, poverty and access to resources, social justice, and race. These are vital and difficult issues we need to confront, and we became a lot more aware of them in the pressure cooker of the pandemic. Some progress was made, and some important discussions began to happen. We still have a long way to go towards addressing those issues.

Helen Chan is a fourth grade math teacher at South Loop Elementary School in Chicago.

Helen Chan, fourth grade math teacher, South Loop Elementary School in Chicago

How did the pandemic permanently change your work as an educator?

The pandemic has had a great impact on the way teachers engage with their students and their families. The pandemic has created a sense of uncertainty and anxiety that was new to many of us, and I have been increasingly concerned about the mental health and well-being of my students and their families. As an educator, I have become more mindful, empathetic, and patient with my students, making sure that they receive the extra care and attention they need and deserve.

Did COVID’s upheaval bring about any positive changes to how you, your school, or your school district serves students and families?

The use of technology to communicate with students and their grown-ups has become increasingly important and convenient in recent years. Video conferencing is now considered the norm. The ability to video chat with students’ families has enabled us to promptly address any issues and work collaboratively towards ensuring their child’s success. In addition, having the frequent communication tools available helps foster positive relationships with students’ families.

Does technology play a larger role in your classroom or school? If yes, how?

In our school, technology plays a larger role as students utilize their Chromebooks and Google Workspace to collaborate. For instance, in my classroom students tackle problems by analyzing data from Google Sheets, creating cultural presentations using Google Slides, and brainstorming ideas with Google Jamboard. They work together on creating presentations and projects while collaborating on a shared document, which might seem more typical of adult meetings than of fourth grade students.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s principals association plans to file for union recognition

2023-05-12T11:00:00+00:00

A group representing Chicago’s school leaders said it plans to file a petition today to form a union, several months after state lawmakers changed the law to allow that.

The Chicago Principals & Administrators Association is submitting signatures with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board representing almost 80% of the district’s roughly 1,100 principals and assistant principals, according to the group’s president Troy LaRaviere. He said he hopes the district will voluntarily recognize the new union.

District officials said in a statement last week they will work with principals to comply with the new law. In the past, they have voiced concerns about principals unionizing, arguing that as managers, school leaders do not belong at a bargaining table. However, the district did not actively oppose the bill that ultimately allowed Chicago Public Schools principals to unionize.

Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, said before his election that the district should recognize the union. Next, the district must file a list of school leaders with the Labor Relations Board so it can affirm more than half signed the association’s petition.

LaRaviere said the new union would advocate for improving compensation and working conditions for principals, who he said often find themselves spending too much time on bureaucratic tasks imposed by “paper-pushers downtown” rather than on strengthening instruction and other big-picture work.

The union would also empower principals to have more of a voice in shaping district’s policies and initiatives such as the district’s new school accountability system, supporters say — a move that could help better retain school leaders after a pandemic-era uptick in resignations and retirements. A key goal would be strengthening job security, from ensuring principals feel comfortable voicing concerns publicly to addressing what Raviere called “less due process than China or Russia” when principals face accusations of misconduct.

“Principals are often discouraged from saying and doing what is right for students for fear that they will be removed by CPS,” LaRaviere said.

According to the district’s latest staffing data, principals in Chicago, with the state’s highest cost of living, make $157,550 a year on average while assistant principals make $126,000. Statewide, the average principal salary was $116,400, and the average assistant principal salary was $100,000 in 2021, according to the most recent data publicly available from the Illinois State Board of Education.

Principals say union could help school leader retention

Ryan Belville, the principal at McAuliffe Elementary on the Northwest Side and a principals association member, said competitive pay is important, but his focus as a union supporter is better working conditions for principals.

He argues the district should have an assistant principal on each campus, a more consistent principal evaluation process, and a clearer principal job description, ensuring school leaders have time to offer teachers guidance in the classroom and build relationships with families and their local school councils. District staffing data suggests 40-some of the district’s 500 campuses do not have an assistant principal this school year.

“The pandemic and the responsibilities that grew during the pandemic raised additional awareness about the value of having union rights,” he said.

The American Federation of School Administrators — a national union with which Chicago’s principals association is affiliated — has said that interest in unionizing principals surged during the pandemic, which tested school leaders like never before. They found themselves overseeing school COVID testing programs and other safety measures, and filling in for support staff and substitute teaching amid severe staffing shortages.

Belville said he hopes advocacy through a new union would help improve school leader retention in the district, where he said principals like him routinely put in long hours and chip in on evenings and weekends.

“We know when we have school leadership transitions, the entire school community is disrupted,” he said.

Melissa Lyon, an expert in education labor relations at the University at Albany in New York, said it would make sense that school leaders would band together and lean on each other more amid the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges. The tight labor market and a national show of collective bargaining power, including a string of teacher strikes in recent years, are likely also factors, she said.

“It wouldn’t be a major shock that principals would look around and see they would have something to gain by coming together as a collective,” she said.

Nationally, principal unions push for more pay, less paperwork

Salary and benefit demands are typical of a newly formed principals union, Lyon said. In large urban districts with powerful teachers unions, veteran educators can sometimes make more than their supervisors in the principal’s office.

In Chicago, where the average teacher salary is $88,750, only one teacher in the district makes about $100 more a year than the district’s lowest-paid principal. Principals, however, work through the summer in Chicago, while teachers can opt to teach summer school for additional pay. And some senior educators do make more than some assistant principals.

LaRaviere said that on a per hour basis, some teachers make more than their principals and often more than assistant principals. That can discourage veteran teachers from taking on the assistant principal role, stymieing a key school leadership pipeline.

In Chicago, there’s a wide range in school leader salaries, especially for assistant principals, who make anywhere from $68,000 to $145,000. For principals, annual salaries range from $136,000 to $178,000.

In Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which recently bumped Chicago from its spot as the country’s third-largest school district, principal salaries range from $100,000 to $132,000, based on the district’s salary schedule for this school year. In New York City Public Schools, the country’s largest district, which has long had a principals union, elementary principal salaries range from about $159,000 to $175,000 depending on years of service, and high school salaries range from $170,000 to $191,000.

Nationally, concerns about protecting school leaders’ time from minor administrative tasks are widespread, Lyon said. It’s also common to see central office pushback to principal unionization efforts. District officials can argue that school leader unions slow down policy-making and hamper a district’s ability to respond nimbly to challenges; they question if supervisors need their own union.

And, Lyon said, “the district can make the case to taxpayers and families that principal salaries are high enough or question whether that money can be better spent elsewhere.”

After years of failed attempts to clear both chambers, the Illinois Legislature approved the change in state law that allowed Chicago principals to form a union in January with bipartisan support. Gov. JB Pritzker signed the legislation into law the following month. The new law prohibits principals from going on strike. It also preserves local school councils’ power to hire principals and renew their contracts.

John Brosnan, a spokesman for the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, said that his office will check the district’s employee list against the signatures in the petition to make sure they actually represent more than 50% of the group’s members. Union leaders often aim for at least 60% to ensure they have “a solid base going into bargaining,” Brosnan said.

If they do not have enough valid signatures in the eyes of the board, the association would get a day or so to come up with the needed signatures or the board would dismiss the petition.

If there are enough signatures, the board would certify the new union — unless the district files an objection, such as arguing the employee group has a managerial role.

But, “since there is an amendment to the law that allows principals to unionize, I can’t figure out what objection they would make,” Brosnan said.

The new state law that cleared the way for principal unionization only applies to Chicago Public Schools. The Illinois Principals Association, which did not take a position on the Chicago principal unionization bill, said so far, it has not seen a surge in interest in forming unions among principals statewide. Chicago officials have argued the right to unionize should be extended to principals across the state.

LaRaviere said he is hopeful that the Johnson administration will be supportive of their union.

“Given that the majority of the forces behind Johnson are union forces,” he said, “it would seem our chances are pretty good.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Unemployment rates for Chicago’s young Black women doubled during pandemic, new study finds

2023-05-11T11:00:00+00:00

A pandemic-era rise in youth joblessness and disconnection hit young Black women in Chicago especially hard, almost doubling their unemployment rate, according to a new report from the University of Illinois Chicago.

According to the study, about 45,800 16- to 24-year-olds were not in school, college, or the workforce in Chicago. Across the state, 177,000 were out of work and out of school in 2021.

Matthew Wilson, an associate director at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois and one of the report’s authors, said the increase in the jobless rate for Black women aged 20 to 24 — from 32% in 2019 to almost 60% in 2021 — was the study’s most staggering finding.

“As conditions continued getting better for other people, they continued to get a lot worse for young Black women,” Wilson said.

Chicago and Illinois have also been much slower to recover from a spike in youth unemployment than the country as a whole, and they have seen racial disparities in jobless rates widen more, the report found. Even as employment rates for young whites and Latinos in Chicago and statewide have bounced back, they have worsened for Black youth.

The report was commissioned by the nonprofit Alternative Schools Network to help make the case for a bill to launch a $300 million statewide youth jobs program introduced in the Illinois Legislature this year. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Kam Buckner and state Sen. Robert Peters, both Chicago Democrats, would enlist community-based organizations across the state to help coordinate jobs for as many as 80,000 teens and young adults.

The issue of youth who are not in school, college, or the workforce has long bedeviled Chicago and other cities, despite research tying the problem to persistent poverty and violence rates. City leaders have argued that finding solutions is key to combating a rise in gun violence, and Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson has set a goal of doubling the number of youth summer jobs.

Chicago likely fared worse than the country as a whole because it’s a segregated urban area with ingrained uneven access to job opportunities, said Wilson.

“Chicago is an extreme site of those types of inequities,” he said. “It has more areas of concentrated disadvantage than the nation as a whole.”

Chicago has a youth summer jobs program, One Summer Chicago, which lined up jobs for 20,300 youth in 2022, according to city data.

Organizers from the Alternative Schools Network are staging a Thursday press conference in downtown Chicago to share the report’s findings and push for the youth jobs bill. They planned to display a coffin to symbolize the gun deaths of youth on the city’s West Side and have a plane flying overhead with a banner reading “Jobs Stop Bullets.”

For young people, disconnection from school and work has been shown to adversely affect health, relationships, and odds of experiencing violence and incarceration.

Overall, joblessness among residents in that age group jumped higher for Black youth than for any other demographic group during the pandemic, to more than 57%. That rate remained elevated even as nationally, unemployment rates for teens and young adults have largely returned to those on the eve of the COVID outbreak.

Williams said the “stark” impact on young Black women stood out. Pre-pandemic, male Black teens and young adults were much more likely to be unemployed and disconnected from school. But during COVID, the employment rate for young Black women outpaced an already “astronomically high” rate for their male counterparts, Williams said.

The reasons for that trend need to be studied more closely, Williams said. One possible factor is that the responsibilities of overseeing remote learning and child care during COVID’s shutdowns fell disproportionately on Black women, who might be more likely than other racial groups to work jobs that could not be done remotely.

The report also notes that youth jobs programs have previously been shown to yield strong returns on investment, paying off in reductions in crime and other positive outcomes.

Kemon Johnson, who is graduating from Youth Connection Charter School’s West Town Academy campus this summer, said youth like him face a Catch-22: They are eager to get a foothold on the job market, but prospective employers don’t take them seriously without any job experience.

Johnson, who is slated to speak at Thursday’s press conference, said he learned helpful skills working at a small custom shirt and shoes business his mom runs and through the One Summer Chicago jobs program. At his alternative high school, he earned certifications in food handling, forklifting, and CPR. But he is still daunted by the goal of finding a full-time position this summer before heading off to community college.

One of Johnson’s classmates, Rianna Jones, who works at a local trampoline park, says having a job has helped her take care of family and basic needs. “It’s helped me see how the real world is,” she said.

Jack Wuest, the head of the Alternative Schools Network, said the group — a long-time advocate for youth employment — commissioned the study to look at where the numbers stood amid the pandemic recovery and to help advocate for a new statewide jobs program.

A pair of bills proposing that program haven’t had any movement in the legislature since March, but a week or so is still left in the spring session.

“The more young people work at that age, the more they will work later,” Wuest said. “It will not only help young people move forward but also help reduce crime and help a lot of businesses facing severe labor shortages.”

The Alternative School Network worked on the legislation that would launch a $300 million statewide program and is part of a coalition of community-based organizations and others pushing for its passage. These organizations would contract with the state to administer the program. They could hire some young people and help others secure jobs with private employers, stepping in to prepare youth and troubleshoot when issues arise in the workplace.

That kind of support can make or break a youth employment program, said Wilson, the report’s author. Job placement programs that simply send off young people without work experience to jobs for which they are not prepared haven’t shown great results, he said. Wilson said youth need not just specialized job training, but also help learning the soft skills needed to keep a job.

“The idea that tomorrow you just offer a job to a young person and they are going to be successful is unrealistic,” he said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago adopts new policy for evaluating how schools are doing

2023-04-26T23:01:15+00:00

The Chicago school board unanimously approved a new system for evaluating campuses that district leaders vowed will make the city a national leader in rethinking how to size up school quality.

The new policy, named “Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency,” formally replaces the district’s controversial school ratings system, which had long come under fire for overemphasizing standardized test scores and unfairly labeling high-poverty campuses.

The new approach does away with rating schools on a five-point scale from 1+ to 3. A separate policy the board approved will adopt three new labels that largely correspond to the state’s designations for schools, as required under the law.

Under the new accountability policy, the district will compile a wide array of metrics and present them to parents and the public — rather than using a complex calculation to produce a ranking as the old system did. A new dashboard with that data will go live sometime during the 2024-25 school year, based on data from this coming school year.

And while the policy aims to hold the district accountable for providing the money, guidance, and other resources schools need to improve, it does not spell out any consequences for campuses that are not making headway.

At the Wednesday board meeting where the policy was approved, district CEO Pedro Martinez said the new system reflects Chicago’s commitment to equity and marks a break with a punitive approach to evaluating schools. He said national leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, are watching Chicago’s overhaul closely, though Martinez called it “a work in progress.”

The district will flesh out how to capture some metrics and create the public dashboard over the next two years, officials said.

John Easton, an expert at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research who was part of an advisory group that crafted the new policy, called the approach “soft accountability”: “We are using a flashlight and not a hammer.”

He applauded the inclusion of more metrics that will attempt to capture how schools are supporting students’ social-emotional well-being and sense of belonging on campus.

Stakeholders overhaul school ratings system amid pandemic pause

The new policy was developed by an group made up of educators, administrators, parents, students, and experts. The Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, which were also involved, have said there is much to like about it, such as more metrics that aim to capture school climate and culture.

But these two organizations urged the board not to approve the policy until it clarifies better what it aims to measure and how.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, teachers union president Stacy Davis Gates said she appreciates that the policy focuses on “inputs” — the dollars, staff, and other support the district gives campuses — as well as student outcomes. She said the policy is “beginning to look like something that makes sense, finally.”

The district’s old school accountability system, known as School Quality Ratings Policy, or SQRP, has been on hold since 2020, when COVID scuttled in-person district and state testing.

The new policy will continue to highlight proficiency and growth on state tests, attendance, high school graduation, and college enrollment. It will also share information about nonprofit and other community partnerships, quality curriculums, and a slew of metrics aiming to capture the student and educator experience on campus.

The three new labels — In Good Standing, Remediation, and Probation — will largely track with the state’s own designations for schools, which are based on test scores, attendance, and other data.

Lisa Jean Walker, a researcher at the University of Illinois in Chicago who addressed the board as a community member, said the district should actively challenge state and federal laws that require these designations rather than merely complying with them.

She said under the now-defunct SQRP, the majority of schools with the lowest ratings served Black students, and all had student bodies with high needs, including large populations of homeless students. Labels such as “probation” stigmatized schools, she said, and have not led to improvement on those campuses.

“Ratings are going away, but the categories remain,” said Walker, an expert on school improvement. “Where is the relief for the Black community?”

Policy moves from punitive to supportive

But school board members and those involved in creating the policy touted the process of crafting it and the final result.

Natalie Neris, the chief accountability officer at the nonprofit Kids First Chicago, which handled outreach on the policy, said it represents a groundbreaking departure from a usually top-down approach to policy-making, in which “experts meet in an ivory tower, make decisions, and then those decisions are imposed on communities.”

Alfonso Carmona, the district’s chief portfolio officer, said a key goal was moving away from punishing struggling schools, including by saddling them with ratings that can lead families to balk at enrolling there. Instead, the focus is on giving them added help to improve.

“We still have to pay attention to student outcomes,” he said. “But the schools should not be penalized as they try to get to where they need to be.”

Carmona said the district made significant changes based on public comment on the policy it has been collecting since March. It split what was initially a single policy into two, with a separate document on the school labels in a bid to comply with state law. The policy now also includes more specific on how the district will hold itself accountable in supporting its schools.

District officials said the district will next work on getting a better handle on exactly how to measure some factors included in the new policy and building the dashboard to feature the data. Some metrics will go live next year, and some in 2025.

“If we want to be a leader in the nation,” school board president Miguel del Valle said, “then we have to get this right.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago is about to shift how it measures school quality as ratings go away

2023-04-24T17:15:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and statewide education policy.

The Chicago school board Wednesday will consider a new policy formally doing away with a longstanding and controversial system that rated schools on a scale of 1+ to 3.

The new draft policy for sizing up schools’ performance, in the works since 2019, would expand the metrics used to evaluate campuses — and aims to place greater emphasis on how schools promote students’ social and emotional development.

It’s a welcome move for critics of the old rating system, who said it overemphasized test scores and stigmatized schools serving students with high needs — even as parents and the public turned to it as a one-stop source of information on everything from attendance to specialized programs campuses offered.

The old system has been on hold since the COVID pandemic derailed district and state testing in the spring of 2020.

In a separate policy also before the board Wednesday, the district would adopt three labels for schools largely reflecting the state’s designations, as required under state law. But otherwise, the district’s new “Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency” policy says the district would not rank schools by any means.

Chicago Public Schools would present the plethora of information on schools compiled under the policy on a new public dashboard beginning in the fall of 2024 — one that district officials and advocates say will offer a more holistic picture of campus quality.

But both the district’s teachers union and its principals association are urging the board to delay backing the policy. They argue that it needs to spell out more clearly how school climate and other factors will be measured and how the district will hold itself accountable for ensuring campuses have what they need to improve — a key goal of the new policy.

“We want to make sure on the front end that we don’t leave too many gray areas,” said Alahrie Aziz-Sims, the principal at Bogan High School on the Southwest Side. “It’s really important to have clarity on where we put our efforts so that teachers and administrators don’t burn out in this recovery period.”

During a recent educational research conference in downtown Chicago, school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said the new policy offers a solid framework, even as it embraces some ambiguity. She said it focuses on “inputs” — staffing levels, curriculums, and other district investments — as well as student outcomes.

“There are things we care about that we don’t yet know how to measure, and in the course of this process, we said, ‘That’s OK,’” Todd-Breland said.

School ratings historically seen as punitive

In 2019, the school board newly appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot approved an updated School Quality Rating System, or SQRP, policy. But members said the new version didn’t go far enough in addressing long-standing criticism — and tasked the district with overhauling the system.

Then, in the spring of 2020, the pandemic shuttered school buildings and led to the cancellation of district and state testing — and the district suspended the ratings, giving all campuses an “inability to rate” label. That has remained the case even as standardized testing resumed statewide with the partial return to in-person learning the following spring.

The district formed an advisory group to tackle the redesign and sought broader input into the effort. All in all, roughly 20,000 people have weighed in on the redesign, according to the advocacy group Kids First Chicago, which led the outreach efforts. That’s more engagement than with any other district initiative in recent memory, says the group.

Natalie Neris, the chief of community engagement at Kids First and a district parent, said many families and community members strongly opposed the old school rating system, which in part informed unpopular decisions to close 50 schools on the city’s South and West sides in 2013.

“What we know historically is that accountability was used punitively,” she said. “It was used to disempower schools.”

Some themes cropped up consistently in the feedback: A new policy should elevate student social and emotional well-being. It should put more of an onus on the school district to provide money, strategies, and other support for its campuses. And it should empower struggling schools to improve rather than punish them, without enough regard for how student poverty and other demographic factors influence student outcomes.

The policy advisory group set out to reflect these priorities in the new system.

New policy aims for more holistic view of schools

One of the advisory group’s members, parent Vanessa Espinoza subscribed to the priorities based on her family’s experience. When Espinoza picked a school for her children several years ago, she relied heavily on the district’s rating system to find a high-performing school.

“I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a 1+ school. It must be good,’” she recalled. “Then you go to the school, and it’s a different picture.”

Espinoza chose a magnet elementary at first, but she felt the school did not deliver on parent involvement and on support for students’ social and emotional development. Then other parents recommended Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy on the Southwest Side, another magnet two blocks from Espinoza’s home. It had a lower rating, but proved a better fit for her family.

“As a parent, I want a holistic system that will provide me with a more complete picture of the school environment,” she said.

Espinoza believes the draft policy delivers that holistic approach.

The district would still include proficiency and growth on state tests for all students, those with disabilities, and English learners. But the new policy notes that these metrics are tied to student demographics and should not be considered a measure of school quality. The system would continue to compile data on chronic absenteeism, dropouts, graduation rates, college enrollment and persistence, and others.

It would also share information about after-school programs, partnerships with nonprofits and other community organizations, and quality curriculums, among many other new metrics. It’s not clear exactly how other factors – such as sizing up a school’s “student experience,” “healing centered culture,” and collaborative environment — will be measured or shared.

The policy suggests for some metrics the district might use surveys, such as the 5 Essentials school climate questionnaire the district has long used for its ratings and the new Cultivate student survey it started administering this year. Both surveys were created by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research.

The earlier version of the policy posted for public comment included the three new labels — In Good Standing, Remediation, and Probation — based on the state’s designations. It said district leaders would have leeway to designate additional schools as on probation — a move the teachers union had flagged as potentially problematic because the criteria for adding schools to the probation list were not clear.

But a new version of the policy published Monday pulls out these labels into a separate policy. Both proposed policies no longer reference the district having authority to place additional schools on probation.

The new version of the policy also adds a “district accountability” portion to most metrics, explaining how the district will support schools in pursuing better student outcomes.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s education chief who also spoke at the education research conference earlier this month, said the new policy would help schools and the district as a whole to improve. She said widely divergent outcomes and student experiences across the district are a central challenge.

“I saw this accountability redesign as an amazing opportunity for us to achieve districtwide coherence,” she said. She added, “The accountability system will be a key driver in achieving equity.”

The policy’s greater emphasis on the student experience and social-emotional learning is backed by a growing body of research, said Shanette Porter, a senior research associate at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. Porter was the lead author on a new study that examined test scores, support for social-emotional development, and behaviors in the ninth grade as factors in longer-term student outcomes — the odds of getting arrested, graduating from high school, and going to college. Social-emotional development proved to be the most powerful factor.

“One of the distinct takeaways from our work is that policies that are over-relying on test score growth are missing so many of the important ways schools are shaping students’ experiences and their trajectories,” Porter said.

Porter said researchers have gotten better at measuring “softer” school climate and culture factors, such as how schools promote social well-being and a sense of belonging. The surveys that the district will likely continue to use for evaluating schools are a solid tool, and students have proven a reliable source of information on their own school experience, Porter said. But the work to refine these metrics continues.

Principals and teachers say policy needs more specifics

Aziz-Sims, the Bogan principal, and Ryan Bellville, the principal at McAuliffe Elementary on the Northwest Side lead the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association’s work on accountability. Both said there’s much to like about the proposed new policy, including the added focus on school culture and community partnerships.

“I am really excited to have this holistic approach because it recognizes a lot of the work and progress that wasn’t captured by the school quality rating system,” Bellville said.

However, they don’t think the school board should approve the policy until it’s much more fully fleshed out.

“There are so many missing pieces,” Aziz-Sims said. “It’s often unclear what’s being asked of schools and principals. Some of the labels are confusing even to us as administrators.”

Aziz-Sims said the district must better define metrics around school climate and culture, and even terms such as “chronically absent,” which can confuse many parents. Although she said principals welcome the policy’s nod to the district’s own responsibility in ensuring schools get the resources they need, that part of the policy is vague and short on details.

At the Chicago Teachers Union, Pavlyn Jankov, a policy researcher, echoed these concerns in response to the earlier policy version.

Overall, the policy offers a much more balanced, comprehensive look at how schools are doing, he said. But the portion on district accountability seems “really thin,” he said, and other parts of the policy need more specifics. For example, he asked, what does the district consider “a balanced student testing plan,” which is referenced in the policy?

“There are many things we like,” Jankov said. But, he added, “You can’t pass a framework without people having confidence in the details and how they’ll be fleshed out.”

At Kids First, Neris, a former Chicago teacher and principal, agrees more work needs to be done in the coming months, though the fleshing out of the implementation details can happen after its approval.

She said the district hasn’t quite “cracked the code” on how to best measure a school climate and social emotional learning. And the district must ensure it is presenting the information it would collect under the policy in a way that’s accessible and understandable to parents.

“The values in this policy feel consistent,” Neris said. “The ‘how’ is where the work still needs to happen.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools officials promise more money for students with disabilities, English learners in preliminary budgets

2023-04-18T21:33:11+00:00

Chicago Public Schools officials said Tuesday they plan to increase the amount of money going directly to school campuses by about $150 million next school year, even as the district has contended with declining enrollment and a murkier financial outlook.

School budgets the district is unveiling to principals this week will grow by almost $1,000 per student — to about $12,740 on average districtwide. But enrollment losses and program changes will mean flat or smaller overall budgets on 18% of the district’s campuses, officials said in a briefing with reporters. On a per student basis, 9% of the city’s 500-plus district-run schools will see stagnant or reduced funding.

School principals will get their preliminary budgets Wednesday. They will have until May 4 to review and appeal their allocations with district officials. The district will not publicly release school budget amounts until after that process is complete.

Last year, about $4.6 billion of the district’s almost $9.5 billion budget went directly to schools. Roughly $2.5 billion went to districtwide programs and staff and $1.6 billion went to debt service and pension costs.

CEO Pedro Martinez faced intense criticism from the teachers union, principal association, and parent groups last year after initially announcing that about 40% of its schools would get smaller budgets, even as overall funding for schools increased by about $250 million. After that review process and the inclusion of some resources the district at first had budgeted in central pots, the portion of schools facing cuts dropped to 23%, and the overall amount of the cuts shrank.

The district this year is also sharing school budgets with principals about a month later than last year, when it touted a timely release as a way to help school leaders plan staffing and programs.

District officials said the bulk of the additional dollars — about $100 million — in next year’s school budgets will go toward hiring more special education teachers and paraprofessionals. The rest will fund added teaching positions, new support for English language learners amid an influx of newly arrived migrant students, and an increase in the district’s “equity grants” for underenrolled campuses. The district said contractual pay increases for staff are built into per-pupil funding schools receive.

In the briefing, Martinez stressed that next school year’s budgets represent a continued shift away from a funding approach that largely relied on school enrollment, but said enrollment should remain a factor.

“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 said.

Roughly 43% of the new budgets are determined by projected student numbers, with the remainder tied to schools’ student demographics, programs, and other factors.

“We’re slowly leaving student-based budgeting. Really what we’re trying to look at are the needs of our students,” Martinez said.

Martinez said he spoke with both Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s and Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s teams about the budgets. But he dismissed the idea that the mayoral runoff election and a desire to touch base with the incoming city administration led to the delay, which he said had more to do with his interest in consulting with principals and network chiefs.

Still, he said, “I am looking forward to working with the new mayor. I think we are going to have a champion who is going to help support us as we continue this fight with Springfield.”

Martinez was referring to a renewed push to lobby for increased funding from the state, which by its formula for “adequate” funding is shortchanging the district by more than $1 billion a year. The added funding next school year is coming from federal COVID relief dollars, which the district needs to spend by the fall of 2024.

The end of that unprecedented federal influx in funding is one factor complicating the district’s longer-term financial picture, along with pension cost increases and shifts in some costs from the city to the district as it transitions away from mayoral control.

The district is now serving more than 80,000 fewer students compared with a decade ago. After the loss of another 8,000 last year, Chicago Public Schools relinquished its spot as the country’s third-largest. Enrollment projections for next school year are not available yet, the district said.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s education chief, said the district will continue to pay for new investments this year related to its pandemic recovery push, including intervention teachers and tutors, teacher professional development, and expanded summer and after-school programs.

Officials said campuses serving primarily Black students, which already receive higher per pupil amounts, will see a more sizable average increases in per student funding: an additional $1,370 per student on average, for a total of $14,680, compared to about $10,000 at majority white and Asian American schools, up roughly $750 from last year.

The district will unveil its full budget in early summer. In this year’s district budget, almost 70% of funds went toward supporting schools, though the district put some dollars in central funds for professional development and other needs rather than directly into campus budgets. The remainder of the district budgets covers teacher pensions, expenses tied to its significant debt, and building upkeep costs.

The district is hosting a citywide meeting with local school council members on Monday to discuss the school budgets.

The Chicago Teachers Union said in a statement released Tuesday evening that it opposes any cuts to school budgets next school year and called on the district to break completely with budgeting tied to enrollment.

“While it is promising to see investments made by CPS in our schools, CPS leadership must prioritize sustainability and collaboration going forward — especially as the budgets are implemented across the city,” the statement said.

Safurat Giwa, the principal at Pershing Elementary Magnet School on the Near South Side, who joined the media briefing Tuesday, said she has appreciated district efforts to soften the impact of declining enrollment on schools like hers.

Despite serving fewer students, her campus got money for two additional teachers and an academic coach, who works with educators on improving their instruction. That allowed the school to avoid combining students from two grades in a single classroom. Smaller class sizes, including a ratio of 16 kindergarteners to a teacher, allowed for “really intensive and focused instruction,” Giwa said.

“I can’t tell you what a huge difference this makes for students,” she said, “especially in the early grades.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago 2023 mayoral election: Brandon Johnson defeats Paul Vallas

2023-04-05T04:26:20+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Chicago newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and state education policy.

Brandon Johnson, a teachers union organizer, county commissioner, and former middle school teacher, will become Chicago’s next mayor after winning 51.4% of the vote to defeat former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in a runoff election.

Johnson’s win marks a stunning achievement in the grassroots movement started by Chicago Teachers Union leadership roughly a decade ago to focus on issues beyond the classroom, such as affordable housing, public health, environmental justice, and police reform.

“We have ushered in a new chapter in the history of our city,” Johnson said. “Whether you wake up early to open the doors of your businesses, or teach middle school, or wear a badge to protect our streets, or nurse patients in need, or provide child care services, you have always worked for this city. And now Chicago will begin to work for its people.”

Brandon Johnson’s supporters celebrate during the winning mayoral candidate’s watch party.

Bankrolled by the teachers union and other labor groups, Johnson broke through a field of nine candidates, securing about 21% of the vote, finishing second to Vallas, who captured 33% of the vote in the first round of voting on Feb. 28. Incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot finished third with 17% of the vote — dashing her hopes for a second term.

With 99% of precincts reporting, preliminary results posted by the Chicago Board of Elections had Johnson with 51.4% to Vallas’ 48.6%.

The two have spent the last five weeks knocking on doors, holding events, debating one another, visiting churches, and collecting endorsements in an effort to sway voters who may have picked another candidate or didn’t vote on Feb. 28. The narrow results illustrate how contentious and divisive the campaign had become and was a stark contrast to the Lightfoot’s runoff landslide in 2019.

“It’s clear based on the results tonight that the city is deeply divided,” Vallas said in a concession speech Tuesday night. “Even though, of course, we believe every vote should be counted, I called Brandon Johnson and told him that I absolutely expect him to be the next mayor of Chicago.”

Former principal of Whitney Young Magnet School Joyce D. Kenner, a Paul Vallas supporter, was holding out hope for a Vallas victory.

Johnson offered an olive branch to those who didn’t vote for him.

“To the Chicagoans who did not vote for me, here’s what I want you to know: that I care about you, I value you, and I want to hear from you. I want to work with you, and I’ll be the mayor for you too,” he said.

Both candidates’ deep ties to education propelled them into politics — though the two have been on opposite sides of the debates over public education policy in the past two decades and presented contrasting visions for the future of Chicago Public Schools.

Vallas, a torch bearer for school choice and charter schools who has supported voucher expansion, faced criticism and applause for his complicated schools’ legacy. Johnson taught at Jenner Academy of the Arts and Westinghouse College Prep before becoming a union organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. His education platform, which aligns closely with the teachers union, promises more staff, free transit for students, and green schools.

Now, Johnson will be the last mayor to have control of the city’s public schools, a perhaps fitting irony for someone who advocated for an elected school board. He will oversee a number of challenges facing the nation’s fourth largest district including declining enrollment, closing pandemic-related academic declines, and the transition to an elected school board.

“On education, the contrast was clear,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the CTU. “Brandon wants to ensure parents have a say, teachers can teach, and students can learn without the intrusion of those who measure their success by closing schools rather than strengthening them.”

Former Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said Johnson’s victory is a vindication of the union’s massive organizing push over the past decade. He said members threw themselves into campaigning for Johnson in a big way, from knocking on doors to making art for his campaign materials.

“There was an outpouring of creativity and organizing in this election,” he said. “It turned out it was just enough.”

Throughout the campaign, Johnson has faced questions over whether he would be impartial in negotiations with his own union, to which he responded: “Who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?”

“Brandon is going to have to govern,” Sharkey said. “I don’t think the CTU gets to decide what it wants. Brandon is a remarkable person who has a lot of principles and deeply believes in governance.”

As Johnson took the lead, the crowd at his election night watch party at the Marriott Marquis downtown pumped their fists and cheered. The volume of the dance music went way up, and supporters danced, snapped selfies, and hugged.

Nina Hike, a science teacher at Westinghouse College Prep and a teachers union leader, said the ground game that the union built was crucial. Teachers turned out to volunteer and campaign for Johnson in full force, she said.

Hike estimated she spent hundreds of hours phone banking, knocking on more than 500 doors, recording a podcast attacking Vallas’ education record, and talking with news reporters.

Wallace Wilbourn Jr., a middle school social studies teacher at DePriest Elementary in Austin on Chicago’s West Side, knocked on doors for Johnson and hosted a canvassing event in his East Garfield Park living room. Early on election night, he was taking deep breaths as the two candidates remained neck-and-neck with razor-thin margins.

“The whole city has been working toward this one progressive goal,” Wilbourn said.

Brandon Johnson was a middle school teacher before rising in the ranks at the Chicago Teachers Union. He was elected to Cook County Commission in 2018.

The CTU called Johnson a “protege” of the late former union president Karen Lewis, who almost ran for mayor herself in 2015 before being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

“You don’t have a Brandon Johnson without a Karen Lewis,” said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said. “She transformed the political debate in our city. She showed Chicagoans how to stand up and demand what their schools and their city need and deserve. Tonight affirms Karen’s dream of a city that works for us all, not just a privileged few.”

At the Vallas election night party at the Hyatt Regency, his supporters held on to hope even as the results showed Johnson taking the lead. Joyce D. Kenner, former principal of Whitney Young Magnet High School who endorsed Vallas, said she did not expect the race to be so close.

Paul Vallas, alongside his family, speaks to his supporters after conceding the race to Brandon Johnson.

Beverly Miles, a former aldermanic candidate and Vallas supporter, said she was “expecting a landslide for Vallas.”

Miles said she thought Johnson was “a nice guy but I don’t think he’s the right guy.” Despite being a county commissioner, she felt he hadn’t done enough for the West Side.

“We knew it was going to be a nail-biter,” Ald. Tom Tunney said earlier in the night when only about 1,000 votes separated the two.

Chicago Board of Elections spokesperson Max Bever said earlier in the day there were still thousands of vote-by-mail ballots outstanding. The Chicago Board of Elections has until April 18 to count all ballots and certify the results.

The early voting and vote-by-mail numbers are double what they were in 2015 and 2019 and Monday’s early voting turnout set a municipal record, according to the Board. Turnout in the first round of voting on Feb. 28 was around 35%, with 566,973 people casting ballots out of roughly 1.6 million registered voters.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org. Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org. Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago staffs fewer National Board certified teachers as it pushes to grow their ranks

2023-04-03T18:12:54+00:00

In the thick of the pandemic, Molly Beth Jourdan, a science teacher at Kenwood Academy High School on Chicago’s South Side, started an arduous two-year quest for the “gold standard” in her profession: certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

She spent hundreds of extra hours reviewing footage of her own teaching, reflecting on ways she could improve, and parsing data on how her students were doing. The work paid off for her 10th graders, she said. By February this year, they had covered three more months of chemistry than she used to teach in a typical year.

Jourdan was one of a class of 49 newly National Board certified teachers recently feted by district and teachers union leaders, who noted research linking the certification program to better learning outcomes for students.

But a Chalkbeat analysis found the overall number of board-certified teachers has decreased steadily, even as the number of educators Chicago Public Schools employs has grown. About 1,000 of the district’s more than 22,000 educators are board-certified, down almost 30% since 2016.

Last school year, about 170 of the district’s 500-some campuses did not employ any certified teachers, up from roughly 120 in 2016 — most of them schools serving predominantly Black students.

The reasons for that decrease are not entirely clear, but likely involve a tangle of factors, officials say. Those include a shift years ago to a lengthier certification process that briefly dampened certifications, COVID’s disruption more recently and some certified teachers leaving their posts — both for leadership roles in the district and for jobs in other districts.

Still, district and teachers union leaders say a longstanding partnership on board certification remains strong — and they share a goal of cultivating more certified educators in the coming years. The district said in a statement it plans to step up outreach to teachers to promote board certification, especially among teachers of color and other underrepresented groups.

“That should be our goal — to lead the nation,” said school board president Miguel del Valle during the March board meeting, “and I think we can get there.”

He added, “I can’t think of a better way to spend our dollars than to help teachers develop to the point where they are the gold standard.”

Tamara Poulson, a spokeswoman for the National Board, said Chicago came in fifth nationally based on the number of new certifications. The Chicago Teachers Union says the district is third for overall certified teachers, data the board said it does not publicize.

Poulson said the start of the pandemic disrupted the certification process. But nationally, the overall number of board-certified teachers has continued to grow to more than 133,000 by latest count, and the number of new certifications has rebounded, with a record pool of 2023 candidates.

Some studies have shown that the students of board-certified teachers learn more than their peers in other classrooms on average. One mid-2010s National Board-funded study by CNA, a nonprofit research organization based in the Washington D.C. area, looked at outcomes for students in Chicago Public Schools and rural districts in Kentucky and found board-certified educators made a difference for students across subjects and types of schools.

But Dan Goldhaber, the director of the Center for Education Data & Research at the University of Washington, who has studied board certification, said the evidence is not conclusive on whether board certification itself actually builds better teachers. There is strong evidence, however, that the process is powerful at identifying and empowering the most talented educators.

Number of board-certified teachers in Chicago shrinks

Amid a push in the 2010s to evaluate and pay teachers based on performance, a growing number of districts and states offered board-certified teachers pay incentives. Those incentives, along with the growing research on the program and student outcomes, powered steep increases in newly certified teachers. That enthusiasm has cooled off somewhat, Goldhaber said, and some states have done away with compensation incentives.

Not Chicago, where certified educators in the district get a $2,295 annual stipend. In keeping with the union contract, the district pays $750,000 a year to support the Chicago Teachers Union’s “Nurturing Teacher Leadership” program that helps educators attain certification and covers all their expenses.

Proposed legislation in Illinois would give retention bonuses of $4,000 per year for two years to board-certified teachers working in hard-to-staff schools.

In keeping with the national trend, Chicago’s board-certified teacher ranks had swelled rapidly earlier in the 2010s, but the rise has slowed more recently. Few new teachers got certified in the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years amid changes that made the process lengthier. Except for a dip in 2019, 50-some teachers a year have gotten certified in recent years.

Meanwhile, ensuring schools with the highest student needs have board-certified teachers on staff has remained a challenge.

Majority Black schools made up about 65% of campuses with no board-certified teachers on staff last year. Among schools that do employ at least one certified teacher, the student-to-board-certified-teacher ratio is highest in schools that serve predominantly Latino students and lowest in the relatively small number of schools where white students are the largest racial group.

Not surprisingly, the district’s selective enrollment high schools topped the list of campuses with the largest clusters of board-certified teachers, leading with Whitney Young with 25 such teachers. But Curie Metropolitan High, a high-poverty campus on the Southwest Side, came in fifth with 18 board-certified educators, outranking some test-in schools. Back of the Yards High School, also on the Southwest Side, has also cultivated a growing cluster in recent years. Among elementary schools, Ogden, Coonley, and Peirce — all on the North Side — have the most certified teachers.

Lynn Cherkasky-Davis, who leads the CTU’s certification program, said some board-certified teachers have been promoted to assistant principal, principal, and central office positions — and that’s a good thing: “They are still supporting our teachers and our students.”

Some likely have left the district; COVID brought an uptick in educator resignations and retirements after years of steep decreases in teacher departures from the district. To keep more of these educators, she said, the district should consider upping incentives for certified teachers.

Cherkasky-Davis noted that over the years, the CTU’s program has come to work with fewer certification candidates but it also better ensures that they are prepared for the enormous time and effort involved. As a result, 94% of district teachers who attempt certification succeed, compared to a national average of 70%. That probably means that fewer Chicago teachers ultimately get certified — but also fewer attempt the process unsuccessfully.

Educators praise board certification for helping them improve

At a celebration during the March school board meeting, district and union officials recognized the 49 newly certified educators, 45% of whom are of color. Another 103 teachers, counselors, and librarians recently renewed their certification.

The event brought a rare moment of mutual appreciation between district and teachers union leaders. CTU president Stacy Davis Gates called the certification efforts “a great demonstration of collaboration and cooperation,” noting the program is special to her because the late union president Karen Lewis was a board-certified teacher.

Sharon Coleman, a counselor at Wendell Smith Elementary on the South Side, became one of 18 district counselors, or 2% of all counselors in Chicago Public Schools, to get board certified. She said the certification process taught her how to better track and crunch data on her students. That helped her realize they needed more guidance in choosing high schools to apply to, so she created a selection chart to help them figure out what campuses were the best fit. Certification also propelled her into school and district leadership roles.

“I wanted to improve the well-being of students in my school community,” she told the school board, noting she was also eager to help increase the number of board-certified counselors of color.

Israel Perez, the principal at Yates Elementary on the Northwest Side, said the process of becoming board-certified a decade ago was the most helpful professional development he ever got. Certification cleared the way for him to make the transition from classroom teacher to school leader.

He renewed his certification this school year, spending weeks teaching fifth-grade math — an experience that helped him reconnect to the classroom and better understand the needs of students and teachers in his building.

Perez said he is forming a group of teachers at Yates to pursue board certification together — and has asked the district to offer the board certification stipend to principals as well.

Cherkasky-Davis told the board roughly 15% of the new class of certified teachers work with students with disabilities, and about 17% are STEM educators. All in all, almost 40% of all certified teachers in the district now are educators of color.

She is pleased with the numbers, she said, but “there’s still work to be done.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How a uniquely Chicago curriculum originated

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

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

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

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

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

That summer, Javee Hernandez — a veteran social studies teacher at Bronzeville Classical whose classroom is across the hall from Avila’s — joined principal Nicole Spicer and other school leaders in deciding whether to adopt the new curriculum. Bronzeville Classical, a test-in school on the South Side where students learn a grade ahead of their age, had opened just a few years earlier, in 2018.

The administration felt the school’s math and reading coursework was strong, but social studies and science could benefit from a revamp. Enter Skyline.

“This was a free, high-quality, rigorous option,” said Spicer. “Skyline became a resource that really was a no-brainer for us.”

The district has offered schools like Bronzeville a slew of incentives to opt into Skyline: free books and math supplies, dollars to spend on science lab equipment, expanded access to technology. But even as Bronzeville has embraced Skyline, other schools have been more cautious.

Schools skipping Skyline must defend their choice

One elementary school principal who left the district last year said she was asked to make a case that her school’s English language arts curriculum passed muster.

She and her teachers largely agreed the school would benefit from adopting Skyline in the later grades; after two years of pandemic schooling, educators felt drained and ready for a break from the labor-intensive process of designing lessons from scratch. But in the earlier grades, the principal compiled test scores and other data to argue that her teachers should be allowed to continue using their own lessons. The district agreed.

“They don’t come out and say, ‘You have to do it,’” the principal said. “But if you can’t prove your school is using a high-quality curriculum, then the pressure is on to adopt Skyline.”

Chalkbeat and WBEZ are not naming several school leaders who did not have district permission to speak with the media; the former principal asked to remain anonymous to avoid burning bridges with the district.

A high school principal said she asked most of her teachers to take last school year to “tinker” with Skyline and do the extensive professional development the district offers. But she has mandated it for a few teachers who did not have robust lesson plans and struggled in the classroom.

This year, the district asked schools to evaluate their curriculums across the board against a district rubric that defined what made for a quality curriculum and recently shared results with principals: Roughly 20% of campuses do not have quality curriculums in reading, math, or social studies, and about 10% do not have one in science.

Mary Beck, the district’s head of teaching and learning, said the district is now working with those campuses to make a plan.

“If you don’t have a high-quality curriculum, what’s your plan to get to a high-quality curriculum?” she said. “Skyline is obviously the example, but not the only example.”

The number of schools adopting Skyline is growing each year. As of January, as many as 432 schools were using the curriculum for at least one subject, roughly 83% of all district schools.

In elementary schools, the English curriculum is the most popular and math is the least (not including world languages, which are not offered by all campuses).

Majority Black schools have adopted the curriculum at the highest rates. Campuses that serve mostly white students — only about two dozen districtwide — have been slowest to embrace Skyline, Chalkbeat and WBEZ found.

In Chicago, 432 schools have adopted Skyline for at least one subject, with majority Black schools using the curriculum at the highest rates.

Skyline adoption has also been slower at high schools, though some high-needs South and West side campuses were early adopters across all subjects.

A couple of principals told Chalkbeat and WBEZ they opted in mostly just to get the free resources from the district.

The high school principal said her school adopted Skyline in all subjects, but buy-in varies.

On one end of the spectrum, science teachers at her school really like the curriculum, which draws heavily on the well-respected curriculum called Amplify Science, and have rolled it out faithfully.

On the other end, English teachers dabbled but ultimately returned mostly to lessons they had developed previously. Social science teachers found the materials too challenging for struggling readers; some are picking and choosing parts to incorporate.

Some teachers struggle to navigate Skyline

Caprice Phillips-Mitchell, the chair of the Chicago Teachers Union elementary steering committee and a kindergarten teacher at Fort Dearborn Elementary School on the South Side, said she hears from a number of teachers who are unhappy with Skyline. And this school year, she experienced some of the problems herself.

Phillips-Mitchell said parts of the Skyline curriculum are too challenging for students or require prior knowledge teachers need to fill in. Because online lessons and assignments are not “user friendly,” teachers say they are printing out the lessons and making copies. Sometimes when teachers try to go back to a lesson, it is gone and replaced with something new.

She said her school was told it must adopt Skyline. That meant she had to stop using an English language arts curriculum she and other teachers liked. Phillips-Mitchell says she believes schools serving low-income students of color are facing more pressure to adopt Skyline.

“Why give anyone a curriculum that’s not really ready to be rolled out?” she said. “Do you do it in some of these Black and brown communities that may not have such a voice?”

The Chicago Teachers Union applauds the district’s effort to create a curriculum bank. But chief of staff Jen Johnson said it is problematic that some teachers are being told that it’s mandatory, while district leaders insist it is not.

“The unevenness of implementation means that teachers are experiencing dramatically different messages,” she said. “We do not support this being some kind of citywide mandated curriculum that takes away important teacher autonomy.”

Johnson said staff need more planning time to consider and digest a new curriculum in order to buy into it and implement it well. She often hears about problems with the online interface or mistakes in the materials. For example, one social studies lesson somehow omitted an entire state.

Teachers and educators across the district interviewed by Chalkbeat and WBEZ echoed the concerns about the platform and what many said is an overwhelming amount of resources. The platform is designed by a company named SAFARI Montage.

The former elementary school principal said she understands the good intention of offering teachers a wealth of resources to choose from, but “Skyline is overly packed with lessons. It’s really too much information for teachers.”

A couple of educators told Chalkbeat and WBEZ that because the Skyline platform was frustrating to use, they instead accessed math materials directly on the website for Illustrative Math, the curriculum that the district adapted for Skyline — essentially defeating the purpose of having a district math curriculum.

A current West Side elementary principal said his teachers largely moved away from using the Skyline reading curriculum in the early grades — with his blessing — because of some of these frustrations. His school sprang for a different early literacy curriculum this year.

Other educators say some of the materials for students have dense text and few engaging visuals. Much of the curriculum is translated into Spanish, but there are questions about how well-suited the lessons are for English language learners. And some teachers say it can be too challenging to make the lessons accessible for students reading below grade level, especially at the high school level.

Bronzeville Classical Principal Nicole Spicer believes that Skyline has made her teachers’ jobs easier and made lessons more engaging for students.

At Bronzeville Classical, teachers and Spicer, the principal, say they can relate to some of these concerns. But they also feel strongly the district has been listening and making helpful changes — and overall, Skyline has enriched their teaching and made their work easier.

Earlier this winter, sixth graders in Hernandez’s classroom learned about how rugged mountain geography influenced the early engineering of the ancient Inca people. She took the Skyline lesson on the topic and made it her own, creating engaging slides with stunning images of the Andes mountains.

Skyline, Hernandez says, has helped her cut down significantly on the time she used to spend on nights and weekends looking for lesson materials online.

Later, students explored design and engineering by the Spartans and ancient Greeks — culminating in a discussion of how these long-gone cultures influence design in present-day Chicago, such as its Soldier Field.

“They’re able to make that connection with the past and the present, which is really neat,” Hernandez said.

Javee Hernandez’s adoption of Skyline has saved her time on curriculum development over nights and weekends.

Beck, the teaching and learning head, says the digital curriculum was designed to be revised and improved quickly in response to teacher and student feedback. District leaders meet regularly with a steering committee of 120 teachers to get ongoing feedback. Beck said the district worked with SAFARI Montage to improve the platform and revamped some courses and units. It’s now focusing on upgrading materials meant for students.

Isabella Kelly, a member of a districtwide student advisory group, said fellow students had both positive feedback and suggestions for improving Skyline during a focus group on the science and French curriculums she hosted last spring.

Kelly, an Ogden High senior and student leader with the group Mikva Challenge, said students found the lessons engaging and loved the opportunities to collaborate on projects and work in small groups. But they also sometimes struggled navigating the online platform.

“The biggest challenge they faced was learning along with their teachers,” she said. “They wanted a little more assistance.”

Skyline is a key tool for academic recovery, district leaders say

In a recent webinar, district leaders reminded principals that rolling out a new curriculum is a heavy, time-consuming lift, and urged them not to get discouraged by the “growing pains,” as Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova put it.

By keeping lessons and assignments squarely on grade levels, the curriculum can play a key part in COVID academic recovery, officials have said. It’s encouraging teachers to avoid constantly reteaching material from earlier grades — an approach shown to hamper academic catchup. That’s challenging work, Beck acknowledged, but the schools can layer other support, such as a specialized program for struggling readers called Wilson.

Beck said Chicago has worked with a group of curriculum experts to continually evaluate Skyline and better understand its impact on student outcomes, but that’s still a work in progress. The University of Chicago is studying whether the curriculum is paying off in early literacy improvements.

Steiner, at Johns Hopkins, says he is generally skeptical of the enormous energy and expense that go into creating an in-house curriculum in all subjects given the quality of off-the-shelf curriculums — especially if the district makes it voluntary. But he said rallying around a strong curriculum, particularly the collaborative work of teachers adopting it as grade level or subject matter teams, can be powerful for urban districts such as Chicago.

Some educators say that in a district where top leadership has been in flux for years and initiatives come and go, they are reluctant to buy into Skyline in a big way.

But Chkoumbova said the district knows adoption is a “long and hard process for schools,” and Skyline is here to stay.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.

Chicago school leaders foresee declining revenue but promise more investments

2023-03-22T23:40:07+00:00

Chicago Public Schools leaders warned of looming budget deficits Wednesday, but still promised to increase funds for pandemic recovery, migrant students, and other needs in the coming school year’s budget.

Over the past year, district officials have repeatedly cautioned about leaner budgets ahead. By 2024, the district will spend down its $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief, which has given it a financial cushion. It could lose some revenue with sharp declines in enrollment. At the same time, it faces a squeeze from rising inflation, a possible recession, and increasing pension and debt service costs.

“These issues have been papered over by federal support, but we need to confront them head on,” district CEO Pedro Martinez said.

A district report last fall noted the city has shifted costs onto the district and could offload more expenses amid a transition from mayoral control to an elected school board. The report described the district’s financial outlook as “fragile” and warned of a potential $628 million deficit by 2026, which represents about 6% of this year’s $9.5 billion budget.

The district won’t produce draft school budgets until next month and a districtwide budget until this summer. But despite the financial pressures it faces, officials said the district will continue to invest in summer and after-school programs, school counselors, academic interventionists, and other positions that it said are paying off.

Martinez promised to put more dollars toward students with disabilities, newly arrived migrant students, and student mental health services.

Some board members have previously criticized the city’s move to shift costs to the district. But on Wednesday, the district’s leaders laid the blame squarely on underfunding by the state. Martinez said he would convene community leaders and other supporters to lobby for more dollars.

The state’s school funding formula shows Chicago Public Schools receives about $1 billion less than what Illinois considers adequate funding. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of state money each year service the district’s massive debt rather than provide for classroom needs.

Chicago also is the only district in the state that covers its own teacher pension costs.

Martinez told board members Wednesday the district will continue to ensure each school has arts programming, every high school has an athletic director, and every student has a laptop or tablet. The district also will increase “equity grants” to prop up elementary and high schools with shrinking enrollment.

It will spend $60 million more next year on services for students with disabilities.

In recent years, the district has paid for police officers stationed in schools, crossing guards, and contributions toward a city-run pension fund — costs previously covered by the city. Those expenses this year totaled about $200 million.

The district also could face increased costs for water, sewer, rent, summer programs, and more, which the city may pass on even though it covers some of them for community colleges and other entities.

On Wednesday, district administrators stressed that pandemic relief dollars have allowed it to ward off cuts. Officials said the district has spent $1.7 billion of its federal COVID allocation, with plans to spend $696 million more next school year.

“There has been a temptation to spend the money as quickly as possible but we opted to be more methodical and more strategic,” Martinez said.

“We want to continue to emphasize that the district receives only 75% of what the state says we need to be adequately funded,” said Michael Sitkowski, deputy chief in the district’s budget and management office.

Officials also noted that the district would have more than half a billion dollars each year to spend on instruction if the state covered teacher pensions in the same way it does for other districts — and another half a billion if it did not have to service its debt related to building upkeep. Martinez stressed that both of these costs are slated to rise in coming years.

“Teacher pensions will take any new revenues we have — state or local,” he said. “They will take it all.”

School board member Michael Scott Jr. noted that the district has not succeeded in pleading with the state for more money in the past. He asked if the district has a plan B if it strikes out. But Martinez insisted only that Chicago must focus on getting more funds from Springfield.

“‘They have so few children and so many adults,’” he said he has heard critics contend. “Frankly that’s what we should have had all along.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago mayoral candidates offer divergent paths on declining enrollment and small schools

2023-03-17T21:09:06+00:00

Chicago’s two mayoral candidates have starkly different visions for reckoning with the city’s steep enrollment losses and under-enrolled schools.

Paul Vallas has said these shrinking campuses could become or share space with specialized magnets, charter schools, or alternative high schools — the kinds of overhauls he oversaw during his tenure as Chicago Public Schools CEO from 1995 to 2001. The city should continue to give families more quality choices, he argues.

Brandon Johnson, on the other hand, says Chicago’s system of choice — in which families can pick from a myriad of district-run, charter, and private programs anywhere in the city — has created a “Hunger Games scenario” in which neighborhood schools lose out to better-funded competitors. The solution, the Chicago Teachers Union organizer says, is a major influx of resources for schools that already exist.

The divide between Vallas and Johnson — both Democrats facing off in an April 4 runoff — embodies the party’s swings and tensions on school choice and other education policies. And it comes at a pivotal time for Chicago, which will transition away from mayoral control to an elected school board in 2025 as a moratorium on school closures ends.

Both candidates’ plans raise questions. The approach of fully rebranding struggling schools Vallas champions has a checkered record, and it would come after three years of COVID-era disruption for students. He has called for expanding the city’s alternative high schools to reengage students who disconnected from school during the pandemic, but these campuses have no shortage of seats after massive enrollment losses recently.

Yet with leaner times looming after federal COVID relief money runs out, it’s tough to say whether the city can pull off the significant influx of resources Johnson wants to revitalize all of its shrinking schools. It would be up against demographic headwinds reducing the number of school-age children — and costs that have swelled to as much as $40,000 per student a year at some under-enrolled high schools, compared with $13,000 on average.

Kate Phillippo, a professor in Loyola University’s Schools of Social Work and Education, notes the city’s system of choice, where most students travel to magnet, charter, or private schools rather than attend their assigned neighborhood campus, is likely here to stay. But it’s also under pressure as the number of small schools grows.

“What we don’t need in Chicago is more schools, unless we are doing it with the goal of other schools going away,” said Phillippo. “I don’t know how much more choice we can introduce.”

More recently, the two mayoral candidates have walked a careful line on charter schools and school choice, with Vallas suggesting that the city actually doesn’t need more charters, and Johnson stressing that he doesn’t oppose them. But their platforms and records are illuminating.

Vallas, a well-known education reformer who helped to remake New Orleans as a charter-centric district after Hurricane Katrina, is a pro-school choice Democrat in the mold of former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, but he has also broken with the Democratic canon in backing an expansion of an Illinois program that pays for some students to attend private schools. Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and former teacher, is staking out a more traditional Democratic position, based on steering more money to traditional public schools.

Vallas argues expanding school choices remains important

If elected mayor, Vallas has made it clear that he would work to support the system of school choice that he promoted as the district’s CEO, when he touts presiding over the creation of 78 magnet, charter, and other schools.

His approach was a precursor to what became known as the “portfolio model” of managing districts — a decentralized, open-enrollment system where cities incentivize high-performing schools and close or restructure struggling campuses. The model was popular in the 2010s, but it has lost much of its luster in more recent years. Research has shown mixed results for students, and advocates have come to champion a less top-down approach based on trust and buy-in from local communities.

On the campaign trail today, Vallas has tried to reflect that shift. He said he wants to empower local communities to invite charter schools into under-enrolled or vacant buildings to take over or share space with traditional schools. Struggling schools could also be converted into magnets or other models, making them more attractive to students and families. He has singled out for expansion the Youth Connection Charter School, or YCCS, network of alternative charters that serve former dropouts and students at risk for dropping out.

At a Saturday mayoral debate hosted by the Chicago Women Take Action Alliance, Vallas — who helped engineer major, polarizing expansions of charters and school choice in New Orleans and Philadelphia — distanced himself from the unchecked growth of charters in Chicago under his successors. He said his administration only green-lit 15 such schools. His focus instead, he said, was on launching specialized magnet programs, such as International Baccalaureate and STEM, housed within traditional neighborhood schools. With enough charters in the city already, he will again focus on pushing for such programs.

“We were very cautious about not destabilizing communities by converting schools into charter schools,” he said. But, he added, “I think it’s very important to expand quality school choice.”

In some ways, Vallas’ comments echo a broader recent conversation about saving some shrinking campuses by rethinking their offerings in a way that can draw local families. His idea of remaking struggling high schools as career and technical academies is one the district’s current CEO, Pedro Martinez, has floated as well; Johnson is also advocating for more career and technical programs.

The tempering of Vallas’ position comes at a time when the city has cooled on charters, which are public schools run by nonprofits or other private entities but in Chicago are overseen and funded by the school district.

In its 2019 contract with its teachers union, the city agreed to extend an earlier moratorium on new charter campuses and limit charter enrollment. The district has also embraced much shorter contract renewals with many more strings attached for its charter providers — more stringent oversight championed by some school board members appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, for instance, has questioned recently whether charters that haven’t delivered on a promise of innovation and superior student outcomes should continue to exist.

Others see Vallas as a potential ally for charters. Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said Vallas has a “long history of seeing charters as an integral part of the school system.” A Vallas proposal to do away with enrollment caps for high-performing charters resonates. But Broy said the group has not yet decided whether to endorse a mayoral candidate.

While the massive charter growth of 15 years ago is inconceivable today, Broy sees room for new innovative charters in pockets of the city with crowded schools, such as in parts of the Northwest Side. Broy, who has decried what he sees as cumbersome charter contract renewals, said his group hopes to work with the next mayor on creating a pathway to longer renewals.

Charters have also lost students since the pandemic began — though they have fared better than neighborhood schools. District-run schools lost roughly 10% of their enrollment since 2019, while charters lost about 6%. Alternative high schools — district-run, charter and for-profit — lost a fifth of their students, and the YCCS network that Vallas has touted was especially hard hit and forced to close two campuses.

Research by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research has shown that the rapid expansion of charters in Chicago resulted in some high-performing schools. But student outcomes have varied greatly among charter campuses, said Elaine Allensworth, the consortium’s director. Ultimately, she said opening more than 100 schools as student enrollment was shrinking was bound to lead to under-enrolled campuses.

Johnson and his supporters have argued that Vallas’ approach would bring disruption to the district on the heels of COVID-era upheaval. At a recent press conference organized by the Chicago Teachers Union — a pioneer in unionizing some charter campuses in the city — charter school teachers said the city’s focus should be on steering resources toward its existing campuses. That includes charters that have lagged in beefing up their support staff and programs for students.

Ryan Lindburg, an educator at CICS Northtown Academy, said school funding in Chicago is already spread too thin, a sort of “Wild West situation.”

“What we’ve actually seen in the past is that a school opens up,” he said. “Two years later, we close it. We rebrand it. It’s a new charter. Two years later, it closes. We rebrand it. And you can’t get any stability that way.”

Johnson says neighborhood schools need major investment

Johnson believes some of the district’s enrollment challenges have stemmed from the very system of choice that Vallas champions.

He points to the closure of 50 traditional public schools a decade ago under then Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a move that was deeply controversial and, Johnson says, fed into an exodus of Black families from the city – flight that has contributed to today’s enrollment declines.

Programmatic missteps have added to the problem, he said, such as having an online preschool sign-up system that is difficult for some families to access.

But Johnson has largely refrained from bashing charters, whose parents make up a sizeable part of Chicago’s electorate. He said that families tend to love their schools regardless of the model. He has also spoken about his own family’s decision to choose public schools outside his Austin neighborhood, where he has said campuses did not offer the extracurricular and other programs his children sought.

Still, he said, “It is clear that charter school expansion forces competition for resources and ultimately harms all schools.”

He has held up the idea of making use of vacant space on under-enrolled campuses by bringing in services that their communities need — from health care clinics to child care centers.

Such steps don’t in themselves reverse flagging enrollment, and the scaling back of coursework, extracurricular options, and other resources for students it has brought. But, proponents of the idea argue, they can generate some revenue for these campuses as well as more community buy-in as they bring neighbors into the building, transforming schools into community hubs.

Johnson has also said he wants to steer resources to these small schools on par with what campuses with larger enrollments would receive: a school library with a librarian, counselors and other support staff, art programs, and sports teams. He sees these investments as part of a broader push to make South and West Side neighborhoods more attractive to families.

But that’s a heavy lift in a city where small schools are poised to play an ever more outsized role: Their number grew markedly during the pandemic, and now one in three elementary schools serves fewer than 300 children. Meanwhile, even as high school enrollment remained relatively stable, Chicago high schools that serve 250 or fewer students lost a third of their enrollments since 2019 on average. The gap between the cost of educating a student at tiny and larger campuses has grown dramatically, and Martinez has been blunt: The district is taking money from schools with healthy enrollments to subsidize its small schools.

Experts such as Phillippo are dubious that significant investments in staff and programming can counteract the effects of powerful demographic and immigration shifts that are shrinking the school-age student population across the Midwest.

Gary Miron, a professor of education leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University who has critically examined the national growth of charters, says investing in struggling buildings can help address the central challenge of high teacher and administrator turnover they face. But the city would need a larger, coherent plan for better supporting its neighborhood schools.

“Throwing resources at these schools isn’t a good idea unless it’s part of an overall management strategy,” he said. “It’s a hard thing to do when you have a decentralized, free-market system of providing a public service.”

Sally Nuamah, a professor at Northwestern University and the author of “Closed for Democracy,” a book about the academic and other fallout from Chicago’s 2013 school closures, says it’s paramount that the next mayor seek solutions to enrollment and other challenges in tandem with local communities. When decisions take place without community input, as with the 2013 closings, they breed disillusionment and mistrust in public institutions.

Johnson recently described those closings, which disproportionately affected Black students, as “one of the most horrific acts done against a group of people in the history of the city of Chicago.”

“The next mayor needs to take seriously the potential consequences of making these decisions on the academic, emotional, and political lives of communities that have already experienced the loss of other important public institutions such as hospitals and libraries,” Nuamah said.

Lilia Guevara, a mother of three, says parents in particular are eager to be a partner in these conversations.

Guevara, who lives on the Southwest Side, has a recent graduate of a Catholic high school and twins with autism — one attending the charter Acero’s Garcia campus and another at a district-run high school. Each of those high schools has proven the right fit for the twins’ distinct needs, she said.

Guevara said she does not want to see the mayoral candidates politicize charter or other schools. Instead, she wants a commitment to appoint more parents to the school board ahead of a transition to an elected board — and to better incorporate parent voices in making decisions more generally.

“The officials are not always thinking about what we deal with as low-income parents raising human beings,” she said.

Ultimately, says Allensworth of the Consortium on School Research, schools are part of a broader, complex governance equation. Affordable housing, transportation, vibrant small businesses, and other factors influence whether families with children move to the city and stick around.

“The mayor is really the one person in a position to influence how different sectors in the city affect education,” she said.

Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Student attendance and behavior in Chicago school show gains — and ongoing struggles

2023-03-03T12:00:00+00:00

With no major COVID surges, the end of “close contact” quarantines, and a much more stable transportation and staffing picture, Chicago Public Schools had high hopes for turning a corner this year on lower than usual attendance and disruptive student behavior.

Indeed, the district has made promising headway: Campuses have seen chronic absenteeism dip for most student groups, including students with disabilities and English learners. They have cut suspensions in half.

But here and across the country, both attendance and behavior remain central challenges.

In Chicago, overall attendance remains just as low as last year, district officials cautioned principals during a recent meeting though the district said in a statement the rate ticked up above last year’s February rate, to about 88%. Chronic absenteeism — defined as missing roughly a month of classes in a school year — remains well above pre-pandemic levels and increased slightly for Asian American and white students, according to an internal data analysis obtained by Chalkbeat.

Black students saw the most marked drop in absenteeism, but more than 40% are chronically absent this year — still well above the 27% rate pre-pandemic. And while suspensions are down markedly, overall student discipline is up slightly over last year.

Amid the district’s push for academic recovery, students need to be in the classrooms to learn. Because absenteeism and discipline affect vulnerable students disproportionately, they can compound the more significant learning setbacks these students experienced during the pandemic.

Chicago is not an outlier in continuing to grapple with these issues, said Hedy Chang of the national group Attendance Works.

“Kids lost so much time,” she said. “This is not going to be solved overnight.”

District officials say they are encouraged by the attendance and school climate gains. They credit an increase in the number of students participating in after-school activities and the ability to intervene faster when students start missing school or acting out in class, among other measures.

District data shows hopeful signs — and some causes for concern

The elementary school Renye Owens’ fourth grade son attends has been preaching the mantra of regular attendance this school year. An email from the school — Jane Addams Elementary on the city’s West Side — arrived in the early weeks of the year urging parents to get students to school and voicing concern about an uptick in students who were leaving early. More recently, the school’s newsletter talked up regular attendance and on-time arrival.

“With gratitude,” the newsletter said, “we thank our parents who have supported our attendance policy.”

In Owens’ case, that’s preaching to the choir: This year and last, the mom of two has been a stickler for making sure her kids are in class every day. Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, her son came home with exciting news. Because his attendance had been consistent, he had earned a Friday without the school’s mandatory uniform.

Instead of his usual khakis and a baby-blue button-down, the fourth grader got to wear jeans and a casual sweatshirt.

“He was happy about it and he felt proud,” she said.

It’s not surprising that attendance is top of mind at Addams and other Chicago schools.

Last school year, chronic absenteeism districtwide soared to 45%, compared with 24% on the eve of the COVID outbreak. An earlier analysis by Chalkbeat showed the city’s charter schools and district-run campuses with majority Black student populations were hit hardest by the drop in attendance. Increased absenteeism was an issue across Illinois.

This year, Chicago has seen absenteeism rates dip for Black and Latino students, English learners, and students with disabilities. So far, 47% of students with disabilities have been flagged as chronically absent — down from 52% last year, but still significantly up from fewer than a third pre-pandemic.

Among Asian American and white students, absenteeism actually increased slightly this year, to 20% and 26% respectively.

Overall attendance has tracked fairly closely to last year’s, though the district avoided the massive drop during the omicron surge in January 2022. The average rate has remained well below the 95% goal the district had long set for its campuses before COVID struck.

Suspensions — in school and especially out of school — are down significantly, but discipline overall has increased. The district said that data reflect a roughly 48% drop in serious or criminal misconduct on campus, but an increase in more minor disruptive behaviors.

What Chicago is seeing is in line with national trends, Chang said. Last year, the delta variant surge disrupted the all-important first month of school, when students get into the campus routines and forge ties with peers and teachers; the chance to reset at the start of the second semester was upended by omicron.

But the absence of such massive across-the-board disruptions this year hasn’t meant that attendance has bounced back to normal — a sign of the long-lasting effects of the outbreak, Chang said. Schools continue to struggle with reengaging families and students, some of whom took on jobs and other responsibilities during virtual learning they’ve been reluctant to give up.

Chang said she is also not surprised to see absenteeism tick up for Chicago’s white and Asian American students. She points to recent Connecticut data showing that even as that state has seen those rates dip for high-needs student groups, rates for peers with lower needs have inched up.

Districts have focused their efforts to intervene on the students hit hardest by the pandemic. But some of the fallout — including the anxiety students can feel as they struggle to catch up academically, often with physical symptoms that can keep them at home — cuts across race and class.

Still, said Chang, “We are seeing some recovery in some places, and that’s usually because people have done some intentional work to get kids back to school.”

Chicago bets big on after-school programs and early intervention

In Chicago, the district says schools have stepped up outreach to families and tracked students’ attendance, behavior, and academic performance closely so school counselors and other staff can check in and intervene more promptly.

The district also said it made major new investments in mental health services, restorative justice coordinators, coaches, and training, and climate coordinators. It put more money into its lauded Choose to Change program, which offers mentoring to students affected by violence and involvement with the criminal justice system. And it’s looking at expanding home visits and other ways to intervene with chronically absent students.

“We are optimistic these investments will lead to improved attendance rates,” the district said in its statement.

Officials say expanded after-school programs, including more opportunities for students with disabilities, are key. The number of students districtwide participating in such programs jumped from 64,000 last year to 77,000 this year — almost 30% of Chicago’s enrollment. After-school participation has grown across all student groups, and the attendance rate is up to about 73%.

At Brunson Elementary, on the city’s West Side, school leaders say relationships on campus play a crucial role in boosting attendance.

The school enlisted “attendance heroes” this year — teachers, administrators, and cafeteria staff, each employee responsible for a specific group of students. They offer encouragement when children come to school consistently, check in with families when students are no-shows, and pause in school hallways to say, “We missed you,” when they return.

Meanwhile, more opportunities to engage in arts, sports, and other enrichment activities along with household item giveaways and other resources for families are helping increase engagement. Attendance is at 87%, a 2% increase over the first part of last school year.

“Our attendance is growing, but no one is at 95% in our network,” said assistant principal LaToya Woods.

Darlene O’Banner, the great-grandmother of two students at Earle STEM Academy on the South Side, said her campus has done a lot this year to rekindle the joy of school and, with that, student and parent engagement. It recently hosted a Black History Month celebration complete with a bouncy house and music, and is getting ready to temporarily turn the gym into a skating rink, she said.

O’Banner, an Englewood community leader who like Owens at Addams serves on a parent advisory board for the nonprofit Kids First Chicago, said she feels a strict COVID-era message that children should stay home over even the mildest symptoms is still dampening attendance. It’s time for schools to move on, she said.

She tests her great-grandchildren for COVID at the first sign of illness, but she said being in the classroom is just too important to keep a COVID-free student with a runny nose home.

“COVID is still here,” she said, “but it’s not killing us.”

Chang says redoubling efforts to strengthen relationships as well as expanding summer and after-school opportunities — ideally in tandem with nonprofits and other community organizations — are key. She pointed to an initiative Attendance Work helped with in Connecticut to expand the state’s successful teacher home visit program to include more frequent visits, not just by educators but also by district staff and community partners.

“We really need a whole community year-round approach,” she said. “It’s not possible to just do this with what’s in the regular school day.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago will spend $76.3 million to add, upgrade school security cameras in next three years

2023-02-22T22:59:52+00:00

Updated to include a statement from the district.

Chicago Public Schools will spend $76.3 million to install new security cameras and replace outdated ones at its elementary and high schools — what the district described as a “bold” three-year plan that will help deter and investigate safety incidents on campus.

District leaders made the announcement at a Wednesday press conference at Eli Whitney Elementary School on the city’s Southwest Side and later discussed it during the monthly school board meeting, arguing that expanded security camera coverage is a top priority for principals.

Five high schools and 58 elementary schools will be the first to receive the camera upgrades this school year. Ultimately, about 430 schools will get the technology — all district campuses that do not have up-to-date camera systems. Officials said they are prioritizing schools based on a number of criteria, including the condition of a school’s existing security cameras, the number of safety incidents on campus, and the prevalence of crime in the neighborhood.

“The biggest beneficiaries are our elementary schools,” CEO Pedro Martinez told board members. “Frankly we minimize the concerns that exist in our elementary schools because there are so many of them.”

But board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she was hearing about the security camera initiative for the first time and balked at its price tag of “what feels like a big bet on technologies of surveillance.” She quoted district safety and security chief Jadine Chou saying that forging relationships with students and families is what keeps schools safe.

“I don’t think it has to be either-or,” she said. “I was just caught off-guard.”

A district spokesperson said in a statement that the first projects this school year were awarded to Greatline Electric and Pace Systems, which are pre-approved vendors in a construction projects pool. The remaining security cameras will be installed by vendors from that same pool, the statement said.

“In order to protect student and staff safety, CPS does not release the specific details of our school safety and security plans,” the statement said.

A board presentation on the current district budget mentioned security cameras on a list of capital investments worth $645 million in total.

Martinez said more security camera coverage was “one of the top asks” from the district’s principals, who he said drove the push to add and update that technology.

“The response of principals has been pretty much unanimous that this is one of the best investments we can make,” he said.

He added, “Students understand that this is a deterrent, a way to protect them.”

A recent string of high-profile school shootings, including a deadly attack in Uvalde, Texas, and an uptick in gun violence in Chicago and other cities has trained a starker spotlight in school safety. Some advocates for schools have questioned whether districts are striking the right balance between addressing heightened student mental health needs that have led to an increase in disruptive behaviors — and investing in building upgrades and surveillance technology.

Liz Winfield, a teacher at Juarez High School, where two students were killed and two wounded in a December shooting just outside the building, echoed that sentiment in a public comment to the school board. She said the 1,700-student school is fortunate to have seven counselors and four social workers, but they have struggled to address students’ needs and an increase in behavioral issues in the wake of the tragedy.

“We need care, not cameras, and staff are in crisis,” she said, adding, “This is not the time to do more with less, nor is it the time to surveil or police our students.”

But Martinez stressed that the security camera project is part of a broader strategy to address school safety, including staffing restorative justice and school climate coordinators, the Safe Passage program that helps students get to and from school, and various efforts to address student mental health and social-emotional learning, including hiring additional counselors. Chou described it as a “holistic approach to bolster safety of our schools.”

The district also hired a company last year to monitor student social media posts and flag any that suggest a student might engage in violence or self-harm.

A push to install security cameras at district high schools started in the early 2010s, following the 2009 beating death of a Fenger High School student. Officials said most are now equipped with that technology.

The district said security cameras help school staff respond to incidents fast and capture footage that can serve as evidence in investigations. In large school buildings or campuses made up of multiple buildings such as Whitney’s, the cameras will allow leaner security staff to monitor activities, both inside and outside, district officials said.

“If students do not feel safe in school, the quality of the academic offerings won’t matter,” Martinez told the school board.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago spent big on summer school in 2022. But tracking participation proved difficult.

2023-02-17T16:27:29+00:00

Last spring, as Chicago schools were grappling with how to recover from the pandemic, district CEO Pedro Martinez urged campuses to go big and bold on summer school without worrying about the price tag.

Tiffany Tillman, the principal at Melody Elementary on Chicago’s West Side, grabbed a notepad and started dreaming up a “summer university” for her predominantly low-income Black students. There would be “campuses” focused on academic recovery, sports, arts, and more.

She paid her entire staff of roughly 40 to work that summer, complete with counselors, psychologist, and social worker. She wanted a safe place for her students that blended learning and fun — breakfast and taco bars, field trips, a book club, a DJ on the last day.

In Chicago, as in other districts, the pandemic and an influx in federal relief dollars made summer school a much bigger deal — a key strategy for helping students bounce back from COVID’s toll. In 2022, the district went all in, spending 50% more than the previous summer: an unprecedented almost $40 million.

Data Chalkbeat obtained this month shows 73,000 students, or a fifth of the district’s overall enrollment, signed up, many for multiple programs.

A record 42,500 students enrolled in enrichment, or Out of School Time, programs designed by school leaders, sometimes in partnership with local nonprofits. But almost all other programs — including ones that help students catch up academically or make the transition to kindergarten and high school — were significantly underenrolled.

And even as the cost and the stakes for students have risen, the district has struggled to track student signups and attendance. That makes it harder to determine if the summer school push paid off — a key question as the district rushes to direct resources to vulnerable students and tighter budgets loom.

Chicago Public Schools took more than six months to fulfill a Chalkbeat records request for school-level enrollment data. For some campus-based programs, the numbers showed repeat signups or unusually high enrollments, raising questions about accuracy. No attendance numbers are available.

The district, which is gearing up to release information on summer school offerings for 2023, said it launched a new effort last year to better track summer participation; that effort will continue this year.

“We continue to strengthen our data collection and reporting methods to best serve our K-12 students in summer 2023 and beyond,” the district said in a statement.

Meanwhile, principals such as Tillman at Melody say the influx of summer resources made a difference for students.

Tillman said one student from a nearby school who was required to attend an academic recovery program at Melody told her: “I wish I could have been here the whole school year. Then I wouldn’t have been in summer school.”

Tracking summer participation remains a challenge

In a decentralized system where some programs are district-run, some draw students from multiple campuses, and some are school-run, tracking summer numbers has long been a challenge — and until recently, a low priority. In fact, not that long ago, schools kept their own records and didn’t report them to the district.

With three systems for entering enrollment data currently, it takes work to distinguish between the number of enrollments and that of unique students, who can enroll in more than one program in the course of a summer. Some principals told Chalkbeat they were required to report attendance data for some programs in the district’s Aspen system this past summer, but district officials said sharing reliable numbers would require entering the dates when programs at all district schools were in session — a labor-intensive undertaking.

But COVID made summer school a higher priority, upping the stakes for capturing data.

Last spring, district CEO Martinez had told the school board he felt an “obligation” to offer students engaging programming both after school and during the summer. He wanted campuses to go all-out in designing summer enrichment programs tailored to their own school communities.

“We have shared with schools that funding is not a limit when it comes to summer programs,” he said at the time.

District officials circled back with the school board in July to tout a summer of blockbuster enrollment. They announced preliminary numbers showing almost 91,000 students had enrolled, clearing a 90,000 target the district had set and far outpacing the district’s enrollment numbers for the previous summer. The 2022 total touted in July included about 33,000 recent Chicago Public Schools graduates contacted through an “alumni supports” program – text, email, and phone nudges to follow through on enrolling in college – but who did not attend district summer programs.

In the summer of 2021, the district now says, 55,000 students signed up for summer programs, a number that does not appear to include “alumni supports,” based on data the district provided that year. It is not clear whether that number included “alumni supports.”

Enrichment programs schools created in-house — some focused on STEM, arts, and sports, and some offered in tandem with local nonprofits — were a particular success, district officials said. Enrollment for the district’s extended school year program for students with disabilities, programs that prepare children for preschool and kindergarten, and a string of new career and technical education camps came in well below targets.

Students mix cupcake batter while attending a culinary camp at Benito Juarez Community Academy High School in Chicago during summer 2022.

Chalkbeat wanted to see what these numbers looked like at the school level and submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the data last July. After a series of delays, the district provided data in December only for Summer Bridge, a program for students in grades 3, 6, and 8 who do not meet the criteria to pass on to the next grade, and Summer Acceleration, for struggling eighth graders. That data accounted for only about 6,500 students out of 91,000 the district had said signed up for summer school.

When Chalkbeat requested attendance data tracked in the district’s Aspen system, officials responded that the district does not collect that information “centrally or comprehensively.” Schools have traditionally seen a gap between signups for summer programs and actual turnout, and the pandemic dampened attendance year-round.

The district also said it does not centrally maintain numbers for students who complete summer programs, which can mean different things for different programs and campuses. The district did share completion numbers with Chalkbeat in the fall of 2020, showing that 14,200 out of 21,600 students who enrolled in largely virtual programs that summer stuck around until the programs’ end.

Officials said the district is working to improve how it centrally tracks summer data to ensure that its greater investment is resulting in equitable access across the city. But the challenge is doing that in a way that doesn’t overburden schools with data entry, allowing them to focus on providing strong programs, they said.

The enrollment data provided to Chalkbeat this month, which doesn’t include the alumni outreach program, shows that many of the 73,000 students who signed up for summer school did so for more than one program. The data shows 115,000 enrollments. Many students signed up for the same program at the same school more than once. That could be because some programs held multiple sessions, but some students enrolled repeatedly in programs they seem unlikely to take twice, such as an orientation program for incoming freshmen, raising questions about the data.

More traditional programs remained underenrolled throughout the summer, but numbers for school-designed enrichment programs, known as Out of School Time programs, grew significantly between that July presentation and the end of the summer. Data shows the average program drawing roughly a quarter of a school’s enrollment. On some campuses, enrollment for these programs appeared unusually high, with the number of students signed up in line with or even exceeding a schools’ overall enrollments.

“Schools were encouraged to use Out of School Time to support return to school for Fall,” the district said in a statement. “We were intentional in wanting to keep the momentum going from the first full year back from the pandemic.”

District officials said feedback from schools was positive

At Melody Elementary, which serves about 300 students, 190 showed up for summer programs, including some from other area schools attending Summer Bridge. Attendance data is not available from the district, but Tillman says she observed strong turnout throughout the summer.

The district has not compared outcomes for students who attended summer schools and peers who did not. But Tillman credits the summer push with a start-of-the-school-year engagement boost and with what she described as higher-than-expected mid-year academic progress.

Ariadne Huitron, 5, draws a flower on a whiteboard during her e-learning class at Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago on May 14, 2021.

At the July school board meeting, school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she had also heard high praise from principals. Some were “raving” about the influx of funds at back-to-school bashes last summer.

Martinez said one school leader on the district’s principal advisory council told him, “I was in tears because I saw the resources and I could set up the programming that I wanted to set up.”

Some principals told Chalkbeat drawing students to summer programs remained a challenge, and staffing issues lingered after a trying school year that made teachers more reluctant to take on summer work. One elementary principal said summer programs there drew an “astonishingly small number of students,” though the enrichment program the school offered did better than centrally managed programs such as Summer Bridge.

“CPS told schools that all families could opt in pretty late,” he said. “As a result, a lot of spots sat empty.”

A couple of principals told Chalkbeat that their schools ultimately opted not to host their own programs. “We were just so tired, and it was going to be a short summer,” one said.

Patrick Brosnan of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council said in the summer of 2022 the nonprofit served almost 1,000 students in programs in partnership with five elementary and two high schools in the neighborhood, including enrichment, arts, sports and field trips and the transition program for high school freshmen.

Interest was up from the previous summer when the nonprofit offered some hybrid programming, Brosnan said, but participation still remained below pre-pandemic levels — perhaps in part a reflection of pandemic-era enrollment losses in some schools.

Susan Stanton of the nonprofit ACT Now!, a coalition of community-based organizations that provide summer and after-school programs, said many of its members partner with Chicago Public Schools to offer programs it fully or partially funds. These programs picked up somewhat over 2021, when COVID still cast a long shadow, she said.

But, she said, the first two summers of the pandemic took a lasting toll on programs, which rely on word-of-mouth and younger siblings of former participants to draw signups. She felt principals did not get enough guidance on how to set up their own programs and the district should have leaned on community-based organizations more and earlier.

“Principals were essentially handed money last minute,” she said, “and building these partnerships doesn’t just happen with the snap of your fingers.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Five City Colleges of Chicago campuses join national community college network to boost completion

2023-02-15T16:15:00+00:00

Five City Colleges of Chicago campuses will get coveted national help in reaching a key goal: boosting the number of Black, Latino, indigenous, and low-income students who go on to earn a degree or other credential.

City Colleges announced Wednesday that five of its seven campuses will join Achieving the Dream, a network of 300 community colleges across the country that offers its leaders free coaching, planning, and other support as they pursue more equitable student outcomes.

The group seeks to attack a persistent issue: While two-year colleges are seen as key economic mobility engines for underrepresented youth, most community college students leave campus without earning a degree — and these outcomes vary starkly by race and income.

The timing could not be better as the City Colleges system emerges from a pandemic that tested community college students and caused enrollments to plunge here and nationally, said Veronica Herrero, the institution’s chief of staff and strategy.

City Colleges touted increased enrollment last fall that outpaced a modest statewide rebound from the dramatic pandemic-related plunge in two-year college enrollment. Still, at roughly 34,800 students, enrollment remains well below pre-COVID levels, when it stood at more than 45,000.

Herrero said overall, the college system held fairly steady on key student outcomes despite the pandemic’s disruption, and retention rates ticked up this year. But much work remains. The system’s three-year graduation rate has improved significantly in the past decade, but it remains at 25% or lower on most campuses. And racial gaps persist. At Malcolm X College, for instance, 11% of Black students who started in 2018 graduated in three years, while 22% of white students and 30% of Asian students did, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. At Harold Washington, 14% of Black students graduated, while 33% of white students and 35% of Asian students did.

“Now is the time for our colleges to look up and say, ‘What are other like-minded colleges doing?’” Herrero said. “This kind of change takes time, and it takes perspective.”

Kennedy-King College, Malcolm X College, Olive-Harvey College, Harold Washington College, and Wilbur Wright College — all City College campuses that met the network’s eligibility requirements, such as having a student body that’s at least 45% Black, Latino or indigenous — will join five other campuses from across the country for a three-year program.

The initiative is partially supported by a $20 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

In recent years, City Colleges has pushed to boost completion rates and address significant racial gaps, Herrero said. The colleges adopted a data system that allows campus academic advisers, faculty, and others to better track student progress, and joined the Caring Campus Initiative, a partnership aimed at helping community colleges improve campus climate and student engagement, she said.

The pandemic hit the institution hard, but it didn’t detract from that focus, Herrero said.

“We’ve made headway; there is momentum,” Herrero said. “This new partnership will really help us accelerate this work.”

She said being able to compare notes and strategize jointly with other community colleges in the Achieving the Dream network will be invaluable as the system continues to pursue a central target: a 55% competition rate across student groups by 2032.

Monica Parish Trent, chief program and network officer at Achieving the Dream, said more than 100 institutions from across the country were invited to apply to be part of the new cohort.

“It is unusual to select so many institutions from one community,” she said, “but the City College of Chicago institutions have been deeply engaged in important equity work. They showed a strong commitment to working with Achieving the Dream to strengthen that work.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

COVID prompted many Chicago principals to leave. What will it take to help them stay?

2023-02-09T23:43:27+00:00

Jasmine Juarez took over as principal of Pilsen Community Academy on March 16, 2020. She was eager to meet her new staff and start forging relationships with them.

The next day, COVID shut down campuses across the state, including the Southwest Side elementary school.

For Juarez and her fellow Chicago Public Schools principals, the following years have brought a gauntlet of challenges: the abrupt shift to remote learning, the academic and mental health toll the pandemic exacted from students, a return to in-person learning complicated by COVID surges and staffing shortages.

“There were times when I hit the breaking point,” Juarez said. “I still do, but I always go back to my why.”

Before the pandemic, the district’s principal turnover was slowing, dipping to a rate below the national average. Still, about half of elementary school principals and more than two-thirds of high school principals were leaving their jobs within five years, according to a pair of new University of Chicago reports based on eight years of staffing data and interviews with local principals.

Then, COVID upended education and the district saw a sharp rise in principal and assistant principal resignations and retirements last school year, data obtained by Chalkbeat showed.

When school leadership changes, research shows there can be a dip in student achievement and an uptick in staff turnover — an especially unwelcome disruption in the midst of COVID’s upheaval.

Now, with a large class of 57 new principals starting last summer, Chicago Public Schools officials say they are focused on improving the principal experience. The new University of Chicago studies offer some clues on how to boost retention, backing up district efforts to provide mentoring for novice school leaders and recruit from the ranks of assistant principals.

Pandemic brought increased turnover and some silver linings

Juarez, the Pilsen principal, said starting her job at the dawn of the pandemic was an intense challenge, but it was also freeing. No school leader was prepared for what came next, and she bonded with colleagues as they navigated the uncertainty together.

“The pandemic really put us all on a level playing field,” she said. “We were all leaders experiencing something for the first time together.”

Still, she leaned on Patricia Harper Reynolds, the principal at nearby Walsh Elementary and the mentor the district assigned her through a program that pairs first-year and seasoned school leaders.

Juarez, a former bilingual math teacher who had served as an assistant principal at Curie High School, picked Harper Reynolds’ brain about how to design a remote learning schedule. She asked Harper Reynolds to read over emails to parents about COVID protocols and other topics. They traded information about food pantries and other community resources where they could steer struggling families.

Because Juarez was “a COVID principal,” she got an extra year in the district’s one-year mentorship program — an extended stretch she now believes should be the default.

Pre-pandemic efforts such as that mentorship initiative were paying off in improved longevity, according to data from the new principal studies, a partnership between the NORC at the University of Chicago, the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Chicago author Molly Gordon said the studies sprang from previous University of Chicago research that showed the powerful link between school leadership and student outcomes.

The new studies found that every year leading up to the pandemic, roughly a tenth of Chicago Public Schools campuses experienced a leadership change. Schools serving a mix of Black and Latino students saw the most turnover, followed by campuses with predominantly Black student populations.

Schools serving largely low-income students also had much more leadership flux. The study did not look at how longevity varied by the race of the principals themselves.

The study found Chicago Public Schools principals are more racially diverse and much more likely to be female than their colleagues nationwide. But Latino school leaders such as Juarez, the Pilsen principal, continue to be underrepresented. In 2020, when almost half of the district’s students were Latino, only 17% of its principals were. Research shows that when students see themselves represented in school leadership, their outcomes, including their math achievement, tend to improve.

The pandemic’s arrival added new pressures to principals’ jobs. Many had to handle their regular duties while also chipping in as substitute teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and technology coordinators.

After dipping earlier in the pandemic to continue the pre-COVID trend of declining turnover, the number of principal resignations and retirements shot up during the 2021-22 school year. During that year, 83 principals and assistant principals left their posts, a 43% increase from the eve of the pandemic. While all employee groups saw more departures, the turnover rate among school leaders jumped the highest.

District officials say they are reexamining the principal’s role

COVID — and the additional stresses it brought — spurred an increase in efforts to unionize school leaders across the country, according to a national principals union.

In Chicago, supporters of a perennial effort to unionize the district’s principals have said that pandemic-era instability strengthened their argument that school leaders should be able to bargain over their working conditions and get greater job security.

In January, the Illinois Legislature approved a bill that would allow Chicago principals to form a union, which had repeatedly failed to clear both chambers in recent years. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office said in a statement to Chalkbeat earlier this month that the governor “looks forward to reviewing the bill when it reaches his desk.”

Troy LaRaviere, the head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, which pushed for the change, did not respond to requests for comment.

District officials, who have opposed the unionization efforts, say they are responding to the uptick in departures by doubling down on support for principals. Last year, the district revived its principal advisory council and boosted its compensation package for assistant principals.

Allison Tingwall, who heads the district’s Office of Principal Quality, says officials are trying to better anticipate departures so it can help schools minimize the disruption when a principal leaves. And, over the past year, the district has worked to update its list of principal competencies — the skills a principal needs to be prepared for the job — and adapt its training and coaching for fledgling leaders accordingly.

In the decade before the pandemic, districts held up the idea of principals as instructional leaders — administrators who spent the bulk of their time observing classrooms and coaching their teachers. But more recently, districts have come to acknowledge that, especially on bustling urban campuses, this idea is not realistic — and principals’ COVID-era juggling act made that even clearer.

Now, Tingwall said, the district wants to prepare principals to set a big-picture course for their campuses and form leadership teams that will take on the job of supporting educators.

Chicago aims to promote more assistant principals

The district has also tried to step up hiring among its own assistant principals, Tingwall said. About 85% of the 57 new school leaders last fall were former assistant principals; traditionally, about half the district’s principals have come to the job through that route.

The University of Chicago studies validate this strategy: Researchers found Chicago school leaders who came from the ranks of assistant principals were significantly more likely to stick around past the five-year mark. Former assistant principals told the authors that role prepared them more than anything else to step into the top job.

“The AP position is really becoming a springboard for the principalship,” said Alyssa Blanchard, one of the studies’ authors at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. “Those principals are ready to take on the role and stay in the job in the longer term.”

Heidy Moran, the former Schurz High School assistant principal who took over at the Northwest Side campus at the start of the school year, was one of the 2022 class of new school leaders. She says for principals, knowing their school community well is a major part of being effective.

Heidy Moran became the principal at Schurz High School on Chicago’s Northwest Side in the fall of 2022. She previously served as the school’s assistant principal for four years.

“Being an AP for four years helped me really understand the school culture and the school community and become a part of that fabric,” she said.

That role did not give her as much of a window into staffing and budgeting, but she got extensive training in those areas last year through a program called Leadership Bridge, a partnership with The Chicago Public Education Fund.

Juarez, the Pilsen principal, recently got accepted to the Cahn Distinguished Principals Fellowship, which she sees as an opportunity to continue growing. She says she hopes to serve as a mentor to Latino educators and administrators who have their eye on the principal role.

As a former Chicago Public Schools student who never had a Latino principal, she once questioned if she was cut out for the job. Juarez said many others might never set that goal unless a school or district leader proactively reaches out to say, “I think you’d be amazing at this.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s school board renews charter schools for shorter periods

2023-01-25T23:56:06+00:00

Eighteen Chicago charter schools and networks got the school board’s blessing to continue operating beyond this school year — but in many cases for relatively short stretches.

The process reflects an ongoing shift in the district’s relationship with its charters. Until this year, the overwhelming majority of these schools had reliably gotten five-year renewals, in some cases for more than two decades. But at the school board’s Wednesday meeting, most got much shorter contracts. Almost half landed only two-year extensions and only two schools got the full five years.

In recent years, the district has put opening new charter schools on hold amid steeply declining enrollment and has resorted to shorter-term charter renewals with strings attached. Some charter operators have argued that the shorter extensions create uncertainty for their school communities, some of which serve largely low-income and other vulnerable students.

At the Wednesday meeting, more than a dozen charter administrators, parents, and students pleaded for longer extensions. Christian Feaman of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools decried the short-term renewals as disruptive and said the advocacy group is pushing for 10-year terms for high-performing charters.

“We continue to be concerned about the lack of consistency and transparency in the renewal process that moves the bar,” he said, adding, “Renewal terms of less than five years jeopardize the stability of our schools.”

But district officials said the shorter-term renewals reflect a push to hold charters more accountable. The district has closely scrutinized how charters serve students with disabilities and English language learners, and how they ensure these schools’ discipline practices do not harm students.

The renewals approved at the board’s monthly meeting on Wednesday largely came with conditions — a list of student outcomes and other requirements that schools have to meet during that renewal period. Those conditions were not included in public board meeting documents but instead will be communicated to charter operators directly.

Charter leaders and supporters ask for longer renewals

One school, Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, a small alternative high school on the city’s Southwest Side, had its charter renewed for one year only.

Many on the renewal list were approved to continue operating for another two years. Those schools are: North Lawndale Charter Prep, Alain Locke Charter School, Little Black Pearl, Plato Learning Academy, Passages, Horizon Science Academy Southwest, and Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy. Acero Schools, Chicago Collegiate Charter School, Intrinsic, Christopher House, and University of Chicago Charter School landed three-year renewals.

Two alternative campuses run by Camelot Schools — Chicago Excel Academy and Camelot’s SAFE Achieve Academy, for students who have been expelled — along with Hope Learning Academy got renewed for four years. The Excel Academy of Englewood and Chicago Tech Academy High School got five-year renewals.

It was the first time Acero, Alain Locke, and the University of Chicago Charter Schools did not get five-year renewals since they were launched in 1998.

Employees and supporters of the charters up for renewal turned out en masse at the Wednesday meeting to argue that they should receive longer extensions.

Administrators at the University of Chicago Charter School said it tackled an uptick in discipline issues amid the pandemic head on, hiring more social workers and training all staff on restorative justice practices, among other steps. They spoke of the school’s efforts to line up more internships for students and steer teens to college.

Nikita Johnson-White, the chief financial officer at Passages, read a letter from an eighth grader raving about the school and said with a new principal at the helm, the school is working to improve services for students with disabilities and more. But she said the two-year renewal the school is getting will not give enough time to make progress, urging the board to grant at least three years.

Aniya Hill, a senior at North Lawndale College Prep, credited the school with helping her transform from a timid freshman to a confident leader of the school’s Peace Warriors violence prevention student group. She said she has been accepted at 20 colleges, a reflection of the charter’s college-going culture.

Hill joined parents and school leaders in arguing for a longer renewal. Jemia Cunningham-Elder, the school’s CEO, said she has worked to address issues the district has flagged with services for students with disabilities and school discipline since she was hired in September. But she said she needs more time.

“We’ve provided 25 years of stability,” said Bruce Miller, a member of North Lawndale College Prep’s board. “If you can provide us with five years of stability, that would be fantastic.”

District officials tout thorough charter evaluations

Feaman of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools said the district needs clearer and more transparent criteria for renewal. A renewal of two or three years means too much of administrators’ energy goes into the considerable red tape involved in seeking extension instead of into making actual improvements for students, he said.

But district officials insisted that their expectations are clear and conveyed to charter operators up front.

“Our renewal process is evidence-based, aligned with national best practices and continuous,” said Zabrina Evans, director of school quality and support atf the Office of Innovation and Incubation.

A five-year renewal is the standard for schools meeting standards in three areas: academics, finance, and operations. Under operations, district officials give extra weight to how well the charter school is serving students with disabilities and English learners and whether it uses school discipline appropriately.

The district said the Office of Innovation and Incubation conducted comprehensive evaluations of the charters seeking renewal. Office staff visited all the campuses, in some cases conducted special site visits to size up services for students with disabilities and school climate more closely.

Passages, for example, did not meet standards in financial performance and in operations, because of concerns about its services for students with abilities and English learners. North Lawndale College Prep also did not meet these standards, in its case falling short in serving students with disabilities and disciplining students excessively, according to the district.

Instituto Leadership did not make the grade in all three categories and is facing closure if it doesn’t meet improvement goals over the coming year. Officials said a newly launched Options School Network to oversee the district’s alternative high schools will provide support to the school in coming months.

Officials said that extensions longer than five years are an option for charters that exceed standards in all three categories.

But board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said even for schools that exceed standards, she would strongly oppose renewals longer than five years. She said the district embraced charter schools with the idea that they could outperform traditional district-run schools. Especially at a time of declining enrollment and the possibility of leaner budgets, she said a decade is review their performance again.

“This was a very sobering presentation today to see school after school after school that are not wildly outperforming our traditional CPS schools,” she said.

Earlier this winter, the board also took the rare step of revoking the charter for once-lauded Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men serving Black boys and taking over its two South Side campuses. The district cited financial struggles at the school and an investigation by its inspector general into sexual misconduct by the school’s founder, Tim King, whose findings he has strongly denied.

The board also approved a new accountability policy for charter and district-run alternative high schools, known in Chicago as options schools. The policy is temporary, effective only for the current school year. It is meant to tide the district over while it works to design a new accountability system for all schools, which is slated to go into effect during the 2024-25 school year.

Alternative schools in the city were subject to their own accountability ratings in recognition of the high-needs students they serve — former dropouts or students at risk for dropping out, in some cases because their studies were derailed by parenthood, homelessness, or criminal justice system involvement.

The new policy says the district will calculate an academic performance score for each school, factoring in metrics such as graduation, attendance rate improvement, growth on the district’s STAR assessments, and more. Schools that fail to attain a high enough score could face mandatory improvement plans and charter nonrenewal if they fail to implement those plans.

District officials said Wednesday in a statement to Chalkbeat that the district wanted a strong accountability policy for alternative high schools because they serve the district’s most vulnerable students.

The district, which presided over a massive expansion of alternative high schools during the 2010s, saw significant enrollment losses on those campuses during the pandemic’s disruption. It also has taken some steps to rein in transfers to alternative schools, raising the bar for traditional high schools referring students to those campuses. The new Options Schools Network will continue a recent trend of closer oversight and extending some district programs to these campuses.

“For schools that are serving some of our most vulnerable students, we are committing to provide the supports these schools need,” Todd-Breland said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

How do students feel about school? A new survey in Chicago asks them.

2023-01-23T18:15:00+00:00

Middle and high school students are used to answering questions at school. But they don’t often get asked how they view their teachers and classrooms.

Last month, Chicago Public Schools students got a chance to weigh in when they took a new 15-minute survey inviting them to rate statements such as: “In this class, my ideas are taken seriously.” “This teacher makes what we’re learning really interesting.”

The results of the Cultivate survey will land in principals’ inboxes next month — part of a new district effort to measure student attitudes toward school, which experts say can help boost students’ grades and well-being.

The survey stems from more than a decade of research at the University of Chicago into the ways classroom environments can shape how students feel about school and how well they do. It measures whether students believe their teachers are nurturing a sense of community and belonging, giving meaningful assignments and quality feedback, listening to students’ input, and more.

“What’s clear is that teachers have a lot of power over the learning conditions in their classrooms — and those learning conditions are really powerful,” said Camille Farrington, managing director at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who helped develop the survey with partners at UChicago Impact.

The questionnaire for students in grades five through 12 could become a twice-a-year ritual. But at a time when the district is rethinking how it holds its campuses and educators accountable, officials stress they will not use the survey to evaluate teachers or rate schools.

The pandemic’s disruption and the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd have spurred unprecedented attention to student mental health and how it affects learning — and to the idea that giving students more agency on campus could be key to improving instruction. Districts across the country are stepping up efforts to understand students’ experiences and exploring ways to enlist students in making decisions. Chicago follows Minneapolis and some smaller districts and charter schools in adopting the Cultivate survey.

The Chicago Teachers Union has voiced support for the new survey, which its leaders feel can arm teachers with valuable information to improve their practice and help forge stronger bonds with students. But the union says the district rushed to implement the survey this past fall, and educators have not yet received professional development on making use of its findings.

Chicago adopts student survey after decade of development

In 2012, researchers at the University of Chicago began digging into how classroom environments can power or sabotage learning. They felt they could use their insights to create a tool for teachers and school leaders to get feedback from students.

They tested multiple versions of a questionnaire and by 2015, landed on a reliable way of measuring students’ perceptions of their learning conditions. But it was a lengthy, cumbersome survey meant for researchers. The university enlisted districts and charter schools to test a shorter version, and Farrington flew around the country to review the data with educators and fine-tune the survey.

“I didn’t want to unleash another survey on schools without being sure that the data would be meaningful and useful to teachers and school leaders,” she said.

Last school year, Minneapolis Public Schools became the first large district to adopt the new survey. Last fall, Chicago Public Schools signed a no-bid contract with the University of Chicago to implement the Cultivate survey as well. It’s meant to complement 5Essentials, another University of Chicago-developed survey that gauges school climate more broadly by asking staff, parents and others how they view school safety, leadership and more.

The district will pay the university up to $286,000 in the first year to provide and help administer the survey. The contract says the university will provide professional development for school staff, calculate scores for each school and help compare fall and spring scores. The university will also explore the possibility of breaking down data by race, poverty, disability, and English learner status.

A board resolution approving the contract said data would go into “interactive reports that are shared publicly and allow for schools and community members to track performance over time.” But the contract itself says the data will only be shared with school staff after district approval, and district officials now say the resolution is inaccurate and might need to be amended.

District leaders have said recently that becoming more attuned to student experiences is key to their push to improve learning. The district has given students a larger role on local school councils and encouraged schools to form student voice committees that give school leaders feedback on improving campus climate. More than 160 campuses, including some middle schools, now have such committees.

Last summer, the American Journal of Education published a study showing that Chicago Public Schools ninth graders who felt educators and administrators listened to their ideas and concerns got better grades and had higher attendance.

Chicago Public Schools officials said the survey is an important tool, and the district is embracing it at a critical time.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened some of our most persistent, longstanding opportunity gaps,” a district spokesperson said in a statement. “To close these gaps, we need to think and act differently, and that begins with listening to our community members, especially our students.”

The district stressed that for now, it only has a one-year agreement with the university to administer the survey twice in 2022-23. It doesn’t yet have data on how many students in grades 5 through 12 who took the survey this winter.

How will student survey data be used?

Pavlyn Jankov, a Chicago Teachers Union researcher, said he and other union leaders met with the University of Chicago team that developed the survey. He said he was impressed by the research and thought that went into designing the questionnaire and the guidance schools will receive to help step up their student engagement.

Teachers are eager for that kind of feedback, he said, and the very act of soliciting it will help strengthen relationships with students.

But he said the union would have preferred to see the district pilot the survey in a smaller number of schools before embracing it districtwide. A relatively small group of staff participated in training on implementing the survey according to Jankov, but when results arrive at schools next month, the overwhelming majority of teachers will not have received professional development on how to use them.

In Jankov’s understanding, principals will receive the data and decide how broadly to share it with school communities and how to use it.

“We have disparate leadership styles across the district,” he said. “Principals will be the gatekeepers of how this information is rolled out in every school.”

Some might even take them into account as they review teachers’ overall performance, Jankov said.

But Farrington said the new Cultivate questionnaire was not designed to evaluate teachers or schools. In fact, its creators intentionally made it hard for any district to do so.

Principals will not get classroom-level data, but rather results for their schools as a whole as well as by subject and grade level. That will allow teams of educators to review data and act on it collaboratively.

Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools is gearing up a new system for evaluating its campuses after it scrapped its controversial rating system amid the pandemic. The 5Essentials survey results factored into those former ratings. But the district has stressed it won’t use Cultivate results for accountability purposes.

The University of Chicago has also teamed up with colleagues at Stanford University, who developed a similar survey meant for use by educators who want to get real-time input from students on their own classroom practices. Farrington said Chicago Public Schools is exploring the possibility of making that survey available to teachers as well.

“The idea of having students just sit quietly in school just doesn’t pass muster any more,” she said.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify who will have access to data from the Cultivate survey.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools seeks feedback on proposed 2023-24 calendar

2023-01-18T19:32:22+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is proposing a 2023-24 calendar that’s very similar to this year’s, with an earlier start, a full week off for Thanksgiving, and a start to summer break in early June.

District officials are giving families a week to weigh in, with a public comment period closing next Wednesday, Jan. 25, at 5 p.m. They can use this Google form to submit feedback.

The calendar will go to the school board for approval at its Feb. 22 meeting.

During the pandemic, the district gradually shifted to an earlier start to the school year — a move that leaders say aligns the calendar more closely to suburban schools and local colleges, and gives students more time to prepare for key tests, such as AP and IB exams.

The changes also allow students to participate in more summer camps, jobs, and other opportunities, officials have said.

The proposed calendar includes 176 days of student instruction and 12 professional development days for teachers and staff. The professional learning date for the first quarter would move to Oct. 26, the day before report card pickup. Both elementary and high schools would host a parent-teacher conference day Oct. 27.

Students once again would get two weeks of winter break and one week of spring break, this time in late March. They would also get a day off for Veterans Day again. This year, the district did not observe Veteran’s Day, but there was no school on Election Day.

Last year, the district asked parents to vote on whether they wanted an Aug. 22 or Aug. 29 start. A slim majority of parents voted for the later start, but the district chose to opt for the earlier start date, saying that a majority of administrators, teachers, and students had voted for it.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools watchdog to investigate Lightfoot campaign’s bid for student volunteers

2023-01-13T15:55:30+00:00

One day after defending the practice, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday it was a “mistake” for her campaign to email educators at Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges of Chicago looking for student volunteers to help in her reelection bid.

The school district’s inspector general has opened an investigation, and the city’s Board of Ethics will look into whether the outreach violated the city’s ethics policy. Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Illinois chapter called the emails “inappropriately coercive.”

The Jan. 10 email from a deputy campaign manager to Chicago Public Schools educators implied that students who volunteered for Lightfoot’s reelection effort would get school credit. After the outreach was first reported by WTTW, Lightfoot drew criticism from her challengers in next month’s election and from others.

After initially saying Wednesday that the request for student volunteers was “common practice,” the Lightfoot campaign said it would alert staff that “a solid wall must exist between campaign and official activities.”

“There was zero, zero, zero coordination, coercion, or anything else between the campaign and CPS on this issue,” Lightfoot said at a press conference Thursday.

Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019 promising transparency and a more accountable government, said a staffer made an “honest mistake” in sending the emails.

But City Colleges of Chicago said it raised the ethics concerns with the Lightfoot campaign after receiving similar emails in August and consulting its ethics department.

“Following the Department’s guidance, City Colleges notified the campaign of CCC’s ethics policy and purged the emails from CCC accounts,” according to City Colleges.

City Colleges said it was not aware of any subsequent campaign emails, but was looking into the matter.

During Thursday’s press conference, the mayor said she met with the staffer and explained the severity of the situation but declined to fire the staffer, calling the incident a teachable moment.

“There was absolutely no nefarious intent on the part of the staff person,” Lightfoot said.

The mayor said she apologized to Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez and Chicago Board of Education President Miguel Del Valle.

A copy of the Jan. 10 email to Chicago Public Schools employees was shared with Chalkbeat by the Chicago Teachers Union.

It’s unclear how many emails to Chicago Public Schools teachers and City Colleges of Chicago were sent out, but Lightfoot said her campaign was taking an accounting and would cooperate with investigations.

The district’s Office of the Inspector General said in a statement that it has opened an investigation into the emails “to determine which, if any, policies have been violated.”

The district’s ethical guidelines for political activity state that political campaigns should not use the Chicago Public Schools’ email system to solicit donations or volunteers.

Meanwhile, Steven Berlin, the executive director of the city’s Board of Ethics, said the matter will be on the agenda for the board’s next meeting on Jan. 23, which will be live-streamed via Zoom.

The city’s Office of Inspector General also said it’s tracking the issue, in consultation with the district.

Nora Flanagan, an English teacher at Northside College Prep, said she found out about the email from colleagues. So far she’s heard from about eight or nine teachers or staff in the building who received the email.

“In 25 years, I have never seen anything like this,” Flanagan said. “I’ve never seen this happen from any elected official, at any level.”

Teachers who received the email are scared to talk to the press for fear of retaliation, she said. Her colleagues called the emails “wildly unethical, probably illegal,” she said.

District employee email addresses are public information, and often listed on school websites, the district noted. Email addresses can also be obtained through a public records request, though there is no record of such a request from any political campaigns, the district said.

The Chicago Election Board had not received any complaints as of late Thursday morning, said spokesperson Max Bever. The election board isn’t authorized to investigate or penalize candidates over city ethics rules, Bever said.

Colleen K. Connell of the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement that the Lightfoot campaign’s email outreach to teachers was “inappropriately coercive and raises First Amendment concerns.” She noted the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that elected officials cannot use their office to pressure public employees to participate in political campaigns.

“Because the Mayor has the ultimate authority over the Chicago schools, teachers may feel coercion in this ask from the Mayor’s campaign or fear negative consequences for lack of participation,” Connell said.

She urged the mayor to make clear that no one in the city should feel compelled to participate in her campaign.

The student advocacy group Good Kids Mad City, a frequent critic of the mayor, also bashed her campaign’s move. Arseny Acosta, one of the group’s leaders, said it’s “morally wrong” to solicit students to volunteer by dangling a chance to earn credits.

“At the end of the day, this free labor would only benefit Lightfoot,” she said.

In New York City in 2021, then-mayoral candidate Eric Adams drew criticism from parents and others after his campaign reached out to educators with its own request to offer students who volunteered on the campaign school credit, according to reporting in the New York Post.

This story was updated to include a comment from Good Kids Mad City.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org. Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

After Jan. 6, this Chicago social studies teacher dug into media literacy and misinformation

2023-01-06T02:17:34+00:00

On Jan. 6 two years ago, students in social studies teacher Anne-Michele Boyle’s virtual class urged her to turn on the news.

Boyle had been teaching at Whitney Young Magnet High School for 15 years. She’d created the school’s Global Citizenship class. But after watching the live footage of the U.S. Capitol insurrection in disbelief, Boyle found herself rethinking her approach to the class.

She scrapped her lesson plans for February and spent the entire month focused on media literacy. Among her goals: to help her juniors and seniors discern fact from fiction, identify credible sources of news, and spot misleading information. Before Jan. 6, 2021, she had devoted two days or less of her course to media literacy. Since then, she has dedicated a full five weeks to critically examining this era’s barrage of misinformation, comparing it to quality journalism and news posted on TikTok. Using Boyle’s lessons, her students have been able to talk family members and friends out of spreading conspiracy theories on- and offline.

This past fall, a first-of-its-kind Illinois law requiring all high schools to teach students about media literacy went into effect. Groups such as the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition — a collective of educators, librarians, academics, and others — rallied to help schools with the rollout of the law, which gives educators a lot of flexibility about what and how much to teach and includes no resources for professional development.

Chalkbeat spoke with Boyle about finding resources for teaching the topic and making it relevant to students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How long have you taught your Global Citizenship course, and how much of it did you devote to media literacy before Jan. 6, 2021?

I developed the course Global Citizenship/Local Citizenship in 2017 because nothing like it existed at my school or other Chicago Public Schools. Now any school in my district can choose to offer it. Global Citizenship is a current events-focused course that challenges students to embrace their roles as global citizens and local citizens by exploring topics such as poverty, hunger, climate change, global health, fair labor, ethical consumption, media literacy, equity, sustainability, and responsibility. Throughout the year, students research, study, analyze, and assess how well we as a global community and local community are doing to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Every unit features an expert speaker and a service-learning or justice-oriented activity. Prior to Jan. 6, 2021, I devoted one-and-a-half to two days teaching media literacy. Today, my students and I spend five weeks learning media literacy skills and exploring the role media plays in a strong democracy.

You got to watch the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol unfold with your students. What do you remember most vividly from that experience?

Yes, I was teaching remotely from my house. My three kids were learning a wall away from me in the kitchen and living room while I was virtually with my Global Citizenship students. It was toward the end of the class period, and I was in the midst of speaking to my students about something when students started dropping in the chat box that we all needed to open up some news sites. Then one of my students turned on her mic and said that “something big” was happening at the Capitol. Class ended briefly after that. I spent the rest of the day on my couch watching various news broadcasts and reading everything posted by The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

How did your approach to teaching media literacy change in response to the insurrection and its aftermath?

During the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as I watched with horror the live news coverage of the insurrection at the Capitol, I realized that the two measly days I used to spend teaching media literacy skills needed to be overhauled and greatly expanded. I scraped my lesson plans for February, cobbled together resources, and spent the whole month of February 2021 teaching media literacy skills.

The fact that 2,000 people stormed the Capitol to prevent a peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden because they believed in their heart of hearts that the election was stolen illustrated to me how fragile our democracy is, how dangerous misinformation can be, and the absolute need to make Americans more educated about consuming media.

How did your students engage with the more extensive media literacy unit you taught last year? What feedback did you get?

They were grateful to learn specific skills such as lateral reading and reverse image look-ups, but they also really enjoyed the fruitful dialogues that developed after exploring resources such as Reporters Without Borders. These conversations led to further discussions on the role of a free press, a media-literate public, free and fair elections, and, overall, what it means to have a strong democracy. These discussions were heartfelt and passionate, and they made me grateful for my career as a teacher.

What was a highlight of exploring media literacy more in-depth with your students last year?

We wrapped up our unit with a “Civically Engaged Media Literacy Service Learning Project.” Students reviewed everything that we had learned and created their own project to teach others. Some students created public art installations to inspire change in how people consume their news or educate on a media literacy issue. A number of students taught family members media literacy skills in fun, family party settings that resulted in real change. Students documented their work from the planning process, through the execution stage, to results and final assessments. Students presented it to our class to wrap up the unit. Many of the students that taught family members remarked on how the fun atmosphere and game-like nature of their teaching resulted in a number of older family members realizing that some of their reposts on Facebook perhaps weren’t actually true. The non-confrontational approach resulted in real change, including less misinformation spreading in the future.

Starting this year, a new law in Illinois requires schools to teach media literacy. Did that law influence how you and your school approach the subject? What’s your best advice for educators who are tackling a media literacy unit for the first time?

I love that this new law went into effect and am proud of the state of Illinois for passing this law. I was already teaching media literacy, so it has not impacted how I approach teaching it.

My advice to fellow educators: Use the resources that are already available. An incredible benefit of teaching in 2023 is the vast array of free, quality resources. The News Literacy Project is a great resource. Their Checkology lessons are easy to use, engaging and succinct. As a teacher, you can pick and choose what you utilize. The Stanford History Education Group also provides a treasure trove of resources to help you teach media literacy. The Pulitzer Center is my go-to resource for all issues that I am teaching, including media literacy. Also, I am happy to share all of the lessons and activities that I have created.

You won a fellowship through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to support your efforts to improve media literacy. How is that fellowship helping you reach that goal?

As part of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program, I was required to develop a unit from start to finish. This was an easy decision for me to make. I spent September through December of 2021 creating, developing, and editing my media literacy unit plan. My Fulbright instructor provided me with regular feedback. As part of our Fulbright coursework, my cohort members and I were required to peer grade our unit plans as well, further improving our unit plan development. The unit went swimmingly last year, and I couldn’t be more excited to teach it in 2023.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s teachers union says the district reneged on extending parental leave

2023-01-06T00:05:54+00:00

The Chicago Teachers Union and two mayoral candidates are calling out the school district and mayor’s office for not offering educators 12 weeks of paid parental leave, mirroring a policy recently rolled out to city workers.

Chicago approved a new policy in September that lengthened parental leave for about 32,000 city employees from up to six weeks to 12 weeks starting Jan. 1 — a move Mayor Lori Lightfoot hailed as a “critical benefit, which undeniably builds equity within our workforce.”

The teachers union said this week that it approached the district about revising its own family leave policy and worked with district officials on such an updated policy modeled after the city’s, which the union said was slated to go to the school board this month. But, according to the CTU, officials backed off from that plan in December, saying they need more time to prepare for the rollout of a new policy.

“For the life of me, I don’t know why anyone would think retracting this would make sense,” said Stacy Davis Gates, the CTU’s president.

Now the union, along with mayoral candidates Kam Buckner and Brandon Johnson, a teachers union organizer, say they believe Lightfoot interfered to scuttle the parental leave expansion.

But in a statement, a district spokeswoman said Chicago Public Schools remains committed to updating its parental leave policy and officials are actively working on it. She denied that Lightfoot or anyone in her office has weighed in on the issue.

“CPS is taking the necessary time to review our policies to determine how to best support our team members who are new parents,” spokeswoman Mary Fergus said.

She added, “Allegations that anyone outside of CPS has influenced the ongoing discussion are untrue and attempts to diminish the integrity of all parties involved in developing a strong policy.”

A spokesman for Lightfoot also stressed the mayor has not engaged with the school district about its leave policy.

“The Mayor is proud that, under her leadership, the City has implemented one of the most progressive municipal parental leave policies in the country that applies to tens of thousands of employees,” the spokesman said in a statement. “While sister agencies are not subject to our parental leave policy, she has encouraged them to consider the same action.”

The union and district are gearing up to begin negotiations later this year over the teachers contract, which expires in 2024. In its statement, the district said benefits such as family leave are subject to collective bargaining agreement negotiations, which haven’t started yet. It’s not clear whether the district is suggesting that a new policy would have to be negotiated during contract talks and would only go into effect once a new contract is approved.

Fergus said a policy update would have to go through a 30-day public comment period and an equity review, among other steps.

Chicago is already an outlier for offering any paid leave to educators, according to data compiled by the National Council of Teacher Quality. Expanding paid leave for school staff is an issue teachers unions have been pushing for in recent years.

Still, Davis Gates said the current policy is “embarrassing” for a district with a predominantly female workforce in their childbearing years. The union won up to two weeks of leave and the ability to use short-term disability for members who qualify for it during contract talks in 2019. Now, Davis Gates said, teachers cobble together leaves using those benefits, saved-up sick and personal days, and unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

Some teachers plan their pregnancies so they can be on leave during summer break; some go back to work before they are ready because of the financial strain of taking a longer leave without pay, Davis Gates said.

Since November, she said, the district and union crafted a model leave policy and a FAQ for employees.

“We were finally working cooperatively with our district on a policy that would give it a competitive edge to deal with teacher shortages, teacher recruitment, and teacher retention,” she said. “It was such a positive experience.”

The union has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for communication about the policy between the mayor’s office and the district in hopes of obtaining documents showing that Lightfoot intervened. Gates personally wrote to Lightfoot Thursday urging her to give the district the green light to grant its employees the same parental benefits that city employees now receive.

The union is also collecting signatures on a petition calling on the city to extend parental benefits for educators.

The mayor and the union have clashed throughout her first term and the union has made it clear they want to defeat her at the ballot box on February 28.

At least two of Lightfoot’s challengers in next month’s election are also blasting her on the issue. Buckner said in a press release that he hoped the mayor “didn’t simply do a bait-and-switch with more than 20,000 CTU members.”

On Twitter, Johnson said the mayor had “derailed” the process of expanding parental leave for teachers, what he described as fresh evidence of the “disrespect” she has shown educators. He called 12 weeks of paid leave a “fundamental human right” and noted that he is a father of three and his wife has served as a doula.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog flags unchecked overtime pay, lost students, sexual misconduct

2023-01-05T06:05:00+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog is raising red flags about sharply increasing extra pay for school staff in recent years, rising sexual misconduct complaints, and a troubling practice of schools mislabeling students as transfers when they’re missing school.

The district’s Office of Inspector General detailed these and dozens of other instances of fraud, misconduct, and wrongdoing in a sweeping 120-page annual report released Thursday.

Inspector General Will Fletcher said his office received 1,825 complaints and opened investigations into 725 — or about 40% — of them. Hundreds were allegations of sexual misconduct taken up by a special unit of investigators created in 2018, which also is investigating complaints received in previous years.

In response to the annual report, Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Mary Fergus said in an email that the district supports the inspector general’s work.

“As a District, we take seriously our responsibility to serve our families with integrity and to address individuals who breach CPS policies and the public’s trust — and hold them accountable,” Fergus wrote. “CPS will continue to ensure our District policies and procedures support the highest ethical standards to ensure our valued team members act in the best interest of our students.”

Here are five highlights from the inspector general’s 2022 report.

Truant students have been mislabeled as transfers

Chicago Public Schools has a “chronic problem” of mislabeling students who are not showing up to school, according to the inspector general’s latest report. Since 2014, there have been five other investigations into the issue. This year, the inspector general found “extensive evidence” schools across the district are mislabeling students as transfers when they are truant, lost, or have dropped out.

Fletcher said the district’s own Office of Internal Audit and Advisory Service audited dozens of schools in 2019 and 2020. His office’s review of those audits found a “districtwide problem of schools failing to document transfers and lost children as required by law and CPS policy.”

More troubling, Fletcher said, is the district’s lack of follow-up to correct these problems.

“We have not been able to confirm or see any evidence that CPS is taking adequate corrective actions even when these audits bear out that schools are not in compliance with what they’re supposed to be doing to verify transfers or missing students,” Fletcher said. “When you have the information, by way of an audit, then you need to correct the problem.”

When students are mislabeled as transfers, they are removed from data used to measure how well schools are doing — including their attendance and graduation rates. Besides compromising data quality, this miscoding also means students may not receive support to get back into class and on track with learning.

The inspector general’s report outlined one case at an elementary school, where 20 students were incorrectly labeled as having transferred without evidence that these students requested transfers. In emails, school staff discussed “dropping” a student who didn’t return after winter break. The report said the school’s principal retired and one of two clerks resigned during the investigation. The other school clerk received extra training and the school culture coordinator -– who the report said was “most responsible” for the issue — was suspended for one day and got extra training.

The audits reviewed by Fletcher’s office were from before the pandemic, and data shows students have been missing more school in the two years since then. The inspector general recommends that the district spot-check transfer verification data and create a process to hold schools accountable for reporting false data to the district.

A district spokesperson said they are creating a new team within the Office of Student Support and Engagement to “address the improper use of leave codes and the documentation of transfers and dropouts.”

Surge in overtime pay, stipends raises red flags

The Inspector General is calling on the district to increase transparency and overhaul how it tracks the way staff earn extra pay beyond their salaries.

The watchdog found a dramatic surge in overtime, stipends and other extra pay that staff earn for taking on extra work, including coaching and after-school supervision. According to the report, Chicago Public Schools paid $73.9 million in extra pay, overtime, and stipends in 2021 — a 74% increase over the previous five years.

Amid this increase, the inspector general’s office cited “recurring problems and a lack of internal controls” with how extra work is tracked. Investigators found payments with no supporting documentation like digital or paper time sheets. The report noted the problem is not being properly audited because the district lacks rules to limit overpayment and staffing to correct issues.

“There’s no one set of rules or directions for how some of these extra pay categories are earned,” Fletcher said. “And then after they’ve been paid out, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of central monitoring or oversight on you know, to deter fraud for certain but then also just to make certain that the district is getting the bang for its buck.”

Since 2019, investigators found staff engaged in so-called “buddy punching” where they would clock in or out for other employees. The report highlights several egregious cases of fraud, including an employee who collected $150,000 in extra pay over four years with video evidence showing they were at a casino or elsewhere.

The watchdog called on the district to implement “clear, concise, organized guidelines” that include written penalties and corrective actions for violating rules. Other recommendations include: mandatory online training sessions for staff; warning and consequences for failing to clock in and out; restrictions on stipend payments; and considering video surveillance of schools’ digital time sheet machines, biometric swipes, or other timekeeping upgrades.

A spokesperson said the district will begin training on the “Timekeeper and Supplemental Payment System” Jan. 31 and will require all school clerks to complete it by Feb. 24. The payroll department is also beginning quarterly audits of extended day pay, overtime pay, and stipends, the spokesperson said.

No preferential treatment for Lightfoot donor in emergency computer purchase

The district watchdog is closely tracking the district’s spending of $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief dollars, the bulk of which is going toward salaries and benefits for current and some new staff. The district recently has begun to spell out more clearly how it’s using these dollars — and a state dashboard allows the public to look up district spending — but the inspector general seeks more transparency.

One of the office’s investigations into spending federal COVID relief money stemmed from a 2020 report by Chalkbeat Chicago and the Better Government Association about the $1.6 million purchase of roughly 5,000 computers for remote learning from Meeting Tomorrow, a local company owned by a campaign contributor to Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Chalkbeat and the BGA found that Lightfoot personally reached out to Janice Jackson, the district CEO at the time, about the company’s interest in providing computers, calling its president and CEO, Mark Aistrope, “truly genuine and very generous.”

The inspector general’s office found that the email from Lightfoot, referred to as Elected Official A in the IG report, did not improperly influence district officials or result in preferential treatment for the company. The office found that the district was facing “an extraordinary demand for computers” amid the abrupt shift to virtual learning and its established technology vendors, CDW and Apple, grappled with delays in delivering tens of thousands of devices the district ordered that spring.

Based on Chalkbeat and BGA’s reporting, most of the used laptops and tablets the district bought from the company did not meet district purchasing standards. Officials said that the purchase was largely meant to help out charter schools, and district technology purchasing specifications do not apply to them.

The report found Meeting Tomorrow sold the used devices at reasonable prices: at a discount or “only slightly higher” than the new computers bought in bulk from established vendors; it helped set them up and delivered quickly. And although a fraction were missing cameras — an issue that district officials at the time said they discovered after Chalkbeat and the BGA’s inquiry — or had other issues, the company replaced them at no cost to the district.

According to the inspector general, the company initially cooperated with its inquiry, but its CEO Mark Aistrope ultimately declined to be interviewed, in violation of district purchasing requirements that vendors cooperate with its watchdog’s investigations. As a result, the inspector general recommended that the district bar the company from future contracts, a step the district has not initiated.

Automatic assignment to military programs ends

After a 2021 Chalkbeat Chicago investigation revealed a dozen high schools were automatically assigning students to the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, the inspector general opened an investigation into the practice.

The district signaled in May it would end the practice of automatic enrollment in JROTC programs, which disproportionately impacted Black and Latino students on the south and west sides.

The inspector general’s report confirms there’s been a sharp drop in enrollment at neighborhood schools where more than 90% of freshmen were enrolled in the military education program without parent consent or notification. The investigation found that a key factor for automatic enrollment into JROTC was the school’s lack of a regular physical education program. In Illinois, enrollment in JROTC satisfies the physical education credit required for graduation.

“I didn’t like being forced to have the class,” one student is quoted as saying in the OIG report. “JROTC is not for everyone. It should not be forced on people.”

The district said it is committed to making sure every school offers standard physical education and gives students a choice between the two. The report said the changes appear to have had an impact.

The report singles out one South Side neighborhood high school where JROTC enrollment dropped from 100% of freshmen to just 9% this fall. The report quotes the principal as saying he hired a physical education teacher and now “students are requesting physical education.”

A district spokesperson confirmed that all 37 of the high schools that have JROTC programs also have physical education teachers on staff. Across all schools, there are 911 physical education positions and 32 are vacant, the spokesperson said.

Progress investigating flood of sexual misconduct allegations

The most complaints fielded by the inspector general’s office this year alleged sexual abuse and misconduct against students. These complaints go directly to a 30-person team of investigators in the watchdog’s Sexual Allegations Unit, which was created in 2018 after a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found Chicago Public Schools had failed to protect students against sexual misconduct and abuse from adults in the system.

Fletcher said the special unit in his office was “flooded with complaints” since it was created and has been staffing up and improving how it handles allegations.

Since 2018, the special investigative unit has confirmed policy violations in 302 instances and its investigations have led to at least 16 criminal charges for sex-related crimes against Chicago Public Schools students.

This year alone, more than 600 of these cases were closed — double what was closed last year.

One involved the head of Urban Prep Charter Academy, who resigned abruptly this summer amid sexual misconduct allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a student while he attended one of the school’s campuses and after he graduated. Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois State Board of Education have since revoked Urban Prep’s charter agreements.

The report also highlighted an investigation at Marine Leadership Academy, which substantiated allegations against 12 employees and a volunteer for sexual abuse, failing to safeguard students, or helping cover up misconduct.

The watchdog opened an investigation in 2019 following an anonymous tip and issued two reports in 2021. During the investigation, investigators warned district officials and child protective services of pervasive sexual abuse at a West Side school since the start of a 2019 investigation into allegations of misconduct, according to the reports.

The report describes a school employee having a sexual relationship with a student after that student turned 18. Another staffer groomed a student and began a sexual relationship after that student graduated. Another employee sexually harassed and retaliated against a student after the student filed a report. A separate employee groomed a student and crossed boundaries with others.

Seven other staffers failed to report and actively hid suspected violations including the principal, the assistant principal, head of security, a counselor, and a teacher’s assistant. They were alleged to have known about the abuses but failed to report, according to the OIG.

The OIG recommended termination, disciplinary actions for staff and administrators, and permanently blocking a volunteer. Most staff resigned and were placed on the Chicago Board of Education’s do not hire list, according to the report. Chalkbeat Chicago and WBEZ reported in October that the district’s top military officer quietly resigned over the summer in the wake of the investigation and another involving a teacher and student at Roosevelt High School.

Other recommendations include an active role by the district to correct culture, training related to mandatory reporting, and evaluate the training for JROTC staff and military instructors.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org. Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org. Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@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 spent $308 million on technology since March 2020. Now what?

2022-12-13T12:00:00+00:00

The COVID-19 pandemic and a historic infusion of federal dollars spurred a technology revolution in Chicago’s public schools — a monumental shift from a district where students had limited access to computers to one where officials say there are as many devices as students.

Chicago Public Schools leaders say this allows teachers to implement a new high-quality curriculum and to give students essential digital skills.

But the district does not have a clear, detailed plan for using the new devices to improve instruction or a reliable system to track what technology campuses have and how they use it, Chalkbeat and WBEZ have found.

Chicago Public Schools has spent more than $308 million on computers and other technology from its three main vendors since the pandemic forced schools to pivot to remote instruction in March 2020 through August this year, according to purchase order data reviewed by Chalkbeat and WBEZ. That’s roughly as much as these companies got paid during the previous two decades combined.

Roughly 40% of that spending took place after students returned to campuses for in-person learning in September 2021, at a time when leadership changes left the district without a top IT official for more than a year.

After months of questioning by Chalkbeat and WBEZ and several inaccurate estimates, officials said last week that they bought nearly 311,000 laptops and tablets. More than 41,000 of the devices are sitting in a warehouse or yet to be shipped by a manufacturer, according to CPS.

Once computers get to the schools, the district has no systematic way to track how they are being used. CPS’ system for tracking device availability on its campuses isn’t regularly updated, and it does not offer meaningful information about whether computers are used at all, Chalkbeat and WBEZ found. The school district depends on schools to take a regular inventory, but the process is time-consuming, and only 35% of Chicago’s 500 district-run schools have a technology coordinator on staff, CPS data shows.

The district inspector general’s office is reviewing CPS’ system for tracking technology assets and reporting that information, the office told Chalkbeat and WBEZ.

Meanwhile, the lack of a systemwide digital learning plan has left some educators seeking guidance on how to incorporate the computers into learning — and in some cases, leaving hundreds of devices to gather dust in storage.

Chicago school leaders note the initial technology expansion took place during a challenging pandemic stretch. They also stress that they have a window into technology use across the district thanks to regular conversations with principals and teachers. And they say educators get leeway on how to use technology based on their classrooms’ needs and goals.

District officials — and some educators — say the access to technology has been a crucial step forward, allowing schools to better gauge how much students are learning and to intervene with support tailored to their needs. That greater access has also been essential as Chicago Public Schools rolled out a $135 million Skyline curriculum for every grade and subject beginning last year.

But experts worry Chicago and other districts tapped federal pandemic recovery funds to amass devices without a strategy for making smart use of them or for replacing outdated computers once the money runs out. Chicago doesn’t have a long-term plan for updating and replacing computers. Instead, officials say they are hoping to persuade the federal government to keep chipping in.

Chicago officials say they are now working on a digital learning plan that would spell out how computers can better power student instruction, building on work they say began before the pandemic. They also say they expect to offer ongoing coaching and professional development for staff.

“I think it’s worthwhile to take a pause and look at what we’re doing here and make sure that the plan for the future is the right trajectory,” said Edward Wagner, deputy chief of Information Technology Services.

Chicago spends big after decades of device disparities

Teacher Daphne Whitington spent years dreaming of bringing an Advanced Placement research class to Julian High School on the Far South Side.

That wasn’t possible before COVID. Her school, serving a predominantly Black, largely low-income student body, never had enough computers, which are needed to scour peer-reviewed journals online and to organize findings.

On the eve of the pandemic, Whitington said the school had a room designated as a computer lab — full of woefully outdated PCs, most of which didn’t work.

“Having digital competency is a necessary part of education now,” she said. “It felt like a profound disparity prior to COVID. It felt like a blatant racial injustice.”

The district’s technology spending was already on the rise at the onset of the pandemic. Still, when COVID hit, only about 40% of Chicago Public Schools students had access to a computer for remote learning, according to documents the district provided to the federal government.

The COVID-19 outbreak set off a scramble to get devices into students’ hands. Some of the $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief funds Chicago Public Schools received powered the push.

The district also got $83.5 million through the federal Emergency Connectivity Fund, an effort to support district spending on devices and wireless access during the pandemic that gave districts fairly tight deadlines to use the money or lose it.

Even after students returned to campuses full time, the district continued to pour tens of millions of dollars into technology. It has spent $123 million on its three main technology vendors — CDW, Apple, and Virtucom — since in-person learning resumed in August 2021, according to purchase order data obtained by Chalkbeat and WBEZ. Most has been spent on laptops and tablets, though the district also bought interactive boards, headphones, projectors, video game consoles, and more. Overall, technology behemoth CDW Government, headquartered in Vernon Hills, is the outside vendor that received the most federal COVID relief money.

In recent weeks, the district struggled to provide Chalkbeat and WBEZ with a total for the devices it bought and handed out to schools. Of the 311,000 devices purchased, CPS says about 270,000 are tagged and assigned to a school or department.

It’s hard to confirm from district data CPS’ claim that it now has a device for each student. Many campuses have received significantly fewer devices since March 2020 than the number of students enrolled, though that might reflect disparities in technology available when COVID hit. The district says it can only estimate how many functioning devices appropriate for remote learning it had pre-pandemic.

Third grade students in Ms. Patiño’s class work on Diagnostic Testing on their chromebooks at Darwin Elementary School.

The influx of technology transformed the district

Inside Darwin Elementary School in Chicago on a recent Tuesday morning, one third grade classroom is nearly silent. Students are taking a math test on their laptops. Big headphones cover their ears.

In the other third grade classroom, a smartboard displays a list of discussion questions. The teacher leads a conversation about a book on the Great Chicago Fire.

“What does it mean to be uneasy?” she asks the class, telling them to draw on earlier lessons when they learned about feelings.

For years, Darwin had to dip into its school budget to provide computers to its mostly low-income Latino students. Then came the pandemic-era influx of devices. Now, the school has a Chromebook for each of its roughly 540 students.

This allows teachers to target instruction for individual students, Principal Daniel De Los Reyes said.

“So this differentiated instruction is actually at the core of what I feel is needed and technology allows us to dig further into that and actually live that out a bit more,” he said.

The federal windfall has meant schools like Darwin no longer have to pay for iPads and Chromebooks out of their own budgets, which gave an edge to wealthier schools that could fundraise for technology. The district now handles all device purchases centrally, officials said. That has helped it to address disparities and to ensure schools are prepared if another pandemic or even a major snowstorm abruptly shutters buildings, Wagner said.

District leaders also say a key rationale for the spending spree is the 2021 rollout of Skyline, the district’s digital curriculum bank — a project conceived on the cusp of the pandemic to give campuses easier access to quality, culturally relevant lessons. Skyline adoption is voluntary, but the district has been leaning more on schools to use it, and data shows Skyline usage increased tenfold this fall compared to last fall.

Skyline lessons can be and — in many cases — should be taught offline with students interacting and writing on paper, especially in the elementary grades. But Mary Beck, acting director of teaching and learning for CPS, says online features can enhance the learning experience. Skyline’s tests are available online, and educators can customize lessons and assignments to fit their students’ needs.

Some educators say this expanded access to technology has been transformational.

Thanks to the arrival of tablets for each student, Whitington was finally able to launch her AP research class last year. This fall, her juniors settled on research topics together, from laws that ban discrimination against natural hair styles to the lack of education on climate change in low-income schools. They are investigating them together online and collaborating even after the class is over.

But, she says, whether devices truly elevate learning is sometimes up to tech-savvy educators.

“Teachers who take an active interest in technology are going to be fine,” she said. “CPS needs to make sure that happens for everyone. I don’t think that’s happening at the moment.”

Teachers at Darwin Elementry School review data from monthly diagnostic tests to determine how to mold the results of testing to their specific learning.

No strategy, support as schools face ‘PTSD with the screens’

At one Chicago elementary school, a sizable shipment of devices arrived this fall. The principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said he didn’t ask for them.

But he can guess what happened.

Without a technology coordinator at the school, the “overwhelming” task of updating the district’s inventory system falls to him. He didn’t get around to logging some of the computers his school already had, so the district shipped more.

Only 174 of 500 district schools have technology coordinators, the district’s most recent staffing data shows. In addition, while some of the district’s massive spending on tech was underway, its top IT job sat vacant for more than a year. It was finally filled in October.

Meanwhile, educators at that principal’s school are often unsure how to meaningfully incorporate the computers into day-to-day learning. Some feel lingering technology fatigue after a challenging virtual learning stretch — a condition the principal described as “PTSD with the screens.”

Hundreds of computers from that fall shipment sit in a back room at his school.

“We have a lot of technology that kids are using to do school research and play games,” he said.

That school’s experience captures the challenges facing schools as the influx of technology has outpaced the district’s capacity to plan and strategize. In the absence of clear expectations, some educators are either passing on using the devices or using them in ways that don’t truly advance learning.

Several principals told Chalkbeat and WBEZ they got more devices than they know what to do with this fall. Wagner, the district’s deputy technology chief, said his department can tell which devices have been turned on at least once through its tracking system, but has no way to know if they are in regular use.

The district’s device inventory is its best window into tech availability across the city. But updating it can be a tall task in schools with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of students and devices.

Schools are encouraged to assign computers to students or educators who need them, marking those devices as “in use.” In the data provided to Chalkbeat and WBEZ with nearly 270,000 devices, only 86,000 — about one-third — are marked “in use.” The bulk of the devices, 170,000, are listed as “available.”

District officials and some principals stress most of those devices marked “available” are actually being used, but that either no one is changing the status or the computer is just not assigned to a specific student.

The remaining roughly 15,000 computers are marked as lost, stolen, recycled, or in repairs, the log of devices purchased since March 2020 shows.

The district also conducts an annual technology audit to get a firm count of its device inventory. But when Chalkbeat and WBEZ submitted a public records request for the latest audit from last spring, the district provided a one-page document that simply lists the number of schools that turned in any information on their assets for the audit. Still, the district says it will have a clearer picture of its device distribution once the latest audit is complete this coming spring.

In the midst of that annual audit process this fall, the principal at Jamieson Elementary School emailed families to say the Northwest Side school could not account for more than 100 Chromebooks, and asked families whose students might have borrowed them to return them.

Meanwhile, some educators say they need more guidance on using this more plentiful technology.

To some, the moment feels like a missed opportunity. Educators got more tech-savvy during the pandemic, and some used computers in innovative ways.

Hal Friedlander, of the nonprofit Technology for Education Consortium, said, ideally, district technology and education leaders, with input from teachers and experts, would work together to come up with a plan before buying devices. But COVID created an urgent demand and left little time for planning.

Kindergarten students in Ms. Bauman’s class work on word study using both the smart board and traditional paper.

Experts caution districts need blueprints and accountability

De Los Reyes, the Darwin principal, said district leaders have not given him and other school leaders instructions for using the technology in classrooms. But he believes the district should strike a balance between setting expectations and letting individual schools pick an approach that works best for their students.

In the younger grades, interacting with teachers and fellow students, as well as learning to write with a pencil, are crucial, he noted. But as students get older, using devices is a key skill they need as they go off to high school, college, and, eventually, into the workforce.

For teachers at Darwin, the influx of new technology has been a huge help.

They can see where students are struggling through the Skyline assessments students take on their devices. Then students get help online tailored to close those gaps.

“It allows us to put a pulse on achievement,” De Los Reyes said. “When you have one-to-one technology, we now have platforms where students can access their learning plan specific to their needs.”

District officials say they want what is happening at Darwin repeated across the district. Beck said she encourages principals to be thoughtful about incorporating technology into a student’s day.

“It’s not that a student is on a computer the entire time sitting next to somebody,” she said. “We really want teachers to adapt to the lesson and the content. You’ll see that students will close their Chromebooks and engage in conversation. It’s using it as a tool.”

Still, Beck insists “being one-on-one is vital.” She and other officials say it made sense to take advantage of available funding to get there.

But, experts say, simply purchasing computers is not enough. Districts need a strategy for use.

Joseph South, chief learning officer for International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit that advocates for the smarter use of classroom tech, said he sees an often fractured and passive use of technology in districts around the country, with devices being used as little more than TV sets.

Instead, he said, students should be using devices to “create, to problem solve, to communicate, to bring in experts from outside the four walls of the classroom.”

Too often, South said, the district technology leader will buy “stacks of devices, and send them out to schools and says, ‘OK, I’ve done my job.’ ”

“That’s actually a really ineffective way of deploying technology,” he said.

But often that’s what happens, said Bart Epstein, an expert at the University of Virginia and head of the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange. School districts don’t know how often or how well students are using devices once they’re purchased.

He likened it to what would happen if districts bought a fleet of buses and parked them in a lot while students walked to school. The public, he says, would be outraged.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.

New policy would change when Chicago students are held back, eliminates test scores as factor

2022-12-07T01:14:29+00:00

Chicago Public Schools could change when elementary school students can be held back a grade and plans to stop using test scores as a factor.

The district did not hold back any elementary students during the first two years of the pandemic in a nod to COVID’s academic and mental health toll. Last year, it revised the policy for promoting students to drop a test that schools were no longer required to give.

Now, the district is proposing to end the use of test scores in promotion decisions permanently, according to a draft policy shared with principals last month and obtained by Chalkbeat. It would also shift the grades in which a student can be held back, from the third, sixth, and eighth grade to the second, fifth, and eighth grade.

Under the proposed policy, elementary students receiving academic interventions would be automatically promoted. The new policy would also add science and social studies to math and reading on the list of subjects students must pass.

Over the past decade or so, the district has gradually relaxed its once-stringent promotion policy. Research showed it harmed more than helped the disproportionately Black and Latino students who were required to repeat a grade. That trend coincided with a rise in skepticism about the value of retention nationally, based on studies suggesting it increases the odds that students might drop out of high school.

The school board is expected to consider the draft elementary promotion policy in January.

Elaine Allensworth with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who has studied retention in the district for years, applauds removing test scores as a factor. But she said the change in the grades students can repeat might be disruptive because it would mean those grades would serve more struggling students.

“That affects the achievement and experience of other students as well,” Allensworth said. “It decreases the rigor of instruction.”

Retention can also be stigmatizing for students.

Lisa Russell, the mother of four Chicago Public Schools graduates and a West Side parent advocate with the nonprofit Community Organizing and Family Issues, said a classmate of her youngest son had to repeat the eighth grade shortly before the pandemic hit.

The girl had received good grades and only found out she was behind academically when she did not attain the required score on the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, the standardized test used in promotion decisions, Russell said. She added it can be deeply embarrassing to be back in an eighth grade classroom with younger students.

“That put her in a shell where she really wasn’t learning any more,” Russell said.

Russell worked with students with disabilities before she retired and said in her experience retention did not help students who were in some cases multiple grade levels behind by the time they were required to repeat a grade. She is glad the district is considering no longer using test scores to retain students.

Pavlyn Jankov, a researcher with the Chicago Teachers Union, noted the grade promotion changes are part of a broader shift, as the district is also working on a new way of evaluating school performance that is expected to put much less weight on tests.

“As a district, we are moving away from test-based accountability and punitive measures,” he said.

The union advocated for that shift and now welcomes the change. But he said the teachers union didn’t know about the new grade promotion policy. He said he worries that documenting student interventions can add to a growing volume of paperwork for which teachers are responsible. And he thinks the new policy should offer a rationale for switching the grades in which students can be held back.

The district’s pre-pandemic promotion policy for elementary students required them to get a C or higher in reading and math as well as hit a certain score on a standardized test. Students who failed to do so had to attend and successfully complete summer school to move on to the next grade.

But last year, the district discontinued its contract with the NWEA, the nonprofit that administers the MAP test used in determining grade promotion. Schools no longer have to give the test three times a year. It is not being used for grade promotion currently and the new proposed policy would formally eliminate testing as a factor.

Under that proposal, students will advance to the next grade if they get a passing grade in core courses, or if they are getting help in them. There are now interventionists staffed in each school who work with struggling students one-on-one or small groups. These students can move on to the next grade even if they fail a class.

Second graders would only have to pass reading. Students in grades five and eight would also have to pass math, science and social studies.

For Chicago, the proposed policy overall would continue a trend of making it harder to hold students back a grade.

In the late 1990s, the district drew national attention with a strict promotion policy based on standardized test scores that led to thousands of students repeating a grade each year. The district touted the policy as an end to “social promotion,” or letting students advance just because they were a certain age. But by the early 2010s, research had started to raise alarms about the long-term effects of holding students back based on test scores.

The district started letting up on its promotion criteria in response to that research. By 2015, officials floated the idea of doing away with grade retention altogether, though that idea never took hold. The number of students held back continued to plummet.

The district was not able to provide data on how many students were retained on the cusp of the pandemic. It is not clear whether the district is also mulling changes to high school promotion.

The Consortium on School Research’s work has offered a clear repudiation of strict promotion requirements, said Allensworth.

Academic growth tended to slow down in the year students had to repeat. Students who were held back, especially those who repeated more than one year, struggled to fit in socially by high school. Some found themselves still in school at 19 and 20 as peers had moved on to college or jobs.

Overall, students who repeated a grade in elementary school were much more likely to drop out by high school. The prospect of repeating a grade did help motivate eighth graders — but not students in earlier grades.

Students who have to repeat a grade often had experienced a family disruption or mental health issues, Allensworth said.

“Retention doesn’t solve the issue for that student — it adds another problem,” she said. She added, “If you look at the effects of this policy, they are pretty much all negative, especially in the longer term.”

But, said Allensworth, retention remains politically popular, buttressed by what she called the “myth of the third grade level.” It’s the idea that students should reach a specific, easy-to-measure knowledge level by the end of each grade, when in fact children fall on a wide academic spectrum.

Allensworth said questioned adding more subjects students have to pass. But she supports including interventions as a factor in favor of advancing students on to the next grade.

“If students are struggling to pass, you want to do something about it,” she said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville bet big on its career high schools. What can Chicago learn?

2022-12-01T22:18:04+00:00

Israel Perez, a high school senior in Nashville, feels he is closing in on his dream of becoming a music producer.

He landed a music business internship at Capitol Records earlier this year and has a part-time gig helping a local church edit and post videos of its sermons. His school, Pearl-Cohn High School, helped him find both.

The campus also boasts the country’s first high school student-run record label affiliated with a major record label, where Perez recently helped produce an R&B single — a collaboration between Warner Music and Pearl-Cohn’s Relentless Records.

As Chicago steps up its own push to connect students to jobs through career and technical education, Nashville offers a helpful case study.

CEO Pedro Martinez has talked about converting some of the district’s shrinking high schools on the South and West sides into career academies in the mold of Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn. There, more students would take courses and get work experience that forge pathways into high-demand industries.

In Chicago and nationally, the resurgence of career and technical education, or CTE, programs, comes as districts have moved away from a mindset that all students should attend a four-year college. That trend gained more traction amid a pandemic that saw employers grappling with crippling worker shortages — and students yearning for faster, debt-free routes to well-paying careers.

Metro Nashville Public Schools is a trailblazer in betting big on the career academy model. But its experience also offers some lessons for Chicago as officials there are still trying to get better at connecting students with meaningful work-based experiences — and reach the teens schools most struggle to engage.

Deborah Crosby, the work-based learning coordinator at Metro Nashville Public Schools acknowledged recently that getting schools, employers, and city officials on the same page is a work in progress.

“We want to bring them all together as an opportunity to serve all,” Crosby said.

An upgrade of Chicago’s career and technical education programs is part of Martinez’s three-year “blueprint” for reimagining learning, which also includes plans to revitalize neighborhood schools and improve services for students with disabilities.

After unveiling the plan’s broad outlines at the start of the school year, Chicago Public Schools leaders have so far shared no details on its rollout.

But in a statement emailed to Chalkbeat on Thursday, the district said work is already underway, and it is preparing counselors to provide both college and career guidance to students. The district also said it is working to expose more middle school students to possible careers, such as at a City Colleges of Chicago event this week, and to offer college credit for some of its high school manufacturing, health care, and IT courses.

It isn’t enough to prepare students for a career without giving them hands-on experience, Martinez told his school board in August. “They actually have to do it,” he said. “You want them to be engineers? You put them in an engineering internship.”

Nashville leads in growth of career academies

In the mid-2000s, Nashville’s high schools were struggling, with a graduation rate well below 60% and a looming takeover by the state of Tennessee. In a bid to change that, the district undertook a major overhaul that would chart a clearer path from freshman year to the careers students might pursue after high school.

Fifteen years later, a dozen of the district’s about 20 high schools house 35 “academies” that prepare students for various careers, with the goal of helping them get college credit, industry certifications, and hands-on work experiences before they get their diplomas.

The district’s high school transformation inspired plaudits from the White House and visits from education officials in other cities seeking to replicate its model. Chicago district officials toured Nashville high schools and spoke with colleagues about career learning in that district in 2017, according to a district spokesperson.

The district’s on-time graduation rate rose to almost 82% in 2021. (Data for spring 2022 is not yet available.) Suspensions declined. Attendance ticked up as well, though as in other districts it dipped during the pandemic. The district touts hundreds of partnerships with employers and colleges.

Interest in the career academy model has spiked nationally in recent years, said Deanna Schultz, who leads the master of science in Career and Technical Education program at the University of Wisconsin at Stout. Districts and charter operators are launching both new academies and converting existing schools, she said, adding that the model was also transformative for high schools in Racine, Wisconsin.

“If students find the right career pathway and coursework, they get excited about the future and become more engaged,” Schultz said.

That sense of relevance and meaning could help boost some struggling Chicago high schools, where enrollments have dropped dramatically over the past decade and attendance has lagged the district’s average. Some of these schools already are career academies, but have seen offerings scaled back in more recent years – in some cases, remaining career campuses largely in name only.

But transforming a traditional high school into a career academy is also a really heavy lift, said Schultz: It requires long and careful planning, educators qualified to teach specialized classes, colleagues willing to collaborate with them, and partnerships with local employers and campuses.

The National Career Academy Coalition, a nonprofit based in Nashville, estimates there are now 7,000 career academies enrolling roughly a million students across the country. Research has shown that the model can boost students’ academics and earning potential.

Different cities have taken a somewhat different approach, but some elements are key: They aim to prepare students for both college and careers, and they work to forge partnerships with both campuses and employers. Usually, they are schools-within-larger-high-schools, but some are “wall-to-wall” academies such as Nashville’s.

But district officials in Nashville are upfront: In some ways, the city’s career academy push is still a work in progress.

Data tracking students’ career trajectories is spotty

Perez, the Nashville senior, had dreamed of becoming a music producer since elementary school. More recently, he used money saved up from a dining hall job to buy recording equipment for his home.

But his modest home setup paled in comparison to what he found at Pearl-Cohn’s state-of-the-art recording studio when he first arrived at the high school last school year to join its entertainment industry pathway.

“I didn’t expect that. I was in heaven,” he said. “This studio is the real deal — top-tier stuff.”

The school’s Relentless Records releases original music created, performed, and produced by students, with music videos that students conceive, direct, and shoot. Like other academies, the school tries to connect core academics to its students’ career pathways, such as a data project with Atlantic Records in which students track music downloads to learn how executives determine who gets a record deal — and to learn math as well.

But when the school took stock of student outcomes in recent years, one thing was clear: Not many students were actually finding their way to jobs in the music industry. The school connected relatively few with internships and other meaningful work-based learning experiences.

Miriam Harrington, the principal at Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet in Nashville, in a new health lab the school is setting up. The high school launched a new program to train students for careers in health care last year.

Nashville has also struggled to track what career academy students do after graduation and has no data it can share on their college and career trajectories.

Chicago has faced similar challenges, even as the federal government pushes districts to better track how these students fare after high school. Earlier this year, based on a string of Freedom of Information Act requests, Chalkbeat found the district has no reliable data on its career and technical education students’ high school experiences or post-graduation outcomes — not even how many apply to these district programs.

Nashville has seen signs its career offerings are improving. Significantly more students take tests to gain industry certifications — a rise the pandemic did not dampen as it did in Chicago and other cities. Still, as more students take the tests, the portion who pass them has dipped, to about half.

In the Nashville district’s academies, freshmen take a career exploration seminar class and attend a massive career fair to pick a career pathway. Sophomores visit employers in their chosen field, juniors shadow a professional in that field, and seniors do a capstone research project or an internship. But, district officials said, schools were trying to connect students with often unpaid work experiences on a somewhat ad hoc basis.

The district is hoping to change that.

With a grant from JPMorgan Chase, it launched a more formal, paid work-based learning program last school year, starting with 68 students at four high-poverty schools, including Pearl-Cohn. Thirteen businesses hosted the interns, who also take a class that teaches them how to conduct themselves professionally on the job. This year, about 80 students are participating in the program, with hopes to expand it dramatically in coming years.

Nashville links career education to labor market

Since the pandemic hit, Gena Shearon, the human resources director at Holiday Inn Vanderbilt in Nashville, said hiring has been a huge challenge.

Enter nearby Hillwood High School. As part of the district’s new grant-funded work-based learning program, the hotel has two interns from the high school, vetted and supervised by the school district, which can also step in if any workplace issues arise.

“I am desperate for people, and she is recruiting for me,” Shearon said, pointing to Crosby, the district’s work-based learning coordinator. “This checks all the boxes for us.”

Hillwood senior Brayden Weaver is one of those interns. He wraps up his high school courses by 12:30 p.m. before reporting to work as a groundskeeper, where he checks the hallway ice machines, replaces bathroom faucets, and does other simple repairs. Weaver gets $16 an hour, free meals, and academic credit. He is in the school’s engineering pathway, eyeing trade school after graduation and a career in construction.

The Holiday Inn Vanderbilt has long had a relationship with Hillwood — one of four Nashville high schools with a hospitality focus — hosting field trips and unpaid interns over the years. Shearon said a student from a few years back started in a job clearing tables and washing dishes in the hotel restaurant while in high school, got promoted repeatedly in college, and now works as a manager of a luxury hotel in town.

But those earlier interns were usually unpaid, and the hotel had to take the lead in enlisting them.

Indeed, Crosby said, persuading employers to join the work-based learning program was fairly easy, even though hiring 17-year-olds involves significant red tape. In Nashville, she said, “Our growth has been crazy. A lot of entry-level positions have gone unfilled. Everywhere you go, there’s a Help Wanted sign.”

But the program has been a harder sell for students and their families because of its novelty and concerns about getting in the way of academics.

Ideally, the program would draw and help reengage teens who are struggling in school. But, Crosby said, the district wants to “put its best foot forward” with that initial group of employers, placing strict attendance and GPA requirements for participating students.

“Right now, that cuts off a lot of people,” she said. “The students who need this the most are being left out.”

That’s true in Chicago, too. Alternative school students have limited access to career offerings, leaving teachers at those schools to cobble together meaningful work experiences for students who have struggled to stay in school.

Ironically, career and technical programs were not that long ago considered a fit for struggling, disengaged students who weren’t “college material.” Their reputation has come a long way, as a gateway to both college and high-earning careers.

Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn, which serves a predominantly Black and low-income student body, has worked to be more effective as such a gateway. Last year, the school launched a new health sciences career pathway, which for some students might offer better odds of getting a head start on their careers.

The school set up partnerships with nearby medical schools and a mock health clinic in a spacious hall on campus, with four medical manikins in hospital beds as well as phlebotomy, trauma, and occupational therapy areas. Last year, the school’s first Latina valedictorian graduated with an associate degree as a medical assistant, and school leaders want more students to do that.

Pearl-Cohn plans to track much more closely what happens with its students when they leave. Slightly more than half of the first group of students who completed the health care program landed jobs as medical assistants or continued on studying in the healthcare field — a promising start.

“My goal and vision is that when our kids leave, they are ready to enter the job market in our local area,” said principal Miriam Harrington. “The goal is to end generational poverty and ensure generational wealth.”

That’s a vision Chicago’s Martinez has sketched out as well: graduates who are able to choose college or careers — and in some cases, go back and forth seamlessly between campus and the workplace, building up their skillset.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville’s academies offer lessons for districts seeking to expand career education

2022-12-01T22:18:04+00:00

Israel Perez, a high school senior in Nashville, feels he is closing in on his dream of becoming a music producer.

As Chicago steps up its own push to connect students to jobs through career and technical education, Nashville offers a helpful case study.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has talked about converting some of the district’s shrinking high schools on the South and West sides into career academies in the mold of Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn. There, more students would take courses and get work experience that forge pathways into high-demand industries.

Deborah Crosby, the work-based learning coordinator at Metro Nashville Public Schools acknowledged recently that getting schools, employers, and city officials on the same page is a work in progress.

“We want to bring them all together as an opportunity to serve all,” Crosby said.

After unveiling the plan’s broad outlines at the start of the school year, Chicago Public Schools leaders have so far shared no details on its rollout.

Nashville leads in growth of career academies

“If students find the right career pathway and coursework, they get excited about the future and become more engaged,” Schultz said.

But district officials in Nashville are upfront: In some ways, the city’s career academy push is still a work in progress.

Data tracking students’ career trajectories is spotty

Perez, the Nashville senior, had dreamed of becoming a music producer since elementary school. More recently, he used money saved up from a dining hall job to buy recording equipment for his home.

“I didn’t expect that. I was in heaven,” he said. “This studio is the real deal — top-tier stuff.”

Nashville has also struggled to track what career academy students do after graduation and has no data it can share on their college and career trajectories.

The district is hoping to change that.

Nashville links career education to labor market

Since the pandemic hit, Gena Shearon, the human resources director at Holiday Inn Vanderbilt in Nashville, said hiring has been a huge challenge.

“I am desperate for people, and she is recruiting for me,” Shearon said, pointing to Crosby, the district’s work-based learning coordinator. “This checks all the boxes for us.”

But those earlier interns were usually unpaid, and the hotel had to take the lead in enlisting them.

But the program has been a harder sell for students and their families because of its novelty and concerns about getting in the way of academics.

“Right now, that cuts off a lot of people,” she said. “The students who need this the most are being left out.”

Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn, which serves a student body that’s predominantly Black and from low-income families, has worked to be more effective as such a gateway. Last year, the school launched a new health sciences career pathway, which for some students might offer better odds of getting a head start on their careers.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media for ‘worrisome behavior’

2022-11-17T23:06:39+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media posts for signs they might engage in violence on campus or harm themselves so that school staff — and in some cases police — can intervene.

A Canada-based company the district hired started scouring public posts for threats and “cries for help” last month. District leaders say the program is key in efforts to prevent violence and self-harm as the district responds to an uptick in school shootings nationally and in the number of local students expressing suicidal thoughts.

The Chicago program – called “Supporting Our Students” – is part of a national trend, as more districts have started paying contractors for social media monitoring services in recent years.

So far, there is no independent research or other evidence showing that student social media monitoring programs are effective in preventing violence and self-harm. In a social media space full of fake accounts, anonymous posts, and grandstanding, civil rights advocates say they worry these programs might needlessly invade students’ privacy and feed into stubborn discipline disparities facing some students, especially Black boys and other students of color.

Cassie Creswell of the nonprofit Illinois Families for Public Schools says surveying students online could undermine the district’s most important tool for getting information that helps avert violence.

“Kids have to have good relationships and trust with adults in their school communities, and that’s how we prevent stuff from happening,” she said. “Spying on kids is not how we do that.”

But Jadine Chou, the district’s safety and security chief, said the new program is not meant to punish students, and the district will involve police only when staff believe a post signals an imminent threat to safety. Rather, district officials say, the program aims to help students amid a pandemic-era rise in youth mental health challenges, as social media has come to play a key role in fomenting conflict and bullying on campus.

“This is not about getting children in trouble,” Chou said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “This is about getting children support.”

Chicago Public Schools piloted a similar social media monitoring program in the mid-2010s. A University of Chicago study deemed the effort promising, with evidence that it helped reduce student misconduct incidents and suspensions. But data also showed Black and male students were more likely to get flagged for concerning behavior, and some advocates voiced concerns about the involvement of a Chicago Police Department school gang unit.

New social media program draws on pilot’s lessons

In 2020, Chicago Public Schools won a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to launch “Support Our Students,” through a federal program titled STOP School Violence.

It wasn’t until this April that the district put out a notice seeking proposals from companies to monitor student social media for “worrisome online behavior,” such as threats, suicidal ideation, and references to drugs, weapons, or gang activity. The document said the district was especially concerned about an almost 60% increase in reports of suicidal ideation in students over the previous school year, with about 300 such reports received since August 2021. It planned to spend $450,000 on the program over three years.

Two companies, Safer Schools Together and GoGuardian, submitted proposals. The district selected SST, a firm based in Canada, with U.S. headquarters in Washington state. Officials said the company offered both a lower cost and better methodology for flagging concerning online behavior. In August, the school board approved an agreement with SST for up to $161,400 over 13 months.

“Supporting Our Students” comes on the heels of a pre-pandemic student social monitoring pilot program called “Connect & Redirect to Respect,” which was also supported by a federal grant from the Department of Justice.

That program involved random keyword searches of public social media profiles. In some cases, officers with CPD’s Gang School Safety Team met with students at their schools to discuss troubling posts. Staff referred students to mentoring, after-school, and summer programs and other services.

A report by the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab compared outcomes for students at schools participating in the program — about two dozen elementary and high schools, most of them on the city’s West and South sides — and for those at a control group of schools with similar demographics. The study found students at participating schools were at a lower risk of becoming a shooting victim, though the difference was not statistically significant.

It did show these schools had significantly fewer misconduct incidents and suspensions and better attendance, while students were not any more likely to be arrested. Data in the report also shows that students flagged through the program were more likely to be Black and much more likely to be male than students referred for intervention by school staff.

The researchers interviewed teachers and administrators who said many conflicts at school start out on social media, and some educators more informally monitor posts in hopes of warding off trouble on campus.

But reporting by ProPublica and WBEZ highlighted concerns by advocates and experts who questioned the practice of pulling students into meetings with police officers based on information gleaned from a program that students and their families didn’t know about.

The new program will be different in some key ways, officials said. The district’s earlier pilot initially used a software to flag posts, but, Chou said, “The algorithm did not catch a lot of the situations we are most concerned for.”

SST’s proposal and the district’s contract with the company say it will use technology to scan posts, but Chou said it will ultimately rely on trained people to review them and flag any content as concerning.

Thanks to SST’s involvement, the district said in a statement, the collection of information off social media will operate “at arm’s length” from the district, ensuring that it collects only data relevant to school safety.

The company will also offer guidance to school safety teams on responding when it flags concerning posts. It will work closely with the district’s Office of Social and Emotional Learning and school-level behavioral health teams to intervene with students and engage their parents. The Chicago Police Department will play a more limited role this time, in keeping with a broader rethinking of the district’s relationship with police.

As part of a district initiative, a growing number of high schools have stopped stationing police officers on campus in the past two years and used the money for restorative justice and other programs. But there will be times police will have to be involved, Chou said.

“If there’s a gun in your video,” Chou said, “I’m going to need to pull in the police.”

Like the earlier program, only publicly posted information will be monitored and collected, and the district and company won’t “friend” or follow students. The contract with SST spells out some measurable goals for the program: decreasing serious infraction, suspensions, and expulsions by 10% each, and student arrests by 5%.

Chou says social media threats and bullying are top of mind for students and parents she’s spoken with about school safety. But the program will be one tool in a much broader district safety strategy, Chou said — with SST serving as “a partner in case something gets missed.”

“When we have strong relationships with students and families, that’s where we get our best information,” she said.

Software ‘spying’ is no substitute for student support

Arseny Acosta, a junior at DeVry University Advantage Academy and an advocate with youth group Good Kids Mad City, said many students want to take a more active part in safeguarding safety on campus and beyond. She pointed to the group’s key role in a Dyett High School for the Arts restorative justice program and a social media “peace pledge” it penned as part of its “Peacebook” anti-violence proposal.

But monitoring students’ social media feels invasive, she said. It could add to mistrust among Black and Latino students, who feel they are still held to a higher discipline standard, Acosta said.

“This idea will most likely backfire, and make students more distrustful of CPS,” Acosta said. “CPS should be empowering and employing their student youth to create safety networks.”

Some district officials have said that programs that monitor student social media for keywords produce an excess of “noisy data” that school staff have to sift through to find any credible threats, said Elizabeth Laird of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

Though some companies have touted case studies or data they have collected, she said, “There is no independent research or data that shows this service works — that it’s an effective strategy to keep students safe.”

Some of those questions about effectiveness were rekindled by the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. That district had a social media monitoring program in place, but it apparently did not flag threatening social media posts by the shooter.

Meanwhile, advocates are concerned that these programs might disproportionately zero in on certain student groups, including students of color and LGBT students, and chill students’ free expression online. Districts have not been transparent enough about these programs and how they work, Baird said. The federal government recently cautioned school districts and other entities about using digital surveillance software that might exacerbate racial and other disparities.

SST didn’t respond to an interview request, but on its site, the organization says it has “a proven record” of helping schools across North America reduce the risk of student violence. It says open-source social media posts it has flagged triggered “successful school/community interventions and full scale police investigations and prosecution.”

The company’s proposal to the district, obtained by Chalkbeat, offers relatively few specifics about these successes. The proposal says its Worrisome Online Behavior reports are “well-received by our clients,” and quotes a safety official with the Lynwood Unified School District in California who says the reports have been an “essential tool” in ensuring school safety. The company has provided the reports to 80 districts in the past two years, consulting with districts on 1,600 interventions, its proposal says.

Under its contract with Chicago Public Schools, SST is required to submit biweekly reports on the number of “worrisome online behaviors” it flagged, the number of students involved in them, and the number of students receiving interventions as a result.

But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Chalkbeat, the district said these reports will not be made public. They contain “highly sensitive student information and outcries,” the district said, and their release would constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” under FOIA and the state’s Student Online Personal Protection Act.

Creswell, with Illinois Families for Public Schools, worked on the latest version of that state law. She says she wants to know more about the specific circumstances under which information gleaned from the program will be shared with law enforcement. The district should be doing more to get word of the program to students and their families, and better explain how it will safeguard against racial and income disparities.

Edward Vogel of the Lucy Parsons Labs, a Chicago-based nonprofit effort to advocate for digital rights, said he believes the district’s interest in supporting students is genuine. But young people often engage in grandstanding on social media, and he questioned the wisdom of tasking people who have no connection to students or their school communities with reviewing posts.

“Social media is a tool that people in gangs use, but there are also lots of young people who say things on social media that are meaningless,” Vogel said. “It’s a murky area to use for assessing threats.”

Given that many student accounts are private or don’t use students’ real names, Vogel said, how will SST even go about finding the right accounts to monitor?

The district said that it’s paramount that the program not perpetuate racial disparities. SST staff have received implicit bias training “to ensure that this effort is not targeting any specific groups.”

Chou stressed the district is not turning over any student names to SST; the company searches instead for references to the district and its schools. Flagged accounts often don’t use students’ real names, so district and school staff work together to identify students who might need help, such as counseling, mentoring, and other support.

She said the program has already had “a small number of successes where we have been able to intervene and support students,” though she declined to share any additional details. Chou said the district might be able to share aggregate data on the program’s results that better protects student privacy after the effort has been in place longer.

Chou said the district has worked to get the word out about the program. The district has not sent emails or letters specifically about the program, but a back-to-school email from district CEO Pedro Martinez included a mention of it on a list of school safety measures.

Chou also briefly mentions the program in a video posted on a revamped Office of Safety and Security website, in which she implores students and families to alert their schools or the district if they come across threats or other troubling content online.

“I want everyone to know,” Chou told Chalkbeat about the monitoring program. “This is not a secret.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools attendance continued to decline last year

2022-11-10T18:26:29+00:00

During the last school year, when academic recovery remained elusive, Chicago schools continued to struggle with lagging attendance, new data show.

This fall, they are making a fresh push to boost student turnout.

School-level data for the 2021-22 school year shows attendance in Chicago continued to slide and remained well below pre-pandemic levels.

The largest declines happened in the city’s charter schools and district-run campuses with majority Black student populations. Shrinking high schools on Chicago’s South and West sides also saw some of the most dramatic declines — though, at some, attendance rebounded somewhat last year after dropping off earlier in the pandemic.

The average attendance rate for Chicago Public Schools stood at about 85% last school year, more than 6 percentage points below the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic upended learning. Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism — the share of students who missed 18 or more days — rose to 45% districtwide last year, compared with 24% on the cusp of the COVID outbreak.

District officials in Chicago and across the country are making attendance a major focus this school year. That’s because for students whose attendance remains spotty, academic and mental health recovery will be harder to attain. Boosting attendance is especially critical for students of color and low-income students, who were hit the hardest by the pandemic’s disruption.

Educators and school leaders have said last year — marked by two COVID surges, staffing shortages, and other challenges — tested them like no other. The basic habits of in-person attendance — getting up, getting dressed, and arriving at school on time — took longer to reestablish than expected. Quarantines and other disruptions killed momentum for some students, and regular attendance remained a national issue.

In Chicago, officials and others say efforts to increase attendance this fall — from a push to intervene faster when attendance lags to a larger role for student enrichment activities — might be starting to pay off. The district’s overall attendance rate so far this fall stands at just more than 90%, an uptick of about half a percentage point compared with this time last year.

“Cautious optimism is the overarching theme,” said Robin Koelsch, senior director of partnerships at Communities In Schools, a national educational nonprofit that works with about 200 campuses in Chicago.

Attendance worse at high schools and South, West Sides

Overall, attendance in Chicago during the fully in-person 2021-22 school year dipped compared with the 2020-21 year, which the district started online before shifting to a hybrid model in the spring. However, comparing in-person and virtual attendance is tricky: Students who logged on to remote classes with their cameras off were not always actively engaged in those lessons.

Schools grappled with how best to track virtual and hybrid attendance. Multicultural Arts High School, where attendance stood at about 85% pre-COVID, saw its rate shoot up to almost 99% in 2020-21, then plummet to 72% last year.

Last year, district data shows the drops were most pronounced for high school juniors and seniors, whose attendance dipped below 80%. Citywide, charter schools and those serving majority Black student bodies saw steep attendance drops in 2020-21, but didn’t lose much additional ground last year. For campuses serving primarily Latino students, both pandemic school years brought dips in student turnout.

Some South and West Side neighborhoods hard hit by the pandemic saw dramatic drops in attendance. Austin, South Chicago, and Woodlawn all experienced declines of almost 10 percentage points in 2020-21 — and those lower rates largely persisted last year. South Shore, where average attendance at 11 neighborhood schools dropped by 13 percentage points earlier in the pandemic, saw a significant rebound, though rates remained below where they were before COVID hit.

Attendance rates and the pandemic’s impact varied widely among campuses. Alternative high schools — whether contract, charter, or district-run — were hit hard. These campuses, which serve high-needs students who previously dropped out or have fallen behind at traditional high schools, generally have lower attendance; amid the pandemic’s upheaval, they saw some of the steepest drops.

On several Ombudsman and YCCS campuses, the attendance rate for the school year dipped below 50%, and in the case of Ombudsman’s South campus, below 40%.

Small high schools serving largely Black students on the city’s South and West sides, from Manley to Phillips, were hard hit as well. Phillips, with an attendance rate of about 61%, remains about 20 percentage points below its pre-pandemic rate. Some schools, such as Austin College and Career Academy, Hirsch, and Tilden, also had significant drops, but regained considerable ground last school year.

The pandemic’s varying impact on different campuses stand out in emerging data, said Elaine Allensworth at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. That schools with comparable student bodies fared so differently raises key questions about what made some campuses better prepared to handle the disruption,

That was an important takeaway in a recent study the consortium released on pandemic-era grading: Elementary schools serving Black students experienced larger declines in grades overall, but ultimately which campus a student attended mattered more than the school’s demographics.

Allensworth’s team is now looking into the relationship between attendance and grades in 2020-21. It found that attendance — traditionally a key predictor of student achievement — appeared to have an even stronger effect on grades during that year of upheaval.

“When attendance suddenly drops, and the more you have differences between students, the more you can see that relationship with other indicators of achievement,” Allensworth said.

District pushes for better attendance

This fall, schools are redoubling their efforts to boost attendance, officials say.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools highlighted the work of campus-based Multi-Tiered System of Supports teams, on which educators and administrators parse attendance, grades, and behavior for individual students to steer help to those who need it. The interventionists the district staffed in each school this fall use the data to work one on one or in small groups with students to help them catch up academically.

The district said it’s also leaning on stepped-up family outreach and expanded after-school programs, including more opportunities for students with disabilities, to help reengage students. A more general emphasis on social-emotional learning, including activities such as healing circles to talk about difficult events, are helping as well, the district statement said.

As of the 11th week of the school year, the district-wide attendance rate was 90.4%, compared with 90% at this time last year. Officials also touted a 93.4% attendance estimate for the first day of school.

“While there is much more work to do, we are pleased that the attendance rate is slightly above this time last year,” the district said.

Campuses are also betting big on the kinds of enrichment opportunities that the pandemic took away from students. Field trips and visits from arts and other community organizations are back this fall — and schools are more thoughtful than ever about tying these opportunities to their instruction, said Koelsch, of Communities In Schools (CIS), an education nonprofit that helps connect campuses with mental health and other community resources.

For example, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium — one of roughly 250 community partners CIS helps connect with schools — is offering a series of virtual lessons on dolphin and other animal communication, culminating in a visit to the aquarium that lets students get up close to the animals and their caretakers. Those types of programs help build engagement and a sense of connectedness to school and the community at large, Koelsch said.

“Many of our schools are asking for opportunities to get students out of the building,” she said.

Student support managers CIS staffs in some of the schools the nonprofit works with have also started book, art, anime, and other clubs during the school day, giving students a chance to connect with each other based on shared interests.

“It’s a way for our students to be seen and valued,” said Shipra Panicker, senior director of intensive student supports.

She added, “Attendance is always a priority for schools, but even more so now.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools may take on more costs as it breaks away from mayoral control, report says

2022-11-04T18:06:13+00:00

Chicagoans will get to elect their school board members starting in 2024. But a report out this week suggests that may come with a cost.

The report, prepared by the district with help from a consulting firm, lists expenses currently picked up by other city agencies that Chicago Public Schools might have to take on as it transitions to an elected school board for the first time in the city’s history. These include water bills, rent, summer programs, and increased pension contributions, among other costs — possibly adding up to tens of millions of dollars a year.

That financial fallout might be relatively modest for a district with a $9.5 billion budget. But, the report says, it could add uncertainty to an already “fragile” financial outlook for the district.

The city does not have to cut off the school district as it shifts away from mayoral control. Some current school board members and the Chicago Teachers Union have criticized the city for already passing on some costs it has traditionally shouldered.

For example, in the past few years, CPS started paying for police officers stationed in schools, crossing guards, and a larger share of contribution toward a city-run pension fund that covers some district employees — all costs previously footed by the city. This year, the total price tag of these new expenses for the district add up to about $200 million.

The school district has had stable budgets in recent years, but after a major influx of federal COVID relief dollars runs out, the report estimates, the district could be $628 million in the red by 2026.

“CPS could find itself in a similar position by the end of this decade as it did in the middle of the last decade: having to rely upon one-time budget gimmicks and draws on fund balance to avoid significant cuts in educational services,” the report cautions.

The upcoming shift away from mayoral control would bring Chicago Public Schools more in line with other school districts, where district and city finances are completely separate.

In July 2021, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill that will phase in an elected school board with 21 members for Chicago Public Schools by 2027. In November 2024, Chicago residents will elect 10 members while the mayor will continue to appoint 11 members. In 2026, Chicagoans will be able to elect the remaining 10 seats and the president of the board.

Pritzker signed another piece of legislation in December 2021 that required the Chicago Board of Education to commission an independent financial review report assessing the district’s funding and detailing the financial agreements between the city of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. That law specified that the report had to be sent to the Governor’s office, the Illinois board of education, Chicago board of education, the General Assembly, and the mayor’s office no later than Oct. 31, 2022.

Report tallies some hypothetical costs

The district’s ties with the city run deep after more than 30 years of mayoral control. The new report acknowledges that it likely doesn’t offer a complete list of the two entities’ financial ties.

One possible cost shift noted in the report is the city charging the school district to use water. It outlines that the city could technically start charging the school district roughly $12 million in annual water, sewer, and permit fees. Currently, these fees are waived for the city’s schools and other public and nonprofit entities, such as its community college system.

The city has also helped the district cover costs for some of its long-term debt, incurred to foot the bill for school construction and building projects. Those payments, bringing in about $142 million a year through a city tax levy, are slated to continue until 2029.

The district is already taking on some expenses the city has chipped in for historically. Chicago Public Schools has been paying a growing amount toward the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund, a city-run pension program that covers district support staff and other employees. The city was handling those costs until recent years, though it did not fully cover them as it went along. This year, the district increased its contribution to $175 million, over objections from some school board members and the teachers union.

Last year, the district also took over from the city the cost of school resource officers and its crossing guard program, for which CPS budgeted $16.6 million this year.

The report notes that some of the uncertainty around these entanglements complicates the district’s broader financial outlook.

The district — serving significantly higher than average portions of students who have disabilities, are homeless, or learning English — now receives about $1 billion less from the state than what is deemed “adequate” funding based on Illinois’ own math. It also diverts hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding to cover debt payments for past school construction and other borrowing.

The largest source of the district’s funding is local property tax revenue, but it’s somewhat limited in hiking those taxes.

Advocates call cost-shifting retaliation

In a statement about the report, the district said it will continue to advocate with state legislators and officials to fully fund the district and address the fiscal challenges that come with the district’s unique position: It is the only district in the state that covers its own teacher pension costs.

“We will work with the State to develop a thoughtful process of disentangling CPS from its historical relationships with the City and other public agencies in Chicago, as well as a process to wind down the extraordinary pandemic-era federal support to avoid a threat to structural budgetary balance,” the statement said.

Chicago Public Schools officials have sounded alarms about the district’s long-term financial picture in recent months, saying they don’t want an elected school board to inherit money troubles. CEO Pedro Martinez has lamented that, unlike other Illinois districts, Chicago Public Schools is limited in asking residents to raise their own taxes to fund the district’s operations and building costs.

Sendhil Revuluri, the Vice President of the board, said the report helps the board and the public better understand the district’s fiscal outlook, which includes projected budget deficits.

“As both a CPS parent and a board member, it’s important to me that we keep these facts in mind as we make decisions — sometimes tough ones — to ensure all our students have excellent educational experiences and we keep improving their learning outcomes,” he said in an emailed statement.

Chicago advocates pushed for an elected school board after years of being dissatisfied with a mayor-controlled school board. That advocacy intensified after former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration closed more than 50 schools across the city’s South and West sides, largely affecting families of color.

As a candidate, Mayor Lori Lightfoot supported an elected school board. But after taking office, Lightfoot came to strongly oppose that shift, arguing that special interests would dominate races for board seats.

During the 2021 spring legislative session, she teamed up with Sen. Kim Lightford, D-Maywood, to propose a hybrid school board bill. The bill didn’t move far, but the mayor made it clear she strongly opposed the 21-person elected school board. Now, some advocates who pushed for the bill are concerned that the city will try to undermine the school board.

Pavlyn Jankov, a researcher for the Chicago Teachers Union, said the city is retaliating against the district for transitioning into an elected school board by shoving these costs onto CPS.

School districts and cities “are supposed to be funding their schools and working together through governmental agreements to raise revenue for their constituents,” said Jankov. “Schools in Chicago Public Schools serve the same residents and have the same borders as the city.”

The report was prepared by the district with help from Columbia Capital Management, a financial consulting firm that works with the city, district, and other government agencies in Illinois.

The state board of education is required to review the report and provide recommendations to the General Assembly by July 1, 2023 on the district’s ability to operate with its own budget.

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Chicago, who sponsored the elected school board bill that passed, said the House is waiting to review and discuss the report by CPS.

“The goal here remains to ensure that every student has access to high quality public education, and our review over the coming months will be focused on that,” said Ramirez.

Correction: Nov. 4, 2022: This article has been updated to reflect that Chicagoans will vote for 10 members of the elected school board and the board president in November 2026, not all 21 seats.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@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.

Illinois school districts received billions in COVID relief funds but some are slow to spend

2022-10-31T11:00:00+00:00

Illinois school districts have received more than $7 billion in federal relief money to help reopen schools and ease the academic and mental health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

But a Chalkbeat/Better Government Association analysis found that a slew of high-poverty districts across the state have spent small fractions of their relief funds, despite serving students who were especially hard hit by the pandemic. Many are in Chicago’s south suburbs, where almost a dozen districts have reported spending 15% or less of their federal dollars. Bloom Township, where 72% of almost 3,000 students are low-income, has spent only 6% of its $20 million allocation, according to state data.

Statewide, districts have spent about $2.8 billion of the total they received, as a federal fall 2024 deadline is looming.

High-poverty Illinois districts have spent a smaller portion – about 42% – of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, allocations than wealthier districts, which have spent roughly 60%, according to the Chalkbeat/BGA analysis of state records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. These high-poverty districts received much more recovery money and have overall spent more per pupil than wealthier ones.

State officials have taken notice of the slow spending in some districts, but are not concerned.

Krish Mohip, the deputy operational education officer for the Illinois State Board of Education, said the state has reached out to some districts that have reported spending little of their allocations or haven’t yet submitted plans for the latest two of three COVID relief packages. But he said his agency is confident that — if districts aren’t spending the money briskly yet — they have solid plans to do so in the next couple of years. Spending is picking up this fall, he noted.

“With ESSER III, we still have a way to go, but we have a lot of time,” Mohip said. “We really don’t have concerns about the rate of spending right now.”

Leaders in some high-poverty districts in Illinois, mostly in southern suburbs, say they have confronted issues with hiring and supply chains that have caused slower spending of their ESSER funds.

School leaders in the south suburban districts where the funds have been spent more slowly say they have confronted supply chain issues, hiring challenges, and other hurdles. Some said they have spent more briskly than state data suggests, but need to get caught up on reporting expenses.

Yet some education experts are questioning why some districts have been slower to spend their funds — emergency aid intended to help address the heightened academic and social-emotional needs of students. About 30% of Illinois students met reading state standards and about a quarter did in math this year, about 20% fewer students than in 2019, according to state data.

“If there are good ways to spend the money well right now, what are districts waiting for?” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “Kids have been hurt both academically and emotionally. We want to know what they are doing now to make kids whole.”

In Chicago’s south suburbs, spending is slow

Among the districts slowest to spend COVID money are a cluster of about 15 south suburban districts, which serve overwhelmingly low-income Black and Latino student populations. Those districts have spent 14% of their federal dollars on average. That’s about $1,200 per pupil – less than half the average amount for high-poverty districts statewide.

Almost 80% of students in these south suburban districts live in poverty. About 12% of their students met state standards in reading on the 2022 state report card and roughly 7% did in math, showing marked decreases in proficiency compared with pre-pandemic.

Brookwood School District 167, a district that serves 57% low-income students, has reported spending only 7% of its $6 million — or $449,228 — as of mid-September.

Brookwood Superintendent Bethany Lindsay said delays in the supply chain have been a factor, pointing to the delay in getting four vans the district purchased to transport students to field trips and community events.

“It took a year to receive them,” she said. “So we couldn’t claim that until we received them.”

Lindsay said the district has focused on removing obstacles that impact academic, social, and emotional learning for its more than 1,000 pre-K to eighth grade students. For example, the recently purchased vans help remove transportation barriers and expose students to new experiences, she said. In Brookwood, almost 17% of students met state standards in reading, and 6% did in math on the 2022 tests.

“The pandemic really showed that vulnerable populations were going to be most impaired because they have limited access to things already,” said Lindsay.

In addition to the vans, Brookwood has spent its money to adopt a two-to-one technology initiative that guarantees students have devices both at home and at school. The district also added another social worker to each of its four schools and has built two new playgrounds.

Lindsay said the district will share updated spending figures with the state in a quarterly expenditure report due at the end of October – a report required of all districts.

In the coming years, Lindsay said, the district will build a STEM and performing arts center to increase representation in those fields and to give students a place of creative expression.

“People can experience that for 100 years,” she said. “So it really stands for something in the community.”

Other south suburban district officials had varying reasons for the slow pace of spending. Some noted that school building repair projects took awhile to get off the ground; others said they are still figuring out what learning software to buy. One district, Dolton West, is holding on to the bulk of its ESSER money to undertake an uncommon plan to embrace hybrid learning next fall.

National experts say districts across the country have sometimes been slow to spend the federal money because they have grappled with how to make the best use of such a large windfall.

Many districts worry about having to lay off new hires and cut new programs when the one-time money runs out. Hiring shortages and supply chain issues have crimped some plans to spend the money, and these issues can be tougher for high-poverty districts, said Marguerite Roza of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

West Harvey-Dixmoor, where almost every student is low-income, has reported spending 13% of its federal COVID recovery money as of mid-September, according to state data. The district, where 7% of students met state standards in reading on the 2022 test and 3.5% did in math, earmarked a portion of the latest COVID package to address learning loss as required by the feds.

But the two interim superintendents, who stepped in at the end of 2021, made a plan to spend most of the district’s almost $17 million allocation on building projects.

“Our facilities haven’t actually been updated in close to 20 years,” said interim superintendent Creg Williams.

Williams said it took a while for the district to line up contractors and bring in materials and equipment to ramp up these projects, which include removing asbestos, upgrading ventilation systems and a school cafeteria, and refreshing flooring, doors, and student lockers. He said the district also launched an extended day learning program this school year and hired a dean of students and an instructional coach, and fall reporting to the state will reflect much additional spending.

In Hazel Crest, superintendent Kenneth Spells also said the district has spent more briskly than the 9% of the district’s $8.3 million allocation that state data shows, though he could not provide up-to-date amounts for how much his district has actually spent. In addition to spending on COVID mitigation measures, Spells said, the district has hired additional teachers so it could staff co-educators in some larger classrooms. It also paid existing staff to offer Saturday school for students needing additional academic help.

The district, where 99% of students are low-income, saw reading proficiency dip to about 9% in reading and 3.5% in math during the pandemic.

“We’re seeing some progress,” he said, “but it’s still early in the game.”

“Story is still being written”

The data obtained by Chalkbeat and the BGA shows all federal COVID relief expenditures reported by Illinois’ roughly 850 districts by mid-September, and is broken into five broad categories: capital projects, supplies and materials, employee salaries, benefits, and outside vendor contracts.

High-poverty districts have been more likely to put these federal funds into school facilities while wealthier ones have steered more dollars toward supplies and salaries.

Chicago has been an outlier among high-poverty districts in spending a large portion of its federal COVID relief dollars on salaries and benefits, largely for positions that already existed when the pandemic hit.

But beyond the broad categories, the state data offers little detail on what exactly districts bought with the money. And it doesn’t answer key questions, such as whether salary and benefit spending is for new or existing employees.

Jianan Shi, executive director of the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand, says parents have generally wanted to see more urgency – and transparency – from districts in spending the federal money.

“We have seen districts small and large fail to be transparent and to include parents in decision-making,” he said.

What Shi consistently hears parents say they want to see: more outreach to reconnect with students and families who disengaged from learning during the pandemic; more staff in schools to support students; after-school programs; mental health support and tutoring.

Spending on facilities allows districts to use the one-time money without setting themselves up for layoffs or program cuts down the road, and some research has suggested a link between better school buildings and student learning.

Still, Shi said, “I don’t remember many parents saying, ‘Let’s just fix this issue in my facility with this money.’ We forget we are talking about students here.”

Mohip, of the state board of education, said his agency monitors the expenditure data districts submit closely, and staff has reached out to some districts to see if they need any help or guidance. He notes districts overwhelmingly met a recent federal deadline to spend the first wave of pandemic recovery money aimed at schools.

Some districts are holding on to the money for good reasons, he said. For instance, a district might have bought computers and other technology early in the pandemic, and might be waiting until closer to the end of the equipment’s life cycle to replace it. Others might still be working to fill new positions.

Ultimately, the money will make a difference, he said. “As of right now, that story is still being written. What we do know is that the money was needed and helpful at a time of distress.”

Some of these districts may be waiting to spend their remaining funds on replacing technology, or to fill new positions at their schools.

Other districts have spent COVID money briskly

Generally, the Chalkbeat/BGA analysis found, wealthier districts have spent their smaller funds briskly.

New Trier Township, for instance, has already burned through its $1.2 million allocation. The affluent school district in Chicago’s north suburbs serving nearly 3,850 students used the money for protective equipment, COVID testing, and other reopening expenditures. It also added two instructional assistants focused on math instruction and an academic interventionist.

But some high-poverty districts have also already spent most of the federal dollars.

Laraway, a small district about an hour southwest of downtown Chicago, has spent almost 80% of its $1.8 million allocation.

Superintendent Joe Salmieri said the district put some of the money toward hiring a teaching assistant for each elementary classroom to better target students who need more help.

“It was full-court press — all hands on deck,” said Salmieri. “Time is of the essence to address the negative effects of the pandemic.”

Initially, Salmieri said, the district struggled to recruit candidates, so it increased the pay and was able to fill most of the jobs this past summer.

The district, where almost all 450 students qualify for subsidized lunch, has also updated its math curriculum and ramped up after-school and summer programming. Salmieri said academic recovery is likely a “three-year journey.”

In Pembroke, an elementary district that serves 173 students, including 91% living in poverty, has spent 90% of the $3.4 million it received. Most of the money has been used on upgrading the single school building and tackling the pandemic’s academic damage, said Superintendent Nicole Terrell-Smith.

On the 2022 state tests, about 10% of students scored proficient in reading, and almost 11% did in math. To address this, Terrell-Smith has proposed that all students receive a personalized learning plan to help teachers tailor instruction to their academic needs. Currently, staff are getting professional development to help them to create these plans for the 2023-24 school year.

“I don’t want to have a beautiful facility but students who can’t read,” said Terrell-Smith.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Jewél Jackson covers K-12 and higher education for the Better Government Association. Contact her at jjackson@bettergov.org

In one high-poverty Chicago suburb, a plan to use COVID relief funds to embrace hybrid learning

2022-10-31T11:00:00+00:00

Back in May, the superintendent of Dolton West, a high-poverty elementary district in Chicago’s south suburbs, invited a group of educators to learn about “the next generation classroom.”

“I think it’s pretty cool,” superintendent Kevin Nohelty told them. “Way out there.”

In the vision laid out that day by a tech consultant and a sales rep from an interactive board manufacturer, the entire 1,890-student district would embrace hybrid learning. In each classroom, two or more large touch screens would allow the teacher to interact with students tuning in from home or from other classrooms. A camera mounted on the ceiling would track the teacher for those remote students.

Dolton West plans to spend the bulk of its $21 million in federal pandemic recovery money to bring a similar vision — one that melds in-person and remote learning — to the district, Nohelty told Chalkbeat. It’s a highly uncommon step for a district serving elementary students, most of whom are Black and living in poverty.

Superintendent Kevin Nohelty plans on rolling out Dolton West’s hybrid learning plan next fall.

Nohelty says the hybrid learning plan will roll out next fall and make the district a national trailblazer, “unstoppable” if another pandemic or other major disruption hits.

Officials say the revamp would allow the district to proactively address teacher shortages and to rethink the school day and week, with students attending, say, three days in person and two virtually.

“The classroom would no longer be just the four walls,” Nohelty said. “You can be anywhere in the world and be able to engage with your teachers.”

Over the past year, some experts and student advocates have voiced frustration that few school districts are using pandemic relief dollars as federal education leaders urged: to boldly reimagine learning post-pandemic. Meanwhile, education tech companies are angling to capitalize on the influx of federal money by convincing school districts to double down on the technology that kept them going during COVID school shutdowns.

But for many educators, simultaneously teaching in-person and remote students was among the most challenging aspects of pandemic schooling. And online learning did not work well for many students — especially younger learners and those living in poverty.

Has Dolton hit on a solution to a slew of post-pandemic challenges — or is it setting out to address the academic fallout from the pandemic by giving students more of what contributed to that fallout in the first place?

Some experts question whether the district is giving itself enough time to pilot its plan, secure permission from the state to roll it out, and get input from families and educators.

The district, which serves the neighboring communities of Dolton and Riverdale, has not yet broadly shared its hybrid learning vision with parents and teachers beyond last spring’s focus group. The teachers union president, for one, says she only heard about the plan from a Chalkbeat reporter.

Loree Washington, a Dolton community leader and parent mentor whose son graduated from junior high in the district, said she would be skeptical about shifting any portion of the school day and school week back online without a pressing reason.

“The virtual learning environment was not successful for us — it just didn’t work,” she said. “So if you are offering more of that, what is your plan to ensure success? We know we can’t do the same thing and expect a different result because that would be insanity.”

Dolton looks to create hybrid learning plan

At Washington Elementary in Riverdale, principal Josh Markward says the pandemic pushed the district to become more tech-savvy.

Dolton spent much of the first of three federal COVID relief packages to close the digital gap, getting students computers and hotspots to connect to the internet at home. This school year, across Washington’s classrooms, tablets and headphones share desk space with textbooks.

Veteran educators such as Anita Pennington can be found at an interactive whiteboard, working on rhyming words with a pair of struggling second grade readers while their classmates do a reading comprehension exercise on their Chromebooks.

But the pandemic and the shift to remote learning also tested students in the economically distressed Chicago Southland district, where officials take pride in providing free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student, and in focusing on social-emotional learning and restorative justice since long before the pandemic.

Dolton, with a shrinking tax base, only receives about 70% of adequate state funding, by the state education agency’s own math. Washington and other community leaders recently joined a new statewide campaign to advocate for fully funding schools.

Students in Anita Pennington’s reading class receive small group instruction while others use Boom Cards on their laptops at Washington Elementary.

Citing COVID fears among families and teachers, the district remained virtual for the entire 2020-21 school year, making it a national outlier.

“Academically, (the pandemic) was tough,” Markward said. “Everyone took a big hit. Everyone was trying to figure it out, teaching on a computer screen.”

On the state’s 2022 standardized tests, 4% of Dolton students met Illinois standards in math, and 9% did in reading, both down slightly compared with before COVID. Chronic absenteeism jumped by more than 20 percentage points, to 53% of students.

After returning to full-time in-person instruction last fall, the district set out to address the damage. In a federal COVID relief spending plan submitted to the state, it said it would beef up its after-school programs and hire additional staff to help with students’ recovery, among other measures.

Then, officials shifted gears. Nohelty said he wanted to save the remaining roughly $20 million for a bolder, more comprehensive plan to rethink learning.

Nohelty says he was deeply shaken after watching the pandemic upend learning in his district — and feels it’s crucial that districts prepare for the next disruption now.

“I don’t want to go through that again and put learning on the backburner,” he said. Thanks to his hybrid plan, “We would be unstoppable — and I say that with passion.”

The hybrid model would give students who are sick, traveling, or missing a ride to school a chance to remain connected to the classroom, he said. That could be a game-changer for students with disabilities that make regular attendance challenging.

And, Nohelty says, the district would be prepared for staffing shortages, allowing educators to teach students in more than one classroom — perhaps with an aide or substitute supervising the students logging on from other classrooms.

“It’s what I would consider very cutting-edge,” Nohelty said of the district’s hybrid plan. “I do believe we are going to change the way we do learning in Southland.”

When Frank Brandolino of Joliet-based Velocita Technology came to meet with the educator focus group last May, he explained that his company has been developing a hybrid “solution” along with Nohelty and Dolton’s deputy superintendent, Sonya Whitaker. Besides the technology, the plan would also include extensive professional development, he said.

The interactive board rep demonstrated software that teachers can use on their boards that allows students to take quizzes, share photos, and “huddle” to collaborate virtually with each other. As many as 60 students can log on at one time, the sales rep noted. Teachers, meanwhile, can track whether students are actively engaging with the platform.

The portal, accessible from anywhere in the world, is the company’s “COVID child,” the rep said. Brandolino then showed a short video featuring a college History 101 class, in which four in-person and 16 virtual students collaborate on an assignment about ancient civilizations and then share their work with the class.

Teachers peppered the group with questions, some voicing enthusiasm for the portal’s features.

Dolton West’s hybrid model would allow students who are sick or absent from school to stay connected to their classrooms.

Experts raise questions about Dolton’s plan

Bree Dusseault, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, says that it’s refreshing to see a district thinking about how the federal relief dollars can help reimagine learning. Overwhelmingly, districts have used the money to buttress a status quo whose inequities and limitations the pandemic underscored.

In surveys, high school students have said they want schools to look different after the pandemic, and some have voiced interest in the flexibility hybrid learning can offer, including for students juggling school with work, internships, or college-credit classes.

But, says Dusseault, remote learning was hard for younger learners. Given the planned fall of 2023 districtwide launch, a number of questions remain, Dusseault says:

Does Dolton have time to pilot this model on a small scale, then gradually roll it out based on data on student outcomes it collects along the way? How will officials reconcile the plan with state instructional time requirements and employee contract obligations? How will the district sustain the ongoing costs of the plan, including refreshing technology, once the federal money runs out?

Most importantly, how will the district ensure that students learning remotely part-time remain engaged in learning? Do all students even have a quiet, safe place to learn virtually?

Those were issues in Dolton during remote learning, when several teachers told Chalkbeat that some students joined in from noisy settings while others eventually stopped logging on.

“This district might be looking to implement a plan that’s not fully baked,” Dusseault said. “Innovation for innovation’s sake is not what we’re looking for.”

Both Dusseault and Bart Epstein, an expert at the University of Virginia and head of the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange, are not aware of other districts adopting indefinite hybrid learning. There are good reasons for that, says Epstein: Expecting young students to stay home two days a week would be a hardship for parents and a challenge for teachers having to juggle both in-person and virtual learners.

“Having hybrid learning as an option for some students to use occasionally is a great idea,” he said. “I am not aware of anybody making the argument that permanent, forced hybrid learning is a net win for students.”

Dusseault stresses district officials need to be communicating about their plan with teachers and families and gathering feedback. Now.

Darlene McMillan, the head of the district’s teachers union, said she was reluctant to comment on the plan until the district spells it out publicly. She said staff vacancies are indeed an issue in Dolton. But the idea of teaching multiple classrooms using hybrid technology concerns her, and might be at odds with the district’s educator contract, she said.

Technology has powered learning in Dolton

On a recent Thursday afternoon, second grade teacher Richard Kealey stood in front of an interactive board in his classroom in Dolton’s Lincoln Elementary. He was teaching addition to the nine students in attendance that day.

A boy — dressed in the district’s uniform of white polo shirts and navy pants — had answered that 5 plus 4 equals 9. Kealey scribbled that answer onto the board with his finger and asked his students if it was correct.

“Don’t be shy, class,” he said. “Speak up!”

Teacher Richard Kealey assists his students as they use i-Ready to learn math at Lincoln Elementary in Dolton.

The students responded with a chorus of yeses. Then they put away their workbooks under their desks, donned headphones, and fired up their tablets. Kealey walked the room checking on students as they logged on to a math program called i-Ready, which offers a series of math games that grow easier or harder depending on how well users do — a program Kealey and Lincoln principal Byron Stingily credit with faster-than-projected growth in math.

Kealey estimates his students missed out on half a year of learning during the virtual stretch. A year after they returned to campus, there is still academic and social-emotional catching-up to do.

“It has been great to have students back in person,” he said. “Remote is really challenging on kids.”

During student pickup at Lincoln later that afternoon, some parents and students echoed that refrain: Technology: good. Virtual learning: hard.

Seventh grader Ja’Shawn McGee said bouncing back from remote learning has been tough. He is still trying to get back on track, especially in math and science.

“It was hard, trying to learn on a laptop,” he said. “I like being in front of a teacher.”

Eternity Lee said her son, Elijah, is also playing catch-up.

“He hated e-learning,” she said. “He missed his friends. He fell behind academically.”

In Dolton, students are still catching up academically after the pandemic’s disruptions; some parents say virtual learning tested families.

She said she wants to see the district spend its federal COVID relief dollars on after-school programs and more one-on-one help with reading for her son, echoing the original spending plan the district had submitted to the state.

Nohelty says the model he envisions won’t simply reprise the virtual learning seen during the early days of the pandemic, but rather draw on its lessons to make technology work better for students going forward.

He acknowledged the district is going into uncharted territory. He is considering a site visit to high schools in California that have adopted hybrid learning. The district still must ask the state to waive some seat time requirements, step up public engagement about the plan, and work out the details of a pilot later this school year. He hopes to bring the plan to his school board in December and seek proposals from vendors next year.

Washington, the Dolton community leader who has served as a parent mentor in elementary classrooms for years, says educators need more help to catch students up academically, from tutoring to more after-school programs.

“If we’re talking about emergency funding, tell me what you’ll do to address the damage now,” she said. “What are we doing about student achievement?”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board moves to take over once-lauded charter serving Black boys

2022-10-26T22:35:09+00:00

Chicago’s school board moved Wednesday to take over two South Side charter campuses that specialize in serving Black boys — an unprecedented step to pull the school’s charter but preserve an academic model officials acknowledged has delivered for many students.

School board members voted unanimously to revoke the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men’s charter. They forcefully rejected the school’s arguments for more time to prove they are on the right track, and voicing dismay at the school’s response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving the school’s founder.

Urban Prep leaders pushed back forcefully, calling on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to halt the district’s plan to take over its two campuses.

Urban Prep, which once received national recognition for steering its students to graduation and college admissions, has come under intense district scrutiny in recent years. Its founder, Tim King, resigned his positions as CEO and board chair this summer after a district watchdog report substantiated allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a former student — allegations King has strongly denied.

The district has also rung alarms about the school’s financial management, which is the focus of an ongoing district inspector general investigation, as well as its services for students with disabilities and the number of licensed teachers it employs.

In a Tuesday news conference on the Englewood campus and during Wednesday’s board meeting, the school’s leaders and supporters decried the district’s own track record of serving Black male students and said the school, run largely by Black men, has delivered better outcomes. They said Urban Prep has gotten its finances in order more recently, and accused the district of using the allegations against King to launch a takeover of the school.

But school board officials were unmoved.

“It’s an egregious report, and it should make everybody upset,” said board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, referring to the investigation’s findings about King. “It’s shameful to me that the Urban Prep board had this information and did not act swiftly.”

However, district officials said Urban Prep has forged a strong academic model and a supportive environment for Black boys, who in Chicago and nationally have long faced the widest academic disparities. In an unusual move, district CEO Pedro Martinez said Wednesday the two campuses, which have a combined enrollment of about 370 students, will remain open under district management — either as free-standing schools or as programs of existing high schools. It plans to keep teachers and staff at the school.

“We want to make sure high-quality programs continue for children in Bronzeville and Englewood — it’s essential,” Martinez said. But, he added, “We cannot compromise. We need ethical behavior, and we need to make sure we are protecting our children.”

The school can appeal the district’s decision to the Illinois State Board of Education. The state took over a third Urban Prep campus in 2018 after the school board revoked its charter.

Tensions between school, CPS boil over

The inspector general’s report alleged King groomed and sexually touched a student who was 16 at the time. According to the report, the relationship continued after the student graduated, and he eventually came to work at Urban Prep; the report also says he continued to receive pay and benefits long after he stopped working there.

The district said the school’s handling of the investigation was troubling because it allowed King — who was featured on a 2010 People Magazine cover as “hero of the year” — to continue interacting with students after the inquiry substantiated the allegations.

Urban Prep also refused to email families about the investigation’s findings, and appointed King to two boards after he resigned, according to board documents.

Meanwhile, an ongoing district watchdog investigation is taking a closer look at the school’s finances. The district says that for years the school relied on district cash advances and high-interest loans to make payroll, racking up more than half a million dollars in finance charges in the process.

Yet Urban Prep still defaulted on paying salaries, leases, and vendors providing services for students with disabilities. The school was able to use a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan during the pandemic to balance its books, but a separate inspector general investigation found it inflated the number of employees on the loan application.

During public comment at the school board meeting and during a Tuesday press conference, Urban Prep officials and supporters decried the plan to revoke the school’s charter. They argued that district leaders can’t come in and replicate the charter’s climate and culture, which is steeped in the sense of identity and backgrounds of its leaders.

They touted the school’s outcomes, from its attendance rate to the 100% college acceptance rate that the charter has long made a cornerstone of its model.

(The rate of College Prep students who actually enroll in college within a year of graduation has plunged in recent years to 48% on the Bronzeville campus and 63% on the Englewood campus, according to state data.)

Troy Boyd, the chief operating officer, asked the board to at least delay the vote on revoking the school’s charter, insisting the school has done everything the district asked of it, and that its financial problems are a thing of the past. He called Wednesday’s vote “tragic.”

“The non-renewal of Urban Prep would mean the end of something that has been transformational for the city,” he said. “We won’t stop fighting.”

At the meeting, a string of students, dressed in the school’s uniform of navy blazers, red ties, and khakis, spoke about the impact the school has had on them, which many credited to the Urban Prep’s leadership and educator team of largely Black men.

Avery Barnes, a sophomore at the Bronzeville campus, said at the school he came to see his value as a Black male, built close relationships with educators, and went on several college visits as an underclassman.

“I feel like Urban Prep has already started the process of preparing me for adulthood,” he said, adding that, “Urban Prep Academies needs to be renewed simply because they make young Black males feel accepted and seen in a society where we are often predicted to go to jail or end up in an early grave.”

Kevin Scott, a senior at the Bronzeville campus, said the school gives students positive role models who look like them in the classroom and principal’s office. Unlike district-run schools, it remained open for in-person instruction throughout the 2020-21 school year, Scott, a National Honors Society member, pointed out.

“Urban Prep is more than just a school,” he said. “It’s been like a family, a safe place, a hangout and so much more.”

Urban Prep Charter Academy leaders and parents hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon in Englewood.

Inside Urban College Prep Englewood Tuesday afternoon, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer at the charter school, said the charter has made progress in rectifying past financial problems, and said Urban Prep officials had completed more financial reporting than at any CPS schools.

Leaders dismissed the district’s claim that the school has compromised its students’ safety. He also argued that the district has been unfairly attacking Urban Prep for some time by revoking the license for its downtown campus in 2018, and disparaging the charter to potential financial lenders.

“Despite CPS’ lack of success and commitment to Black male students, they have the audacity to think they can be successful taking over Urban Prep and turning it into a program of another CPS high school,” Lacewell added. “It is both ludicrous and infuriating.”

But school board members and district officials said they could not allow the charter’s current leadership to continue on. The board has granted the school a series of short-term extensions of its charter amid mounting concerns, in part because of its reluctance to cause any disruption to students at the height of the pandemic, members said.

“At this point, unfortunately, all doubt has been removed that the leaders of the organization do not have students’ best interests at heart,” board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools slated to revoke Urban Prep’s charters

2022-10-24T22:57:15+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is poised to take over two campuses of a charter school once lauded for steering Black boys to college but more recently mired in financial and other troubles.

The district is recommending that its school board revoke the charters for Urban Prep’s Englewood and Bronzeville campuses during its Wednesday meeting — a move that comes on the heels of district claims of financial mismanagement and a district inspector general investigation that alleges sexual misconduct by the school’s founder.

However, citing Urban Prep’s distinctive programming, district CEO Pedro Martinez is recommending that the two campuses remain open under district management.

Tim King, who resigned as Urban Prep’s CEO and board chair in August, has strongly denied the allegations against him in court filings and media reports. King’s attorney and current school leaders could not be reached Monday, but the school released a statement saying the school district was targeting it despite a track record of serving Black boys.

Board documents, including a summary of the inspector general’s report first released publicly Monday morning, outline a string of issues with Urban Prep’s operations. The report alleged that King groomed and sexually touched an underage student who eventually came to work at the school — and continued to receive paychecks and benefits for years after he stopped working there. And it recommended that the district fire King and place a do-not-hire designation in his personnel file.

Board documents also say the school has been mismanaged financially for years, failed to provide students with disabilities with federally mandated services, and failed to staff enough licensed educators.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said financial mismanagement and other missteps at the school violated the law, endangered students, and wasted taxpayer dollars.

“The timing for this non-renewal is student-centered — making this decision now, instead of next year — enables families to make informed decisions about their next step,” the district said.

In its own statement, Urban Prep said it has worked in good faith with the district on meeting its conditions to reauthorize the charters. It said the district is using the misconduct allegations against King to “control and undermine Urban Prep’s operations and new leadership team.” It called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to intervene.

“If equity is a priority in a city where residents want positive outcomes for Chicago’s young, intelligent, Black men then the future existence and independence of Urban Prep Academies must be preserved,” the statement said.

If the school board pulls Urban Prep’s charters, the school will have the option of appealing to the Illinois State Board of Education.

The two all-boy campuses, which have seen enrollment shrink in recent years, together serve about 370 Black students. The state took over operations of a third Urban Prep campus in 2018 after the school board revoked its charter amid academic concerns.

Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men received national recognition for ensuring each of its graduates was admitted to college; People Magazine named King “hero of the year” and featured him on its cover in 2010.

The inspector general’s office found in a previous investigation that Urban Prep used a loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program during the pandemic to help balance its books, but overstated the number of people it employed in its application.

Board documents say that the school came to rely increasingly on cash advances from the school district and high-interest loans to keep going financially. The school repeatedly defaulted on paying staff salaries, leases, and vendors who provided services to its students with disabilities, according to the documents.

The latest district watchdog investigation, first reported in WBEZ earlier this summer and obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request, says King started an inappropriate relationship with an Urban Prep student, who was 16 at the time. The alleged victim described the relationship to district investigators, who found that King supported the student financially through college, took him on “lavish” vacations and eventually hired him at the school.

King’s attorney told WBEZ earlier this year that the investigation was deeply flawed.

During recent school board meetings, Urban Prep students, parents, and other supporters have appealed to the board to keep backing the school. They have said it has made a difference in the lives of low-income Black boys — a student group that has long faced the widest disparities in student outcomes in Chicago and other urban districts.

Board documents describe the reaction by the charter’s leadership to the IG investigation and eventual conclusions this past summer as “astonishing.” The school failed to inform the district that following King’s resignation, its board appointed him to a legacy board for the charter, and that he would run the Urban Prep Foundation, the documents state.

In a signal of their growing concerns about the school, school board members granted the Englewood campus only a one-year renewal with numerous conditions last school year. The district now says the school failed to meet those conditions.

Board documents say the district wants to continue operating the school as a campus of one of its existing high schools. It will try to retain as many of the current administrators, teachers, and staff members as possible.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s four-year high school graduation rate hits record high

2022-10-24T20:08:31+00:00

Chicago Public Schools saw its highest four year-graduation rate in at least a decade, while also making strides in the number of freshmen on track to graduate, district officials said Monday. But the announcement came amid the release of sobering test scores known as the “nation’s report card” that indicated a steep decline in math proficiency among Chicago students.

Inside Gage Park High School on the Southwest Side, CEO Pedro Martinez celebrated the improvements in graduation rates, freshman-on-track rates, and $1.5 billion in scholarships, while lauding the accomplishments of the class of 2022.

Martinez said he is “very, very proud” of the four-year graduation rate, which increased to 82.9% last year, up nearly 3% from the 2020-21 school year.

The district saw marginal improvements to the five-year graduation rate, which stood at nearly 84% in 2022, up from 83.8% in 2021. About 89% of freshmen were on track to graduate on time, Martinez said.

While the district made strides in overall graduation rates, racial disparities and pandemic challenges persist among Black and Latino students. However, the graduation rate gap among racial groups narrowed last year.

The Monday announcement brought an upbeat turn to a morning that also saw the release of scores on the National Assessment of Academic Progress, or NAEP. Chicago’s scores dropped sharply in fourth and eighth grade math, wiping out roughly a decade of academic growth, and dipped more modestly in reading in those grades — a decrease the agency administering the test does not consider statistically significant.

Martinez acknowledged that proficiency rates had declined among elementary and high school students, but expressed confidence the district would see a rebound across grade levels this year.

“We just know last year was a very difficult year,” Martinez added. “We feel comfortable with the structures that we have in place this year that we will have a strong recovery.”

Last year, amid ongoing disruption from the pandemic, Chicago hit a five-year graduation rate record for the third year in a row, with 83.8% of students graduating.

All racial groups saw upticks, though white students’ rate grew the most. Black boys — a group district officials have deemed a priority — logged a comparable increase.

In 2021, the four-year graduation rate slipped slightly, with 80.2% of high schoolers graduating on time. That year, the district also touted its lowest dropout rate ever, at just below 4%.

Chicago district leaders take special pride in the growth of graduation rates over the past decade. In 2010, the overall graduation rate stood at just 55%. The district has also made headway in narrowing racial and gender disparities in graduation, though significant gaps remain.

In the 2022 data, the graduation rate for Asian American students, the highest in the district, was 14 percentage points higher than that for their Black peers.

Graduation rates also continue to lag for students with disabilities and English language learners.

In total, 21,205 district students got diplomas last spring compared to 20,722 in 2021.

“Today’s announcement is very encouraging,” Martinez said. “But we also know there’s still a lot of work to do, especially as we’re recovering from a pandemic.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s NAEP scores fall, wiping out a decade of growth in math

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Chicago’s latest scores on a test known as the “nation’s report card” showed steep declines in math while holding fairly steady in reading.

The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or NAEP — test released today add to a growing body of evidence quantifying the academic damage from pandemic disruptions.

The declines return achievement levels to what they were about a decade ago — reversing years of progress for Chicago Public Schools. Across Illinois, scores exceeded the national average and mostly remained flat, but there was a marked decrease in eighth grade math.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona called the national scores “appalling and unacceptable.”

“These are definitely sobering test scores,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, Chicago Public Schools’ chief education officer. She added, “It’s sad to see some of the progress that we had made in the past several years wiped off.”

In Chicago, the test also offered fresh evidence that the academic fallout has been greatest for Latino and Black students. White students generally saw scores dip more slightly, widening pre-pandemic disparities.

But there were also bright spots: Overall, the district, which had seen declines in reading scores leading up to the pandemic, saw dips in reading that are not considered statistically significant. Reading scores ticked up slightly for eighth grade Latino students. English language learners made significant gains and now outperform peers in other urban districts and nationally.

Chkoumbova said officials are also seeing signs this fall that some recovery strategies are paying off, including staffing tutors and academic interventionists, expanding after-school programs, and enlisting instructional coaches to help teachers.

Latest NAEP scores are first since 2019

The NAEP is considered one of the country’s most definitive measures of where students stand academically. Fourth- and eighth-graders across the country take the test administered by the federal government, which allows comparisons to be made across states and over time. Students in Chicago and elsewhere last took the test in 2019, on the eve of massive disruption from the COVID outbreak and a shift to remote learning. A representative sample sat for the latest test from January through March.

Scores for Illinois as a whole were flat between 2019 and 2022 for fourth graders in both reading and math — one of the few states across the country that held its ground in that grade. Eighth grade scores dipped, particularly in math, where the decrease was most pronounced nationally as well.

“We are proud that Illinois students scored above the national average in both reading and math for grades 4 and 8,” the Illinois State Board of Education said in a statement. “This is the nation’s gold standard report card, and this demonstrates that our investments in learning recovery serve as a national model because they are working. We have much work to do, but this is an important indication that our students are on the right track.”

Nationally, students in fourth and eighth grade saw unprecedented declines in math and significant dips in reading achievement between 2019 and 2022. The declines were broad-based — affecting students in virtually every state and region of the country. Other research has already shown that academic progress was derailed during that period. But the results from the closely watched NAEP exam provide the most detailed and authoritative accounting yet, with data coming from a representative set of students nationwide and allowing for comparisons across states and some cities.

Before the pandemic, Chicago’s average math scores had remained essentially unchanged since the mid-2010s, after a decade of steady improvement in both reading and math.

On the 2019 test, the city’s average reading scores had slipped, and the city lagged slightly behind other urban districts. The eighth grade drop mirrored a dip in eighth grade reading scores nationwide, which had remained largely flat for about a decade.

In both eighth grade reading and math, Chicago’s 2022 scores put it roughly in the middle of the pack among about two dozen large districts that administered the tests. Here, about a fifth of fourth graders scored “proficient” in math and reading, which represents a more than 10 percentage point drop in math. Another fifth of eighth graders scored “proficient” in reading and 16% did in math on the test, which sets a relatively high bar for proficiency.

Racial gaps in NAEP scores widen

The district has also grappled with significant racial and income disparities in how its students perform on the test.

Based on the latest scores, some of these disparities only widened during the pandemic. In both fourth and eighth grade math in particular, the disparities between scores for Black and white students widened to more than 40 points. The gaps between low-income students and their peers generally increased as well.

Students with disabilities also lost ground on the tests, though that decline was not as steep as it was for other student groups.

Chkoumbova said the district has used its “opportunity index,” which draws on student demographics and other data, to direct the most recovery resources to the schools with the highest needs, including those serving the most Black and low-income students. That’s an approach officials say they hope will help the district attack widening disparities.

Federal and Chicago education officials both said they found falling math scores and proficiency particularly troubling in the eighth grade — a gateway to more advanced math coursework in high school that prepares students for STEM careers. Chicago had one of the steepest declines in eighth grade math scores.

In part because of pre-COVID dips in reading scores, the district set out to redouble its early literacy efforts, with a focus on structured phonics instruction for young learners. Mary Beck, the district’s head of teaching and learning, credited these efforts with helping the district hold the ground in reading.

She said across the board, she expects the district to recoup lost ground on the NAEP much faster than it took to make those 2010 gains.

“Our ability to rebound and reach higher — we’re much better primed for that,” she said.

Impact of remote learning difficult to determine

It is challenging to tease out the academic impact of remote learning from the broader pandemic disruption, including the trauma students experienced as families grappled with illness, death, economic fallout, and a rise in gun violence. Still, new evidence is emerging that virtual learning contributed to declines in learning.

Chicago stuck with remote learning longer than some other urban districts, reopening for hybrid instruction in March of 2021 for elementary and middle school students, and in mid-April for high schoolers. On a call with reporters, Peggy Carr, commissioner of National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, said the scores paint a complicated picture of the role of virtual learning, and the agency would study the data more closely before drawing any conclusions.

A Chalkbeat analysis of the national data found mixed evidence. In fourth grade math, states where schools were fully open for longer tended to see smaller declines in scores. In eighth grade math and fourth grade reading, there was also a relationship, but it was very modest. In eighth grade reading, there was no correlation at all.

In comparing scores to 2019 and previous years, an important caveat is in order: Chicago’s enrollment has shrunk steadily over the past decade, and although its racial makeup has remained largely unchanged more recently, it now serves a smaller portion of low-income students.

Plummeting national results in reading and math from a slightly different, long-term NAEP trend test made headlines when they came out in September, showing that the pandemic and remote learning had erased two decades of student academic growth.

“As a country we face enormous challenges, and there are many areas of serious concern in this data,” said Carr, referring to the latest data.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Q & A: Chicago Public Schools’ academic chief on pandemic recovery and her goal to rethink the status quo

2022-09-29T21:00:38+00:00

Like other urban districts, Chicago Public Schools is tackling academic and mental health recovery from the pandemic in earnest after last school year’s persistent disruptions. And it continues to face long-standing challenges, from racial disparities in student outcomes and lackluster college completion rates.

So, earlier this year, when CEO Pedro Martinez was looking for a chief education officer – his second-in-command – he wanted a CPS stalwart and pragmatic problem-solver. He chose Bogdana Chkoumbova.

Raised and college-educated in Bulgaria, Chkoumbova started out in the district more than two decades ago as a special education teacher at Chopin Elementary on the West Side. She later served as Disney II Magnet School’s founding principal and spearheaded the North Side elementary’s expansion into the high school grades.

She moved on to roles in central administration in 2016, including as a member of the district’s bargaining team during contentious negotiations with the teachers union in 2019 and as chief schools officer before Martinez promoted her in January.

Chalkbeat Chicago spoke with Chkoumbova about what schools need as they recover from the pandemic, the district’s plan to bounce back and reimagine learning, and the roadblocks it must overcome.

You have served as a special education teacher, a principal, a network chief, and chief schools officer. How did these different roles prepare you to step in as the district’s No. 2 as it comes out of the pandemic?

Through my roles, I’ve continued to stay focused on the student experience. I also really value my experience in both elementary and high schools, and my respect for the differences in the school communities throughout Chicago. But at the end of the day, the vision and the goals that everyone has are very similar. After the setbacks that we had in the last couple of years, I think it’s a really exciting moment, not only to go back to a strong foundation and apply everything that we know how to do well as an educational system. But it’s also an opportunity for us to think about innovation — a newer, deeper, and broader vision for what student success looks like.

We have seen a tension between the yearning to get back to normal after all the pandemic upheaval — and the sense that we shouldn’t go back to a normal that did not work for many students. How can the district rethink what learning looks like in Chicago?

While the pandemic deepened some of the opportunity gaps, they were persistent and existing for a very long time. So clearly, all the strategies we’ve used in the past were not sufficient to eliminate these opportunity gaps. We need to think differently.

One initiative I can highlight is having a unique curriculum (Skyline, an initiative of former CEO Janice Jackson) that is culturally responsive and uplifts our students’ identities and their lived experiences in their neighborhoods and communities. One of the areas where I think we have the most opportunities, and we have not really solidified our approach, is the role of the student in the learning process. This year, we’re really thinking about deep student engagement in a more focused way, in our classrooms, but also outside the classroom. We want to support our students to feel that sense of belonging to their school community.

We had a really great summer engagement for our students. More than 91,000 students participated in programs. What made a difference is that we decided that this time around, we would support our schools to design their own summer programs that are more aligned with unique needs that they see for their students.

Another area where I’m really thinking about innovation is opportunities to expand access for students. In the last couple of years, we really doubled down on providing access to algebra for middle school students. We did this in a variety of ways, such as virtual classes and engaging high school teachers to teach in a hub model. It proved to be very successful.

How much do we know about where students stand academically post-pandemic?

We see in assessment data from the state that many of our students are far from proficiency in certain areas, and we are definitely very concerned about catching up. But I think one of the primary areas of focus right now — to make sure that we support our students to accelerate their learning — is strong social-emotional learning supports, helping them to rebuild relationships. I think one of the hardest consequences from the pandemic is actually social isolation. Learning is a social enterprise.

We are doubling down on making sure that we have strong classroom instruction, at grade levels and in all content areas. We have layers and layers of support for students, ranging from intervention teachers to our tutor corps to a lot of new after-school programs. On the teacher side, we have rolled out this year’s universal professional development plan, which is pretty robust. We want our teachers to be excited about the work, but also to have the support that they need to address this huge need that our students are presenting right now.

What are we finding out so far about which recovery efforts are working? What might be some areas where we’re not seeing expected gains?

Clearly, it is very early to talk about student outcomes as evidence. We’re just starting the school year, but there are some early promising signs. We have many schools that are raising their hand, looking for quality curriculum resources. We have over 400 schools, even in this challenging moment, saying, “We want to do the work around new curriculum adoption.”

We see our schools and principals really engaging in the work around instructional leadership, team development, and professional learning. We had thousands of educators joining us for professional development sessions throughout the summer and during the first few weeks of school, which indicates that people are excited and ready to embrace that work.

We are seeing an unprecedented number of after-school programs developed at the school level. Programs didn’t start until late October in a typical year, but this year, we are really rushing to get to that point. Our first-day attendance is very promising. Our students are eager to come back. From principals, I’m feeling that sense of calm and focus.

We have a large number of schools that adopted our new literacy and math assessment for our kindergarten through second grade students. We are wrapping up by the end of the month, and everyone will have an opportunity to look at the data and align their classroom instruction with individual student needs.

How long might it take for Chicago students to recover from the pandemic academically?

The pandemic lasted a long time, and I certainly hope that we don’t just recover. I hope that we exceed and accelerate progress for our students. I think this will be really dependent on how strongly aligned we are as a system to offer support to our schools. I think we will see pretty significant growth this year. I definitely can predict this. And it’s not just based on my optimism. I know that some of the key investments that we made this year will pay off in our schools.

CEO Martinez has spoken at least a couple of times recently about the issue of severely under-enrolled neighborhood high schools on the South and West sides — and about the possibility of exploring innovative models that take advantage of their smallness. Do you have a sense of what some of those approaches might be?

I don’t know exactly. Again, we don’t want to be prescriptive as to what that looks like. We want to engage the community, the parents, students, and principals in what we call design teams. But our vision is that we strengthen school, through programmatic investments or through offering certain pathways and connections with community colleges or business partners. I don’t think CEO Martinez thinks that there is an ideal school size that we should be driving towards. There is a value in small schools, and there can be very strong programs.

As you are gearing up to do this work, what’s standing in the way? What are the barriers?

We still have some challenges around staffing. We have some hard-to-staff areas: mathematics, science, and special education. Transportation is something we’re working on and improving. But I think the biggest challenge — but also a tremendous opportunity — is to build and rebuild trust. How do we work with parents, students, teachers, principals, and community members to make sure that we all share pride in the work of CPS?

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Can Chicago revitalize its tiny high schools?

2022-09-27T21:03:43+00:00

After 18 months of virtual learning, Terrence Smith returned to Chicago’s Austin College and Career Academy last year — and was struck by how empty the four-story building felt.

The West Side school lost more than a third of its student body during the pandemic, shrinking to fewer than 160 students, in a campus meant to serve almost 1,900.

To Terrence, then a junior, the course offerings felt thin, with only one music class and Spanish as the sole foreign language option. The school’s career programs had been scaled back. And with lackluster attendance adding to the sense of a hollowed-out campus, the social fabric felt threadbare.

“Kids weren’t motivated to come to school because Austin didn’t have a lot to offer,” Terrence said.

Dramatically shrinking South and West Side high schools such as Austin have bedeviled Chicago leaders for more than a decade. These campuses, which serve several thousand mostly low-income Black students, have been largely left to limp along — resulting in lean course offerings, fewer sports, clubs, and other extracurricular activities — and often, lower attendance, graduation, and other outcomes.

COVID-era disruptions magnified the problem: Even as high school enrollment remained stable districtwide, campuses enrolling 250 or fewer students lost a third of their student bodies on average since 2018. This week, the district is slated to release preliminary fall 2022 enrollment numbers showing added student losses at the elementary level, even as officials are forging ahead with plans for a new Near South South high school.

Now, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is vowing to boost the district’s tiny high schools as part of a broader plan to revitalize neighborhood schools with input from their local communities. He promised more details later this fall, but has made it clear salvaging these campuses will cost the district and has called on the state to chip in.

Small-by-design high schools in Chicago and elsewhere have yielded strong student results thanks to close relationships and collaboration.

But the question remains: Can CPS reverse-engineer a successful small high school out of what’s left of a once bustling large school?

District leaders, who cannot close schools until 2025 under state law, have signaled the answer for some schools might be a strong new academic or career focus, making up for the lack of breadth in coursework and activities. Experts say that approach can work — but the plan needs to be more than a shallow rebranding gimmick, and one that families and educators rally around.

“You can really focus on building a distinctive identity in that school that people own and have a hand in shaping,” said Jack Schneider, an associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “But central office shouldn’t decide what that identity is without community input.”

Chicago’s tiny high schools are a perennial issue

Steven McIlrath, who has taught math in Austin for 28 years, was also taken aback by Austin College and Career Academy’s pandemic-era loss of students.

McIlrath fears some students didn’t transfer but simply stopped coming to school. The campus needs engaging coursework and after-school activities to nurture students’ sense of connectedness, he said.

“The school feels like a shadow sometimes of what it could be,” McIlrath said.

The enrollment blow that the pandemic dealt small district-run schools such as Austin underscores how vulnerable these campuses and their students are to upheaval and trauma. But these enrollment losses are not a COVID-era phenomenon.

The number of charter and other high schools in the city grew markedly in the 2000s, even as the high school student population ticked up only modestly. An exodus of Black families from Chicago and other demographic changes have put added pressure on South and West side schools.

Critics of a city plan to build a new high school that would serve Chinatown and the South Loop have said the move will siphon yet more students from shrinking South Side high schools, such as Phillips and Tilden.

The district has propped up these and other shrinking schools with “equity” grants and federal pandemic recovery money that help them pay for essentials, such as the salaries and benefits of administrators and core subject teachers.

Under former CEO Janice Jackson, the city launched a competitive process to give neighborhood schools a boost with funding for new, in-demand programs. Hirsch High School, for example, sought to rebrand itself as a performing arts high school. But like a number of other small high schools, including Manley and Uplift, it didn’t get the money.

Mary Long, a Hirsch supporter whose nonprofit contracted with the school to provide restorative justice and coaching, appealed to the school board last spring not to let that school wither.

Already dramatically down from a heyday of more than 1,000 students, Hirsch’s enrollment dipped slightly during the pandemic. Last year, it was down to about 80 students, in a building with capacity for 1,500 students. Enrollment inched up this fall — to about 100 students.

“The soul has been taken from Hirsch,” Long, who was wearing a Hirsch shirt, told the board. “We have the barebone minimum of a school.”

A new career and technical education program could help the school find a niche in the area and draw more families, Long said.

Long, who became involved with Hirsch after her son was shot and killed a block away from the school in 2012, recently came together with supporters of five other shrinking South Side high schools, including Bowen and Corliss — an informal “East of the Dan Ryan Expressway” group that rallied to advocate jointly for solutions. Their main fear: closure.

“Students are constantly asking: “Why?’” Long said in an interview. “‘Why don’t we have swimming when we have a pool in the building?’ ‘Why don’t we have more programs that prepare us for the real world?’”

Across the Dan Ryan in Englewood, CPS built a new state-of-the-art $85 million high school — with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, athletic fields, a library with floor-to-ceiling windows. But it came with a condition: The neighborhood’s four under-enrolled high schools had to close.

Hirsch principal David Narain says he doesn’t think closure or consolidation is the answer for his school. It serves students with high needs, and has tried to capitalize on its smallness to do that better, emphasizing social-emotional learning and training staff in responding to trauma. It just brought on a full-time social worker.

“It’s my theory that if this school is no longer here and our students scatter to larger schools, they’ll be lost in the shuffle,” he said.

But, says Narain, the school’s size makes it difficult to offer richer coursework, including access to college-credit classes. For now, a grant makes it possible to offer after-school programs, such as a new campus garden. The performing arts focus the school pursued before the pandemic would enrich the student experience, but won’t double or triple the enrollment — what Narain says the school needs for a robust, sustainable program. The neighborhood’s poverty and instability are the real enrollment roadblocks, he argues.

During the pandemic, Hirsch’s per pupil spending increased from about $23,000 to $30,500. Overall, the district now spends $12,000 per pupil on average at high schools with more than 250 students and almost $26,000 on average per student at smaller high schools.

Martinez has said he is a fan of small schools. But he’s also acknowledged that operating Chicago’s severely under-enrolled neighborhood high schools is expensive. Despite spending more per student, some of these schools still don’t deliver a well-rounded student experience.

He told the school board last month about visiting some of these schools and admiring the beauty of their historic buildings.

But, he said, “I came out sad, feeling like this could be better. I kept thinking about the student experiences.”

In Chicago, more than 75% of CPS students go to high school somewhere other than their neighborhood school. In Austin, 93% of CPS students living in the school’s boundary go elsewhere. A Chalkbeat analysis found that about 95% of CPS high schoolers living within the attendance boundaries of schools with fewer than 250 students don’t choose that school.

In order to revitalize these shrinking high schools and attract more students, Martinez has called on the state legislature to provide small school grants along with the moratorium it put in place through 2024. He said that would allow the district to explore innovative models, such as converting some into career academies that prepare students for jobs in growing industries, such as aerospace.

Lessons from the past can inform small school revival

McIlrath, the Austin teacher, arrived at the school before it was converted into smaller schools-within-the-school, in a bid to create tighter-knit, more collaborative school communities.

The move played out against the backdrop of a national small schools movement, backed by the Gates Foundation and other reform-minded funders who funneled hundreds of millions of dollars toward launching small-by-design high schools and carving up existing larger ones. Chicago got more than $24 million over several years to transform a dozen schools, including Bowen.

Then, the funders moved on. Austin’s three small schools shrank, until the district merged them back into one high school.

Experts who studied the small schools movement found some of these schools showed promising gains in attendance and grades, as well as college persistence. But others languished. W. David Stevens of the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research said the most successful campuses had strong principals and a highly collaborative staff culture.

“There are benefits to smallness, but unless you are intentionally cultivating those benefits, you won’t see them,” said Schneider, of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has also studied the small schools movement.

One of the superpowers of small campuses, Schneider says, is that they make it easier to hear out students, parents, and educators and include them meaningfully in setting goals and making decisions.

The nonprofit Kids First Chicago set out to get that kind of community input before the pandemic. The group worked with community leaders to hold quality-of-life conversations in Austin and North Lawndale, areas that have seen large enrollment declines.

One idea that emerged was the concept of turning these school buildings into “community hubs” where under-enrolled schools lease extra space to nonprofits and other community organizations. That arrangement not only provides a revenue boost, but also brings needed services directly to families.

It can also shift perceptions of the schools by drawing residents into those buildings and creating more local ownership of their programs.

Kids First notes 36 campuses, most of them high schools, have more than 2,000 square feet of available space — some in areas where nonprofits are looking to expand, and the city has said it wants to encourage development.

There are examples — including in small high schools — of shared space. Several Chicago Public Schools host health clinics; others lease space to community-based organizations.

“What parents are saying is, ‘Can we bring some of these investments into school buildings?’” LeShonne Segura of Kids First said.

It’s not clear if Martinez will incorporate this concept into his revitalization plan.

Both McIlrath and Terrence, the student who is now a senior at Austin High School, feel a sense of possibility on campus this fall.

Teens this year seem “spongy” to McIlrath, eager to learn.

“We’re getting some momentum and traction,” he said. “I hope we’re going to survive this next wave of people outside the community prescribing solutions for us.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Study: Chicago students failed more classes during pandemic, but A’s rose too

2022-09-27T11:00:00+00:00

Chicago students got more failing and incomplete grades during the pandemic, though that increase was much steeper at elementary schools than high schools, a new report out today finds.

But researchers with the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research say COVID-era grading data also offers some bright spots — and clues about how to steer recovery dollars to the schools that need them the most.

At the elementary level, twice as many Chicago Public Schools students got Fs or incompletes during the spring of 2021, compared with 2018 and 2019, according to a new consortium study of pandemic grading in the district.

But at the high school level, an uptick in failing grades was relatively minor, suggesting the majority of students remained engaged in learning despite the pandemic’s disruption. As previously reported, both elementary and high school students also earned more A’s, with many students who were previously getting B’s now receiving higher grades.

Racial, income, and gender disparities predating the pandemic continued during the outbreak. Elementary schools with the largest increases in failing grades and incompletes were more likely to serve predominantly low-income and Black students. But even among schools serving similar student populations, there were major differences in grading.

That variation merits closer study to see why some campuses were better able to weather the upheaval — and could guide efforts to target resources for academic recovery, said Elaine Allensworth, who leads the consortium and co-authored the study.

“We’ve seen the headlines about a ‘lost generation,’” she said. “The fact is that it was really hard for everybody, but most students were able to stay engaged.

“Let’s focus our efforts on the students who really had a hard time,” Allensworth added. “It’s a hard task, but it’s not an overwhelming task.”

Over the past year, emerging national test score data showing major academic damage from the pandemic has drawn much attention. But grades are also a revealing measure of how students have fared, Allensworth noted.

Chicago’s grading data raises some concerns, she said, but it’s not doom and gloom across the board. However, the study did not look at grades for first through third graders, cohorts that data suggests might have experienced the brunt of the pandemic’s learning fallout.

The consortium study zeroed in on grading among students in grades 4 through 12 during the spring of 2020, when all learning abruptly shifted online, and 2021, when Chicago school buildings reopened but most students continued to learn virtually. It compared grades to those from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years, the last two before COVID upended public education across the country.

For high school students, the portion of failing grades in 2021 increased only slightly — from 6% to 8% of all course grades — compared with the pre-pandemic years. A larger portion of high school students, particularly those who were earning B’s before COVID hit, got A’s.

The study did not explore the reasons behind these shifts, but some educators have reported giving students more grace amid the trauma and upheaval of the COVID outbreak.

At the elementary level, the picture is more troubling: During 2017 through 2019, about 11% of students in grades 4 to 8 failed a class. In spring of 2021, that portion had jumped to 21%. On some campuses, that increase was much more dramatic.

Allensworth said the differences between the elementary and high school level don’t come as a complete surprise: High school students are more mature, and their coursework is set up for more independent learning. In high schools, there’s also a stronger focus on ensuring teens stay on track for graduation, placing these campuses in a better position to flag struggling students earlier.

That said, the increase in high school students who struggled to stay on track with learning is real, and ongoing efforts to re-engage them are important, Allensworth said. If students disconnected from school in 2020 and stopped coming from school, for example, they would not be reflected in 2021 grading data.

The district needs to understand these differences better, said Allensworth, whose team is poised to explore that question through student surveys and virtual platform engagement data. The district’s school board is slated to vote Wednesday on a no-bid contract with the University of Chicago for up to about $286,000 to administer surveys of students’ classroom experiences.

“Everyone was trying to figure this out on the fly — dealing with the crisis as best as they could,” she said. “Some schools seem to have figured out better strategies.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Two new Chicago efforts to cultivate more diverse teachers land federal grants

2022-09-13T19:56:53+00:00

Two new initiatives to recruit and support aspiring teachers at some of Chicago’s highest-need public schools are getting an infusion of federal cash.

Chicago Public Schools and DePaul University are receiving a collective $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education, part of a broader grant program to support innovative ways of enlisting, preparing, and retaining more educators, especially teachers of color.

The district’s program aims to offer more help and guidance to student teachers — educators-to-be working on district campuses while they pursue licensure — at high-poverty, hard-to-staff schools across the city.

DePaul University is gearing up to place 800 new teachers — career-changers and recent graduates in fields other than education — to teach special education, math, and other hard-to-fill roles at high-need neighborhood schools over the next five years.

The department announced the grants this week as U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and First Lady Jill Biden set out on a weeklong bus tour to showcase promising pandemic recovery efforts, including those to address teacher shortages.

District officials said in a statement that its new student teacher program will work to recruit and retain more veteran teachers of color to pair with novice teachers in the classroom, offering added support and mentoring to both groups. The effort aims to build on existing programs to create a pipeline for more diverse educators, including Teach Chicago Tomorrow, which steers district students toward careers in education.

The district credited Teach Chicago Tomorrow, among other efforts, with increasing the portion of new teacher hires who are Black or Latino to roughly half of all new educators this school year.

“We know that teachers make a profound difference in our students’ lives everyday and that impact can be even greater when a teacher looks like and understands their students,” district spokeswoman Mary Ann Fergus said in a statement.

Teacher and staff turnover is a perennial challenge for the district.

After increasing the number of staff positions during the pandemic and seeing retirements and resignations in some roles pick up, CPS saw a slight uptick in the number of unfilled positions at the start of the school year. It reported an almost 5% vacancy rate, compared with almost 3.5% during the first week of the 2021-22 school year.

Here and in other districts, certain teaching positions — particularly those in special education, science, math, and others — remain tough to fill. In addition, recruiting and retaining male Black and Latino teachers has continued to be a challenge: Latino men, for example, make up about 5% of Chicago’s teachers, even as Latino boys account for almost a quarter of all students.

The federal money awarded this week from the Teacher Quality Partnership grant program seeks to address these issues, supporting efforts in which school districts and teacher prep programs partner more closely. This fall, 22 initiatives nationally received a total of $24.8 million in five-year grants, including a teacher residency program in Colorado.

“These programs help prepare, place, develop, and retain effective teachers and leaders in our schools and classrooms,” Cardona said in a statement. “Our students need quality educators now more than ever to address their academic and mental health needs.”

The federal departments of education and labor recently sent a joint letter to district and state education leaders across the country urging them to step up efforts to tackle teacher and support staff shortages. The letter called for setting competitive wages for educators, including by using federal COVID relief dollars, though it is not clear how districts might sustain wage increases once that one-time funding runs out.

Chicago’s new Pre-Service Teaching Equity Project, or P-STEP — the CPS program receiving a roughly $1.1 million Teacher Quality Partnership grant — aims to ensure schools work more closely with faculty at local college teacher preparation programs to support student teachers. In partnership with Chicago State University, Northeastern Illinois University and DePaul, the program will focus on pairing veteran teachers of color with those student educators and better supporting the mentors as well as the new teachers. The goal: more diverse novice educators qualified to teach hard-to-staff subjects accepting permanent jobs with the district.

The DePaul program, in tandem with the Academy for Urban School Leadership and CPS, is also setting out to recruit and place more Black and Latino teachers in hard-to-staff positions at district schools serving 70% or more low-income students.

Starting next fall, the aspiring teachers will participate in a residency model, receiving mentorship from a veteran teacher at one of 25 district schools and working to complete master’s degrees in education and get their teaching licenses. The project is setting itself a goal of retaining at least 85% of first-year teachers in schools with higher-than-average vacancies.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago educators create new lessons on Asian American history, nuclear power

2022-08-29T11:00:00+00:00

On the eve of the pandemic, Aiko Kojima Hibino came across a viral photo showing dozens of copies of John Hersey’s nonfiction classic “Hiroshima” discarded in a Chicago high school’s dumpster.

On social media, the photo was sparking a lively debate about how school libraries should manage their collections. But to a stunned Kojima Hibino, a Japanese American parent whose eighth grader attends National Teachers Academy, the image symbolized a larger issue:

A crucially important part of American history — the U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II — seemed to be sliding into obscurity.

Kojima Hibino sprang into action. She enlisted a friend and colleague — a local college professor whose family survived the Hiroshima bombing — and two middle school educators at NTA, an elementary on the Near South Side, to create a new curriculum delving into the country’s fraught relationship with nuclear power.

“This issue is affecting people here and now — not just unfortunate people far away in Japan a long time ago,” said Yuki Miyamoto, who teaches nuclear and environment ethics at DePaul University and helped create the curriculum. “It’s a racial justice issue. It’s an environmental issue.”

Sixth graders at National Teachers Academy on Chicago’s Near South Side discuss the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of a new curriculum the school piloted last spring.

This past spring, the curriculum pushed sixth graders at NTA to think critically about the bombings, nuclear testing in the Pacific, and the use of nuclear power as a fossil fuel alternative. It also helped spur up-to-the-moment conversations about racism, environmental justice, and oppression.

Earlier this year, Illinois became the first state in the country to require its schools to teach Asian American history starting this fall — a move Gov. JB Pritzker touted as the state’s answer to a national rise in hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans during the pandemic.

That legislation and the new NTA nuclear curriculum come amid a national backlash against teaching ethnic studies and exploring troubling chapters of the country’s history. The curriculum’s creators say it can help schools meet the new Illinois law’s requirements, and they are exploring ways to get it into more classrooms.

NTA teachers set out to create nuclear curriculum

The idea of the nuclear curriculum came from a chance social media sighting.

In 2019, someone snapped a photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Hersey’s “Hiroshima” from the Senn High School’s library collection discarded in a dumpster to make room for new books. The photo cropped up in a Facebook parent group and later on Reddit, where it garnered more than 1,600 comments.

Kojima Hibino saw the photo in a Chalkbeat Chicago story about the online debate. The image was jarring to her, bringing up questions she had long harbored: Why is so little Asian American and Pacific Islander history taught in American schools? Why are school conversations about the atomic bombing of Japan often so stripped of complexity?

She reached out to Miyamoto, the DePaul professor, who was even more taken aback by the dumpster photo. Kojima Hibino also brought up the issue with Jessica Kibblewhite, NTA’s middle school social science teacher, in the parking lot of the school, near Chicago’s Chinatown. The two had both played an active role in a successful campaign to ward off the school’s planned closure in 2018.

Kibblewhite and later Laura Gluckman, the middle school science teacher, voiced interest in addressing nuclear power and the bombing in their classrooms. But first, they had some studying to do.

The two teachers got a private lecture from Miyamoto. They read or revisited books about the bombing and nuclear power, such as “African Americans Against the Bomb.”

“It’s been a long process of learning for Laura and me,” Kibblewhite said. “We are learning alongside our students.”

Then the group set out to craft a curriculum that connected to pressing social issues. Gluckman, for instance, dug into the effects of nuclear testing on indigenous communities in New Mexico and residents of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. She drew parallels between these historical developments and environmental justice flashpoints in the Chicago of today: the botched implosion of the Hilco smokestack during the pandemic and the debate over relocating General Iron, a metal scrapper, to the Southeast Side.

They called it the Paper Crane Project, in honor of Sadako Sasaki, the young Hiroshima bombing survivor who folded more than a thousand origami cranes before she died of leukemia.

Ty Yamamoto, an origami instructor at the Japanese Culture Center, taught sixth graders at National Teachers Academy how to fold origami paper cranes. As part of a new curriculum on nuclear power, the students also learned about Sadako Sasaki, the young Hiroshima bombing survivor who folded more than a thousand origami cranes before she died of leukemia.

As the NTA group was putting the finishing touches on the curriculum last summer, the Illinois Legislature passed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History, or TEAACH, Act, which requires districts to teach Asian American history at both the elementary and high school level. In addition to being a response to anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, the law was part of a broader push to make social studies lessons in Illinois more inclusive, reflecting the experiences of an increasingly diverse student body.

The number of Asian American students statewide has increased by roughly 10% since 2015; in Chicago, that number has remained fairly stable, but as the district’s overall enrollment shrank, Asian American students have come to make up a slightly larger portion, just more than 4%.

The TEAACH law leaves it up to districts to decide exactly what to teach and how much time to devote to the subject. For the teachers at NTA preparing to tackle questions of nuclear power with their students, the new legislation only reinforced their sense of purpose.

Sixth graders helped pilot the curriculum in May

In Kibblewhite’s sixth grade classroom in May, Landon Bermudez pulled up a 1945 entry from former President Harry Truman’s diary on his laptop.

He had just taken the floor in a lively classroom discussion over the ethics of America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and that diary entry from the eve of the attack was just the ammunition he needed to argue that bombing was unjustified. In it, Truman voices misgivings about the human toll using the bomb would exact on civilians — but, Landon pointed out to his classmates, he also refers to the Japanese as “savages” and “fanatic.”

“This is showing definite racism by the word choice he is using,” Landon told the class, a moment the teacher captured on video.

Kibblewhite’s sixth graders studied a slew of documents and texts to prepare for that day’s discussion, examining the question of whether the bombing was ethical from different perspectives. Some, like Landon, argued the bombing, which cost more than 200,000 Japanese lives, should never have happened at that late stage of the war. Others countered it was the fastest way to put a definitive end to the war.

The conversation got heated at times, but students remembered their charge to always base their arguments in evidence. “Think deeper,” Kibblewhite had often urged students in the runup to the class.

“I really enjoyed that class because you were able to share your opinion instead of listening to someone else’s – and you had to back it up,” Landon said in an interview.

At NTA, themes of resistance and social justice run through Kibblewhite’s teaching. The nuclear discussion was a way to pull these themes together.

“It was gratifying to see students weave in all that knowledge at the end of the school year,” she said. “Students were really thinking about why the issue is so deeply complex, not just echoing the common narrative.”

In Gluckman’s classroom, the sixth graders examined the use of nuclear energy to reduce carbon emissions. Students studied the benefits of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels. But they also explored the human impact of uranium mining and nuclear power plant disasters such as Chernobyl.

At NTA this school year, all four sixth grade classrooms will use the new nuclear curriculum. Kibblewhite and Gluckman are planning to add a call to action: Students might host a symposium for peers, parents, and teachers, or create poetry or art, or hold a press conference on the University of Chicago campus, home of the Manhattan Project.

“We want to support students to feel like activists, changemakers, and leaders,” Kibblewhite said.

The teachers also want to bring the curriculum to other campuses. They have submitted it to the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which is compiling resources for educators to help their schools comply with TEAACH, and they plan to craft professional development for colleagues.

They hope the curriculum would help these educators better connect with students such as NTA seventh grader Maya Williams, who was in Kibblewhite’s classroom last spring.

Maya, whose mother is Japanese, had made origami before, but she got to make paper cranes — a symbol of peace in the bombing’s aftermath — with her classmates for the first time. She also got to learn in a deeper, more nuanced way about the end of the war, from multiple perspectives, including that of Japanese-Americans at the time.

“The entire project was memorable,” said Maya. “ It was the first time I had ever learned about Japan in depth in a school setting.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools chief unveils his blueprint for bouncing back from the pandemic

2022-08-24T21:06:09+00:00

Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez says a new three-year “blueprint” will help the district emerge stronger from the pandemic’s disruption.

Martinez offered a high-level overview of his plan at the school board’s monthly meeting Wednesday. The plan promises to improve services for students with disabilities, strengthen career and technical education, make grading and school admissions fairer, and expand after-school and summer programs, among 10 academic initiatives the district will tackle in the coming years.

The first order of business, though: a push to revitalize the district’s neighborhood schools, with more details on the blueprint’s inaugural initiative coming next month.

“The only reason I came to CPS is to reimagine our neighborhood schools,” said Martinez, who voiced particular concern about the district’s shrinking high schools.

The blueprint is Martinez’s bid to put his own stamp on the direction of the district as he enters his second year at its helm. He has said that in Chicago the pandemic dealt a setback for a district showing promising growth in graduation rates and test scores, widening racial and income gaps in academic outcomes.

Fewer Chicago Public Schools students, across all racial groups, met state standards last year, according to 2020-21 data presented by district officials Wednesday. Gaping disparities between racial groups continue to persist. For example, less than 6% of Black students met state math standards, while 53% of Asian American students did.

The gaps widened at the high school level, with a quarter of Black students meeting reading and writing benchmarks on the SAT, compared to 77% of white students — a disparity that increased by more than 10 percentage points compared to the cusp of the pandemic.

Experts have cautioned that comparing pandemic-era and pre-pandemic scores is tricky because of significant disruption to test-taking during the outbreak and demographic changes in which students took the test. But Chicago officials said the data does offer insights into the pandemic’s damage — and fills them with a sense of urgency.

“Clearly we see that what worked in the past may no longer be sufficient,” said Bodgana Chkoumbova, the district’s academics chief.

Although the district was able to stem the fallout this past school year, Martinez said, academic and mental health challenges remain.

“This blueprint really is a response to that,” he said. “We now have an opportunity for innovation, for refocusing, for reimagining.”

Along with the blueprint’s “reimagining” initiatives, the district is vowing to streamline its operations — ensuring cleaning schools and feeding and transporting students run more smoothly — and to rebuild trust with families. Officials said families and school communities will drive the fleshing-out and rollout of the plan.

“We recognize that some of the decisions of the past have left some communities feeling a breakdown of trust with the district,” said Fatima Cooke, the district’s deputy chief of schools.

Martinez has framed that pandemic disruption as an opportunity to reimagine learning and to address longstanding inequities that the COVID outbreak highlighted.

Amid a youth mental health crisis the pandemic deepened, for instance, schools can take on a larger role in providing social-emotional and trauma support to students. After the pandemic accelerated enrollment declines, districts can explore innovative models for shrinking neighborhood schools instead of letting them limp along or closing them. Some small high schools, for example, could become career academies focused on specific high-demand industries, from aviation to cybersecurity to construction, Martinez has said.

The blueprint builds upon the five-year vision for the district that Martinez’ predecessor, Janice Jackson, had unveiled on the eve of the pandemic, but adjusts for the fallout from the past three years.

Martinez, the former superintendent of San Antonio Independent School District, took over Chicago’s public schools in late September last year, amid a challenging return to full-time in-person instruction and the delta variant surge. He is a district graduate who served as its finance chief during former mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration. He has said pandemic recovery proved elusive last year as schools grappled with staffing shortages, a rise in disruptive student behaviors, and other issues — but the current school year offers a much more promising outlook.

As part of his three-year plan, Martinez also said the district will double down on early literacy, and expand world and dual language programs, with a goal of ensuring every student in the district becomes bilingual. The plan also covers efforts to rethink school accountability and build a more equitable school admissions process, which predate Martinez’s arrival in the district.

Martinez once again said that more robust career preparation, ideally beginning in the middle grades and including meaningful hands-on opportunities such as internships, is “the future of education.”

A recent Chalkbeat Chicago series on career and technical education showed that data on how the roughly 15,000 students participating in these programs do is limited and often unreliable. Still, it suggests a relatively small portion take part in key opportunities — from work-based learning to industry certification to college credit courses — that are considered the gold standard for today’s career training programs. Those opportunities are uneven among different campuses and parts of the city, and are especially limited for the city’s alternative high school students.

Chicago and many other large urban districts are raising the profile of their high school CTE programs amid a growing reckoning that the “College for All” push of the past decade has left many students behind.

School board members offered positive feedback on the plan, particularly what they described as a genuine effort to bring in family and employee input, including at back-to-school gatherings earlier this month. Some pushed for details on initiatives under the plan, but district leaders said they have more public engagement to do before spelling out specific solutions.

“Even when we have the right solutions,” Martinez said, “the way we implement them and the way we work with communities has to be different from what we have done in the past.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

On Chicago’s first day of school, a mix of enthusiasm and jitters

2022-08-22T23:44:02+00:00

Outside Falconer Elementary school on Chicago’s Northwest side shortly after 7:30 a.m., fourth grader Sebastian Benitez beamed with pride as he shook hands with Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Surrounded by his mom and younger siblings, the politics lover dressed in a blue polo and sweater said he hoped to get straight As, after bringing home one B last year.

“I’m going to try to boost that up,” he said. “I’m going to try to do better.”

Like Benitez, Lightfoot and her hand-picked schools CEO Pedro Martinez are hoping for a better year, after two tumultuous ones navigating the pandemic’s massive disruption to learning.

“I expect this to be one of the CPS strongest years ever,” Martinez said during a mid-morning press conference at Excel Academy of South Shore, an alternative school on the South Side.

The district is pledging to redouble efforts to have the recovery year officials hoped for last year, before COVID surges, staffing challenges, and other issues emerged.

Martinez will soon outline a three-year blueprint for the district that aims to strengthen neighborhood schools, career and technical education, services for students with disabilities, and more.

Despite notable challenges, Martinez said he and his team were working to ensure student safety, up-to-date COVID-19 protocols, and providing students with high quality teachers and staff.

Staffing challenges still linger

According to publicly available data, there are roughly 3,000 additional positions district wide compared to pre-pandemic and more dollars for professional development.

However, not all additional positions are filled. As of Monday, Martinez said the district had 900 vacant teacher positions districtwide, an uptick from last year when it had 600.

“We’re in a much better place than last year,” Martinez said, while acknowledging that hiring is ongoing. “We’re still hiring bus drivers. We’re still hiring custodial staff. We’re still hiring crossing guards.”

The district is planning to deploy long-term substitutes, Martinez added.

The tenor of the first day of classes also signaled a more cordial tone between district leadership and the teachers union.

Outside Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School, Chicago Teachers Union leaders and members suggested a new era of more cooperation with the district is within reach.

“There’s a great opportunity for setting a fresh start,” said Rebecca Martinez, the union’s director of organizing. “I think that’s what’s wonderful about the beginning of a school year.”

Others spoke about the difficulties of filling some vacant positions, particularly for educators and support staff who work with students with disabilities and English language learners.

Maggie Slavin, a teacher starting her second year at Back of the Yards, said the high school is entering the new school year fully staffed with special education educators and paraprofessionals. But she worries that’s not the case at all CPS schools. She urged district officials to streamline and speed up the process for hiring and onboarding new staff.

Music teacher Felix Ponce called on the district to deliver on promises to invest in more equitable access to arts education — an issue he said the district and union leaders should tackle together.

Recent Back of the Yards graduate Britney Quiroz, now a student at New York University, urged leaders to stay tuned in to what students are telling them they need — and encouraged fellow students to get involved.

“Student voice is crucial to the growth of our community,” said Quiroz. “The youth are gifted with the ability to reimagine.”

Some students face bus rides longer than an hour

Over the summer, district officials took steps to avoid busing issues that last year left students waiting for rides that sometimes never came. Martinez admitted Monday that hundreds of students are still facing bus rides that are more than an hour each way.

Union president Stacy Davis Gates alluded to those challenges during a speech at the City Club, noting that some children with disabilities will need to ride the school bus “for hours,” she said.

Despite a national shortage of bus drivers, the district has managed to route over 15,600 students across CPS. It continues to work to hire more drivers by increasing hourly wages, offering alternative modes of transportations such as taxis, and monthly stipends for parents.

Families who made transportation requests after July will need to wait a few weeks. About 80% of routes were under an hour, but Martinez noted that he was looking at a percentage of routes that are longer and would be looking at opportunities for improvements to those longer commutes.

“I ask families to be patient with us,” Martinez said. “Give us a couple of weeks. There’s going to be opportunities for us to get more efficient on the routes.”

Safety concerns heightened after mass shootings, city violence

Davis Gates offered a starkly different take on the state of Chicago Public Schools than Martinez in his own City Club address last week, when the CPS chief said the pandemic had disrupted but not broken a district on the rise — with record graduation rates and rapid academic growth.

Davis Gates said a decade of school closures and experiments in education reform and school turnarounds had failed students.

“We should all be disappointed in ourselves,” she said. “That’s an F.”

Offering up an alternative to Martinez’s yet-to-be-released blueprint, Davis Gates said the union would advocate for beefing up arts and athletic programs, and expanding the sustainable community schools model, in which campuses partner with community organizations to offer students added support.

Martinez and Lightfoot touted the steps the district plans to take this year to support students’ mental health and get them re-engaged in school.

While the festive mood filled schools, some parents said school safety weighed heavily in their minds following the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Highland Park earlier this year.

Jonathan Martinez and Natasha Alcedo, parents of a fifth grade Falconer student, were nervous about the “unfortunate” shootings, but hopeful for a safe and blessed school year.

“As parents, we always get nervous when children go back to school,” Alcedo said. “We hope that they’re learning well and that the teacher and kids are nice to them — along with any other safety precautions that we’re always worried about on a day to day basis.”

Jadine Chou, CPS’ chief of safety and security, said the district and multiple city agencies, including the Chicago Police Department and the city’s Office of Emergency Management, conducted a drill last week in preparation, Chou said. The district conducts over 3,800 drills every year, she noted.

The district has also implemented a new visitor management system, new safety video training, and expanding programs that go beyond physical safety to offer social, emotional, and mental health support, Chou said.

“We take safety and security in CPS very seriously,” Lightfoot said.

Chicago Public School CEO Pedro Martinez, center left, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, center right, greet students on the first day of classes after summer break at Falconer Elementary School in city’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood.

As Lightfoot and Martinez greeted families at Falconer, they peppered students with questions about their first-day hopes and offered compliments on haircuts and lunch boxes.

Hundreds of students and parents awaited the opening bell — a signal of the official end of summer for students — including Ethan Duran, his mother, and two siblings. The third grader has been eager to return to the classroom, in part, to play on the newly installed playground.

His mother, Soledad Galvan, was cautious about the return to school. She said unknown questions around the monkeypox virus and making sure schools were secure “no matter what” were top of mind for her.

Despite those concerns, she is hopeful for a good year for her three children.

So is her son, who eyed the playground and said: “I’m excited!”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Amid buzz for career training, little access for Chicago teens at alternative schools

2022-08-22T17:14:11+00:00

During the pandemic, Yasmine Nelson wanted to support herself. So she took on jobs at a McDonald’s in Indiana and a warehouse in downstate Illinois — and fell behind in high school.

Last year, she returned to Chicago determined to get her high school diploma. Woefully short on credits, she enrolled in Peace and Education Coalition Alternative High School, a second-chance campus in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood.

She did well in the small, supportive school. But as graduation loomed this spring, Nelson, 19, grappled with uncertainty about what might come next, other than the minimum-wage jobs she’d held since age 15.

Then a school counselor pitched a surprising option: an operating engineer apprenticeship.

It’s the kind of career training opportunity that few alternative high school students like Nelson — former dropouts or students whose studies were derailed by poverty, homelessness, or pregnancy — have access to.

About this project

Roughly 15,000 students in Chicago Public Schools attend the district’s career and technical education, or CTE, programs. But these programs have kept a relatively low profile in recent years, and little is known about how well students enrolled in them do in high school and after graduation.

Earlier this year, Chalkbeat Chicago senior reporter Mila Koumpilova set out to find out more about high school CTE in Chicago, as school districts across the country pledge to expand and upgrade such programs. The project was supported by the Higher Education Media Fellowship at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, which backs reporting into issues related to CTE.

Part 1 explores the push to strengthen CTE programs in Chicago and across the country — and some of the key barriers, including a dearth of data on student outcomes. A version of this story also appears in The Washington Post.

Part 2 looks at the limited access to career training for alternative high school students and new efforts to change that in Chicago and other cities.

Officials say these students, who in Chicago are disproportionately Black and poor, simply don’t stick around on alternative campuses long enough to take part in time-consuming career and technical education programs, also known as CTE.

Now, as Chicago and other urban districts move to expand these programs, advocates worry alternative school students may be left out.

In Chicago, only 40% of alternative high school students graduate, and even those who do can face bleak career prospects in a marketplace that increasingly expects workers to come in with skills and credentials. Career training exposure can improve their odds of graduating and better prepare them for life after high school, student advocates say.

The broader push to upgrade high school CTE offerings comes amid a pandemic that drove an unprecedented number of students to disengage from school and left crippling staffing shortages in many industries in its wake. Now, in Chicago and across the country, efforts are underway to offer alternative high school students more flexible opportunities to get training at a time when COVID’s academic, mental health, and economic fallout has made these teens more vulnerable than ever before.

“We know our kids are not ready when they leave us, and then they are on their own,” said Sheila Venson, executive director at Youth Connection Charter School, a network of charter alternative schools. “We can get them a diploma, but where do they go next? If we can keep them a little longer, we can send them out with a clearer path.”

No formal path between dropping out and finding a career

In late March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the rounds at a new Skilled Trades Career Fair at downtown Chicago’s McCormick Center. The city and school district had invited thousands of students from the city’s alternative high schools and other schools serving South and West Side teens at risk of dropping out. They could learn about jobs in carpentry, pipe-fitting, welding, and more.

“A good life, a stable income, being able to dream big dreams — this is what this is all about,” Lightfoot told students gathered on the expo’s opening day.

Ironically, shop or vocational classes, as they used to be known, were once seen as a dumping ground for struggling students. Now these programs can lead to well-paid, in-demand jobs, but they’re often out of reach for teens who stumble academically. Few alternative schools offer CTE programs. In their absence, some campuses have offered career exposure and training opportunities on an ad hoc basis, benefiting a few students at a time.

Jack Wuest of the Chicago-based nonprofit Alternative Schools Network, a long-time advocate for alternative high school students, said bringing those students to a trades career expo is not enough to open up access to increasingly specialized professions.

Vocational classes used to be seen as a “dumping ground” for struggling students, but now are known to lead to career paths for students out of school. Few alternative schools have career and technical programs available.

“That’s like the major league teams coming in and showing kids how to be ballplayers,” Wuest said. “Showing kids these trades careers but not giving them the skills to do them? It’s ludicrous.”

Compared with other large urban districts, an unusually large portion of Chicago’s high school students attend alternative campuses. Over the last decade, the city doubled the number of alternative schools, mostly by contracting with new, for-profit operators specializing in catching students up on credits quickly.

Overall, alternative school students are much more likely than their peers at traditional high schools to have disabilities, experience homelessness, get arrested, or become victims of violent crime, a recent report by the University of Chicago’s Education Lab found.

They could also benefit from high-quality CTE programs, advocates say. Many already juggle school with full-time jobs, and the pressure they face to contribute to strained family budgets only increased during the pandemic.

But, said John Wolf, associate director of Education Lab, “most of the career routes the school system offers are designed for traditional students, who are marching along that four-year path to graduation,” .

A 2021 district analysis of CTE expansion opportunities obtained by Chalkbeat is blunt about why alternative schools are not a fit to host career training programs: Students are just not enrolled long enough to complete a full CTE course sequence, which generally takes two to three years. The analysis flagged inequitable access in areas such as the West Side, with its many alternative schools and shrinking traditional campuses.

Brigitte Swenson, the long-time principal of Peace and Education High School, has been a vocal champion of career training for alternative school students.

But she admits it’s a challenge.

“They are mentally at the end of their high school career even if they are not there creditwise,” Swenson said.

The students her school serves are generally older, significantly behind on high school credits — and eager to get their diplomas.

Swenson’s school has connected some students with the citywide Chicago Builds program, which prepares youth for construction careers out of Dunbar Vocational Career Academy in Bronzeville. But with the long commute to the South Side and a significant time commitment, those students struggled to complete the program.

Schools like those in the YCCS network have explored helping their students earn shorter-term certifications as a bridge to more advanced vocational training.

At Youth Connection Charter Schools, Venson says before the pandemic, the district invited its alternative high school providers to apply to host an in-house CTE program. But that would have required committing to at least a two-year sequence of courses and did not involve enough additional funding, Venson said. Because the average time students spend on YCCS campuses is 18 months, YCCS passed.

YCCS campuses, which like other alternative schools suffered major enrollment losses during the pandemic, have explored helping students earn shorter-term “bridge” certificates as stepping stones to more advanced training. The network has eyed a plan called YCCS U, which would allow students who complete graduation requirements to stick around and get career training.

Venson said she worries that the ingrained district idea of alternative schools as efficient credit recovery factories means young people are stepping into the world unprepared.

“Give students the credits, and put them out on the street,” she said. “But these kids need skills and stability.”

Indianapolis model shows potential for CTE

Limited or nonexistent access to CTE for alternative high school students is an issue across the country — despite growing recognition that these young people can benefit from the programs.

But there are examples to prove there’s enormous potential, said Patrick Turner, an assistant research professor at the University of Notre Dame. Take, for instance, a network of charter campuses for high school dropouts that Goodwill, the nonprofit known for its thrift stores, started in Indianapolis in the early 2010s.

Goodwill’s Excel Centers, including one in Gary, Indiana, offer a flexible model where students who are 18 and older earn industry-recognized certifications and college credits while also getting technical and career training. Turner says keys to the program’s success are free child care and transportation, flexible schedules that allow students to work, and life coaches who help students sketch out a future beyond the short-term goal of checking off required high school credits.

“Throughout their education on these campuses, students have their minds not just on getting a diploma but on mapping out their next steps after graduation,” Turner said.

Turner’s research found that students who completed the program saw an almost 40% increase in their earnings in five years compared to young people who applied but didn’t enroll or who started but didn’t finish the program — outcomes that remained consistent across race and gender.

The model has since expanded to five states and Washington, D.C. — with additional campuses, powered with federal COVID recovery dollars, slated to open in Arizona. Research on the earning potential of going through CTE programs in high school is fueling national interest in replicating the model, Turner said.

Jacquese Stewart, 17, creates a vector graphic that the student will use to make a wooden light box. YCCS’s Community Youth Development Institute High School have turned many classrooms into hands-on labs, exposing students to career opportunities.

Chicago alternative schools cobble together flexible career programs

Yasmine Nelson, the Peace and Education student, was among about 20 graduating seniors who landed apprenticeships with JLL, a company that staffs operating engineers on Chicago Public Schools campuses. Students in the program, a partnership with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399, will earn an all-expense-paid associate degree while working in school buildings.

“I get to go to school and get paid until I graduate?” Nelson recalled thinking as her high school counselor told her about the opportunity. “I was definitely interested.”

At an orientation meeting, a JLL operating engineer told students, who asked why they should go for the apprenticeship instead of starting college, about colleagues who’d gone to college in unrelated fields — then come to train with the company in hopes of landing well-paying, stable jobs. Companies like JLL are eager to cultivate worker pipelines to an aging, predominantly white workforce.

After a press conference to announce the program, Nelson told JLL executives, “I want to be my own boss someday — either at the top of JLL or at my own company.”

Pedro Martinez, the district’s CEO, gave her his business card and promised her a job in the district after she went through the program.

Some local alternative schools are also working to cultivate more career exposure opportunities for students.

On YCCS’s Community Youth Development Institute High School on the South Side, Executive Director Aaron Royster says a decade or so ago, the school made a big push to build a college-going culture, helping students apply to the City Colleges of Chicago, various HBCUs, and elsewhere.

That push foreshadowed the district’s own efforts to better support college-bound students under former CPS CEO Janice Jackson. And it worked. The school, whose students are primarily Black and low-income, saw a marked increase in college enrollment, Royster said.

“Unfortunately, we found that a lot of our students were coming back with nothing but student loans,” Royster said. “It became crippling in some cases.”

On the cusp of the pandemic, the school changed its approach and turned some of its classrooms into hands-on labs, Royster said.

Now, students grow microgreens under LED lights in a former math classroom and other produce for local restaurants in a school garden. They make lotions and soap for sale under the “Nature’s Gifts” brand in the cosmetology lab. They create chess sets and souvenirs using 3D printers and lasers in the industrial design lab. And they are rehabbing a school-owned house in the neighborhood.

“A lot of students don’t know what careers they might want to get into after high school — or what they would actually enjoy,” said Jacquese Stewart, who is a senior this year, who sewed face masks in the school’s fashion lab to sell during the pandemic. “Here, you get to figure it out.”

The Community Youth Development Institute is awarding students core credits for the hands-on work they complete in elective classes.

Although the classes taught in those labs are largely electives, the school is trying to help students who want to graduate fast by awarding core credits for that hands-on work. These efforts are still new and were disrupted by the pandemic, but Royster says the school has seen an uptick in the portion of graduates who have jobs lined up at graduation or go on to college. He wants students to be triple threats: prepared for college, careers, and entrepreneurship.

Separately this past school year, the University of Chicago’s Education Lab helped pilot a new effort to connect students with paid internships on one traditional campus and three alternative schools, including Ombudsman South.

At Ombudsman — a for-profit alternative campus tucked away in a strip mall in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood — Judith Bolanos heard about the program from her principal, and she was intrigued by the chance to land a paid internship she could juggle with morning classes.

Bolanos, who was a senior last year, had dropped out of Solorio High School on the city’s Southwest Side not long after the pandemic started, as her family became homeless and started doubling up with relatives and friends across the city. She had tried to get a job, but hit a common Catch 22: Employers wanted to see prior experience, but she couldn’t get it without an employer taking a chance on her despite a lack of skills and high school diploma.

Last winter, staff at Ombudsman, where she arrived last fall to take another crack at graduating, sat her down for mock interviews and resume prep. Through the program, she worked at the local alderman’s office and the school. Bolanos continued taking classes – a condition of participating in the program – while gaining helpful skills, such as working with Google Sheets.

But the experience also made her wish she’d gotten a chance to get more extensive career training before the tail end of her high school career.

“If that opportunity was offered,” she said in April, “I definitely would have taken it.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago and other urban districts, a new embrace of career and technical programs

2022-08-19T12:00:00+00:00

When Chef Samantha Jones arrived at Juarez High School in Chicago six years ago, she discovered a shell of a culinary program.

Jones set about to change that: She created a curriculum, arranged regular produce deliveries, and sought out opportunities for students to show off their skills outside the school’s kitchen. When the pandemic shuttered the school building, she crisscrossed the predominantly Latino neighborhoods on the city’s Southwest Side to drop off ingredient kits at students’ homes.

More recently, Jones has taken students to meet chefs at the premiere James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards downtown, shuttled them to contests where some earned thousands of dollars in culinary school scholarships, and planned a trip to Italy next year to visit a mozzarella maker and olive tree farm.

“Those hands-on opportunities have created buzz for our program,” Jones said. “In terms of students who actively want to be here — that’s changed dramatically.”

The resurgence of the culinary program at Juarez coincides with a rising profile of high school career and technical education, or CTE, in Chicago and nationally. Chicago Public Schools and other large urban districts are setting out to rethink and expand these programs in the wake of the pandemic as students look for more direct, debt-free routes to in-demand careers.

About this project

Part 2 looks at the limited access to career training for alternative high school students and new efforts to change that in Chicago and other cities.

The push represents a shift away from the district’s recent emphasis on encouraging all students to go to college, which led to greater college enrollment but not necessarily a diploma. More than two-thirds of the district’s students still either don’t go to college or don’t finish it. An estimated 50,000 Chicagoans in their teens or early 20s — most of them Black and Latino high school graduates — are not in the workforce or in school, even as local employers clamor for workers.

Now the hope is that more robust CTE programs can send off more teens with a clear post-high school path as the district is vowing to focus on better serving Black and Latino boys.

But for districts such as Chicago, shifting gears on CTE can be a heavy lift. Chicago has CTE powerhouse schools such as Juarez, with strong programs rich in hands-on opportunities — and CTE deserts, neighborhoods with few offerings or programs that don’t do as much to help students jump-start their lives after high school.

Data on student outcomes is spotty, but numbers obtained by Chalkbeat suggest a relatively small portion of the district’s roughly 15,000 CTE students — who are disproportionately Black — get the work experience, college credit, and credentials considered the gold standard for high school career programs.

Pedro Martinez, a national champion of CTE who took over Chicago Public Schools last fall, says he wants students graduating from the district’s programs ready to tackle training programs or college — or to start building careers, perhaps returning to school later to gain more skills. He’d like to see more students graduating with work experiences, industry certificates, and college credit, even associate degrees.

“This is where I see education going in the future,” said Martinez, the former superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District. “I see a convergence of pre-K-12, higher education, and industry all coming together.”

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is a huge advocate for career and technical education, and wants students to begin building careers while in high school.

CTE held a lower profile amid college push

Janice Jackson, who stepped down as Chicago Public Schools CEO last year, had focused on building a college-going culture in the district.

Several CTE programs – some underenrolled and outdated – closed during Jackson’s tenure. But Jackson said in an interview with Chalkbeat after she left the district that she came to better appreciate career education’s value.

“We went from not having a college-going culture almost to the extreme, where that’s all we talked about,” she said. “What we learned is the same skills that students need to successfully complete high school, they need to access trade programs.”

Those program closures and a relatively low profile for CTE over the past decade have left the district with uneven offerings. Last year, as the district mulled an expansion of citywide programs, it studied which career fields merited additional programs because of high employer demand and competitive pay — and which parts of the city could most use those programs.

The analysis, obtained by Chalkbeat, zeroed in on business, construction, IT, and the health sciences, and found students in large swaths of the city don’t have access to those types of programs. Programming is particularly thin on the city’s West and Near West sides and in areas such as the Southwest Side’s Greater Stockyards — parts of the city that are predominantly Latino and Black. The more diverse Northwest Side generally offers robust access to a variety of programs.

“We’ve got some stellar programs, and some of our kids are doing amazing stuff,” said Sarah Rothschild, a Chicago Teachers Union education policy researcher who serves on the union’s CTE committee. “But there’s no consistency and stability across schools. Some of the kids who can benefit the most in disinvested communities have the least access.”

Overall, roughly 14% of the district’s high school population is enrolled in CTE programs — a portion that has remained relatively stable since 2016. Black students, who make up about 36% of Chicago’s student body, account for 45% of CTE enrollment.

During contract negotiations in 2019, the teachers union pushed for more central office oversight of CTE programs. It argued that principals on the South and West sides confronting shrinking enrollment, slimmer budgets, and pressure to show improved college enrollment metrics were shuttering programs. That left some schools as “career academies” in name only, with one or two remaining programs. District officials now sign off on closures after consulting with the union and local school councils.

Chicago has little data on its CTE programs

The hands-on opportunities CTE programs offer kept students such as Jerry Green engaged in school through the pandemic’s turbulence.

One Friday in May, Green, dressed in a white chef’s coat over black jeans, bustled at a hot plate, ladling chicken and vegetables into toasted pitas. Green and a couple of classmates in Clemente’s culinary arts program were facing off against teams from three other Chicago high schools in the district’s inaugural “Food Truck Wars” in May, with culinary school scholarships going to the winners.

Green, 18, watched anxiously as the judges tasted the team’s chicken gyros from an imaginary food truck named “Stuff It.” The Clemente students had conceived the trucks’ design, business plan, and menu.

Although the “Stuff It” team didn’t win the contest, the culinary arts program had already hooked Green up with a culinary certification, a scholarship to a local community college, and a summer job at a nonprofit that prepares meals for the homeless with leftover restaurant ingredients.

A growing body of research is showing some CTE models pay off, especially for low-income students and boys of color like Green.

As the national “college for all” movement wanes, a number of other factors have also given these programs a boost in recent years: more federal funding and requirements after the pre-pandemic passage of the Perkins V law; employers eager to build diverse talent pipelines amid crippling worker shortages; and students wanting more direct access to well-paying careers in high-growth fields.

New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have recently held up CTE as key to reengaging students, crafted a five-year strategic plan for CTE last year. The city is the birthplace of the P-TECH high school model, which has shown promising gains in graduation and earning potential. In these schools, students cultivate both academic and workplace skills with the goal of graduating with industry-recognized associate degrees.

More recently, Dallas has bet big on the P-TECH model. Martinez recently traveled to Dallas with Juan Salgado, the chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago, to learn more about how that school district works with local community colleges and employers.

During the coming school year, Philadelphia, where district leaders tout a markedly higher than average graduation rate for its 6,000 CTE students, will review all 43 CTE programs to ensure they are attuned to employer needs and student demand.

The district also joined a partnership between Pennsylvania districts and the local maritime and defense industries that has connected students with apprenticeships and jobs. The efforts reflect a break with the idea of CTE as a dumping ground for students who struggle academically.

“It was always viewed as a program for those who ‘can’t, won’t, and don’t’ — for those not going to college,” said Michelle Armstrong, Philadelphia’s executive director of CTE. “We view CTE as giving our young people options.”

But experts say significant hurdles stand in the way of improving high school CTE programs, from a dearth of qualified educators to difficulties forging partnerships with employers and community colleges, to the lingering perception of CTE as a fallback for struggling students.

A shortage of data on student outcomes can also hamper overhaul efforts in districts that have faced relatively little pressure to compile numbers from their states or the federal government, says Shaun Dougherty, an expert on CTE at Vanderbilt University.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, Chicago officials said they don’t have data on how many CTE students graduate, go on to college, or land a job. The district doesn’t even comprehensively track the number of students who apply to these programs.

A recent brochure for families promoting the district’s CTE programs touts opportunities to participate in work-based learning, such as internships, to get industry certifications and to earn college credit. But solid data on the portion of students who actually participate in these opportunities is also hard to come by.

District data on certifications shows the portion of CTE students earning these credentials dipped before COVID hit, to about 12% in 2019, and dropped further during the pandemic, though the district said it saw an uptick this year.

District data also show significant gaps among campuses in the portion of students who engage in work-based learning and earn college credit. Unlike the vocational or shop programs of the past, today’s CTE programs are not only expected to prepare students for careers but also to tie into college-level programs for teens who want the option of getting additional training and credentials.

CPS leaders say they will track these numbers more closely as they set out to strengthen CTE offerings.

Martinez wants to work closely with colleges and employers

Even before Martinez took over the district last September, CPS officials were starting to explore ways to update the career programs.

Under Jackson, the district signed an agreement – called Chicago Roadmap – with the City Colleges of Chicago. The pact promises better coordination and a shared commitment to ensure students arrive on college campuses with clear career goals, which increases their odds of getting a diploma. One early example is a health sciences model pathway, with the district piloting two more— in manufacturing and IT — in the fall.

In a plan submitted to the state this spring, the district vowed to expand CTE with measurable goals. By 2025, for instance, each CTE student is supposed to participate in at least one work-based learning experience, and the district is adding staff this school year to coordinate these opportunities.

Martinez has signaled that CTE will loom large in a three-year blueprint for the district he is slated to unveil in the fall.

Martinez told Chalkbeat he believes more district high schools should embrace the P-TECH model. He said he wants to enlist large employers in the CTE push, mentioning recent conversations with Accenture and Amazon.

“The goal is to bring internships and job shadowing opportunities, especially for younger children — even exposure at the middle school grades,” Martinez said. “I’m telling industry partners, ‘You get to shape your workforce while they’re still in high school.’”

Juarez High School’s culinary program has become so popular that there is a waitlist.

In the meantime, Jones, the culinary teacher at Chicago’s Juarez High School, is forging ahead. For the coming school year, the culinary program has a waitlist; students who did not get in are filling up the after-school cooking program.

“I didn’t realize culinary arts was this popular,” said Jah Pagan, who will be a junior this year.

Pagan said he feels lucky to be enrolled. He is already eyeing higher-stakes cooking competitions and summer jobs.

This spring, Pagan and his classmates squared off in a clash between two imaginary restaurants for their class capstone project. They hustled to finish sumptuous brunch spreads: French toast, yogurt parfaits, biscuits, sausage-and-fruit breakfast skewers and more.

In a corner, atop one of the industrial freezers, cooking competition trophies towered — a reminder of the program’s goal to jump-start students’ careers.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

This educator is bringing Clemente High School’s library back to life

2022-08-18T13:00:27+00:00

Andie Townhouse arrived at Roberto Clemente Community Academy on Chicago’s West Side to find dusty shelves and a woefully outdated collection in the school’s library.

Before it enlisted Townhouse, the school hadn’t staffed a librarian in more than a decade.

She set out to update the library’s checkout system and its offerings – heavy on Scientology and eating disorders, light on engaging fiction. But she also tackled a complete rethinking of the space for the post-pandemic era, adding 3D printers, yoga classes, a knitting circle, tutoring, and an herb-growing wellness corner — a gathering place where students can set the agenda, connect with each other, and discover more about themselves.

Townhouse is an impassioned advocate for school libraries at a time when Chicago and districts across the country are cutting back. School librarians have become something of an endangered species over the past decade. The layoffs of a couple of Chicago Public Schools librarians made headlines this past spring.

Chalkbeat spoke with Townhouse about her work to reimagine Clemente’s library, the response from her students, and the role of school librarians in pandemic recovery.

What drew you to a career as a school librarian?

I am drawn to the ways in which librarians are relationship architects. I love collaborating with my colleagues, community stakeholders, sports teams, local authors, businesses, museums, as well as any other organization that wants to show up for our kids.

I love being a connector of free resources because, at the end of the day, I want those resources to help people propel their lives or teaching practice or research. I am also a graphic novel expert, and I enjoy sharing my own reading identity with high school students immensely.

The trope of the “shhhing librarian” is long over. We are out in the community, meeting people, and seeing how best to be a thought partner.

When you started at Clemente High School last year, you were the school’s first librarian in 13 years. What was on your to-do list early on?

The day I was hired, a ceiling pipe had burst, and fans were everywhere to dry out the carpet. The first thing I saw when I walked in were about 300 books from the Church of Scientology.

Weeding became my priority. I had mostly non-fiction that was all outdated material. This went beyond “Pluto is a planet.” I had racist books, books that perpetuated stereotypes, books that made fun of disabled children, and about three bookcases devoted to just eating disorders.

The world has changed four times since the library was last weeded, and in the library world we call this “spoiled milk.” I had a “curdled collection” because nobody was there maintaining what is truly a living, breathing thing.

I also learned that books were all checked out on the “honor system,” which is really no system at all. Now, students can check out books at a self-checkout station, place holds, search for print versions of books, or even borrow eBooks and instantly read them.

I took interest surveys at lunch, in the hallways, in the lobby — wherever I could find kids to tell me what they liked to read because this was now their space. The new books had to be a validating mirror reflecting back their lived realities. I was able to order 900 brand-new books this year.

What are your plans for reimagining Clemente’s library to meet the needs of today’s students?

We were recently the recipient of two grants to jumpstart our year. Makers4Change recently sent the library our very first 3D printer, and I have another one on the way for a new 3D printing lunchtime club.

I am also in the process of purchasing a few sewing machines, dress forms, fabric, knitting needles, yarn, embroidery floss and hoops. I recently bought a Cricut cutting machine. Our kids will be able to cut out vinyl stickers for their water bottles or punch out memes with our button maker.

I’m turning certain spots of the library into makerspace corners, where our students will now be able to solve real-world problems with their hands.

Last year, we were gifted two hydroponic towers. One of the grants will help us restock much-needed nutrients and seed pods, tools, tubs to transport herbs, and a micro-collection of gardening how-to titles. I’m looking forward to meeting up with our Gardening Club to enact a pesto and chimichurri taste-off with the herbs grown in our wellness corner.

Over the summer, I earned my 200-hour yoga teacher certification. I can’t wait to bring yoga to our kids after school, as well as mindful meditation sessions during lunch.

How do you see your role and that of other school librarians in the push to help students recover from the pandemic?

The pandemic’s social disruption was felt by everyone. Hardest hit were our kids, though, who hadn’t been around each other in nearly two years. School librarians were so adaptable during this time, delivering books to families outside of working hours and zooming with students to conduct reference interviews and readers advisory services.

Maintaining a connection is not something that can be replicated on Zoom, and our kids really lost how to work together, how to feel together, and to process their emotions together. The library remains and will always be a shared space. School librarians, who remain community-builders at heart, are helping kids feel their way back into the world because we have welcomed everyone back into that shared space.

What feedback have you received from students on your work so far?

The students love being in the library during lunch because for some, the lunchroom is just sensory overload. This year, alongside our English Language Learner Department Chair, the library started a thriving tutoring program during fifth period lunch. Students are taking ownership of their learning during this time, and they bring along their homework, their study skills questions, and their friends.

This summer, Chicago Public Libraries launched a part-time paid internship program for high school students 16 and older. For some students, I am the first librarian they have ever met since they didn’t have a library to go to during elementary school. Students saw a career path for their lives that wasn’t there before. When some of them landed this internship at their neighborhood branch, I cried on my lunch break.

In Chicago and other urban districts, a growing number of schools do not have a librarian. What is the fallout?

I am only one of 80 librarians left in CPS out of 600 schools. It upsets me because people making the decision to close school libraries wouldn’t accept this for their own children. When you close libraries, cut funding, and take a librarian out of their space, you lose the ability to make your school community cohesive. Kids are left to raise their reader selves alone and check out books — if at all — with zero guidance, and the collection becomes completely overlooked.

Schools that invest in staffing their school library see strong returns academically, socially, and emotionally for their entire community of learners. If schools are interested in re-opening their library, they can contact the CPS Libraries team at library@cps.edu.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

As Chicago gears up for a new school year, CEO previews plan to ‘reimagine’ learning

2022-08-17T21:19:43+00:00

Hundreds of thousands of children across Chicago head back to school on Monday — and district CEO Pedro Martinez is promising it will be the “strongest year ever.”

Martinez offered a sneak peak at how he plans to make that happen: a focus on early literacy, expanded dual language programs, a push to revive neighborhood schools, and stronger career and technical education. It’s all part of a three-year blueprint Chicago Public Schools will unveil in the coming weeks.

Martinez spoke Wednesday during a City Club of Chicago luncheon, as he nears his one-year anniversary at the district’s helm. “I am still new, folks, and I’m using that,” he joked.

Next week, Martinez will preside over kicking off a new school year in Chicago for the first time. Previously the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District, he took over the district in late September last year, just as it contended with a rocky return to full-time in-person instruction amid the delta COVID variant surge.

At the luncheon, he said his second school year will be a chance to double down on efforts to bounce back from the pandemic, and pledged “a strong recovery year that brings the district back to its pre-pandemic upward trajectory.”

Officials said more details on what the CEO described as a blueprint to reimagine learning in the district are coming soon. Martinez’s plan, which encompasses 10 initiatives, also aims to bring better services for students with disabilities, more equitable grading practices, and more after-school and summer school programs.

As Martinez has acknowledged in recent months, his first school year as CEO did not end up being the pandemic recovery year district leaders had hoped. Staffing shortages, clashes over COVID safety protocols, and an uptick in behavioral issues – among other challenges – disrupted learning once more.

But Martinez said he is optimistic about the district’s future — and ambitious about rethinking how it meets students’ academic and social and emotional needs.

Staffing remains a major concern, Martinez said. The district is seeing an uptick in its teacher vacancy rate on the eve of Monday’s school start, in part because schools added more than 600 additional teacher positions and numerous new support staff roles.

Declining enrollment is also a key challenge, Martinez said, but he said he also sees an opportunity to explore innovative models for the district’s smallest schools — for example, as career high schools focused on specific high-demand industries, from aviation to cybersecurity to construction.

Under his blueprint, Martinez said he wants to reinvest in neighborhood schools and engage local communities in planning for their future.

“We need to make sure without exception that every neighborhood has schools that offer academic and enrichment options that are attractive to our students,” he said.

In an ideal world, he said, he wants to see every student graduate bilingual and biliterate. On the career training front, Martinez said he wants to see more opportunities for middle school students to sample possible careers and even get high school credit, while high school students earn college credit and take part in internships, apprenticeships, and other hands-on training:

“This,” he said, “is the future of education.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Technology, Skyline rollout dominate Chicago Public Schools’ federal relief vendor spending

2022-08-11T15:59:21+00:00

Technology companies and curriculum consultants received nearly half of the federal stimulus money Chicago Public Schools has spent so far on outside vendors, according to purchase order data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Almost a quarter went to five companies helping the district roll out Skyline, a new curriculum schools can choose to adopt and one of former CEO Janice Jackson’s signature initiatives. Nearly a fifth of the spending went to CDW and Apple, the district’s main computer vendors.

The amounts are still a small fraction of the $2.5 billion Chicago schools got from the federal government’s two latest stimulus packages for schools. The $156.6 million spent on almost 1,000 outside vendors so far accounts for about 6% of the funding from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER — an unprecedented infusion of federal dollars aimed at helping students bounce back from the pandemic’s massive academic and mental health fallout.

Chicago has so far spent the bulk of its COVID relief money on salaries and benefits, mostly for positions that existed before the pandemic hit. The district is an outlier, particularly among high-poverty districts, in how much of its COVID relief dollars has covered staffing costs: Out of about $871.9 million in spending the district reported to the state in early July, more than 85% went to pay and benefits — compared to 27% on average for other Illinois districts. Chicago officials have said this spending has allowed the district to retain employees even as it lost enrollment.

The data, which includes some open purchase orders that have not yet been paid out, covers only spending on district-run campuses. The district has passed on about $38.5 million to charter and contract schools as required by law, but it was unable to provide more detailed data on how they spent the money.

The district also said it recently reclassified some vendor expenses previously paid with other dollars to cover them with COVID relief funds, so they are not included in the purchase order data it provided earlier this summer.

It’s hard to put Chicago’s COVID relief spending on outside vendors into national context because relatively little detailed data from other districts is available, said Bree Dusseault of the nonprofit Center on Reinventing Public Education.

“We want to see districts invest in at least something new and different to disrupt an inequitable school system, which wasn’t designed to recover well,” Dusseault said. “They should be investing in new approaches.”

In Chicago, a large chunk of the money is going to longstanding vendors or to initiatives that were already in the works when the pandemic hit, such as the Skyline curriculum. The district has also brought in new partners to provide student mental health support and other services, including a collaboration with Lurie Children’s Hospital to expand behavioral health teams in schools. The data indicates the hospital has gotten a little more than $250,000.

Dusseault stressed the importance of using the money to support and keep staff, many of whom are leaving after two difficult years of pandemic disruption. She said unveiling a high-quality curriculum could be a powerful tool to help schools bounce back from the pandemic’s academic damage, as long as it is coupled with teacher training and ongoing support.

The district said in a statement that it works to spend the federal dollars “thoughtfully and deliberately.”

All in all, about 20 large vendors account for the bulk of the spending, or more than $105 million, with schools across the city engaging other companies and organizations on a much smaller scale, sometimes to provide arts and enrichment activities for students. In addition to technology and Skyline, COVID-related expenses – for masks and school care room attendants – also figure prominently in the district’s outside federal relief spending.

Here are the top 10 vendors that have gotten COVID relief money from Chicago Public Schools so far:

(Can’t see the list? View the graphic directly.)

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

As fewer kids enroll, big cities face a small schools crisis

2022-08-01T12:00:00+00:00

On a recent morning inside Chalmers School of Excellence on Chicago’s West Side, five preschool and kindergarten students finished up drawings. Four staffers, including a teacher and a tutor, chatted with them about colors and shapes.

The summer program offers the kind of one-on-one support parents love. But behind the scenes, Principal Romian Crockett worries the school is becoming precariously small.

Chalmers lost almost a third of its enrollment during the pandemic, shrinking to 215 students. In Chicago, COVID-19 worsened declines that preceded the virus: Predominantly Black neighborhoods like Chalmers’ North Lawndale, long plagued by disinvestment, have seen an exodus of families over the past decade.

The number of small schools like Chalmers is growing in many American cities as public school enrollment declines. More than 1 in 5 New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over 1 in 4. In Chicago it has grown to nearly 1 in 3, and in Boston it’s approaching 1 in 2, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

Most of these schools were not originally designed to be small, and educators worry the coming years will bring tighter budgets even as schools are still recovering from the pandemic’s disruption.

“When you lose kids, you lose resources,” said Crockett, the Chalmers principal. “That impacts your ability to serve kids with very high needs.”

A state law prohibits Chicago from closing or consolidating schools until 2025. And across the U.S., COVID-19 relief money is helping subsidize these shrinking schools. But when the money runs out in a few years, officials will face a difficult choice: Keep the schools open despite the financial strain, or close them, upsetting communities looking for stability for their children.

“My worry is that we will shut down when we have all worked so hard,” said Yvonne Wooden, who serves on Chalmers’ school council. Her children went to the pre-K through eighth-grade school, and two grandchildren attend now. “That would really hurt our neighborhood.”

The pandemic accelerated enrollment declines in many districts as families switched to homeschooling, charter schools and other options. Still other students moved away or vanished from school rolls for unknown reasons.

Many districts like Chicago give schools money for each student. That means small schools sometimes struggle to pay for fixed costs — the principal, a counselor and building upkeep.

To address that, many allocate extra money to small schools, diverting dollars from larger schools. In Chicago, the district spends an average of $19,000 annually per student at small high schools, while students at larger ones get $10,000, according to the Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

“I love small schools, but small schools are very expensive,” Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez told the school board recently. “We can get some really creative, innovative models, but we need the funding.”

At the same time, these schools are often stretched thin. Very small schools offer fewer clubs, sports and arts programs. Some elementary schools are forced to group students from different grades in the same classroom, although Martinez has vowed that won’t happen next year.

Manley Career Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side illustrates the paradox. It now serves 65 students, and the cost per student has shot up to $40,000, even though schools like Manley offer few elective courses, sports and extracurricular activities.

“We’re spending $40,000 per pupil just to offer the bare minimum,” said Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago, which has studied declining enrollment in the district. “It’s not really a $40,000-per-pupil student experience.”

Small schools are popular with families, teachers and community members because of their tight-knit, supportive feel. Some argue districts should pour more dollars into these schools, many of them in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the pandemic. Schools can serve as community hubs and points of local pride even as they lose students — as is the case in North Lawndale.

Race also looms large. Nationally, schools with more students of color are more likely to be closed, and those in affected communities often feel unfairly targeted.

Students attend a class at Chalmers Elementary School. Chicago and New York City are among the places that have spent COVID relief money to keep schools open, prioritizing stability for students and families.

The prospect of closing schools is particularly fraught in Chicago, where 50 schools were shuttered in 2013, most in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The move frayed trust between residents and the district and, according to University of Chicago research, markedly disrupted learning for low-income students.

In Boston, where the district had been losing students well before the pandemic, families are skeptical of closures.

Among the schools most at risk is P.A. Shaw Elementary School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Revived from a previous closure in 2014, the school had just over 150 students last year, down from 250 in 2018. After making plans to eliminate two classrooms earlier this year — seen by some as a harbinger of closure — the district faced blowback from parents and teachers.

Parents rallying behind the school included Brenda Ramsey, whose 7-year-old daughter, Emersyn Wise, is entering second grade. When Ramsey became homeless and went to stay with family during the pandemic, teachers from Shaw drove half an hour to deliver schoolwork. Later, the school’s staff helped Ramsey find permanent housing.

Ramsey, 32, still remembers the joy she felt when she and her two daughters first visited Shaw.

“The principal looked like them — she was a young Black woman who was excited to see them,” she said.“They were really big on family engagement, family involvement, and that’s just something you don’t see that often.”

Now, with the school’s fate in question, Ramsey is debating whether to keep Emersyn there.

Ramsey’s dilemma illustrates what the district calls its “cycle of declining enrollment”: Schools’ enrollment falls, leading to financial instability – which prompts even more families to leave. The problem is often worse at schools with more students of color.

And when schools face closure, it’s “devastating” for families, said Suleika Soto, acting director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, which advocates for underrepresented students.

“It means you have to uproot,” she said. “And then if parents don’t like it, then they’ll remove their children from the public school system, which again adds to the toxic cycle.”

Nevertheless, some urban school districts that are losing students, including Denver, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, Missouri are considering school closures. Earlier this year, the Oakland, California, school board voted to close several small schools despite furious protests.

“School budgets have been cut as a way to keep more schools open,” said former Oakland board member Shanthi Gonzales, who resigned in May soon after voting to support school closures. “There are really awful tradeoffs.”

Elsewhere, leaders — buoyed by federal COVID-19 relief funds — have continued to invest in these schools.

Two young students work with Davetra Richardson in a classroom at Chalmers Elementary School.

Chicago will use about $140 million of the $2.8 billion in COVID-19 relief it got to help prop up small schools this school year, officials said. Martinez, who took over as schools chief last fall, has sidestepped talk of closures, saying he wants to study how the district can make its campuses more attractive to families — and push for more money from the state.

In Los Angeles and New York City, officials say they’re focused on luring students back into the system, not school closures.

But federal relief money will run out soon: districts must budget that money by September 2024. When it does, districts may be hard pressed to keep all of their small schools afloat.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Bruce Fuller, an education researcher at University of California, Berkeley. “It’s going to be increasingly difficult for superintendents to justify keeping these places open as the number of these schools continues to rise.”

Chalkbeat journalists Kaitlyn Radde in Washington, D.C. and Thomas Wilburn in Chicago and Associated Press journalist Sharon Lurye in New Orleans contributed to this report. Barnum reported from New York and Binkley from Boston.

Early results from this spring’s state test suggest Chicago students are still struggling

2022-06-16T11:00:00+00:00

Chicago teachers and principals got an early look at Illinois state test results in recent weeks — and what they saw was sobering.

According to the preliminary, unofficial scores obtained by Chalkbeat, 15% of the district’s third through eighth graders who took the test this spring met state standards in math, and a fifth of students met standards in English language arts. Meanwhile, roughly a third of students in both reading and math scored near the bottom on the test.

The data has not been verified by the state, which will allow districts to submit corrections over the summer and release the numbers publicly this fall. Chicago Public Schools, which along with other districts shared the scores with school leaders in late May to help plan instruction for the fall, said it cannot yet provide data on the number and demographics of students who took the test this spring. Though testing conditions were more typical than in 2021, when school was virtual for most, the lack of participation data makes comparisons to previous years problematic.

Still, amid a dearth of districtwide metrics capturing where Chicago students stand academically post-COVID, the data offers a rare window into a reality district leaders have acknowledged: This was much less of a recovery year than they hoped it would be, when dealing with heightened student mental health needs, staffing shortages, and coronavirus surges sometimes overshadowed academics. In 2018-19, the year before the pandemic disrupted learning, almost a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students met or exceeded expectations in math, and 28% met or exceeded standards in language arts.

“This data is not exactly a surprise, but it starts to quantify what everyone’s been talking about in a way that’s reliably linked to mastery of state learning standards,” said Paul Zavitkovsky, an assessment specialist at the Center for Urban Education Leadership at the University of Illinois Chicago.

A spokeswoman for ISBE said the agency has not yet received the data from Pearson, the test provider, making results “very, very preliminary.” Districts can submit data corrections to the agency during a window in July and August — “a crucial step for ensuring data accuracy,” the spokeswoman said.

Chicago officials also cautioned that these results are still unofficial and could yet change and declined to comment on them. They noted about 14,000 student records, which account for almost 10% of students eligible to take the test, were not included in the districtwide results because they were missing information such as a student ID or a test score. A CPS employee shared the districtwide numbers with Chalkbeat.

Some experts Chalkbeat spoke with said it’s fairly unlikely that the outcomes will change significantly as a result of the state’s verification process, particularly for a large district such as Chicago. However, some also stressed the lack of data on who took the test this spring — especially in light of enrollment declines and other pandemic-era disruption — makes comparisons to previous years unreliable.

Teachers unions and some parent groups in Chicago and statewide have sharply criticized the practice of administering standardized tests amid the pandemic, especially in 2021. They argue that the exams have added to the burden on students and educators without offering meaningful information about how students are doing.

Outgoing Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey said he remains skeptical of the tests’ value.

“Who really benefits from ranking and sorting schoolchildren, when our students have been through extraordinary trauma and desperately need counselors, social workers, art teachers, special education teachers, teaching assistants, afterschool programs, and more?” Sharkey said in a statement.

Chicago has vowed to step up academic interventions

The preliminary test scores for Chicago Public Schools show the percentage of students meeting standards declining markedly across grades in both math and reading since before the pandemic. The portion of students who scored in the lowest of five categories — “did not yet meet expectations” — increased to about a third of students in both English language arts and math.

The setbacks on the test are especially pronounced for grades three, four, and five, notes Zavitkovsky. That’s troubling, he said, because those grades are a crucial time for mastering foundational skills before students enter middle school, with its emphasis on more complex subject matter.

“The implication here is that without deep instructional interventions at the middle school level that have been very difficult to achieve under the best of conditions, the likelihood of learning recovery for kids now entering the middle school years is pretty low,” he said.

In Chicago, district officials have said that the challenges of responding to two COVID surges this school year got in the way of tackling academic recovery in earnest. They plan to step up such efforts in the coming school year, including by staffing more interventionists — educators who work with struggling students one-on-one or in small groups — and investing in professional development. The district is putting more dollars in an in-house tutoring program that confronted hiring challenges in 2021-22.

Typically, nearly all students in grades 3-8 take state tests, which were canceled nationwide in 2020. Zavitkovsky did not put much stock in Illinois’s 2020-21 results, when about 68% of eligible students statewide took the assessment — a group that was disproportionately white. Overall in Chicago, 16% of students who took the test last year met standards in math and 21% did in reading.

However, he said with students across the state back learning in person full-time, this spring’s results are a more valid measure of the pandemic’s damage and offer districts some insights on where to focus their recovery efforts.

Zavitkovsky said the data cleanup over the summer largely involves correcting student demographic data and accounting for transfers that can affect individual campus results. But he said districtwide results coming directly from the testing provider should be fairly reliable.

Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research said while she would not rule out future changes to Chicago’s preliminary scores, those changes are usually small.

She noted another potential factor in the score declines: changes to the district’s accountability process. Both educator and campus evaluations are on hold as the district rethinks how it measures both, and with less pressure to perform well, scores tend to slip somewhat.

Derek Briggs, who leads the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said he, too, believes it would be unlikely for the districtwide results to shift significantly, thanks to an approach called “pre-equating” that allows for reporting results quickly with a higher level of confidence.

However, he said the absence of data on test participation means this spring’s numbers are now lacking crucial context. Not only is data on the portion of eligible students who took the test missing, but it’s also unknown whether the cohorts of students who took the test in 2018-19 are still around. And with massive pandemic-era enrollment losses in urban districts such as Chicago, the test-takers of this spring are likely a smaller, different group.

“We expected COVID to have a negative effect on learning,” Briggs said. “But these scores might not accurately capture that because we don’t know if we are comparing apples to apples.”

Nationally, there is some evidence that this past spring saw a return to more normal participation and testing procedures, at a time when nearly every school in the country was open for in-person learning. But in Chicago, there is no solid data, and quarantines for students who tested positive for COVID and unvaccinated close contacts might have added a wild card.

Early results helped school leaders plan

Some district leaders and others have complained for some time that they receive results from the IAR, which the state considered replacing but decided to keep this year, too late during the year to make them relevant to efforts to strengthen instruction. This spring, Pearson gave districts early access to the preliminary results.

Chicago Public Schools turned over the preliminary scores to principals May 31. The district’s office of teaching and learning also hosted workshops for school staff on making use of the scores in instruction.

“This is the fastest release of preliminary data in recent memory by the Illinois State Board of Education of the Illinois Assessment of Readiness testing results,” the district said in a statement. “The early release of preliminary IAR results will allow the district and school teams to begin an early plan for academic support in the coming school year.”

One principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously without authorization to discuss the scores, said the early release of the data was extremely helpful. Educator teams at various grade levels pored over scores for their grades and for individual students, rallying around plans to address gaps when school resumes in late August.

For example, the English language arts test revealed that some students’ struggles with writing — what that principal described as one of the legacies of learning remotely — were hampering their learning. Teachers made a plan to step up work on those skills in the fall.

“It was really worthwhile to have this information and share it with teachers so they can make adjustments in the fall,” the principal said.

Still, this principal said it was discouraging to see the districtwide results, which the principal said suggest the district did not do enough this school year to help students catch up academically. Students urgently need added instruction, especially in reading, but staffing shortages, including an ongoing dearth of trained tutors, and educators too exhausted and burned out to take on after-school work are getting in the way.

“I worry about the long-term effects,” the principal said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

At one high-needs Chicago high school, the class that bore the brunt of COVID’s toll graduates

2022-06-13T21:48:39+00:00

Gerlia Baker and Keshawn Arnold sat side by side in a high school auditorium on Chicago’s Southwest Side — she in a white robe with the gold salutatorian stole draped around her shoulders, he in the gleaming blue robe most of the Richards Career Academy’s 40 soon-to-be graduates wore.

The two cousins were members of the high school class that felt the brunt of COVID’s upheaval – a disruption that brought them closer even as it wrenched their academic trajectories wider apart.

“Keeping it real: You have been cheated,” Richards principal Ellen Kennedy told them and their classmates from the stage. “This pandemic robbed you of so many of the high school experiences you so richly deserve.”

Since the second half of their sophomore year, the outbreak has tested public schools across the country: It shuttered campuses and abruptly shifted learning online. It left families grappling with illness, death, and economic hardship. It ushered in crippling staff shortages and quarantines.

For Gerlia, Keshawn, and countless teens like them, those cascading challenges sank GPAs. They upended school athletic seasons. They sapped motivation and brought on depression. They also opened up reserves of strength and determination that at times surprised them.

The past nine months were supposed to help students bounce back in time for graduation, but a sense of normalcy has remained elusive for them and their small school in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, where half of the students are Black and half are Latino.

As Gerlia and Keshawn, both 18, stood on the cusp of their post-high school lives, they knew the pandemic had also put its stamp on their next steps. It would, they suspected, reverberate well past the moment when they walked out of the aging Richards building for the very last time.

That evening on stage, under a white, blue, and gold balloon arch that spelled out 2022, Kennedy nodded to that reality. But she also urged them to refuse to let COVID define them.

“Fate took your high school career in a direction we did not expect,” she said. “Don’t let that consume you. The past is the past.”

Chalkbeat Chicago followed Gerlia, Keshawn, and the Richards high school community throughout the school year, to learn about efforts to reengage students and navigate the challenges of another pandemic year. The graduation at Tilden High School, the first traditional ceremony in three years, was yet another marker of both the obstacles and triumphs of the COVID era for students in Chicago and around the nation.

The graduation ceremony at Tilden was the first traditional ceremony Richards students had for three years.

Graduation festivities return at Richards

Earlier that evening, Gerlia and Keshawn waited outside Tilden’s auditorium for the start of the ceremony. They were at the head of one of two lines of students gearing up to file inside, where families waited.

In the hallway, robes swished gently on restless bodies, almost drowned out by animated chatter in English and Spanish. Caps featured an explosion of color: plastic flowers and butterflies, the green, white, and red stripes of the Mexican flag, the Nike check mark symbol with the words, “Just Did It.”

Gerlia’s cap was trimmed with white fur. She stood still and poised, glancing at her phone with studied indifference, tuning out the excitement and fidgeting around her. Keshawn’s cap read “021 Free Black.” He was his usual high-energy, jocular self: bouncing on the balls of his feet, chatting with friends, pacing to the back of the line, donning a pair of sunglasses and taking them off, calling out to the school’s dean of students and basketball coach Corbin Leeks.

“Keshawn, get over here — stop playin’,” Gerlia said sternly, barely glancing up from her phone.

“You guys ready on this side?” asked a staffer wearing one of Richards’ custom “The tassel was worth the hassle” shirts.

“Hey, we need, like, five more minutes,” Keshawn called back. “We’re too nervous.”

Education leaders and experts are just beginning to capture the pandemic’s toll on the country’s public school students: Graduation rates dipped in at least 20 states. (In Chicago, the on-time graduation rate slipped slightly while the five-year rate hit a record high.) National test score studies suggest slowing academic growth and widening racial and income disparities. Attendance this fall lagged pre-pandemic rates markedly, hovering around 83% on average in Chicago high schools.

Of the 45 Richards seniors who started in the fall, one moved, one dropped out, one transferred to an alternative high school and two will take another crack at finishing up over the summer.

But numbers can’t quite capture the ways in which Gerlia and Keshawn struggled — or how each dug deep for a resilience they didn’t know they had.

Gerlia juggled school with captaining the basketball team, caring for four younger siblings, serving as a student rep on the local school council, and working a job at Wendy’s that had her closing out the store at 1:30 a.m. several times a week. Still, she stayed focused on her goal of becoming a valedictorian and landing at the right college.

Earlier this spring, fatigue set in prematurely, and Gerlia lapsed briefly into the flat, unmotivated state that she knew from the previous year of remote learning. She got her mojo back by the end of the spring, and though another student — Deysi Coronel, the captain of the soccer team — narrowly edged her out for valedictorian, she felt she had finished her high school career strong.

Keshawn, on the other hand, returned in the fall shaky after largely disconnecting from school the previous spring. As with many other teens at Richards and other schools, his efforts to get back on track were sometimes hampered by spotty attendance and behavioral issues. A basketball standout, he had a tough season, landing on the bench more often than ever before after clashing with Leeks. But, with occasional pep talks from Gerlia, he made it to the finish line.

For Richards, end-of-the-school year events helped reclaim some normalcy. After a two-year hiatus, prom was back at a downtown hotel. The school also held once again its traditional senior luncheon.

In the spring of 2020, Richards held drive-through graduation ceremonies in a parking lot. Last year, it hosted six mini-graduations, gathering up to a dozen seniors to confer their diplomas hurriedly while most family members waited outside.

This year, with the return to Tilden’s auditorium, Kennedy said the day before graduation, “We’re back to regular-ish end of year events.”

Now, as the ceremony was about to begin, Gerlia and Keshawn stood at the head of their line, the sound of “Pomp and Circumstance” inside the auditorium rising in anticipation. The cousins exchanged a final glance and plunged into the joyous, raucous mass of family members, who snapped photos, bounced fussy babies, leaned against walkers, cheered, and called out the graduates’ names.

The graduating seniors strode slowly toward the stage decorated in the Richards’ blue and white colors.

Family members cheer on their loved ones as they graduate from Richards, celebrating their students’ milestone achievement following the chaos of a global pandemic.

The pandemic changed students’ take on college

After Kennedy’s opening remarks, Leeks, the dean of students, called Gerlia, “a natural leader,” to the stage to give her salutatorian speech.

“Go ahead, queen!” a woman screamed from the crowd as Gerlia stood and strode confidently to the stage.

Gerlia spoke about the setbacks the last two-and-half years had brought: Remote learning tested her and her classmates. The loss of her grandmother to cancer damaged her support system irreparably.

She thanked God and the staff at Richards for looking out for her along the way.

“We lost half of sophomore year and all of junior year,” she told her classmates. “We are still adjusting to being back, but I am grateful we have each other. I feel we are the best senior class to ever graduate from Richards.”

She said she was especially proud of Keshawn for “getting back on track to graduation.”

“Congratulations, class of 2022,” she said “You made it.”

At times this spring, Gerlia has been haunted by the question, “What if the pandemic never happened?”

She likely would have ventured farther for college, perhaps at one of the HBCUs teachers and family members have been talking up – and perhaps on an athletic scholarship, if the virus had not upended her later sports seasons.

But the turmoil made her crave the safety of home and feel a responsibility to be closer if her mother needs help. She is headed to Western Illinois University to study journalism. A visitor from the school earlier this spring convinced her it was the right fit, with its wide range of majors and lots of student clubs and activities.

“Students are really involved at that school, and that’s the kind of place I want to be,” Gerlia said the day before the graduation ceremony. “Richards is the same way. Richards is still coming with me.”

Her thoughts about the summer revolve around paying for college: The university gave her a scholarship, but it doesn’t cover tuition and other expenses in full. She is trying to land more hours at Wendy’s over the summer. At college, she plans to juggle a work-study position and an off-campus job.

Forty Richards seniors received their diplomas as this academic year comes to a close.

Keshawn is still unsure about his fall plans, but he’s eyeing Kennedy-King College in the City Colleges of Chicago network. Without the pandemic, Keshawn — a promising sophomore on the cusp of COVID — says he would have been in a stronger position, with a higher GPA and a better track record in basketball. But while the outbreak dealt a blow to college attendance, particularly for Black and Latino boys, Keshawn says it left him determined to go.

“If the pandemic didn’t happen, I don’t know if I’d have gone to college,” he said. “But I missed out on a year of school, and I want to make up for that.”

His major? “I’ll let it come to me when I get there,” he said. “I’m just going with the flow.” He plans to work at FedEx and play basketball this summer.

But first, both Gerlia and Keshawn are taking time to simply savor making it to graduation day.

On stage at Tilden High School, Yeridiath Bejar, a Richards counselor, took the podium to confer the diplomas.

“Let’s get started,” she said. “Vamos!”

Keshawn was third to stride across the stage, giving himself a clap as he advanced toward Kennedy. He towered over the principal as they paused for a photo with his diploma. Gerlia did a little dance when she took the stage, then pranced toward Kennedy to catch up.

After all 40 seniors had crossed the stage, the new graduates turned to face their families. Kennedy instructed them to move their tassels from right to left.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kennedy said, as applause and cheers from the stands swallowed up her voice. “I now present to you the class of 2022.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools unveils $9.5 billion budget for upcoming school year

2022-06-07T22:12:20+00:00

Chicago Public Schools unveiled a 2022-23 district budget Tuesday totaling $9.5 billion, up roughly $200 million, or about 2%, from this school year.

Under its proposed plan, the district is gearing up to spend more on about 1,600 added teaching and other staff positions, expanded professional development, and facility projects — and on servicing its significant debt. Next year’s budget is the first for CEO Pedro Martinez, a one-time finance chief at the district, who inherited this school year’s spending plan when he took over at the helm last September.

Notably absent was any reference to former CEO Janice Jackson’s signature Moving Forward Together pandemic recovery initiative, which was supposed to be in its second year in 2022-23 — though the district will stick with some investments under that framework, such as an in-house tutoring program that was off to a slower-than-planned start this school year. The district, which owes some $8.6 billion, will spend $769 million on debt service payments, slightly more than last year.

Overall, $4.6 billion will go directly into school budgets, representing about 48% of the overall budget, a slightly larger portion compared with this school year. Amid declining student enrollment that accelerated during the pandemic, that campus funding adds up to an 8% increase per pupil. The district will spend $765 million for facilities, a roughly 14% increase over this year.

District officials said the focus will be on the academic and mental health recovery that remained elusive this year, as well as social and emotional learning and professional growth for educators. The district, which said it has spent about 45% of $2.8 billion in federal emergency COVID relief funds, is budgeting another $730 million of those dollars.

Some of the money will buttress pre-pandemic initiatives and programs, such as a pre-kindergarten expansion, grants for schools dealing with steep enrollment declines, and the rollout of the district’s universal Skyline curriculum.

“We’re investing these funds strategically, setting a new foundation for success to ensure schools have the resources and capacity to move every student forward,” Martinez said in a statement.

The school board will vote on the budget at its June 22 meeting. District leaders set the stage for the budget unveiling at their meeting in May, when they spoke at length about what they described as a murky long-term financial outlook for the country’s third-largest district, with a historic infusion of federal COVID relief dollars only a temporary salve.

Martinez and some school board members voiced frustration that the district does not have the ability to ask the city’s taxpayers to raise their taxes to chip in more for operating and facility expenses.

This year’s $9.3 billion budget grew by about 10% from the previous year, thanks to roughly $1 billion federal COVID relief dollars. It featured more modest spending on facilities projects, a tab that had shrunk in recent years before this coming year’s proposed hike.

The district first announced its campus budgets in April, drawing criticism because budgets would shrink on 40% of campuses amid significant pandemic-era enrollment losses, even though the district was allocating more dollars to schools overall.

Critics including the district’s principal association, teachers union, and parent advocacy groups called for holding school budgets harmless for the third year in a row as the city’s schools make a plodding pandemic recovery.

Through an annual process in which school leaders appeal the size of their budgets, the district has since restored about $24 million in funding, including $14 million for special education. The district also distributed professional development and other centrally budgeted dollars among campuses, boosting overall school budget amounts and shrinking the amount of the cuts to a total of $18.6 million, with about 23% of campuses now seeing lower budgets.

Principals, parents, and others are urging the district to step up spending its federal pandemic relief dollars to address pressing student academic and mental health needs. District leaders have pushed back in recent weeks, arguing that deploying the extra money gradually over three years will make for more sustainable expenses.

Next year’s investments with that funding include $100 million for early childhood programs, $72 million for centrally funded teaching positions, $45 million for professional development, and $30 million in summer school programming.

The district said next year’s budget includes 43,376 full-time employee positions, an increase of 1,620, including 524 teachers, 112 nurses, and 53 counselors, among others. The new educator positions include 100 additional art teachers as the district said it put a premium on expanding arts instruction along with reducing class sizes and boosting professional development. Special education funding is up $68 million.

The budget will also pay for a new initiative to reengage 1,000 young people who have disconnected from school for a year or longer during the pandemic.

Officials noted the district remains funded at just 68% of what the state estimates would represent “adequate” funding — and vowed to continue pushing for more resources.

Last month, the Chicago Board of Education narrowly approved increasing a pension payment to a city employee pension fund from $100 million to $170 million. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, one of the no votes, argued the district needs every dollar it can steer toward student needs as it tries to bounce back from the pandemic.

In response to Tuesday’s budget update, the Chicago Teachers Union argued the mayor was balancing city hall’s budget on the backs of students.

“Chicago Public Schools students and families have dealt with two years of trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the trauma many of them face from gun violence, discrimination, regressive fines and fees, and neglect of their communities,” the union said in a statement. “They’ve had enough of ‘tough.’ What they need is recovery, with compassionate, competent leadership that is leading that recovery — not cuts to their schools and classrooms.”

The district will host public hearings on the budget ahead of the board vote, from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. June 13 and from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. June 15 at its headquarters, at 42 W. Madison St. Hearings on the capital budgets will be held virtually at: noon June 15, 4 p.m. June 16, and 11:30 a.m. June 17.

Correction: This story was updated to reflect that $4.6 billion will go directly into school budgets.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board approves $170 million pension payment

2022-05-25T22:36:33+00:00

Chicago Public Schools leaders raised alarms about long-term financial pressures looming for the country’s third-largest district, arguing that like others in the state, it should have the ability to ask its residents to raise their own taxes to pay for operating and building project expenses.

The wide-ranging discussion came Wednesday as a divided board voted to significantly increase the district’s contribution to a city employee pension fund. The board also faced ongoing criticism over trimming some campus budgets next year, though officials recently reversed some of those cuts.

At the board’s regular monthly meeting, the district administration reiterated that it’s investing more in schools next year amid steep pandemic enrollment declines and is putting a premium on ensuring “reasonable” class sizes, arts programming, and academic interventions across the board. And officials gave a broad breakdown of how they have spent about $1 billion in federal COVID relief dollars so far, along with a more detailed outline of $600 million in additional spending planned for 2022-23.

But those dollars will be gone in two years, officials stressed, and the district’s prospects for additional revenue are murky at best — as Chicago gears up for a transition to an elected school board.

“This elected school board should have some of the same authority every other district in the state has to go to the voters for both operating and capital expenses,” said board president Miguel del Valle.

CEO Pedro Martinez similarly expressed frustration that the district is currently limited in asking Chicago’s taxpayers for help in chipping in for building improvements — an option he says was available at districts where he worked in Nevada and Texas.

CPS, which is gearing up to release its complete budget later this summer, announced its campus budgets in April. The district is allocating more dollars to schools overall, but critics pounced on proposed budget cuts at 40% of campuses amid significant pandemic-era enrollment losses.

The district’s principal association, teachers union, and some parent advocacy groups have argued that the district should hold school budgets harmless for the third year in a row to account for heightened student academic and mental health needs.

The district has since restored about $24 million in cuts, including $14 million for special education, following appeals from school leaders. The district also divvied up educator professional development and other dollars that had previously been centrally budgeted among school campuses, boosting overall school budget amounts. With these revisions, the overall amount of the cuts decreased to $18.6 million, with about 23% of campuses now seeing lower budgets.

But advocates and outgoing Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey continued to make a case against any cuts to the board Wednesday.

“As long as staff is being cut from schools that are already short-staffed, you’ll hear me speak out against these cuts,” Sharkey said.

Sharkey also decried a ballooning payment to a city employee pension fund at a time when Illinois, by its own calculation, found Chicago receives about 63% of the money it needs to be fully funded.

The district is on the hook for $170 million to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, a pension fund that covers its support staff — up from $100 million last year. This will be the third year the district will contribute for its employees’ pensions, an expense the city has previously handled.

“If the money isn’t there, let’s say we cannot afford to give $170 million to the city,” Sharkey said.

But del Valle said stepping in to cover pension expenditures for the district’s own employees is a key step in “disentangling” the district from the city as Chicago Public Schools transitions to an elected school board from one historically appointed by the mayor.

He called on the teachers union to join the district in advocating for more money from the state to help meet these pension obligations, which he said threaten to open up a “humongous structural deficit.”

Still, he stressed, “These pension payments are CPS employees. They are our responsibility.”

Board vice president Sendhil Revuluri said that over the years the city put “wildly inadequate” contributions into the fund, and Chicago now faces growing payments to catch up on increasing obligations. The $170 million represents about 65% of this year’s tab, with the city picking up the rest.

The board backed the increased payment on a 3-to-2 vote. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, one of the no votes, argued the district really needs every dollar it can steer toward student needs as it tries to bounce back from the pandemic.

“I’m not comfortable with having City Hall balance any more of their budget on CPS’ budget,” said Todd-Breland, who added “This is one of those times where we’re being asked to do this on a timeline that does not work for CPS.”

Correction: The article’s headline has been updated to reflect the total pension payment approved by the board.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

‘A glaring concern’: Chicago’s support staff substitute pool stretched thin amid pandemic

2022-05-25T14:26:13+00:00

When Chicago classroom assistants take time off or quit, Stekeena Rollins steps in to fill a crucial void.

She guides students with disabilities through lessons. She helps them eat lunch and go to the bathroom. And she “puts out little fires” amid an uptick in disruptive behaviors, sometimes feeling like a one-woman trauma team.

During a school year marked by unprecedented support staff shortages, Rollins has been in high demand.

This school year has trained a spotlight on a dearth of substitute teachers in Chicago and beyond. But the district’s special education classroom assistant, or SECA, substitute pool has also been stretched thin — even as the city hired more than 140 support staff substitutes last fall, growing that pool by more than 20%.

SECAs, who help students with disabilities with academics, behavior, and basic needs, have played a key role in navigating COVID’s disruption, helping schools forge and shore up student connections tested by surges and quarantines.

According to data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago, the district was able to fulfill slightly more than a quarter of almost 80,000 requests for a support staff sub so far this school year, compared with 68.5% of requests for substitute teachers. As with educator subs, data shows wide disparities in the rates of filled requests.

The staffing shortages and heightened student academic and mental health needs have brought renewed recognition of the key roles school support staff plays — and the importance of lining up backup.

At one Chicago school, a blind student skipped lunch because he didn’t know what was on the menu and put off drinking water to avoid bathroom trips when his SECA wasn’t around. At Englewood’s Perkins Bass Elementary, special education teacher Adriana Gonzalez has seen classroom teachers trying to double as aides, standing by a student with disabilities to offer support even as they are teaching a lesson to the entire classroom.

“SECAs are an integral part of the school community,” said Gonzalez. “You can definitely feel a shift when they are absent.”

Amid increasingly stressful work and relatively low pay, many paraprofessionals and other school support staff members have been swept up in the Great Resignation, said Ritu Chopra, the executive director of the Paraprofessional Research and Resource Center at the University of Colorado Denver. Chicago Public Schools has almost 440 SECA and bus aide vacancies this month, compared with 250 around the same time in 2019, according to the SEIU Local 73, the union that represents both full-time and substitute SECAs and bus aides in the district.

Many school districts, including larger urban districts such as Detroit Public Schools, don’t even have support staff substitute pools.

“I am hearing more about paraeducator shortages than ever before,” Chopra said. “In some cases, they get paid more at a fast food restaurant, and it’s less stress for them.”

SECAs pick schools that communicate student needs clearly

Rollins, the substitute SECA, says schools desperate for substitutes have courted her like never before: She gets more phone calls directly from principals trying to enlist her. Teachers praise her work and ask if they can get her a coffee or a bite to eat.

Stekeena Rollins serves as a special education classroom assistant substitute in Chicago Public Schools.

“I need to clone myself 10 more times because I get so many requests,” said Rollins, who subs in Chicago and neighboring Evanston. “It’s almost like a bidding war.”

Support staff vacancies and attrition have bedeviled Chicago Public Schools for years, but this year, the number of SECA vacancies are “a glaring concern,” said SEIU Local 73 executive vice president Stacia Scott.

Some students with disabilities are entitled to one-to-one or part-time SECA support under their Individualized Education Programs, the binding documents outlining their needs. Scott says she has seen more robust efforts — in some cases in tandem with the union — to recruit and quickly onboard custodians and crossing guards.

“I’m not sure why there hasn’t been the same full-court press when it comes to SECAs and bus aides,” she said.

While the fill rates for substitute SECA requests have been low across the board this school year at about 23% on average, some schools have done much better than others, a data analysis by Chalkbeat shows.

About 45 of the district’s roughly 500 schools had none of their requests for SECA subs fulfilled. On the flipside, almost 20 schools had fill rates of 70% or more. The Blair Early Childhood Center on the Southwest Side got coverage all 94 times it requested support staff subs.

Substitute teacher coverage data shows that schools in some North Side neighborhoods tend to draw those educators at much higher rates than high-needs campuses on the South and West sides. But the picture is more mixed when it comes to support staff subs. The neighborhoods with highest fill rates for SECA and other subs are largely on the South and Southwest Sides, including Oakland, South Deering, Riverdale, and Roseland.

Scott and SECA subs who spoke with Chalkbeat suggested that more of these substitutes live in South and West side neighborhoods and seek out opportunities to fill in close to home. Areas that are harder to reach by public transit, such as O’Hare, might be at a particular disadvantage.

Ciere Fisher started working as a substitute SECA in 2014 while she was attending community college and weighing a teaching career. She later joined the district as a full-time SECA but returned to subbing as she pursues a graduate degree in occupational therapy. She says she subbed at a handful of nearby schools when she lived on the West Sides. Now in Lakeview on the North Side, she again stays largely close to home.

But she also says that some campuses do a better job of helping substitute SECAs navigate the tough job of parachuting in to serve students with high needs in unfamiliar environments.

Following advocacy from the support staff union, full-time SECAs are expected to leave information on students’ needs, schedules, likes, and dislikes for their substitutes in the district’s system. But only some schools, such as Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, where Fisher works regularly, have fully embraced that practice.

In other cases this school year, Fisher says, teachers are surprised when she shows up in their classrooms — occasionally saying they didn’t even know the district had substitute SECAs. And during a hectic school year, no one has the time to explain what she needs to do and how she can be most helpful.

She’s had some overwhelming days, stepping in to cover absences or vacancies in several different classrooms on the same day and covering lunch duty.

“It’s kind of like being thrown to the wolves,” she said. “I end up feeling like I’m not being that helpful, and I’m just a body in a room.”

Rollins also says she also gravitates toward schools that communicate clearly about student needs. Because of a shoulder injury, she often can’t serve students who need to be lifted onto wheelchairs or changing tables during the day — and it’s frustrating to show up at a school only to find out she’s not a fit for their needs.

Schools in Chicago tend to be better about providing that information than Evanston, said Rollins, who also substitute teaches in that district. At $24 an hour for sub SECAs, the pay in Chicago is better.

Chicago has stepped up effort to hire substitute paraprofessionals

The district says it has stepped up efforts to recruit and retain both substitute teachers and paraprofessionals this school year. It touts monthly job fairs, a redesigned sub recruitment website, and a social media campaign to highlight the flexibility and rewards of these jobs.

The district hired more than 140 substitute SECAs in October and November alone to address support staff vacancies, increasing that pool to 430 people, from 350 on the cusp of the pandemic.

The district also offered a daily pay incentive at the height of the omicron surge in January. SEIU’s Scott says the COVID spikes and delays in contact tracing earlier this year affected sub coverage: “The fear level is very high among our subs because of how transient they are.”

Nationally, districts are paying closer attention to support staff recruitment and retention, and in some cases trying to expand their substitute pools. The 820,000-student New York City school district now has 10,000 paraprofessional substitutes, up more than 3,000 since before the pandemic, according to the United Federation of Teachers, the district’s educator union, which also represents para subs. That district requires full-time paras to serve in that substitute pool first; it pays a daily rate of $166.67.

In Chicago, mental health and behavioral concerns have dominated calls to Equip for Equality’s hotline, but staff attorney Luiza Quental says the nonprofit that provides legal services and advocacy for people with disabilities has also heard from families who say their children are entitled to a SECA — but it doesn’t seem one is there, at least not consistently. Being able to line up backup for those crucial positions is key, she said.

“Some kids really can’t be without a para,” she said. “The day the para doesn’t come, families don’t send them to school or pick them up early.”

Angelina Landaverde, one of the nonprofit’s clients, has a fourth-grade son who is blind and shares a SECA with other students. She says the boy has had four different SECAs so far this school year, and she keeps hearing from him about stretches when he isn’t getting much help.

The family is pushing for more support in hopes of seeing faster gains in his reading and writing skills. Landaverde said her son didn’t eat lunch sometimes and avoided drinking water because he didn’t want to impose on friends to help him with meals and bathroom trips.

“Those are not jobs for his friends,” Landaverde said in Spanish. “That’s where a paraprofessional comes in.”

Gonzalez, the Englewood teacher, says she has definitely felt the shortage of backup SECAs this school year. In a self-contained classroom where she works with students with disabilities, missing a SECA for the day means that she struggles to accommodate students who need to take a break from the classroom during the school day.

Gonzalez took part in a recently released survey by Educators for Excellence Chicago, in which 83% of teachers polled said special education support staff shortages have challenged their school this year.

Some Chicago principals say in a school year filled with staffing and other challenges, finding support staff backup can seem like a lesser worry.

But, as one principal who spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously because he was not authorized by the district put it:

“If you can’t find a SECA sub, how do you supervise lunch and recess? How do you provide attention and care to students with extreme behavioral and other needs? For families and for classroom teachers, it’s a big deal.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Teachers Union leadership retains power, despite growing opposition

2022-05-21T13:34:12+00:00

After a contentious run-up to the election, the incumbent leadership group known as Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) will retain power over the Chicago Teachers Union for another three years, defeating two slates who looked to unseat the group that has steered the union for over a decade.

CORE avoided a runoff election by winning 56% of the vote, the Chicago Teachers Union announced early Saturday morning. Challenger group Members First earned 27%, and the slate Respect, Educate, Advocate, and Lead, or REAL, received 17% of the vote.

In a statement to rank-and-file members, outgoing president Jesse Sharkey acknowledged the extremely challenging three years for members, who have gone through an 11-day strike, the ongoing pandemic, and “two brutal school reopening campaigns to protect your safety and that of your school communities.”

“This particular election saw competing visions from three slates vying for leadership of our union,” Sharkey said, who acknowledged the heated debates running up to the election. “It is time for us to come together for healing, and the solidarity that anchor our strength.”

Stacy Davis Gates will replace Sharkey, who announced earlier this year he would not seek re-election. Other officers are Jackson Potter, vice president, Maria Morena, chief financial secretary, and Christel Williams-Hayes, recording secretary. CORE was first elected in 2010.

Gates will lead the union as the district continues to navigate the fallout from the pandemic. The upcoming mayoral election and transition to an elected school board is on the horizon and could see the union leaders exercising their political muscle.

The period leading to the union election has been tense. Union leadership sued a former advisor to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Lisa Schneider Fabes, arguing that a social media campaign backing Members First amounted to illegal outside meddling.

During the election, Members First criticized current leadership for overreaching on social issues not directly connected to the classroom instead of staying focused on more traditional concerns such as prep time and compensation. Members First also said the union was too quick to strike in January, pointing to a standoff with the mayor’s office that produced modest changes to safety protocols amid the omicron surge.

REAL also criticized the handling of the strike. They argued that current leadership was disconnected from rank-and-file members and spent too much money supporting political candidates without giving members a full accounting.

Throughout the pandemic, CORE leadership has pushed the district to adopt strict safety strategies. A call for an agreement came to a head in January when teachers voted to walk out and teach remotely over safety concerns. The district canceled classes and locked teachers out of remote instruction software during the standoff.

CORE leadership has criticized the district’s proposed budget cuts for the upcoming years, saying Chicago Public Schools should be pouring more resources to schools that are still dealing with pandemic fallout.

Winners in the election will serve three-year terms that begin July 1 and end June 30, 2025.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

The Chicago Teachers Union votes on its leadership Friday. What’s at stake?

2022-05-18T15:20:04+00:00

Chicago Teachers Union members are voting on their leadership this week — a high-stakes decision at a challenging juncture for the country’s public educators.

The district is navigating a faltering recovery from the pandemic, at a time when educators here and across the country report feeling stressed and demoralized. Meanwhile, a mayoral election and a transition to an elected school board loom during the next CTU leadership’s three-year term, with the potential to redraw an often combative relationship with the city.

The incumbent Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators, or CORE, slate will face two challengers in Friday’s election: Members First and Respect, Educate, Advocate, and Lead, or REAL.

CORE has steered the teachers union for more than a decade, reshaping it into a powerful progressive force that often set a national agenda for urban educators. Following protracted standoffs with the district and city, it won a groundbreaking contract in 2019 and some of the country’s strongest COVID protocols in 2021, spelled out in an agreement that became a model for other districts. Stacy Davis Gates, the current vice president, is running for the top job after Jesse Sharkey announced earlier this spring he would not seek the post again.

Members First, led by school psychologist Mary Esposito-Usterbowski, has criticized the current leadership for overreaching on social issues not directly connected to the classroom instead of staying focused on more traditional concerns such as prep time and compensation. That caucus has also argued the union has been too fast to strike or refuse to work in person, pointing to January’s showdown with the mayor’s office. That work stoppage produced much more modest changes to safety protocols, at the cost of four days of pay for teachers and five missed days of school for students.

The second challenger slate, Respect, Educate, Advocate, and Lead, or REAL, led by Darnell Dowd, a seventh grade teacher at William H. Ray Elementary School, has said the union must forge ahead on a more expansive social justice agenda. But they have also criticized the handling of the January labor action. They say current leadership has become disconnected from its rank-and-file members and spent too much on supporting political candidates without giving members a full accounting.

The May 20 election is being closely watched by unions in other districts.

“The CTU since CORE took over has become a bellwether for other large urban teachers unions across the country,” said Bradley Marianno, a professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. “Nationally, teachers unions are looking to this election as a litmus test.”

After two years of intense disruption for educators, the tension between a more expansive, politically engaged stance and a return to bread-and-butter issues is palpable across the country, Marianno said. The leadership of the New York City teachers union — in the more traditional labor mold — just won reelection after a progressive caucus calling for a broader agenda tried to unseat it. But, says Marianno, the CTU election might more decisively tip the scales.

The runup to the Friday vote has been tense at times. Union leadership sued a former advisor to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Lisa Schneider Fabes, arguing that a social media campaign backing Members First amounted to illegal outside meddling in a union election. Members First said it did not seek or embrace that help.

If no slate gets a simple majority of votes, the union will hold a runoff vote. Results are expected late Friday or early Saturday morning.

Chalkbeat Chicago asked the three slates four key questions about their priorities and vision for the CTU’s future. Some responses have been edited for length.

Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators, or CORE

CORE slate members opted for a virtual interview.

What would be your top priorities at the CTU’s helm?

Stacy Davis Gates: Many of our school communities do not have robust and well-resourced fine arts programs, student governments, and sports programs. Children don’t come to school because they’re in love with calculus or physics. They come to school because it is the center of their social life, and there are opportunities for them to develop. What CPS, under mayoral control, has done is whittle away at everything except for standardized tests.

It is important for this union to make schools whole, meaning, we need more than just reading, writing and arithmetic. Going forward, this union will be fighting for co-curricular and extracurricular activities. The union will be fighting for more revenue to come into our school community in order to upgrade our facilities and build better facilities.

We dealt a blow in a coalition victory to standardized testing, prohibiting it for pre-Kindergarten to second grade. We need to return to a time when teachers have the opportunity to explore and take risks in the classroom.

It’s also important that student-based budgeting is ameliorated. Schools on the South and West sides are deprioritized because they don’t have students packed into every single corner. We need something that looks more like evidence-based funding at the state level.

After two pandemic years that severely tested educators and students, Chicago Public Schools confront both new and longstanding challenges, from shrinking enrollment to staffing shortages to heightened student mental health needs. How do you see the union’s role in the district’s ongoing recovery?

SDG: President Joe Biden sent the largest infusion of public federal money to Chicago Public Schools than any other time in history, and that money is not being spent. It’s not being spent because we haven’t forced their hand. When resources are allocated into our school communities, it is only because we have organized in coalition with families, students, community leaders, and community organizations to make it happen. At Dyett (High School for the Arts), Chicago Teachers Union members — actual classroom teachers and paraprofessionals — held a hunger strike to save their school. The 2019 strike was able to secure a nurse and a social worker in every school.

Under CORE leadership, you are seeing the very things that community folk have long cried for. Now, we will have an elected school board — the first in the 150-year history of this district. Now, you have local school councils with more authority.

Do you see a path to a more collaborative relationship with district leadership and the mayor’s office?

SDG: Our purpose is to agree that the Chicago Public School system has to be resourced, respected, and that the people who both attend the school district and work in the school district have to be treated humanely. Now, if we can agree on that then the forecast is sunnier. But if we cannot agree on the humanity of those that inhabit our school buildings, both the worker, the student, and all of our families, then where is the point of collaboration? Under mayoral control, the humanity of the people who are in the Chicago Public School system has not been regarded.

Chicago faces a mayoral election and a transition to an elected school board. What is the potential impact on the city’s educators and students, and do you see a role for the union in those votes?

Jackson Potter, vice presidential candidate: This gets to the crux of why it’s important to have a multi-dimensional strategy to advance educational justice in a city that incorporates both enforcement of future agreements, but also in the political arena. So much is determined by these various levels of government, including the school board. They modify the state laws around our evaluation, and can make them more strict. They can add assessments that take up instructional time. And they can impose policies like student-based budgeting, which we’re now dealing with where the most trauma that we’re seeing in the system is in the schools that are facing drops in enrollment.

Instead of flooding these schools with resources, social workers, mental health professionals, and parent mentors, which is the logical thing in this moment, schools like Zapata and other schools on the South and West sides are getting their budgets overwhelmingly cut. If we elected a school board that was more sympathetic and reflective of our school communities, they could on the next day suspend the student-based budgeting formula and make for a different system of funding positions.

Members First

Esposito-Usterbowski, the slate’s presidential candidate, provided written responses to questions.

What would be your top priorities at the CTU’s helm?

$750 for supplies and a streamlined process for reimbursements
Increase in pay to surpass rising inflation
Strengthen benefits including expanded vision and dental
Bring back the 30-minute morning prep
Hire more field representatives to improve contract enforcement and better serve members
Smaller classroom sizes
Change residency requirements
Ensure all CPS work is pensionable
Improve cleanliness in schools
Create a strike fund

After two pandemic years that severely tested educators and students, Chicago Public Schools confronts both new and longstanding challenges, from shrinking enrollment to staffing shortages to heightened student mental health needs. How do you see the union’s role in the district’s ongoing recovery?

We believe our union has to be completely focused on delivering for union members and improving our schools for CPS students and families. When CTU focuses on non-educational issues, it weakens our ability to do what our union was set up to do. That is why CTU members want change.

Do you see a path to a more collaborative relationship with district leadership and the mayor’s office?

We all know Stacy Davis Gates’ relationship with city leaders is toxic. She simply will not be able to deliver much for us in negotiations. We need change to the CTU so we can have a fresh start with city leaders and start getting more for our members.

We want to work collaboratively with all stakeholders to deliver for union members, CPS students and the families we serve. We believe we can better do that with a fresh start.

Respect, Educate, Advocate, and Lead, or REAL

The slate’s candidates provided written responses to questions.

What would be your top priorities at the CTU’s helm?

The January work action exposed how fractured the union is. Only 55% of members voted with the leadership to end the walkout. CTU normally votes in the 70-80% range. We must regain trust with our members and communities. We cannot be so convinced that we’re right that we stop listening to our members. We need to listen and engage. We need to prioritize making our union whole again and recommit to the mantra that “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Unifying our members will be our top priority. REAL has campaigned on a pledge of financial transparency, democracy, and member-driven unionism. We build trust with members when we show them how we spend their money. Members voluntarily pay PAC dues when they trust the process and are respected. Our members will only value political initiatives and endorsements when they drive the process.

REAL will:

have staggered six-year term limits for leadership so officers will work under the contracts they negotiate;
hire more field representatives with a staffed hotline;
allocate resources to expose, remediate and monitor bullying principals;
help members elect a delegate in every school;
fight to end REACH and student-based budgeting;
leverage donations to candidates with member engagement and door knocking; and
endorse candidates based on members’ vision of who fights for our schools and educators.

We can never outspend the billionaires, but we can out-organize them. REAL will return democracy to the Chicago Teachers Union. All union members with diverse viewpoints will be invited to be active in all union committees regardless of their caucus. No member will ever be disparaged, as is the practice now, when they disagree with leadership and an independent parliamentarian will ensure that all House of Delegates meetings are run democratically.

REAL will fight to end School-Based Budgeting (SBB), which assigns the same funding to each student regardless of the student’s needs. Schools with higher student poverty, homelessness, and family instability need more funding and more staff but they get the same amount as less challenged schools. SBB has had a disastrous impact on neighborhood schools, especially on the South and West sides. In addition, CTU veteran teachers and staff are more expensive to hire so principals are unable to hire them because budgets are cut to the bone.

We must replace SBB with an evidence-based model, which ensures student equity and member security in our buildings. This approach, which the state of Illinois has offered since 2017, is much more equitable. Funds are sent to schools based on each student’s actual need, such as assistive technology or wrap-around social services to address our students’ mental health needs.

Under REAL’s leadership, we will fight until we have fully funded neighborhood schools, with excellent learning conditions for every child. We will finally achieve, as our union has advocated since 2012, “the schools that Chicago students deserve.”

Do you see a path to a more collaborative relationship with district leadership and the mayor’s office?

We don’t have to like or agree with the mayor, but we need an effective relationship to get the things our schools need. REAL leadership will seek an effective relationship with the CPS leadership and the Mayor. We’ve experienced abuse and witnessed steadily deteriorating school conditions for far too long, though, to believe Chicago’s schools will be improved through pleasant conversation alone.

REAL’s political approach seeks power by mobilizing our members, instead of just writing big checks like our present CTU officers. REAL will listen to our members and get their buy-in on endorsing political campaigns. REAL will share all PAC information, and our PAC committee will make the endorsement and donation decisions. Then we mobilize our members – knocking on doors and making calls to get pro-teacher, pro-student, pro-union candidates elected to the Chicago school board.

Finally, every single school board in Illinois will be elected. Many parents and community groups fought alongside CTU for this important change and we will lock arms again to make sure the entire city is equally represented.

An elected school board is a victory, but it won’t solve all our problems. As always, our power lies in our members.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

‘We deserve it’: After two years of COVID upheaval, Chicago teens are ready for prom

2022-05-11T13:56:59+00:00

As the omicron variant surged in Chicago in January, Liset Perez contemplated the spring ahead with rising anxiety: Would the pandemic scuttle the Sullivan High School prom as it did for last year’s senior class on the Rogers Park campus?

Students like Perez have clung to the promise of such hallmarks of senior year as the coronavirus upended yet another school year.

Several months later, on a late April afternoon, Perez sat in her school’s auditorium and watched classmates sashay across the balloon-festooned stage in flowing chiffon and silk as they modeled some of 100 donated prom dresses secured by a Sullivan teacher and a local beauty pageant winner.

Prom was definitely on, the school’s principal assured the students, and Perez joined her classmates in a raucous cheer.

“We deserve it because we have worked so hard the last couple of years,” she said later.

Those two years have tested students again and again: Teens have lost loved ones to COVID, navigated racial unrest, taken on jobs to chip in for strained family budgets, and worked to stay engaged in school through campus shutdowns, staffing shortages, and more.

This spring for students across Chicago, prom — the perennial cornerstone of that final stretch before graduation — doubles as a milestone on the way to reclaiming a measure of normalcy. Like Sullivan, some city campuses did not host prom at all last year while others opted for smaller, socially distanced events on the heels of a high school reopening that brought less than a third of students back to school buildings.

After two years of massive disruption for teens, students like Perez say prom feels more meaningful and joyous — and they are taking none of the build-up for granted.

Throughout Chicago, educators and others have worked to ratchet up the excitement. Across the city from Sullivan, at the Southwest Side’s Juarez High School, a packed auditorium exploded in applause earlier this spring when the principal unveiled the prom’s location. (No, it’s not the cafeteria again.)

Students modeled donated dresses in the auditorium of Sullivan High School in Rogers Park. A teacher at the school organized the donation drive.

Sullivan High hosts major prom dress donation drive

Earlier this spring, Jodi Weiss, a special education English teacher at Sullivan, started worrying. After two years, the school would again host prom — but what if some of its students could not afford a dress? Almost 95% of students are low-income at Sullivan, nicknamed “Refugee High” because it serves as a starting point for many newcomers to the country.

Weiss posted a call for donated dresses on a Rogers Park Facebook page. She spent a Saturday earlier in March driving around the neighborhood and picking up donations. Some are “not so prom-y,” she said, but she figured students could still wear them to scholarship interviews and other formal occasions. At the end of the day, though, she didn’t think she had enough outfits.

Luckily, Alejandra Sotelo, recently crowned Miss Teen Rogers Park, saw the Facebook post. Her own prom at a small Catholic high school had been canceled the previous year, yet another festive occasion the pandemic derailed.

Thinking about students who might miss prom because they couldn’t afford a dress “broke” her, Sotelo told the seniors gathered in the auditorium on that April afternoon. So she sprang into action, lobbying local boutiques and consignment shops for more donations.

Weiss took over a storeroom the school’s security guards had used for their equipment. Now, racks laden with dresses in sizes 0 to 14 and in a rainbow of fabric, sequins, and lace filled the space, with shoes and other accessories stacked up nearby. The school is still looking for donated suits.

“You do not have to go shopping,” said Sotelo, now a freshman at Loyola University, in a long black dress and her white sash. “You do not have to spend a ton of money.”

“Make some noise if you are ready to get out of here!” she called, to loud applause as junior girls modeling some of the donated dresses started parading across the stage.

They strode arm-in-arm with boys, some wearing suits and some unabashedly underdressed in T-shirts and jeans. Sotelo talked up the dresses — “a stunning navy blue number with butterflies at the sleeves!” — as the couples paused in front of an arch fashioned from white, gold, and black balloons.

Last spring, prom had returned to many, though not all, Chicago high schools, but events carried reminders of the pandemic’s unyielding grip: Some were held outdoors. Others were confined to gyms and cafeterias, with restrictions on guests and exhortations to socially distance.

This year, many schools are returning to larger events, and though the district recommends masks, they won’t be required. A slew of schools, from Bowen on the South Side to Lane Tech on the North Side, have organized their own prom attire donation drives. Lane Tech and its alumni association recently hosted a “Prom Pop-up Shop” featuring more than 50 donated dresses.

Perez, the Sullivan student, and her friends Rodney Mason and Dariana Lee already had outfits picked out the day of the fashion show, but said they will get the word out about the donated dresses.

They know how disappointed seniors had been to miss prom the previous years. So they are taking nothing for granted: the fun of putting their outfits together, the company of favorite teachers who have signed up to chaperone, even the chance to hone social skills still rusty from pandemic isolation if the school ends up sharing the venue, the downtown Hyatt Regency, with another campus on May 20.

During another challenging school year, Mason said, “Prom is a good thing to focus on to keep your mind positive.”

“We’ll be one of the lucky ones,” said Lee. “It’s going to be really special for us. It’s been a long year.”

Juniors at Sullivan High School on Chicago’s Far North Side modeled donated prom dresses in the school’s auditorium in April 2022. The school did not host prom in 2021.

At Juarez High, principal unveiled the prom location at a school assembly

Back in late February, shortly after the omicron surge had subsided, principal Juan Carlos Ocon stood in a crammed Benito Juarez auditorium and recounted a conversation with students a few weeks earlier. A table of seniors in the school’s cafeteria had stopped him as he passed by during the lunch hour.

“We’re kind of sad,” one student said. “Are we going to have the graduation ceremony in the parking lot again?”

“Are we even going to have a prom?” another pressed Ocon. “Are we going to have it in the cafeteria like we did last year?”

“Class of 2022, you know that the last three years have been so hard,” Ocon told the students in the auditorium that day. “Your sophomore year was interrupted in so many ways. Your junior year was crazy. And if you thought those two years were crazy, this year was even more so.”

So, Ocon said, this year’s seniors were due for some good news.

“Prom is not in the cafeteria,” he said, prompting cheers from the crowd.

“Prom is not in the gym.”

More cheers.

“For the first time in three years, we are going to be at the Palmer House in Downtown Chicago,” Ocon said, to raucous applause, almost as loud as when students found out later during the assembly that the nonprofit Hope Chicago would give every Juarez student a free ride to an Illinois college.

Juarez senior Bella Rios was in the auditorium that day. Like Perez at Sullivan, she had almost resigned herself to graduating without a prom, rebuffing her mom’s invitation to go prom dress shopping. She did not see Ocon’s announcement coming.

When she heard it, she said, “I was completely shocked, and I was really happy. I would be able to experience what other students did not.”

That morning, Rios looked for pictures of the Palmer House’s interior on her phone, eager to picture herself and her friends in that sprawling space.

Juarez counselor Jesse Palencia said excitement has been building since. The Six Flags Grad Night, the overnight Senior Lock-In at the school, and other events in the run-up to prom have been better attended than usual. The school is also planning a celebration with music, food, and a photo booth for college Decision Day on May 20.

This year unlike in the past, Juarez students got to pick the dance’s theme, just announced last week: Old Hollywood.

For teens, said Ashley Baker, a senior at Westinghouse College Prep, the pandemic has heightened experiences as simple as being on campus with friends and infused milestones such as prom with special meaning.

“Everyone’s talking about prom — what colors they are wearing, how we’ll make the place bright and vibrant,” she said. “I feel prom is more meaningful this year. We’re all able to communicate and socialize instead of being 6 feet away from each other.”

Though Baker still masks daily at school, she might go maskless during at least part of the June 10 prom, to show off her makeup and snap photos with friends.

Baker recently collected a swatch of fabric — emerald green sequins — from the seamstress working on her dress. Now she just has to find the perfect matching shoes and accessories.

Mauricio Peña contributed to this report.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago, a new push to steer more young men of color into teaching

2022-05-02T11:00:00+00:00

The question came when Khalil Cotton least expected it. He was in summer school, after falling behind at Dyett High School for the Arts during the upheaval of COVID and virtual learning his junior year.

Then, out of the blue, the school’s principal, Cortez McCoy, pulled him aside and asked: Would he consider becoming a teacher?

Khalil thought back to educators with whom he’d bonded in middle school: A math teacher who made the subject fun even for struggling students. A computer science teacher who cultivated a passion for coding in Khalil and became a “big brother,” that rare person in front of whom the teen allowed himself to cry.

Both were Black men.

With McCoy’s encouragement, Khalil, now a rising senior, joined a pilot program launched last fall at Dyett and two other Chicago high schools to cultivate a new generation of Black and Latino male teachers. About 80 seniors are taking an Intro to Urban Education class and sorting through their career goals, with plans to offer more mentoring after graduation.

The pandemic exacted a heavy toll from boys and young men of color, widening racial and gender disparities in academic outcomes such as graduation and college enrollment. Some advocates and experts believe that attacking a long-standing shortage of educators who look like these teens is a key solution, given evidence that exposure to male teachers of color increases boys’ odds of graduating and going to college.

In Chicago Public Schools, students of color make up about 90% of the student body, 16% are Black boys, and almost a quarter are Latino boys. Yet fewer than 4% of the district’s teachers are Black men, and fewer than 5% are Latino men. That compares with fewer than 2% for each group in Illinois districts overall, where students of color make up slightly more than half the enrollment.

The pandemic and the country’s post-George Floyd racial reckoning have given new urgency to efforts to recruit and retain male teachers of color, with more buy-in from school districts, which have often let nonprofits take the lead. But the push to grow the ranks of these teachers face hurdles, including schools that put too much pressure on young Black and Latino educators to be role models and disciplinarians for boys of color.

Khalil, the Dyett High senior, for one, says he is not daunted.

“I want to be there for students in that way,” he said. “I want a kid to say to me one day, ‘Thank you! You changed my life.’”

The pandemic widened disparities — and spurred new urgency

In a Dyett classroom recently, McCoy reminded seven students of their upcoming capstone assignment: Pick a subject they are interested in and teach a class. They could put together a PowerPoint presentation, have a conversation with peers-turned-pupils, or — as one of the students, Jamal Davis, vowed to do — make the class get up and dance. The idea was to get a small taste of shaping young minds. Over the whiteboard, a stenciled sign read, “You Get What You Work For, Not What You Wish For.”

“You all will be activists in the classroom,” McCoy said. “You being in front of those students every day will bring about social change. It’s not common. The fact that you all are about to graduate is not common. You are bringing about social change already.”

McCoy first found out about the pilot project last summer when the nonprofit Thrive Chicago, which administers former President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative locally, approached him about piloting an effort to steer more Black and Latino boys toward careers in education. At Dyett, more than 95% of the roughly 580 students are Black, and more than 80% qualify for subsidized school meals, the federal measure of poverty.

For McCoy, who grew up poor in the South Side’s Roseland neighborhood, the idea resonated instantly.

“Education was always presented to my family as a way out,” said the former math teacher.

Although he expected a new Intro to Urban Education class would be hard to juggle with his principal duties during a year that has tested school leaders, he said, “I instantly knew this was a class I wanted to teach as a Black man.”

At Thrive, Yaseen Abdus-Saboor, the My Brother’s Keeper coordinator, said the idea for the project predates the pandemic. At a summer 2019 summit My Brother’s Keeper hosted in Chicago, teens and young men of color told organizers they wanted more school-based activities and classes that would help them forge a sense of purpose. Abdus-Saboor and others on his team also pored over recent research showing that exposure to Black teachers — particularly male teachers — in the elementary grades significantly decreases the odds of dropping out and increases the likelihood of pursuing a college degree for Black boys.

The pandemic only raised the stakes: Here in Chicago, according to a Chalkbeat analysis, last school year widened already marked disparities in attendance and grades for Black and Latino boys. Nationally, data on test scores and college enrollment also shows a disproportionate impact on male students of color.

The Thrive pilot is the latest in a string of recent efforts to draw more men of color to teaching, often starting in high school or college.

In New Orleans, a program called Brothers Empowered to Teach has gotten recognition for steering 75% of its 50 original participants to teacher training programs — and supporting them through college and the make-or-break early years on the job. A TED Talk by its co-founder Larry Irvin Jr. on retaining Black teachers has drawn more than 1.5 million views.

More recently, University of Illinois Chicago started a program for would-be male Black and Latino teachers named Call Me MISTER, which offers scholarships, mentoring and help with finding a job. In Chicago, the Thrive pilot has built on a district program called Teach Chicago Tomorrow, which supports high school students interested in education jobs more broadly. That program is among efforts the district credits for helping it increase the portion of Black and Latino new teacher hires from about 30% in 2019 to 45% last year.

Travis Bristol, an expert in educator diversity and retention at the University of California at Berkeley, says it’s refreshing to see more school district buy-in for efforts that were traditionally often backed by philanthropy. (For now, Thrive covers the cost of the program in Chicago.) He points to a resolution the Los Angeles Unified School District board passed earlier this year setting goals to increase the number of Black teachers and leaders in that district, the country’s second largest.

But retaining fledgling educators remains a challenge. In studying a New York program called NYC Men Teach, Bristol found that school leaders who understand these teachers are key. Male teachers of color are more reluctant to seek out guidance and support from their colleagues and principals than other new teachers.

“The principal has to be intentional about asking these novices if they need help,” Bristol said.

Another issue is that schools often place extreme pressure and unreasonable expectations of male teachers of color navigating the challenging first years of their careers.

“You can’t assume that these men know how to be or even want to be father figures to all Black boys,” Bristol said. “You can’t expect them to come in and fix 400 years of problems for Black boys that they did not create.”

Cory Cain, a dean of instruction at Chicago’s Noble charter network and a co-founder of the Black Male Educators Alliance of Illinois, says he knows this predicament all too well. In his first teacher job in Boston, he was called upon to intervene with boys struggling with behavioral issues — though he had never taught these students and had come to the school because he wanted to teach science, not act as disciplinarian.

“”If we go into teaching, we become a panacea,” said Cain, a former principal at the charter Urban Prep.“We are pushed to solve all the issues and all the problems, which is really exhausting.”

Cain said pressure young men of color feel to contribute to strained family budgets remains a deterrent to going into teaching, with its sometimes unpaid student-teaching experiences and relatively modest starting salaries. And many districts are still lamenting a shortage of male Black and Latino applicants instead of proactively recruiting them on college campuses and among their own support staff members.

“The rhetoric is there,” he said. “But for me, it’s about what people are actually doing.”

Chicago pilot program is slated to expand in the fall

At Dyett during that recent class, McCoy, once a business major in college, told the students the ability to face a classroom of students and state their case clearly translates across professions. In fact, out of the seven teens facing each other across a tight rectangle of desks that day, only Khalil is bent on a teaching career. Two students, including Jamal, are on the fence. The rest have other post-graduation plans.

Khalil Cotton, a senior at Dyett High School for the Arts in Chicago, is taking a new Intro to Urban Education class, designed to steer Black and Latino boys to teaching careers. He hopes to pursue a degree in education after graduating from Dyett this spring.

That’s in line with participants in the project overall, which also premiered at Butler College Prep and Johnson College Prep last fall after an initial plan to pilot it at five high schools was scaled back — in one case, ironically, because a campus was not able to line up a male instructor of color. In a January survey, slightly fewer than 30% of students in the Intro to Urban Education class expressed interest in majoring in education in college, while the rest listed a wide range of other majors.

One takeaway from the first year, said Abdus-Saboor, is that many students already have an idea of what career they’d like to pursue by their senior year. If the program gets to them earlier — perhaps by their sophomore year or sooner — it might influence more to consider education.

“During senior year, we have less time to present educators as a viable career option,” he said.

As Abdus-Saboor works to select seven additional high schools to expand the program this coming fall, he’s looking for campuses that might be open to building a multi-year teaching pathway for students. The program is also reviewing parts of the curriculum that might have been overly wonky to make it “more palatable for high school students.”

The goal of the program was never to turn every single student on to teaching, Abdus-Saboor says. Steering teens to college with a clear sense of purpose is a win — and maybe some will circle back to education down the road.

“We want to plant a seed,” he said.

McCoy agrees that the benefits of the pilot go beyond cultivating future teachers. The curriculum involved a lot of writing, and he saw those skills improve. For McCoy, the class reminded him of the importance of social and emotional support for students and building relationships after he started the year preoccupied with addressing the pandemic’s academic fallout.

For Khalil, who is headed to Chicago’s Columbia College in the fall, the most powerful aspect of the class was pushing students to get to know themselves better. They had to write letters from their 30-year-old selves to their 17- or 18-year-olds selves. They explored what motivates them (in Khalil’s case, his mother’s high expectations) and what they appreciate about themselves (the volunteer work he has done in Chicago and New Orleans).

Jamal, who is going to Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black campus in Georgia, still wants to be a dance studio owner and choreographer. But he says he appreciates the effort to steer more young men like him to education.

He says the support of Black males — from the athletic director to a security guard to educators — has made the campus a more inviting place.

And he also gives high marks to the portion of the class that pushed students to explore their identities.

“Everyone should experience this class — not just boys, but girls too,” he told McCoy. “You have to know yourself before you can bring out the best in others.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Amid pushback on school budget cuts, Chicago schools chief promises more communication

2022-04-27T22:54:35+00:00

Chicago Public Schools leaders vowed to step up efforts to explain next fall’s school budgets amid intensifying pushback — and sharp questioning from a school board member — about cuts on some campuses with declining enrollment.

After a string of protests — including two events Wednesday ahead of the regular school board meeting — district CEO Pedro Martinez said the backlash has in some ways misrepresented a shift in how the district budgets for schools.

After two years of largely holding schools harmless amid steep enrollment losses magnified by the pandemic, the district proposed cutting budgets at 40% of schools, while the remainder could see comparable or increased funding. Critics, including the teachers union, the principals association, some elected officials, and parent groups, have argued the district should use its federal COVID relief dollars to ward off the cuts as schools are still trying to bounce back from the pandemic’s disruption.

At Wednesday’s meeting, board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland argued the district should have communicated and engaged school communities more about the budgets. Local School Councils, for instance, had to vote on the budgets last week without a clear understanding of how centralized dollars for professional development, after-school programs, and more will affect their schools, she said.

“Folks don’t know what’s going on — and sometimes that’s me,” she said. “There has to be greater visibility and transparency and true overcommunication.”

Martinez said that since releasing the school budgets last month, the district has added some additional dollars for academic coaches and other staff and partially reversed some cuts after principals made a case that they went too far. He said the outcry over the cuts has not accounted for additional resources the district budgeted in centralized funds campuses will tap.

The schools chief also argued that the protests fail to give his team credit for ensuring that all schools have art instruction and enough staffing to avoid combining students of different grades in one classroom.

And he stressed that, with the district adding about 1,600 teaching positions, it’s unlikely any educators will lose their jobs next fall.

Chalkbeat Chicago requested updated school budget data reflecting the additional resources and tweaks the district has made. But officials said that because these adjustments are ongoing, the district likely will only release updated school budgets when the complete district budget comes before the board this summer.

The Chicago Teachers Union and a coalition of parent advocacy nonprofits held protests before Wednesday’s board meeting to call on the district to reverse the cuts. During the meeting, union president Jesse Sharkey acknowledged the school budgeting issue is complex and said he understands that the district will likely rehire special education and other teachers facing layoffs at other schools with stable or growing enrollments. But he said he worries that other districts might snap up some of those educators before they are assigned new positions.

“School communities will be thrown into turmoil and there will be lots of turnover,” Sharkey said.

Martinez said he will work to make the process of switching schools smoother. With the positions the district is hiring, he said, “There’s no reason anyone will lose their jobs.”

He also pushed back against the suggestion that the district was sitting on unspent federal COVID relief dollars, including $1.8 billion from the American Rescue Plan alone. Officials said last month the district has spent 7% of this money, though a plan for making use of the dollars before the fall 2024 deadline is forthcoming.

“Every single ESSER dollar is being spent or is being committed,” Martinez said, referring to the acronym for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, the catch-all name for that federal funding.

Todd-Breland said board members have heard from school leaders and Local School Council members concerned about the fallout from the cuts. She commended Martinez for his engagement with principals, but said the district did not do enough to explain the budget and seek input from other employees and families. And, she noted, the board has not yet gotten a full accounting of how the district has spent its federal pandemic relief money — an update officials promised is coming later this spring.

Martinez said he will keep getting the word out.

“We want to make sure everybody has the facts and the complete information,” Martinez said, adding, “When the dust settles, this budget will be much more equitable.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago hopes new portal will boost preschool enrollment — despite first-day glitches

2022-04-19T21:46:19+00:00

This story has been updated to include a statement and additional information from the district.

Chicago Public Schools kicked off its pre-kindergarten enrollment season Tuesday with a new application portal — and as steep pandemic-era enrollment losses brought a net loss of pre-K classrooms, hampering the district’s push toward universal preschool.

But by late morning, the district’s portal, which displays a wider range of early learning opportunities for families, ran into technical difficulties, bringing applications to a standstill until late afternoon. Parents took to social media to voice frustration as the district said unexpectedly high demand sparked the malfunction and officials worked to resolve the issue with their vendor.

District officials Tuesday morning touted the program’s “continued expansion” — with the addition of 29 classrooms at six schools, but numbers provided later at Chalkbeat’s request show a contraction: The district is also cutting 48 classrooms at 47 schools, for a net loss of 19 classrooms. The district stressed that all of the affected campuses will retain their preschool programs and could reopen shuttered classrooms in the fall if they fill each available seat and have at least 10 students on their waiting lists.

Some early learning advocates said they are seeing a shift in talking to families — with COVID anxiety easing and interest in learning opportunities up — that makes them hopeful the district’s pre-K expansion might regain momentum.

“We are in the third year of the pandemic,” said Gabriela Tenorio, the coordinator of an early learning ambassador program at the parent advocacy group Community Organizing and Family Issues, or COFI. “Parents want their kids back out there, learning.”

In 2020, the district saw a 34% dip in its preschool enrollment for 3- and 4-year-olds, which was even more pronounced among Black families, where the decline was 44%. Enrollment rebounded somewhat last fall, back to 15,430 students, compared with 17,490 on the eve of the COVID outbreak. The numbers are up from pre-pandemic times among white and Asian families, but the district has not recouped those steeper losses of Black and Latino children.

Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched the push for free, universal pre-K, and his successor, Lori Lightfoot, has continued to champion the expansion. But even before the pandemic, the city grappled with hurdles, from mismatched supply and demand in some neighborhoods to an application process that confused some families.

“Chicago Public Schools, like other school districts, has been working to mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 that impacted enrollment at CPS and school districts across the nation,” the district said in a response to questions from Chalkbeat.

The district partnered with the city to place ads on trains and buses, billboards, radio, web, and streaming TV ads. Schools also got outreach dollars, and the district teamed up with community organizations to do outreach door-to-door and help with the application process.

The district said it will continue to monitor supply and demand closely, still tentatively forging ahead with its expansion plans to build up to universal pre-K. This past fall, 2,299 children were waitlisted for early learning programs, including 452 4-years-old.

CPS plans to add another 50 classrooms by the following school year. Preschool programming is available in 64 out of 77 Chicago neighborhoods, according to the district, with the goal of reaching every area of the city by 2023.

All children who are 4 by Sept. 1 are eligible for full- or half-day preschool programs. Three-year-olds are generally eligible for half-day programming. Low-income students, children with disabilities. and those in temporary living situations are given priority.

The district’s new portal, developed in partnership with the Chicago Department of Family Support and Services, will allow families to access more programs, including for pregnant mothers and for younger children through community-based organizations and private providers.

“I hope that our Chicago families take advantage of this expanded opportunity to support their children’s growth and well-being,” said district CEO Pedro Martinez in a statement. “Research has told us again and again that early childhood education provides students with the critical foundation for future success in kindergarten and beyond.”

Martinez and other top district officials touted the new portal in a press event at Wendell Smith Elementary on the South Side just a couple of hours before the site went down.

Talibah Moore, a community organizer with COFI, said she and other advocates are excited about a site that gives parents, including pregnant women, more options and allows them to select more programs. COFI spearheads the long-standing early learning ambassador program to get the word out about such learning opportunities, particularly on the South and West sides.

About 20 parent ambassadors fanned out during the past two weeks to give families a heads-up about the start of the application season, stressing the importance of early learning for children’s brain development. Moore said though the program continued on throughout the pandemic, ambassadors encountered a lot of reluctance to enroll children in district preschools amid rampant COVID fears. But this spring, the mood seems to have shifted.

“Parents are thrilled to apply again,” she said. “This brings hope.”

Parents can apply online at www.chicagoearlylearning.org, via the district’s early learning hotline at (312) 229-1690 or in person at a school or early learning center.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

What Chicago schools got right about parent outreach amid the pandemic

2022-04-12T11:00:00+00:00

In Chicago and beyond, the pandemic strained the ties between schools and families like never before: Some students tuned out virtual instruction, disengaging from learning completely. Once students were back in the classroom, parents craved information and reassurance about how schools were keeping their children safe amid surge after COVID surge.

But the upheaval also forced schools to rethink how they reach out and engage with families, in some cases inspiring new ways of keeping them in the loop. A new study by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research zeroes in on what worked well in school-family communication during the outbreak — strategies worth sticking with even after COVID’s disruptions recede.

In dozens of conversations with parents, students, educators, and school staff, the researchers found key upsides of pandemic-era outreach: Schools embraced virtual meetings that removed some barriers to participating, and they adopted mobile apps that allowed them to connect with caregivers and troubleshoot in real time. Some campuses empowered support staff — from paraprofessionals to security guards — to communicate with families, creating more points of connection. And educators came to appreciate more fully the importance of outreach that’s not just about attendance and grades — the value of just checking in or listening.

But the study also reaffirmed an important takeaway of previous research: Communicating with families — rather than being haphazard or improvisational — should be governed by a clear plan designed by school leaders. Educators and other staff often spoke about needing more support and guidance.

“School leadership plays a key role in getting everybody on the same bandwagon,” said David Orta, senior research analyst at the consortium, who co-authored the report with Vanessa Gutiérrez.

Gutiérrez, who like Orta is a Chicago Public Schools graduate, brought to the project memories of her own immigrant family struggling to navigate the public school system in the 1990s and 2000s. She said she worried about adding another responsibility to the to-do lists of harried parents and other caregivers — but found that they were eager to share their experiences, with focus groups usually running much longer than planned.

In partnership with Chicago Public Schools, the authors held focus groups with about 60 caregivers, students, and school employees on the city’s South and West sides during the fall and winter of the 2020-21 school year.

Parents and educators extolled the convenience of virtual meetings, such as parent-teacher conferences on Google Meet, and the usefulness of phone apps such as Remind and Google Voice for quick, direct communication. One high school teacher told of worrying about a student whose camera was off during a midterm. The teacher messaged the student’s caregiver, and the camera came on right away, showing the student at work on the exam. The improved translation functions of that technology also made communication between teachers and parents easier.

Teachers and caregivers said they really appreciated outreach and events — from a family night featuring reading aloud, bingo, and mask-making to an informal, attendance-optional literacy night that did away with a strict agenda and punitive approach. Home visits and routine wellness check-ins also helped teachers and staff forge bonds outside the more traditional communication about academic and behavioral issues.

“It’s the idea that schools really are communities, and there need to be opportunities for community-building in interactions with families,” Orta said.

Those events and similar efforts also helped connect parents and build rapport among them, making them feel more supported during a trying time. The pandemic also highlighted how knowing a school’s families and their cultural backgrounds can power effective communication.

But educators also related a central challenge: often feeling they were on their own when it came to communicating with their families. Even generally supportive school leaders did not always offer enough guidance and information for fielding questions and concerns from parents.

Gutiérrez said the conversations for the study were healing amid the pandemic.

“For me, the stories of our participants reminded me of the strength, creativity, and persistence that lives in our schools and communities, specifically Black and brown communities,” she said. “There was an understanding that folks needed to have grace and flexibility for one another.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Budget cuts hit pandemic-weary Chicago elementary schools

2022-04-08T11:00:00+00:00

In 2022-23 school budgets across Chicago, pandemic-era enrollment losses are colliding with the urgent push to recover from the outbreak’s academic and mental health damage.

In Little Village on the city’s Southwest Side, Zapata Elementary will lose more than $894,000, or about 13% of its budget, next fall — a cut that could claim eight teaching positions and a preschool classroom. Cardenas is looking at $605,000 less, or a 6% reduction, and the resulting loss of four classroom teachers and a support staff member.

The cuts come on the heels of a steep enrollment dip: Little Village’s 14 elementary schools lost almost a fifth of their students during the pandemic, which accelerated a pre-COVID trend of shrinking Latino majority elementary schools throughout the city. Because fewer students are enrolled, the neighborhood’s campuses will actually get an average of $2,600 more per student next fall than they did the year the pandemic hit — despite getting less money overall.

Little Village is also one of the neighborhoods where COVID took the heaviest health and economic toll — and the district is slashing budgets as campuses try to bounce back from that profound disruption. The cuts also come as the district acknowledged spending just 6% of its $1.8 billion in American Rescue Plan dollars, the latest and largest infusion in federal pandemic recovery cash.

Chicago largely shielded schools from the financial fallout of declining enrollment for the last two years, but this fall, 40% of the district’s campuses will see leaner budgets. The district’s principals group says the rising cost of employee salaries and benefits could mean even campuses where budgets stayed relatively flat might need to trim to balance them.

District leaders say that declining enrollment has left some campuses with too many staff members for the size of their student bodies, stressing most schools got a funding boost even after the loss of 25,000 students districtwide during the pandemic. They note that additional help for schools will come from centralized funds for after-school and summer programs, professional development, and more — funds that some school leaders such as Cardenas principal Jeremy Feiwell say will power key staff and programs.

“There is no school where the budget is being adjusted unless the children are just not there — they are literally physically not in the building,” said district CEO Pedro Martinez in an interview.

But advocates fear the cuts could undermine efforts to recover from the pandemic and thrust once-bustling campuses in neighborhoods such as Little Village into a cycle of staff and program cuts that trigger more family defections.

“The school community is losing out,” said Jianan Shi of the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand, “and that starts a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t stabilize the community.”

Raise Your Hand launched a social media campaign Wednesday urging parents to email the school board and Mayor Lori Lightfoot in opposition to the budget cuts. With other community groups, it is hosting a Friday press conference at Shields Middle School in Brighton Park. Parents and advocates in Little Village and other neighborhoods are also vowing to press the district to reconsider the cuts ahead of a summer school board vote on the overall district budget.

Some also plan to reach out to state legislators, noting that by the state’s own calculation Chicago schools remain underfunded so the district is trying to divide a pie that’s too small.

Major differences between per-pupil spending at nearby campuses remain

In their school budget announcement last month, district officials touted a $290 million increase in funding for schools. Some of that is going to central funds from which schools will draw to cover various expenses.

Based on data CPS provided last month, district-run campuses will see a net increase of about $60 million, following $225 million more last year, when 95% of schools saw budget hikes. On campuses where budgets will shrink — primarily neighborhood elementary schools — those cuts add up to a total of about $42 million.

Because of enrollment declines and recent budget bumps, only a handful of schools in CPS will see a decrease over pre-pandemic funding on a per student basis. Districtwide across grade levels, schools will receive about $12,800 per student on average, compared with about $12,000 in this school year’s budgets and with roughly $10,050 in 2019-20.

Little Village is a microcosm of the complex picture of the district’s school budgeting. With about $1 million in net cuts across all its campuses, it is second only to Avondale in total reductions, and followed closely by North Lawndale and Garfield Park, two other neighborhoods hard hit by the pandemic.

Elementary schools in Little Village will receive roughly $11,730 per student on average next fall. That’s an increase over last year because the schools serve many fewer students, but just slightly below the districtwide average. To local community leaders, that amount does not adequately reflect the neighborhood’s challenges.

A Chalkbeat Chicago analysis also shows dramatic differences in per-pupil funding between nearby schools with similar demographics here and across the city, often skewed by campus size: The 800-pupil Gary Elementary, for instance, will get about $10,400 per student. The 250-pupil Hammond Elementary will receive $15,250.

At a school board meeting after the budgets were announced, Martinez voiced dismay with media coverage that he said focused disproportionately on the cuts. He said it was more notable that at a time when 75% of schools had flat or shrinking enrollment, 60% saw funding increases — in some cases substantial ones.

The district ensured all schools had money to avoid combining students in different grades in the same classroom, Martinez said, noting that the total amount of district-issued grants to soften the impact of enrollment losses is increasing to $50 million, a $14 million hike over last year. The district also earmarked dollars for art instruction, physical education, and at least one intervention specialist on each elementary campus.

“We are setting a new standard for what every school has to have,” Martinez said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

In some cases, such as at Pilsen’s Orozco Academy, Martinez said, schools had money in their budgets for, say, a special education classroom with no students. Contractual salary increases were factored into the budgets, he stressed, and since the district released those budgets, some dollars have been added for academic coaches, high school athletic coordinators, and counselors.

The district said it is also working with some campuses that might need added help to make their staffing work for the number of students.

Troy LaRaviere of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, on the other hand, told the board that rising salary and benefit hikes account for as much as a 6% increase in staffing costs at many schools, so even campuses where budgets stayed relatively flat face cost reductions to balance their budgets. He urged board members to talk to principals and refrain from supporting the district’s final budget without more dollars for schools.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, LaRaviere said an analysis by his association suggests that even under a best case scenario in which campus staffing costs go up only 3.5% next school year, 324 schools out of roughly 500 total district campuses are facing a combined “stability shortfall” of more than $100 million.

He said recent investments in school budgets have not made up for leaner staffing on some campuses dating back to the district’s 2013 shift to student-based budgeting, in which enrollment plays a larger role. LaRaviere said he doesn’t fully understand how the district arrived at its proposed school budgets, with examples of schools that gained students but saw cuts and others whose budgets got a boost despite enrollment decreases.

In Little Village, Hammond, with enrollment down more than 18% over last year — the neighborhood’s steepest loss — will get a modest budget bump. Corkery Elementary, a 415-student school that only lost seven students, is facing a 3% budget cut.

“There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to these cuts,” he said. “They are especially mean and callous when you know the challenges schools are having as they try to help students reacclimate.”

The district should steer a larger portion of its roughly $9 billion budget directly to schools, LaRaviere said. Next year, about $4 billion is going into school budgets or central funds supporting schools, including $838 million for charter schools, according to the district. The rest will cover central administration, capital, debt service, employee pensions, and other expenditures.

LaRaviere and other critics said the district should tap its federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, allocation to give schools stability as they navigate the pandemic recovery.

Officials have said that COVID surges, staffing shortages, and other hurdles have crimped spending on academic and mental health interventions through the district’s half-billion dollar Moving Forward Together initiative to just 12% of the two-year program’s budget.

“We have unspent money,” said Shi of Raise Your Hand. “We are in shock that we are going to cut millions of dollars from local schools during a pandemic.”

In Little Village, cuts went deeper than community leaders expected

At Cardenas, Feiwell, the principal, says class sizes in some grades on the 860-student campus will increase somewhat as it loses four of its teachers. But he sought to reassure members of his local school council that the leaner budget will not arrest momentum in Cardenas’ push to recover from the pandemic, with a redoubled focus on basic literacy skills in the early grades and building relationships with middle schoolers.

The school’s budget does not tell the whole story, he told them: The school will get two centrally funded teaching positions, offsetting what would have been a larger loss of staff. Also from central funds, Cardenas will get after-school, technology, and professional development dollars that will give teachers more time to plan jointly. He stressed the school, which lost 113 students last year, won’t cut programs or key support personnel such as its three social workers, made possible in part by an outside partnership.

“Will we lose great teachers? Absolutely,” Feiwell said. “We don’t have the enrollment to support these positions. But everything we have done before will still be in place.”

Alderman Michael Rodriguez, who represents a large swath of Little Village, said he and other community leaders, as well as some principals were bracing for budget cuts.

Little Village along with nearby Pilsen — another traditionally Latino area that grappled with overcrowded schools less than a decade ago — had some of the city’s steepest enrollment losses during the COVID outbreak. During that time, Latino enrollment losses for the first time outpaced Black student departures, which in the years leading up to the outbreak had been much sharper.

The reasons are complex: The population of Little Village has declined overall amid immigration and demographic shifts. The pandemic displaced families, causing some to double up with relatives in other neighborhoods or in the suburbs.

Still, Rodriguez said, “People are in a bit of a shock at how much some of these budget decreases are.”

Overall, elementary schools in the neighborhood will see about $2.7 million in cuts. Several elementary campuses got modest increases, with more substantial hikes for local high schools.

Rodriguez said the budget news comes amid high hopes that schools here might see enrollment rebound in the fall, as COVID fears ease and families become more comfortable sending their children back to school, especially if vaccines become available for those 5 and younger.

At Madero Middle School, principal Hamed Flores told his local school council this week that despite a loss of $134,000 from the school’s budget, the campus will keep all its staff. That involves covering the school’s International Baccalaureate coordinator with money for an academic coach budgeted centrally and tapping dollars for supplies and digital resources.

Still, some on the council said the school needs extra help rather than clinging to the status quo. The 260-student campus serves 44 students with disabilities and 111 English learners, including a growing number of recent arrivals from Central America with intense language and academic needs. It can use more classroom assistants to help them.

“I feel relieved because I’m always worried about cutting staff,” said Gabriela Oria, who serves on both Madero’s and nearby McCormick Elementary’s school councils, after the meeting.

But she said she wants to see more strategic investment to address the heightened social and emotional needs of students and to draw more students to Little Village campuses.

Astrid Suarez, the education director of the Little Village-based nonprofit Enlace Chicago, said she has heard from school administrators who are trying to determine whether these cuts might claim positions in counseling, academic intervention, or special education — positions they got this school year as part of the district’s pandemic recovery efforts.

Schools in the neighborhood, which have experienced historical disinvestment, need stability as they try to bounce back from the pandemic, she said. They are still working to re-engage families and students, particularly high schoolers who took on jobs during the pandemic to help with household budgets.

“Every penny we cut in our schools means losing positions and deepening the inequities in our schools,” she said. “And that’s very troubling.”

Suarez said Enlace and other advocates are hoping to make a case for rolling back some of the reductions before the school board approves its budget.

Across the city, at the 780-student Jamieson Elementary on the Northwest Side, some members of the Local School Council are looking into the implications of voting down a school budget that’s about $342,000 less than last year, or a 4.2% cut. Local councils have to take a vote on the budgets by April 19.

Jen Streicher, who serves on the council, says that after years of prioritizing lower class sizes in the early grades, the cut could mean the loss of three classroom teachers, a special education teacher, and a paraprofessional — and more students per classroom in some grades. The school, where about 70% of students are low-income and a third are learning English, could also lose one of its assistant principals.

“We have been asking, ‘Is there a way for us to take a stronger stance and advocate for more funding?’” Streicher said.

Kristin Blagg, a school finance expert at the nonprofit Urban Institute, said enrollment declines that are colliding with pandemic recovery efforts present a central challenge for urban districts across the country.

Districts need to tread carefully: Some students who sat out the non-mandatory preschool and kindergarten during the pandemic could return to public campuses in the fall — less prepared for school than their peers — leaving districts that trimmed budgets scrambling to adjust.

The $2,750 more per pupil Chicago schools will have next fall compared to 2019-20 is substantial. But schools are trying to address heightened student needs and handle a slew of new responsibilities, such as COVID testing — while inflation rose and compensation costs continued to increase.

“It’s such a push-and-pull tradeoff,” Blagg said. “You want to allocate funds in a way that reflects current enrollment. You also don’t want to pull funds from schools with high needs.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Name	Total budget	YoY change	Budget/student	YoY change
OROZCO	$3,666,724.00	-18.6%	$13,333.54	9.6%
CROWN	$1,991,393.00	-17.2%	$14,123.35	4.6%
GREGORY	$3,357,806.00	-15.0%	$11,823.26	-8.1%
WILLIAMS HS	$1,657,480.00	-14.8%	$26,309.21	44.7%
ZAPATA	$5,916,816.00	-13.1%	$10,680.17	-2.6%
ERICSON	$4,095,000.00	-12.6%	$10,111.11	-2.0%
MAYS	$3,224,983.00	-11.9%	$12,548.57	5.6%
REILLY	$6,642,771.00	-11.3%	$10,925.61	-0.7%
FISKE	$4,389,058.00	-10.8%	$12,363.54	-4.3%
CUFFE	$2,965,589.00	-10.4%	$13,180.40	-15.2%
JENSEN	$3,599,325.00	-10.4%	$11,997.75	6.0%
BLACK	$3,795,345.00	-9.9%	$9,832.50	4.3%
OGLESBY	$3,707,506.00	-9.7%	$13,630.54	16.6%
SMITH	$3,327,970.00	-9.5%	$12,014.33	3.2%
SALAZAR	$3,025,348.00	-9.2%	$10,050.99	-7.0%
AUSTIN CCA HS	$2,840,718.00	-9.1%	$17,866.15	34.3%
JOHNSON	$3,156,331.00	-8.7%	$11,910.68	13.0%
DAVIS M	$2,415,683.00	-8.3%	$15,892.65	7.3%
BOWEN HS	$3,709,459.00	-8.3%	$19,626.77	5.8%
HAY	$3,276,849.00	-8.0%	$12,227.05	-2.9%
MCDADE	$1,814,238.00	-8.0%	$9,449.16	-13.2%
DUNNE	$2,781,414.00	-7.9%	$13,837.88	-7.0%
SMYTH	$4,933,587.00	-7.8%	$12,715.43	-2.1%
SHIELDS MIDDLE	$4,864,190.00	-7.7%	$9,354.21	1.4%
LEWIS	$4,227,090.00	-7.7%	$10,541.37	4.6%
MCCORMICK	$5,380,191.00	-7.6%	$11,255.63	2.6%
LYON	$10,018,717.00	-7.6%	$9,066.71	-0.3%
AVONDALE-LOGANDALE	$5,674,602.00	-7.5%	$10,850.10	1.6%
YOUNG ES	$5,544,714.00	-7.4%	$10,829.52	6.5%
COURTENAY	$5,305,821.00	-7.4%	$25,508.75	21.1%
HAINES	$4,898,312.00	-7.4%	$8,639.00	-2.5%
FRAZIER PROSPECTIVE	$2,496,125.00	-7.0%	$15,220.27	11.1%
COOPER	$5,223,945.00	-6.8%	$11,430.95	-7.4%
GARVY	$5,770,900.00	-6.6%	$8,174.08	2.3%
RICHARDSON	$8,684,436.00	-6.4%	$8,888.88	3.9%
LAVIZZO	$3,754,677.00	-6.3%	$11,309.27	4.4%
CARDENAS	$9,170,605.00	-6.2%	$10,589.61	6.0%
DUBOIS	$2,713,988.00	-6.2%	$13,707.01	0.9%
UPLIFT HS	$3,288,789.00	-6.1%	$38,241.73	15.7%
GRIMES	$3,954,116.00	-6.1%	$10,061.36	2.2%
WARD L	$4,391,715.00	-6.0%	$15,355.65	10.4%
WADSWORTH	$5,058,523.00	-5.9%	$10,878.54	-10.6%
NIXON	$5,757,008.00	-5.8%	$9,790.83	6.8%
WARD J	$4,859,835.00	-5.8%	$9,117.89	0.4%
BEIDLER	$3,302,271.00	-5.7%	$10,791.74	2.9%
ADDAMS	$5,549,854.00	-5.7%	$9,635.16	0.7%
STAGG	$4,230,843.00	-5.7%	$11,373.23	3.4%
AZUELA	$6,286,117.00	-5.7%	$8,779.49	5.8%
MCDOWELL	$1,525,206.00	-5.6%	$13,379.00	21.7%
DVORAK	$3,578,564.00	-5.6%	$10,943.62	-3.0%
HEDGES	$5,102,158.00	-5.5%	$10,349.20	0.4%
CHALMERS	$3,266,699.00	-5.4%	$15,264.95	21.5%
WASHINGTON H ES	$3,287,754.00	-5.4%	$14,809.70	14.2%
HIBBARD	$7,522,972.00	-5.4%	$8,998.77	-1.0%
SANDOVAL	$7,148,370.00	-5.4%	$9,176.34	2.3%
GOUDY	$6,216,610.00	-5.4%	$11,180.95	5.7%
MANIERRE	$3,724,796.00	-5.4%	$14,002.99	3.2%
DIXON	$4,279,426.00	-5.2%	$8,541.77	5.5%
PHILLIPS HS	$6,160,098.00	-5.2%	$10,902.83	3.1%
BLAINE	$6,904,557.00	-5.2%	$10,274.64	5.3%
CASSELL	$4,041,098.00	-5.1%	$11,194.18	1.5%
MELODY	$4,250,847.00	-5.1%	$13,712.41	-0.2%
RAY	$5,602,258.00	-5.0%	$9,950.72	3.4%
EDISON PARK	$4,994,248.00	-5.0%	$10,740.32	5.1%
LARA	$4,773,819.00	-4.9%	$14,734.01	12.1%
SEWARD	$5,154,559.00	-4.9%	$10,649.92	10.6%
CLARK ES	$2,549,647.00	-4.9%	$14,323.86	-2.7%
HEFFERAN	$3,254,332.00	-4.9%	$14,528.27	8.3%
HALE	$7,608,272.00	-4.8%	$9,498.47	-3.2%
EDWARDS	$13,329,239.00	-4.8%	$10,253.26	-1.5%
HERNANDEZ	$7,800,650.00	-4.7%	$8,764.78	7.3%
PENN	$3,002,760.00	-4.7%	$13,587.15	1.3%
BRIGHTON PARK	$3,898,840.00	-4.7%	$11,743.49	5.9%
GARY	$8,432,292.00	-4.6%	$10,436.00	9.9%
CLISSOLD	$5,460,161.00	-4.6%	$14,036.40	4.3%
KIPLING	$2,935,939.00	-4.5%	$11,790.92	5.9%
MANN	$3,032,039.00	-4.5%	$10,348.26	-3.8%
CARSON	$7,965,601.00	-4.5%	$9,082.78	-0.4%
MADERO	$2,922,534.00	-4.4%	$11,028.43	9.7%
CHICAGO WORLD LANGUAGE ACADEMY	$3,878,210.00	-4.3%	$8,715.08	8.6%
MARQUETTE	$9,910,958.00	-4.3%	$10,102.91	-0.3%
JAMIESON	$7,734,965.00	-4.2%	$9,903.92	5.1%
ASHBURN	$4,684,524.00	-4.2%	$13,697.44	10.9%
PRITZKER	$5,276,170.00	-4.2%	$8,055.22	5.7%
NICHOLSON	$5,013,593.00	-4.1%	$11,191.06	-4.3%
EVERS	$2,822,805.00	-4.1%	$13,252.61	1.8%
PILSEN	$3,225,819.00	-4.0%	$14,086.55	9.9%
ALBANY PARK	$2,243,207.00	-4.0%	$9,269.45	-3.6%
CARROLL	$4,518,232.00	-3.8%	$11,735.67	2.4%
MORRILL	$5,838,166.00	-3.8%	$12,137.56	5.0%
PICKARD	$4,231,021.00	-3.8%	$13,305.10	12.6%
GALLISTEL	$6,637,237.00	-3.8%	$11,099.06	1.1%
SUMNER	$2,956,802.00	-3.7%	$13,563.31	3.8%
TUBMAN	$4,567,821.00	-3.7%	$11,622.95	12.9%
EBERHART	$10,579,021.00	-3.7%	$9,420.32	-1.6%
SAWYER	$10,087,322.00	-3.6%	$9,145.35	5.8%
GILLESPIE	$4,465,346.00	-3.6%	$11,135.53	3.1%
SABIN	$4,276,239.00	-3.6%	$11,433.79	14.7%
OKEEFFE	$5,311,247.00	-3.6%	$10,475.83	2.3%
SKINNER NORTH	$3,812,474.00	-3.5%	$7,733.21	-0.2%
COLES	$3,626,785.00	-3.5%	$11,930.21	3.5%
BRADWELL	$4,531,751.00	-3.4%	$10,115.52	1.7%
WHITE	$1,765,397.00	-3.4%	$15,622.98	-7.7%
VON LINNE	$5,769,383.00	-3.4%	$9,381.11	3.5%
HYDE PARK HS	$8,288,421.00	-3.3%	$11,641.04	4.5%
BURLEY	$4,048,390.00	-3.3%	$7,800.37	6.0%
PIRIE	$2,759,731.00	-3.3%	$12,487.47	-2.0%
WACKER	$3,078,647.00	-3.2%	$13,867.78	0.3%
DALEY	$4,870,656.00	-3.2%	$9,550.31	2.7%
SULLIVAN HS	$7,482,460.00	-3.2%	$13,035.64	0.7%
WHITNEY	$6,743,648.00	-3.2%	$9,975.81	4.3%
DURKIN PARK	$6,922,924.00	-3.2%	$10,195.76	0.2%
BURKE	$3,966,562.00	-3.2%	$14,745.58	-0.3%
HUGHES C	$2,796,881.00	-3.1%	$14,125.66	13.5%
PRIETO	$8,130,959.00	-3.1%	$10,318.48	6.5%
BURNHAM	$5,089,014.00	-3.1%	$11,725.84	-6.4%
WASHINGTON G ES	$5,859,344.00	-3.1%	$9,126.70	2.6%
BURROUGHS	$4,221,167.00	-3.1%	$11,108.33	6.6%
DEPRIEST	$6,087,683.00	-3.0%	$13,120.01	1.0%
CORKERY	$4,804,121.00	-2.9%	$11,576.20	-1.3%
LORCA	$6,753,115.00	-2.9%	$10,170.35	0.6%
MAYER	$6,076,564.00	-2.9%	$9,421.03	3.1%
PARK MANOR	$3,158,209.00	-2.8%	$12,996.74	3.2%
EVERETT	$2,437,199.00	-2.7%	$23,434.61	16.0%
STONE	$5,025,786.00	-2.7%	$9,171.14	0.5%
GRAY	$9,077,094.00	-2.5%	$9,077.09	2.8%
LENART	$2,415,007.00	-2.5%	$8,625.03	-3.2%
BRUNSON	$4,587,293.00	-2.5%	$11,000.70	-3.4%
HAMILTON	$4,146,772.00	-2.5%	$9,235.57	-0.1%
EVERGREEN	$2,887,613.00	-2.5%	$12,664.97	7.8%
LEE	$6,192,847.00	-2.4%	$9,312.55	5.8%
SPRY ES	$4,329,772.00	-2.4%	$13,322.38	10.8%
PRESCOTT	$4,311,206.00	-2.4%	$10,388.45	18.7%
CARNEGIE	$5,061,314.00	-2.4%	$10,224.88	11.8%
CHICAGO MILITARY HS	$4,154,376.00	-2.4%	$17,026.13	12.0%
SHIELDS	$5,562,960.00	-2.3%	$11,470.02	9.7%
BENNETT	$3,072,499.00	-2.3%	$11,295.95	-5.9%
BRONZEVILLE HS	$2,150,921.00	-2.2%	$35,261.00	39.4%
TONTI	$8,376,134.00	-2.2%	$10,055.38	-0.8%
SCHUBERT	$5,666,541.00	-2.2%	$10,228.41	1.3%
WOODLAWN	$2,203,752.00	-2.2%	$12,665.24	1.8%
OGDEN ES & HS	$14,728,902.00	-2.2%	$10,088.29	5.7%
HAUGAN	$9,082,499.00	-2.2%	$10,748.52	3.4%
CALMECA	$6,417,792.00	-2.1%	$9,650.82	3.8%
NORTHWEST	$4,783,139.00	-2.1%	$10,220.38	14.4%
NOBEL	$5,911,100.00	-2.1%	$9,802.82	4.4%
COLUMBIA EXPLORERS	$8,274,277.00	-2.0%	$10,513.69	3.8%
LINCOLN	$6,066,423.00	-2.0%	$7,371.11	9.4%
CARTER	$3,020,203.00	-2.0%	$10,942.76	5.8%
SKINNER	$8,465,076.00	-2.0%	$7,517.83	4.0%
EARHART	$2,143,286.00	-2.0%	$10,304.26	10.3%
DYETT ARTS HS	$5,581,213.00	-1.9%	$10,393.32	6.5%
JACKSON M	$4,321,507.00	-1.8%	$14,649.18	9.8%
FULLER	$3,632,201.00	-1.8%	$11,604.48	6.3%
CURTIS	$4,145,351.00	-1.8%	$10,494.56	4.9%
NEW FIELD	$6,441,253.00	-1.7%	$11,840.54	3.5%
COOK	$3,943,760.00	-1.7%	$13,234.09	10.2%
CLINTON	$9,421,440.00	-1.6%	$9,200.63	3.7%
SOUTH LOOP	$6,538,493.00	-1.6%	$8,183.35	-3.4%
LITTLE VILLAGE	$7,092,303.00	-1.6%	$11,293.48	5.5%
HERZL	$5,770,136.00	-1.6%	$13,804.15	10.9%
LLOYD	$8,188,289.00	-1.6%	$9,901.20	5.4%
NEW SULLIVAN	$6,034,882.00	-1.5%	$14,900.94	4.8%
MORTON	$2,938,413.00	-1.5%	$16,234.33	10.5%
CRANE MEDICAL HS	$4,530,168.00	-1.5%	$11,158.05	8.2%
BEASLEY	$10,211,193.00	-1.5%	$9,865.89	6.2%
NETTELHORST	$6,327,079.00	-1.4%	$9,373.45	4.3%
SUTHERLAND	$5,886,639.00	-1.4%	$9,713.93	11.9%
SHOESMITH	$3,058,190.00	-1.3%	$9,865.13	8.3%
LINCOLN PARK HS	$17,768,524.00	-1.2%	$8,600.45	1.2%
KANOON	$4,846,145.00	-1.1%	$11,039.05	4.9%
LAWNDALE	$2,767,705.00	-1.1%	$12,813.45	-5.2%
PULASKI	$7,286,607.00	-1.1%	$8,757.94	4.7%
EBINGER	$6,666,069.00	-1.0%	$8,911.86	12.1%
SAUCEDO	$9,166,355.00	-1.0%	$10,173.53	3.7%
HANSON PARK	$14,882,491.00	-1.0%	$12,665.95	9.9%
DE DIEGO	$6,297,168.00	-1.0%	$13,571.48	-3.1%
CARVER MILITARY HS	$5,215,592.00	-1.0%	$12,846.29	7.8%
BELDING	$5,145,811.00	-0.9%	$9,654.43	1.3%
STOWE	$6,470,984.00	-0.8%	$11,061.51	-0.9%
ELLINGTON	$5,232,725.00	-0.7%	$12,793.95	4.9%
RAVENSWOOD	$4,687,954.00	-0.6%	$9,085.18	2.6%
TWAIN	$8,376,433.00	-0.6%	$8,780.33	6.1%
MCCUTCHEON	$5,238,861.00	-0.6%	$16,954.24	4.5%
MCKAY	$7,159,510.00	-0.6%	$10,997.71	1.9%
NORWOOD PARK	$3,451,106.00	-0.6%	$9,034.31	11.1%
PETERSON	$8,141,871.00	-0.5%	$9,412.57	1.6%
NORTH RIVER	$2,876,184.00	-0.5%	$11,104.96	6.0%
BURBANK	$8,150,721.00	-0.5%	$11,029.39	3.9%
SOUTH SHORE ES	$4,629,536.00	-0.5%	$16,534.06	5.2%
FARADAY	$2,618,297.00	-0.4%	$14,229.88	12.0%
NIGHTINGALE	$10,071,226.00	-0.4%	$9,555.24	2.2%
BEAUBIEN	$8,364,388.00	-0.4%	$8,676.75	5.4%
NATIONAL TEACHERS	$6,595,025.00	-0.4%	$9,071.56	5.7%
STEVENSON	$11,923,293.00	-0.4%	$10,979.09	3.8%
BARRY	$5,063,106.00	-0.3%	$10,888.40	8.0%
GRISSOM	$3,099,155.00	-0.3%	$11,148.04	2.5%
FARRAGUT HS	$7,525,054.00	-0.3%	$14,871.65	6.4%
MURPHY	$5,738,028.00	-0.3%	$11,929.37	13.1%
ROGERS	$7,728,098.00	-0.3%	$10,674.17	0.1%
HEALY	$10,348,199.00	-0.2%	$8,154.61	5.6%
LOVETT	$3,241,188.00	-0.2%	$10,592.12	2.0%
JOPLIN	$4,023,411.00	-0.1%	$10,615.86	-2.7%
PRUSSING	$6,053,274.00	-0.1%	$9,428.78	7.4%
PROSSER HS	$11,826,382.00	-0.1%	$10,616.14	8.9%
ORIOLE PARK	$5,587,112.00	0.0%	$8,996.96	8.2%
SCAMMON	$6,010,866.00	0.0%	$9,205.00	4.9%
TARKINGTON	$8,601,599.00	0.0%	$9,536.14	2.0%
BOONE	$7,810,637.00	0.1%	$10,597.88	7.1%
WELLS ES	$3,915,467.00	0.1%	$12,509.48	11.9%
CAMRAS	$8,542,411.00	0.1%	$10,718.21	8.8%
IRVING	$3,924,332.00	0.1%	$13,213.24	4.5%
PERSHING	$5,333,841.00	0.2%	$10,997.61	8.9%
GREELEY	$4,637,525.00	0.2%	$12,466.47	19.6%
FALCONER	$9,258,753.00	0.3%	$10,310.42	8.4%
RICKOVER MILITARY HS	$5,308,239.00	0.3%	$11,901.88	0.5%
SCHURZ HS	$16,584,413.00	0.3%	$11,974.31	10.0%
GREENE	$3,759,319.00	0.4%	$12,126.84	16.9%
PULLMAN	$3,848,647.00	0.4%	$11,488.50	1.9%
MARSHALL HS	$3,201,572.00	0.4%	$15,030.85	7.5%
BROWN R	$3,300,461.00	0.4%	$11,499.86	6.0%
SHOOP	$4,921,739.00	0.5%	$11,262.56	-3.2%
FORT DEARBORN	$4,581,331.00	0.6%	$13,202.68	5.2%
CHOPIN	$4,846,479.00	0.7%	$16,828.05	9.7%
WEST RIDGE	$6,942,072.00	0.7%	$10,407.90	9.9%
COONLEY	$7,378,356.00	0.7%	$8,413.18	10.9%
WALSH	$4,351,283.00	0.7%	$16,997.20	18.4%
OWEN	$2,811,808.00	0.7%	$10,531.12	2.6%
DAVIS N	$6,990,062.00	0.8%	$13,238.75	11.0%
MARINE LEADERSHIP AT AMES HS	$8,764,073.00	0.9%	$11,235.99	7.2%
PHOENIX MILITARY HS	$5,826,778.00	0.9%	$10,691.34	7.0%
STEM	$3,697,769.00	0.9%	$9,554.96	6.1%
BARNARD	$2,967,738.00	0.9%	$11,327.24	2.5%
GRAHAM ES	$3,754,456.00	1.0%	$10,851.03	5.9%
FARNSWORTH	$6,995,825.00	1.0%	$13,427.69	9.7%
HALEY	$5,262,778.00	1.1%	$11,465.75	-1.6%
SWIFT	$6,664,203.00	1.1%	$12,138.80	9.4%
BELL	$7,761,758.00	1.2%	$8,586.02	9.8%
TILTON	$3,271,492.00	1.2%	$12,930.80	3.2%
HIRSCH HS	$2,117,055.00	1.2%	$27,141.73	16.8%
INTER-AMERICAN	$6,441,324.00	1.2%	$9,458.63	4.2%
ESMOND	$3,087,598.00	1.3%	$11,268.61	-11.3%
CHAVEZ	$8,539,535.00	1.3%	$10,401.38	3.2%
METCALFE	$3,762,315.00	1.3%	$11,264.42	-9.3%
DEVER	$6,818,418.00	1.3%	$9,079.12	-3.8%
TALCOTT	$5,216,359.00	1.4%	$11,748.56	-2.9%
BELMONT-CRAGIN	$5,823,357.00	1.4%	$12,826.78	-5.0%
HAWTHORNE	$4,927,681.00	1.5%	$8,555.00	0.2%
ARMSTRONG G	$11,239,447.00	1.5%	$9,250.57	2.0%
PEIRCE	$10,217,506.00	1.6%	$9,630.07	-2.3%
MARSH	$7,380,178.00	1.6%	$10,853.20	8.2%
HOLDEN	$4,124,213.00	1.6%	$10,010.23	5.3%
RUIZ	$6,020,387.00	1.7%	$13,468.43	18.9%
SPENCER	$4,817,366.00	1.8%	$11,125.56	2.7%
HENDERSON	$2,591,290.00	1.8%	$13,783.46	6.1%
MASON	$3,469,125.00	1.8%	$12,944.50	13.6%
HITCH	$4,864,027.00	1.9%	$9,926.59	7.9%
LELAND	$5,038,388.00	1.9%	$13,803.80	2.2%
MITCHELL	$3,485,485.00	2.0%	$9,369.58	0.9%
OTOOLE	$3,671,151.00	2.0%	$11,192.53	-3.9%
GUNSAULUS	$7,005,919.00	2.0%	$10,363.79	9.6%
ONAHAN	$5,758,089.00	2.0%	$8,698.02	4.3%
DISNEY	$12,624,105.00	2.1%	$8,605.39	7.0%
BOUCHET	$6,838,476.00	2.1%	$11,454.73	3.4%
DAWES	$10,325,181.00	2.1%	$10,325.18	-0.1%
JEFFERSON HS	$6,275,544.00	2.1%	$38,978.53	-8.7%
MCAULIFFE	$6,085,655.00	2.1%	$10,657.89	14.1%
BATEMAN	$8,467,523.00	2.1%	$9,633.13	3.0%
BUDLONG	$6,854,390.00	2.2%	$10,512.87	1.4%
POE	$1,814,498.00	2.2%	$8,938.41	-0.3%
BROWNELL	$2,152,125.00	2.2%	$12,810.27	6.4%
PASTEUR	$6,022,943.00	2.2%	$10,402.32	-0.1%
EDISON	$2,066,954.00	2.3%	$8,074.04	-0.1%
HAMMOND	$3,844,002.00	2.3%	$15,253.98	25.8%
GAGE PARK HS	$4,391,197.00	2.3%	$14,588.69	9.8%
HOLMES	$1,893,617.00	2.4%	$14,793.88	4.0%
CASALS	$4,023,276.00	2.4%	$11,397.38	8.2%
ORTIZ DE DOMINGUEZ	$5,437,443.00	2.5%	$13,730.92	7.4%
SMYSER	$7,550,153.00	2.5%	$9,792.68	9.9%
PEACE AND EDUCATION HS	$3,144,639.00	2.5%	$47,646.05	33.5%
MONROE	$7,500,830.00	2.5%	$10,700.19	6.0%
BASS	$4,641,333.00	2.6%	$12,246.26	3.1%
WOODSON	$3,683,784.00	2.6%	$12,790.92	8.0%
ROOSEVELT HS	$11,056,977.00	2.7%	$10,947.50	3.8%
CHICAGO VOCATIONAL HS	$9,320,876.00	2.7%	$14,079.87	15.0%
BURR	$4,012,062.00	2.7%	$8,204.63	3.4%
AIR FORCE HS	$3,074,921.00	2.7%	$17,671.96	15.7%
CAMERON	$6,649,649.00	2.8%	$10,471.89	5.5%
PICCOLO	$6,304,455.00	2.8%	$11,546.62	-2.3%
MCNAIR	$5,741,908.00	2.9%	$16,838.44	3.8%
DRAKE	$3,632,567.00	2.9%	$12,927.28	-1.5%
FULTON	$4,104,685.00	2.9%	$12,629.80	7.7%
FOREMAN HS	$7,937,365.00	2.9%	$13,949.67	9.3%
RANDOLPH	$4,259,975.00	2.9%	$12,033.83	11.1%
TALMAN	$4,412,393.00	3.0%	$12,642.96	6.8%
HAYT	$8,813,864.00	3.0%	$9,947.93	1.9%
PORTAGE PARK	$8,227,598.00	3.1%	$10,454.38	8.6%
NEWBERRY	$4,866,773.00	3.1%	$12,608.22	11.6%
LASALLE II	$5,778,530.00	3.1%	$9,962.98	2.0%
ALCOTT ES	$6,668,611.00	3.1%	$11,077.43	5.2%
LANGFORD	$2,581,187.00	3.1%	$14,834.41	16.2%
CHAPPELL	$5,682,371.00	3.1%	$10,782.49	8.6%
LOCKE J	$11,484,481.00	3.1%	$9,765.72	4.8%
DENEEN	$5,027,244.00	3.2%	$11,637.14	6.5%
SAUGANASH	$4,527,152.00	3.2%	$7,163.22	0.4%
CLEVELAND	$6,596,183.00	3.2%	$12,684.97	4.0%
BURNSIDE	$4,579,970.00	3.2%	$13,550.21	11.2%
TELPOCHCALLI	$3,268,874.00	3.2%	$13,180.94	-2.6%
POWELL	$5,296,615.00	3.3%	$10,225.13	4.5%
TAYLOR	$4,243,925.00	3.3%	$12,160.24	6.6%
DARWIN	$5,943,546.00	3.4%	$10,806.45	2.2%
COLEMON	$2,605,076.00	3.4%	$14,553.50	21.9%
CLAREMONT	$6,134,913.00	3.4%	$14,641.80	3.6%
MOUNT GREENWOOD	$8,677,378.00	3.4%	$7,558.69	11.3%
RABY HS	$4,050,811.00	3.5%	$20,458.64	28.6%
REVERE	$2,255,921.00	3.5%	$10,301.01	-5.0%
VON STEUBEN HS	$15,255,410.00	3.7%	$9,102.27	3.6%
DULLES	$6,627,703.00	3.8%	$9,192.38	2.6%
HURLEY	$7,127,736.00	3.8%	$9,737.34	7.5%
HOYNE	$2,351,618.00	3.9%	$11,145.11	8.3%
WELLS HS	$4,627,714.00	3.9%	$14,737.94	4.6%
BRIDGE	$8,972,289.00	3.9%	$8,585.92	5.7%
LANE TECH HS	$34,525,030.00	3.9%	$7,871.64	4.9%
LASALLE	$4,672,218.00	4.0%	$9,962.09	12.6%
VANDERPOEL	$2,628,281.00	4.0%	$10,306.98	6.1%
ARIEL	$4,775,379.00	4.1%	$11,849.58	14.1%
PEREZ	$3,634,130.00	4.1%	$12,662.47	10.3%
ASHE	$3,728,713.00	4.2%	$11,652.23	6.8%
STEINMETZ HS	$12,527,229.00	4.2%	$10,912.22	5.9%
DIRKSEN	$9,083,384.00	4.2%	$10,206.05	4.4%
MURRAY	$4,538,073.00	4.2%	$9,376.18	4.0%
MCPHERSON	$8,570,376.00	4.2%	$13,185.19	-0.6%
JUAREZ HS	$17,070,919.00	4.3%	$10,029.92	4.4%
SENN HS	$15,075,534.00	4.3%	$9,892.08	5.8%
EARLE	$3,776,111.00	4.3%	$14,037.59	18.6%
HAMLINE	$6,312,097.00	4.3%	$11,332.31	0.0%
WATERS	$5,083,905.00	4.4%	$8,069.69	7.2%
DEVRY HS	$1,916,343.00	4.4%	$11,829.28	1.8%
DETT	$4,927,271.00	4.4%	$17,108.58	14.2%
CANTY	$7,855,810.00	4.4%	$10,149.63	3.2%
YOUNG HS	$18,345,604.00	4.5%	$8,560.71	7.6%
KENWOOD HS	$18,364,716.00	4.5%	$8,154.85	-1.4%
HUGHES L	$6,303,784.00	4.5%	$13,674.15	-3.2%
ARMOUR	$3,798,231.00	4.5%	$14,836.84	3.3%
PAYTON HS	$10,399,876.00	4.5%	$8,717.41	6.6%
SHERWOOD	$3,704,381.00	4.6%	$14,997.49	11.3%
GRESHAM	$3,940,442.00	4.6%	$10,855.21	5.1%
CHICAGO ACADEMY ES	$5,688,030.00	4.6%	$10,139.09	4.6%
LAKE VIEW HS	$15,144,602.00	4.6%	$10,495.22	-1.9%
NASH	$3,205,073.00	4.7%	$14,502.59	9.4%
FUNSTON	$5,687,416.00	4.7%	$14,112.69	9.9%
HOWE	$4,220,930.00	4.8%	$10,850.72	1.3%
BARTON	$4,514,552.00	4.8%	$14,610.20	12.2%
CLAY	$6,359,070.00	4.8%	$11,059.25	-0.5%
CURIE HS	$29,853,587.00	4.8%	$9,756.07	2.5%
KING ES	$3,251,284.00	4.8%	$13,270.55	1.9%
KILMER	$9,019,588.00	4.9%	$12,597.19	8.7%
WESTINGHOUSE HS	$11,878,588.00	4.9%	$9,965.26	10.5%
HENRY	$5,318,379.00	4.9%	$10,510.63	6.8%
DEWEY	$4,375,166.00	5.0%	$14,731.20	2.9%
HARTE	$3,254,482.00	5.0%	$9,832.27	-9.6%
AMUNDSEN HS	$14,349,458.00	5.0%	$9,630.51	2.8%
WORLD LANGUAGE HS	$4,120,602.00	5.0%	$12,917.25	13.6%
GALILEO	$5,531,885.00	5.0%	$10,131.66	7.6%
HANCOCK HS	$9,388,149.00	5.1%	$9,213.10	5.1%
RUDOLPH	$3,640,873.00	5.1%	$37,534.77	-1.4%
ALDRIDGE	$2,786,109.00	5.1%	$12,839.21	-8.9%
DECATUR	$2,465,125.00	5.1%	$7,926.45	-3.3%
BROWN W	$3,637,813.00	5.2%	$19,453.55	9.1%
CULLEN	$2,083,080.00	5.3%	$11,768.81	10.6%
NEIL	$6,092,051.00	5.3%	$23,075.95	5.7%
CLARK HS	$7,059,750.00	5.3%	$13,498.57	5.5%
FAIRFIELD	$5,268,042.00	5.3%	$10,189.64	2.4%
SOUTH SHORE INTL HS	$6,448,711.00	5.3%	$11,061.25	1.3%
KELLY HS	$18,832,577.00	5.4%	$10,848.26	8.1%
TANNER	$4,285,871.00	5.4%	$13,870.13	5.0%
ROBINSON	$1,813,819.00	5.4%	$17,111.50	11.4%
MATHER HS	$16,680,527.00	5.5%	$9,669.87	-1.1%
MADISON	$2,732,097.00	5.5%	$14,532.43	6.1%
OWENS	$4,878,888.00	5.7%	$14,307.59	7.2%
KELLER	$1,892,356.00	5.7%	$8,926.21	8.2%
SOCIAL JUSTICE HS	$3,759,611.00	5.7%	$12,367.14	16.5%
WESTCOTT	$4,916,293.00	5.8%	$11,622.44	4.6%
PLAMONDON	$2,146,348.00	5.9%	$17,593.02	22.4%
DISNEY II ES & HS	$11,547,047.00	6.0%	$9,582.61	4.6%
NORTHSIDE PREP HS	$9,454,348.00	6.1%	$9,073.27	7.8%
BACK OF THE YARDS HS	$10,341,390.00	6.1%	$9,792.98	8.1%
FENGER HS	$3,724,232.00	6.2%	$15,263.25	24.5%
DOOLITTLE	$2,943,655.00	6.3%	$12,113.81	-2.4%
SIMEON HS	$13,624,587.00	6.4%	$10,032.83	11.2%
JONES HS	$15,807,965.00	6.4%	$8,065.29	6.6%
LINDBLOM HS	$13,627,854.00	6.4%	$9,818.34	7.1%
OTIS	$5,491,015.00	6.4%	$17,770.28	15.4%
FOSTER PARK	$4,692,458.00	6.5%	$14,663.93	7.1%
KINZIE	$7,533,322.00	6.6%	$11,277.43	8.7%
FRANKLIN	$3,243,937.00	6.6%	$9,010.94	7.8%
MCCLELLAN	$4,861,451.00	6.7%	$15,991.62	16.5%
VOLTA	$7,081,887.00	6.7%	$10,102.55	10.2%
COLUMBUS	$2,099,889.00	6.8%	$9,374.50	19.2%
BRIGHT	$4,182,211.00	6.9%	$17,140.21	13.0%
REINBERG	$8,796,437.00	7.0%	$11,903.16	2.9%
CHICAGO AGRICULTURE HS	$10,306,177.00	7.0%	$12,661.15	7.5%
HARLAN HS	$4,468,721.00	7.1%	$15,251.61	8.6%
MANLEY HS	$2,406,961.00	7.1%	$37,608.77	45.6%
HAMPTON	$5,565,119.00	7.2%	$11,474.47	1.2%
KELLMAN	$2,760,036.00	7.2%	$12,957.92	8.7%
SOLORIO HS	$12,858,556.00	7.2%	$10,270.41	6.0%
JAHN	$4,420,787.00	7.2%	$14,214.75	6.2%
KENNEDY HS	$15,219,667.00	7.2%	$10,065.92	4.5%
SADLOWSKI	$7,329,878.00	7.3%	$11,746.60	6.7%
WILDWOOD	$4,697,471.00	7.3%	$10,603.77	14.8%
PARKSIDE	$3,267,418.00	7.3%	$13,557.75	11.3%
NORTH-GRAND HS	$12,083,816.00	7.4%	$11,116.67	2.6%
GALE	$4,127,756.00	7.4%	$18,510.12	2.1%
HUBBARD HS	$17,997,896.00	7.4%	$9,883.52	1.5%
EDGEBROOK	$3,794,911.00	7.5%	$8,377.29	15.5%
JORDAN	$5,713,093.00	7.5%	$12,339.29	3.3%
LIBBY	$3,746,412.00	7.5%	$13,145.31	15.8%
SHERMAN	$3,225,700.00	7.5%	$12,311.83	1.4%
BEETHOVEN	$3,208,610.00	7.6%	$10,913.64	-13.3%
BLAIR	$5,521,918.00	7.6%	$25,329.90	-0.8%
WEST PARK	$5,488,154.00	7.8%	$11,223.22	5.1%
THORP O	$8,283,438.00	7.9%	$10,367.26	13.8%
GOODE HS	$10,084,138.00	7.9%	$10,548.26	5.6%
VAUGHN HS	$6,701,727.00	7.9%	$31,761.74	19.7%
DUNBAR HS	$6,239,242.00	7.9%	$12,655.66	-9.6%
CHRISTOPHER	$8,671,960.00	8.0%	$26,199.27	10.6%
LOZANO	$3,911,961.00	8.0%	$22,482.53	22.3%
KERSHAW	$4,048,012.00	8.0%	$16,388.71	5.4%
GOETHE	$6,622,161.00	8.0%	$9,071.45	9.5%
YATES	$5,171,318.00	8.1%	$17,123.57	15.2%
KING HS	$7,819,100.00	8.1%	$12,490.58	-20.0%
TURNER-DREW	$2,788,990.00	8.2%	$13,875.57	14.2%
BRENTANO	$5,920,038.00	8.2%	$8,849.09	-2.9%
FIELD	$1,785,594.00	8.3%	$12,754.24	6.0%
CHICAGO ACADEMY HS	$6,174,069.00	8.3%	$10,985.89	10.0%
CARVER G	$5,055,289.00	8.4%	$11,866.88	-5.4%
TAFT HS	$35,780,833.00	8.4%	$8,705.80	4.4%
CATHER	$4,904,871.00	8.5%	$14,641.41	18.5%
VICK	$4,509,147.00	8.5%	$16,456.74	3.4%
YORK HS	$6,617,004.00	8.5%	$40,103.05	13.1%
SOUTHSIDE HS	$9,698,014.00	8.5%	$26,140.20	-4.3%
FERNWOOD	$2,879,321.00	8.6%	$9,629.84	-5.2%
SHERIDAN	$4,930,750.00	8.6%	$9,303.30	12.7%
DORE	$8,004,412.00	8.6%	$11,132.70	10.1%
MOZART	$6,065,360.00	8.6%	$12,636.17	15.0%
RUGGLES	$4,039,074.00	8.8%	$12,239.62	18.7%
ENGLEWOOD STEM HS	$11,680,573.00	8.8%	$14,089.96	-10.7%
LOWELL	$5,052,597.00	8.9%	$16,246.29	13.4%
BROOKS HS	$9,550,264.00	9.0%	$9,666.26	8.6%
MOOS	$5,418,458.00	9.0%	$12,513.76	7.5%
GREEN	$4,532,925.00	9.0%	$13,904.68	7.0%
BEARD	$8,421,279.00	9.1%	$29,240.55	-26.1%
NINOS HEROES	$3,885,766.00	9.1%	$11,956.20	-2.3%
CLEMENTE HS	$9,112,271.00	9.2%	$13,400.40	9.9%
CHASE	$6,624,642.00	9.2%	$16,813.81	7.6%
KELLOGG	$2,952,988.00	9.2%	$10,622.26	8.5%
HIGGINS	$3,327,455.00	9.3%	$13,256.79	13.2%
AVALON PARK	$2,962,425.00	9.8%	$13,166.33	10.8%
GARVEY	$2,990,705.00	9.9%	$11,636.98	0.0%
WHISTLER	$4,169,439.00	10.0%	$14,681.12	21.6%
BOGAN HS	$9,269,529.00	10.1%	$12,375.87	8.1%
HEARST	$5,123,911.00	10.4%	$16,636.07	11.5%
HENDRICKS	$4,001,862.00	10.4%	$20,522.37	14.4%
PARKER	$5,032,996.00	10.4%	$12,806.61	13.0%
SOLOMON	$4,377,216.00	10.5%	$12,506.33	11.5%
WASHINGTON HS	$15,839,001.00	10.7%	$10,278.39	8.2%
MORGAN PARK HS	$11,843,776.00	10.8%	$10,407.54	5.0%
PALMER	$7,238,390.00	10.9%	$9,915.60	11.2%
FINKL	$4,062,275.00	11.0%	$18,298.54	20.5%
BYRNE	$6,445,198.00	11.1%	$10,514.19	12.5%
HARVARD	$5,278,235.00	11.1%	$14,000.62	4.3%
DRUMMOND	$3,309,938.00	11.1%	$10,608.78	23.6%
CALDWELL	$2,829,519.00	11.2%	$11,789.66	13.9%
JULIAN HS	$6,122,624.00	11.2%	$15,618.94	10.6%
ALCOTT HS	$4,408,717.00	11.2%	$12,349.35	3.8%
SUDER	$5,212,344.00	11.3%	$11,954.92	11.6%
WHITTIER	$2,695,361.00	11.7%	$15,142.48	10.4%
WARREN	$2,708,924.00	11.9%	$11,478.49	0.0%
INFINITY HS	$4,919,706.00	12.0%	$12,268.59	11.1%
MULTICULTURAL HS	$3,198,218.00	12.1%	$13,726.26	8.2%
THORP J	$4,584,885.00	12.1%	$15,809.95	7.8%
MOUNT VERNON	$2,874,408.00	12.3%	$11,780.36	5.4%
TILL	$4,109,367.00	12.5%	$13,128.97	11.0%
ORR HS	$3,523,294.00	12.6%	$16,311.55	27.7%
KOZMINSKI	$3,155,101.00	12.6%	$12,620.40	9.9%
COLLINS HS	$3,992,932.00	12.8%	$15,908.10	3.8%
SAYRE	$5,588,521.00	12.8%	$12,966.41	14.4%
STOCK	$3,808,441.00	12.8%	$15,802.66	-2.1%
PECK	$9,038,573.00	13.0%	$11,256.01	15.1%
WENTWORTH	$6,164,557.00	13.1%	$15,146.33	7.8%
MIRELES	$4,941,189.00	13.4%	$10,907.70	5.1%
BRENNEMANN	$5,886,773.00	13.8%	$13,595.32	-2.5%
MOLLISON	$3,364,340.00	14.1%	$11,289.73	9.1%
RYDER	$6,537,547.00	14.1%	$17,960.29	10.7%
CORLISS HS	$5,313,350.00	14.3%	$16,656.27	1.7%
DOUGLASS HS	$1,805,642.00	14.5%	$41,037.32	30.1%
KELVYN PARK HS	$6,612,841.00	14.6%	$13,523.19	-7.5%
JUNGMAN	$4,827,826.00	14.6%	$19,545.85	15.1%
GRAHAM HS	$6,068,377.00	14.7%	$29,601.84	2.9%
BRONZEVILLE CLASSICAL	$3,145,369.00	14.8%	$9,618.87	-5.9%
THOMAS	$3,195,111.00	14.9%	$27,308.64	14.9%
TILDEN HS	$3,668,402.00	15.1%	$20,267.41	29.1%
WEBSTER	$3,325,705.00	16.3%	$14,980.65	28.9%
REAVIS	$3,959,927.00	17.0%	$14,092.27	-0.9%
RICHARDS HS	$3,711,023.00	18.1%	$15,334.81	13.7%
SPRY HS	$2,879,066.00	18.7%	$32,716.66	30.9%
BOND	$4,238,279.00	19.9%	$18,347.53	23.5%
NORTHSIDE LEARNING HS	$9,152,552.00	20.3%	$35,892.36	12.7%
SCHMID	$2,891,062.00	20.9%	$15,296.62	10.1%
SIMPSON HS	$1,831,614.00	25.7%	$79,635.39	14.7%
AUDUBON	$6,078,959.00	40.2%	$12,406.04	49.1%
SOR JUANA	$4,102,352.00	42.4%	$12,941.17	13.6%

2022-23 Chicago school budgets

Five Illinois educators on reimagining how schools support mental health

2022-03-24T15:19:45+00:00

The pandemic’s traumas and isolation spurred a mental health crisis among children — and an unprecedented reckoning about the role schools can and should play in tending to the mental health needs of students and staff members.

The Illinois legislature recently backed proposals allowing students and educators to take time off for mental health reasons. With federal COVID relief dollars, some schools across the state are trying to bring more help for students in-house – from one-on-one therapy to wellness screenings to new social and emotional learning curricula. But such efforts can be uneven from school to school and district to district, and work remains to better track which approaches are paying off for students.

Chalkbeat spoke with five finalists for the 2022 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching about what they and their campuses are doing to address the pandemic’s mental health fallout for both students and educators — and how public schools could shift their approach to better serve struggling, vulnerable students.

Their answers have been lightly edited and condensed for publication.

Sharon Ponder-Ballard is a teacher at Englewood STEM High School.

Sharon Ponder-Ballard

Englewood STEM High School, Chicago

On supporting student mental health: At Englewood STEM, we have two full-time social workers, three full-time counselors, and a clinic with a social worker and psychologist. We use the Umoja Seminar and Embarc curriculums to reach every student in the building with social and emotional learning. During the advisory period, teachers engage students in mindfulness and meditation. We also offer group counseling, one-on-one crisis meetings, and other mental health interventions through our school’s behavioral health team.

On supporting teacher mental health: To provide the best care for our students, we also must take care of ourselves as educators. Our job requires so much of our mental and emotional alertness that we need to replenish without taking it home all the time. During prep period, I try to go out jogging at least twice a week on our beautiful track. Often, there are other colleagues there getting those steps in and enjoying the fresh air.

On reimagining learning for the post-pandemic era: During the pandemic, we had students who began working during the day to help support their families. My response was to hold virtual early evening classes for students who could not make it during their regular class periods. Maybe another approach to teaching could be to allow students who are dealing with homelessness, anxiety, and other mental health issues to join classes virtually. Many of these students are having difficulty concentrating and adjusting to in-person instruction.

Nikki Lazzarreto is a teacher at Deerfield High School.

Nikki Lazzaretto

Deerfield High School, Township High School District

On supporting student mental health: When I ask students how we are supporting their mental health, they say that they have a therapy dog and free muffins on Fridays. Some report that they have teachers they can talk to who care, but as far as the school as a whole, they can’t think of anything else. Of course, I would like to see more.

On supporting teacher mental health: I know that our mental health is mentioned a lot, but there doesn’t seem to be anything done with intention. One thing I feel my building does is support “family first.” I really appreciate that. Having even one professional development session that gives teachers choices having to do with mental health would be great: yoga, mindfulness, art therapy, movie time, cards, or board games. That would be amazing in a month like February when we need a break.

On reimagining learning for the post-pandemic era: I’ve added more social and emotional learning to my classroom, where one day a week is dedicated to checking in and creating a strong community. Intentionally building in this type of learning could go a long way. It provides opportunities to teach soft skills and listening with intention and empathy.

Will Ejzak is a teacher at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep.

Will Ejzak

Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, Chicago

On supporting student mental health: Flex Seminar days every other Wednesday are a great way to give students a breather in the middle of the week while creating positive relationships between students and teachers and providing opportunities to catch up on missing work. Teachers lead 80-minute seminars on subjects they’re passionate about. I’ve taught seminars on the history of pop music or the dystopian sci-fi show “Black Mirror.” Teachers can “flex” students out of their seminars to provide tutoring or extra time to catch up on work. It’s a really healthy way for kids who are stressed out or falling behind to get the additional support they need.

We’ve also been making a push to implement Executive Functioning classes designed to build students’ academic confidence while teaching organization, time management, and self-advocacy skills. Sometimes, student stress or feelings of helplessness stem from the fact that schools don’t teach “soft” academic skills or give students guidance in establishing healthy academic routines.

On teacher mental health: Our Instructional Assistance Team has been planning out-of-school casual social events for teachers to get together and talk about anything besides work. That’s been a small but valuable gesture.

On reimagining learning for the post-pandemic era: One thing that became even more necessary during the pandemic was providing space in the classroom for student voice. During the pandemic, my classroom became even more discussion-based and student-led than was before. Students learn more when they are doing, and students take ownership of and pride in their learning when they are the ones doing most of the talking and thinking.

Otto Corzo is a teacher at McHenry Community High School.

Otto Corzo

McHenry Community High School

On supporting student mental health: My district is providing mental health seminars during the school day. But few students are aware of these opportunities. There can also be a stigma to seeking help and attending those meetings. I would love to see more done to make student wellness a significant component throughout the day and to normalize the topic of mental health. I would encourage all districts to take time out of the day to have students partake in mindfulness activities and breaks.

On supporting teacher mental health: If schools are not intentionally taking care of teachers’ mental health, a culture that supports student mental health cannot be established. Just recently, my district has offered teachers lunches and coffee. More should be done to care for the teachers. I suggest giving teachers access to nutritionists, yoga instructors, and massages during their free periods.

On reimagining learning for the post-pandemic era: I recommend that the education process return to being transformative and not transactional. We need to provide students with the opportunity to display mastery of the content or skills in the way that best suits them. I think we focus too much on learning content and not enough on learning skills. We as educators need to not be tied to a calendar and a set curriculum.

Laurel Kulig is a teacher at Northtown Academy High School.

Laurel Kulig

Northtown Academy High School, Chicago International Charter School

On supporting student mental health: Our Student Services teams are rockstar collaborators who keep tabs on each student, communicate openly with us about needs, intervene with student crises, and connect students to resources outside of the building. There is so much more to supporting mental health than having a stellar counseling department, though, and a lot of it has to do with student voice and student advocacy. Our school provides students with a robust suite of options and advocacy. For example, we have integrated alternative credit programs for students who work or participate in sports or the theater program. We also weave supportive practices into the central curriculum. In our broadcasting class, for example, students produce editorial commentary that helps them feel heard by the staff and administration.

On supporting teacher mental health: My school is such a cool community of educators. Teams of teachers and administrators have opened up dialogue and community connections through book clubs, staff traditions, and consulting with local community nonprofits. Our administration supports our staff by providing additional planning time and bringing in “fun” days — most recently, a taco truck on professional development day. We have access to an anonymous work-life balance support line, and our principal’s mantra this year has been for us to focus on building relationships and culture.

On reimagining learning for the post-pandemic era: In my biology classes during e-learning, we embraced the practice of taking field notes in nature. Students would go outside and learn to take in the world and to record what they saw and heard by sketching, writing, mapping, and even collecting small samples in their field notebooks. The practice helped my students to connect to the world in an entirely new way. It made room for them to be self-directed and exploratory. Picture a world where we can flip the model on its head, allowing students to have more self-paced, discovery-based, service-oriented learning facilitated by, but not necessarily housed in, their local school. What if our buildings were truly hubs for interconnected mentorship, service, and support rather than monolithic flagship models themselves?

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board ‘discouraged’ by district’s spending on academic, mental health support: ‘This is an emergency’

2022-03-23T22:27:06+00:00

Some Chicago school board members are urging the district to pick up the pace on its federally-funded push to address the pandemic’s academic and mental health fallout, saying the money isn’t being spent fast enough to meet the immediate needs of students.

The district has so far spent only 12%, or $62.9 million, on a two-year, half-billion dollar initiative called Moving Forward Together, which was designed to help students bounce back from COVID disruption. And it has made use of less than 7% of its $1.8 billion allocation under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan, the third and final round of federal COVID relief dollars.

District officials said they have run into a slew of hurdles to spending the money faster: The delta and omicron variants diverted energy from academic recovery efforts, and the national “Great Resignation” made it harder to line up the staffing needed to roll out new programs to support students.

CEO Pedro Martinez also noted that the district had to spend dollars from earlier federal relief funding rounds first, and that not all expenses are included in the American Rescue Plan figures because the district hasn’t reported them to the state.

Some school members said they understand the challenges, but still would like to see stepped-up efforts to get help to schools now.

Board president Miguel del Valle said the district needs to expedite its hiring processes for community-based organizations that provide CPS with social, emotional, and mental health support.

“This is an emergency,” del Valle said. “Schools are crying out for additional help.”

Board member Luisiana Melendez acknowledged the persistent challenges, but said “timely interventions” for students were immediately needed to prevent more problems in child’s learning, and social and emotional development.

“I am a little discouraged by the low amount of investment so far,” she said.

The Moving Forward Together plan announced last June uses $525 million — a portion of the $1.8 billion in American Rescue Plan dollars the district received — to address academic and mental health trauma from the pandemic over the span of two years. Chicago Public Schools got a total of roughly $2.8 billion from three rounds of federal COVID relief.

The program investments include:

learning acceleration and access to grade-level content ($35 million)
targeted intervention and tutoring ($15.3 million)
supporting students with disabilities and English language learners ($7.6 million)
early literacy ($1.9 million)
transition-year support ($11.1 million)
social, emotional, and healing supports ($3 million)

Real-time spending data that Chalkbeat obtained and analyzed suggests that the district has so far used a significant portion of its federal COVID relief dollars to cover the salaries and benefits of existing teachers and support staff and other routine expenses for which it had previously budgeted state and other funds. The district told the state it would use about $764 million in federal emergency relief to pay for existing instructional positions alone. It plans to separately cover support staff such as cafeteria workers and security guards as well as pre-kindergarten personnel with COVID dollars.

During a meeting at the beginning of the school year, board members pressed district officials to spell out how they would track whether the initiative was paying off for students. Some members voiced concern about the possibility of making a substantial investment without having results to show for it.

At the time, officials said they were still exploring ways to capture the program’s outcomes, noting some challenges such as quantifying student mental health improvements. But they promised to report back with concrete measures of success.

On Wednesday, district officials didn’t outline a metric for measuring the success of the program. Rather, board members echoed Melendez’s concerns around the pace of spending for such interventions.

The school year had been dubbed as a “recovery year,” but in reality the district has been focused on reopening and keeping schools open amid surges, staffing retention, and other issues, Martinez said.

“We all wanted this to be a recovery year, but it has not played out that way,” Martinez said.

Across the country, school districts are grappling with learning gaps and mental health challenges created by the pandemic that upended the education system. The federal government has issued billions in COVID relief funding to help school districts respond.

In detailing the initiative last summer, Chicago Public School officials said about 84,500 students had been flagged for target support and another 18,130 students would qualify for more intensive outreach. The district’s effort would primarily be focused on the South and West communities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said at the time.

The initiative is broadly focused on re-engaging students who tuned out after the district shifted from in-person to remote learning in March 2020. Chicago Public Schools used portions of the funds to create behavior and mental health teams at school, while also partnering with outside providers for mental health services.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Melendez and other board members asked the district how they planned to speed up the use of these funds to ensure students were receiving necessary interventions now and in the coming years.

“This is not meant to be finger-pointing or blaming anybody,” Melendez said, “but I think this is an issue that is becoming increasingly urgent as time continues to go by and children are suffering from the long-term learning impacts — and social emotional impacts— of COVID.”

The presentation was only “a partial picture,” in part, because of the complexity around how those funds are reported, Martinez said, promising a more in-depth analysis of spending by May. Still, Martinez said the district was “doubling down” on providing support that principals were asking for including social workers, counselors, and nurses by next year.

Board member Melendez acknowledged the complexity of the funding but argued that “schools are hurting, they need support now.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

More money for Chicago schools next year, but some shrinking campuses see cuts

2022-03-18T18:43:05+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will spend $290 million more on its schools next school year, or $4 billion total, officials said, continuing a trend of boosting campus funding even as enrollment dips.

But unlike the current school year, when roughly 95% of schools saw budget hikes, some campuses with steep enrollment declines will see those losses reflected in shrinking budgets. Overall, officials said, 40% will see budget cuts, in a few cases of $800,000 or more. Most of the $290 million increase officials touted will not go directly into school budgets but rather into central pots campuses can draw from, such as a $45 million bucket for educator professional development. School leaders will only see roughly a net $60 million more directly in their budgets.

The district has steadily increased the amount of money that goes directly to schools in recent years. Last year, it added $225 million, a move officials said was possible because of an influx of federal COVID relief dollars. The district got roughly $2.8 billion across three federal stimulus packages that it has to spend by fall of 2024.

CEO Pedro Martinez said a fuller picture of how the district will spend its remaining federal dollars will emerge when it unveils its complete budget this summer and a three-year overhaul plan he will release soon.

Next year’s budget is the first that Martinez, who arrived after the school year started last fall, gets to shape, offering a glimpse at his priorities and longer-term vision for the district. He said the budget release, which comes earlier than in recent years, is the first step in a three-year district overhaul plan he is gearing up to unveil soon.

“These budgets will help our students to return to the record-breaking academic gains we saw before the pandemic,” he said at a virtual press conference, adding, “Our financial outlook is very strong.”

The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, a frequent critic of the district, said in a statement that officials painted too rosy a picture of next year’s school budgets. The association said it has heard from dozens of principals today concerned about looming cuts to their budgets, including some totaling $100,000 or more.

“As we emerge from this pandemic our children need their school budget increased,” the group’s head, Troy LaRaviere said. “However, CPS has decided to slash them once again.”

He said the cuts reflect “callousness and neglect.”

Data the district release later on Friday shows 146 campuses saw cuts greater than $100,000. Orozco Academy, an elementary in Pilsen that lost a quarter of its students last year amid neighborhood demographic changes and a shift to magnet school status, will take an $836,000 cut. Zapata, Reilly, and Lyon elementaries, which experienced more modest enrollment losses last year, will also see cuts of more than $800,000.

The district announces draft school budgets in the spring and a final, districtwide budget in the summer. The additional school funding will include $72 million for new teaching positions that will help reduce class sizes at some schools.

The district has repeatedly increased school budget funding earmarked for special education, early childhood programs and its equity grants, cash infusions for campuses dealing with steep enrollment declines or those in neighborhoods facing economic and other hardships. The district is doing away with the term “equity grant,” which was confusing to families, officials said, but Chicago will spend $50 million to prop up the budgets of schools with small or steeply declining enrollments, a $14 million increase over last year.

School budgets generally make up about 60% of Chicago’s overall district operating budget. This current school year, that operating budget is $7.8 billion, part of a total $9.3 billion budget that also includes facilities and debt service expenditures.

The district has experienced a net loss of about 25,000 students during the pandemic, with current enrollment at 330,400 students. An unprecedented number of students — more than 53,000 — left Chicago Public Schools for other districts, private schools, and homeschooling.

The district will spend $21 million to continue to add nurse, social worker positions, and case workers, with officials saying they aim to go beyond goals spelled out in the district’s contract with the Chicago Teachers Union.

The newly unveiled school budgets also include:

$39 million more for special education.
$10 million more for all-day pre-kindergarten programs.
$6 million to add 53 new counselor positions, in addition to 64 positions the district announced last year.
$3 million more for bilingual education.
$2 million to create new staff positions to support unhoused students.

Over the years, the union and others critics have taken aim at a school budget formula in which student enrollment still looms fairly large. They say the district’s approach sends shrinking schools on the South and West sides into a spiral of lost funding, program and staff cuts, and further student losses.

But Martinez’s predecessor, Janice Jackson, argued that while the district cannot divorce budgets from enrollment entirely, it has taken major steps to make funding more equitable. Roughly half of school budgets this school year are based on pupil numbers, and 95% of campuses saw budget hikes.

Martinez said he will aim for a balanced approach. Enrollment will still count, but the district is trying to soften the budget pain for schools that are rapidly losing students.

“We put some safeguards to limit the reduction,” he said.

“We didn’t want any school to not have resources for intervention teachers, arts classes, or smaller class sizes,” he added.

The press conference featured two principals at schools with growing enrollment who saw increases in their budgets. At Emmett Till Math and Science Academy, a South Side elementary school, principal Raven Patterson-Tally said she is especially excited about a hike the school got for special teachers and support staff.

“With these resources, we’ll be more thoughtful about how we approach inclusion and other best practices,” she said.

She said her campus will also benefit from centrally budgeted dollars to continue rolling out the district’s new universal Skyline curriculum. She said teachers who piloted that curriculum at her school found it rigorous and well-connected to state academic standards.

“Best of all, I don’t have to pay for it out of my budget,” she said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Name	Enrollment change	FY22 Budget	FY23 Budget	Budget change
OROZCO	-25.68%	$4,503,295	$3,666,724	-18.58%
CROWN	-20.79%	$2,403,859	$1,991,393	-17.16%
GREGORY	-7.49%	$3,950,957	$3,357,806	-15.01%
WILLIAMS HS	-41.12%	$1,946,114	$1,657,480	-14.83%
ZAPATA	-10.79%	$6,811,120	$5,916,816	-13.13%
ERICSON	-10.79%	$4,685,482	$4,095,000	-12.60%
MAYS	-16.56%	$3,660,900	$3,224,983	-11.91%
REILLY	-10.72%	$7,490,333	$6,642,771	-11.32%
FISKE	-6.82%	$4,920,494	$4,389,058	-10.80%
CUFFE	5.63%	$3,309,706	$2,965,589	-10.40%
JENSEN	-15.49%	$4,016,577	$3,599,325	-10.39%
BLACK	-13.65%	$4,212,431	$3,795,345	-9.90%
OGLESBY	-22.51%	$4,104,262	$3,707,506	-9.67%
SMITH	-12.34%	$3,678,575	$3,327,970	-9.53%
SALAZAR	-2.27%	$3,330,398	$3,025,348	-9.16%
AUSTIN CCA HS	-32.34%	$3,126,171	$2,840,718	-9.13%
JOHNSON	-19.21%	$3,458,337	$3,156,331	-8.73%
DAVIS M	-14.61%	$2,635,599	$2,415,683	-8.34%
BOWEN HS	-13.30%	$4,044,756	$3,709,459	-8.29%
HAY	-5.30%	$3,562,097	$3,276,849	-8.01%
MCDADE	6.08%	$1,971,213	$1,814,238	-7.96%
DUNNE	-0.99%	$3,020,840	$2,781,414	-7.93%
SMYTH	-5.83%	$5,352,105	$4,933,587	-7.82%
SHIELDS MIDDLE	-8.93%	$5,270,002	$4,864,190	-7.70%
LEWIS	-11.67%	$4,577,506	$4,227,090	-7.66%
MCCORMICK	-9.98%	$5,822,498	$5,380,191	-7.60%
LYON	-7.30%	$10,837,308	$10,018,717	-7.55%
AVONDALE-LOGANDALE	-9.04%	$6,137,749	$5,674,602	-7.55%
YOUNG ES	-13.07%	$5,989,828	$5,544,714	-7.43%
COURTENAY	-23.53%	$5,731,715	$5,305,821	-7.43%
HAINES	-5.03%	$5,288,968	$4,898,312	-7.39%
FRAZIER PROSPECTIVE	-16.33%	$2,684,244	$2,496,125	-7.01%
COOPER	0.66%	$5,605,324	$5,223,945	-6.80%
GARVY	-8.79%	$6,181,686	$5,770,900	-6.65%
RICHARDSON	-9.87%	$9,275,287	$8,684,436	-6.37%
LAVIZZO	-10.27%	$4,007,516	$3,754,677	-6.31%
CARDENAS	-11.54%	$9,775,899	$9,170,605	-6.19%
DUBOIS	-7.04%	$2,892,206	$2,713,988	-6.16%
UPLIFT HS	-18.87%	$3,503,395	$3,288,789	-6.13%
GRIMES	-8.18%	$4,211,821	$3,954,116	-6.12%
WARD L	-14.88%	$4,673,259	$4,391,715	-6.02%
WADSWORTH	5.20%	$5,376,041	$5,058,523	-5.91%
NIXON	-11.84%	$6,113,563	$5,757,008	-5.83%
WARD J	-6.16%	$5,157,059	$4,859,835	-5.76%
BEIDLER	-8.38%	$3,502,805	$3,302,271	-5.72%
ADDAMS	-6.34%	$5,886,525	$5,549,854	-5.72%
STAGG	-8.82%	$4,485,785	$4,230,843	-5.68%
AZUELA	-10.83%	$6,664,831	$6,286,117	-5.68%
MCDOWELL	-22.45%	$1,615,950	$1,525,206	-5.62%
DVORAK	-2.68%	$3,790,894	$3,578,564	-5.60%
HEDGES	-5.92%	$5,399,503	$5,102,158	-5.51%
CHALMERS	-22.18%	$3,454,988	$3,266,699	-5.45%
WASHINGTON H ES	-17.16%	$3,476,561	$3,287,754	-5.43%
HIBBARD	-4.46%	$7,953,103	$7,522,972	-5.41%
SANDOVAL	-7.48%	$7,556,124	$7,148,370	-5.40%
GOUDY	-10.47%	$6,570,729	$6,216,610	-5.39%
MANIERRE	-8.28%	$3,936,076	$3,724,796	-5.37%
DIXON	-10.22%	$4,515,767	$4,279,426	-5.23%
PHILLIPS HS	-7.98%	$6,496,146	$6,160,098	-5.17%
BLAINE	-9.92%	$7,281,093	$6,904,557	-5.17%
CASSELL	-6.48%	$4,257,981	$4,041,098	-5.09%
MELODY	-4.91%	$4,478,470	$4,250,847	-5.08%
RAY	-8.16%	$5,898,494	$5,602,258	-5.02%
EDISON PARK	-9.53%	$5,254,715	$4,994,248	-4.96%
LARA	-15.18%	$5,021,381	$4,773,819	-4.93%
SEWARD	-14.03%	$5,419,335	$5,154,559	-4.89%
CLARK ES	-2.20%	$2,680,557	$2,549,647	-4.88%
HEFFERAN	-12.16%	$3,421,273	$3,254,332	-4.88%
HALE	-1.72%	$7,993,412	$7,608,272	-4.82%
EDWARDS	-3.27%	$13,995,978	$13,329,239	-4.76%
HERNANDEZ	-11.18%	$8,187,610	$7,800,650	-4.73%
PENN	-5.96%	$3,150,914	$3,002,760	-4.70%
BRIGHTON PARK	-10.03%	$4,090,342	$3,898,840	-4.68%
GARY	-13.21%	$8,840,159	$8,432,292	-4.61%
CLISSOLD	-8.47%	$5,722,233	$5,460,161	-4.58%
KIPLING	-9.78%	$3,074,173	$2,935,939	-4.50%
MANN	-0.68%	$3,174,404	$3,032,039	-4.48%
CARSON	-4.05%	$8,338,523	$7,965,601	-4.47%
MADERO	-12.83%	$3,057,402	$2,922,534	-4.41%
CHICAGO WORLD LANGUAGE ACADEMY	-11.88%	$4,051,478	$3,878,210	-4.28%
MARQUETTE	-4.01%	$10,352,512	$9,910,958	-4.27%
JAMIESON	-8.87%	$8,077,045	$7,734,965	-4.24%
ASHBURN	-13.64%	$4,891,494	$4,684,524	-4.23%
PRITZKER	-9.41%	$5,507,602	$5,276,170	-4.20%
NICHOLSON	0.22%	$5,229,854	$5,013,593	-4.14%
EVERS	-5.75%	$2,942,565	$2,822,805	-4.07%
PILSEN	-12.60%	$3,359,436	$3,225,819	-3.98%
ALBANY PARK	-0.41%	$2,335,958	$2,243,207	-3.97%
CARROLL	-6.10%	$4,697,921	$4,518,232	-3.82%
MORRILL	-8.38%	$6,067,408	$5,838,166	-3.78%
PICKARD	-14.52%	$4,396,634	$4,231,021	-3.77%
GALLISTEL	-4.78%	$6,895,874	$6,637,237	-3.75%
SUMNER	-7.23%	$3,071,980	$2,956,802	-3.75%
TUBMAN	-14.75%	$4,745,674	$4,567,821	-3.75%
EBERHART	-2.09%	$10,982,626	$10,579,021	-3.67%
SAWYER	-8.92%	$10,467,817	$10,087,322	-3.63%
GILLESPIE	-6.53%	$4,631,947	$4,465,346	-3.60%
SABIN	-15.96%	$4,435,743	$4,276,239	-3.60%
OKEEFFE	-5.76%	$5,507,123	$5,311,247	-3.56%
SKINNER NORTH	-3.33%	$3,949,966	$3,812,474	-3.48%
COLES	-6.75%	$3,756,419	$3,626,785	-3.45%
BRADWELL	-5.08%	$4,692,770	$4,531,751	-3.43%
WHITE	4.63%	$1,827,594	$1,765,397	-3.40%
VON LINNE	-6.68%	$5,971,525	$5,769,383	-3.39%
HYDE PARK HS	-7.53%	$8,573,596	$8,288,421	-3.33%
BURLEY	-8.79%	$4,185,990	$4,048,390	-3.29%
PIRIE	-1.34%	$2,853,155	$2,759,731	-3.27%
WACKER	-3.48%	$3,181,239	$3,078,647	-3.22%
DALEY	-5.73%	$5,032,025	$4,870,656	-3.21%
SULLIVAN HS	-3.85%	$7,729,715	$7,482,460	-3.20%
WHITNEY	-7.14%	$6,965,177	$6,743,648	-3.18%
DURKIN PARK	-3.41%	$7,149,987	$6,922,924	-3.18%
BURKE	-2.89%	$4,095,972	$3,966,562	-3.16%
HUGHES C	-14.66%	$2,886,975	$2,796,881	-3.12%
PRIETO	-9.01%	$8,392,229	$8,130,959	-3.11%
BURNHAM	3.58%	$5,251,783	$5,089,014	-3.10%
WASHINGTON G ES	-5.59%	$6,046,424	$5,859,344	-3.09%
BURROUGHS	-9.09%	$4,354,281	$4,221,167	-3.06%
DEPRIEST	-3.93%	$6,273,827	$6,087,683	-2.97%
CORKERY	-1.66%	$4,949,792	$4,804,121	-2.94%
LORCA	-3.49%	$6,956,109	$6,753,115	-2.92%
MAYER	-5.84%	$6,256,368	$6,076,564	-2.87%
PARK MANOR	-5.81%	$3,247,987	$3,158,209	-2.76%
EVERETT	-16.13%	$2,505,130	$2,437,199	-2.71%
STONE	-3.18%	$5,165,794	$5,025,786	-2.71%
GRAY	-5.21%	$9,312,409	$9,077,094	-2.53%
LENART	0.72%	$2,477,563	$2,415,007	-2.52%
BRUNSON	0.97%	$4,703,863	$4,587,293	-2.48%
HAMILTON	-2.39%	$4,251,492	$4,146,772	-2.46%
EVERGREEN	-9.52%	$2,960,291	$2,887,613	-2.46%
LEE	-7.77%	$6,347,436	$6,192,847	-2.44%
SPRY ES	-11.92%	$4,437,127	$4,329,772	-2.42%
PRESCOTT	-17.82%	$4,417,960	$4,311,206	-2.42%
CARNEGIE	-12.70%	$5,186,038	$5,061,314	-2.40%
CHICAGO MILITARY HS	-12.86%	$4,256,560	$4,154,376	-2.40%
SHIELDS	-11.01%	$5,696,083	$5,562,960	-2.34%
BENNETT	3.82%	$3,143,489	$3,072,499	-2.26%
BRONZEVILLE HS	-29.89%	$2,199,899	$2,150,921	-2.23%
TONTI	-1.42%	$8,564,599	$8,376,134	-2.20%
SCHUBERT	-3.48%	$5,793,048	$5,666,541	-2.18%
WOODLAWN	-3.87%	$2,252,829	$2,203,752	-2.18%
OGDEN ES & HS	-7.48%	$15,055,724	$14,728,902	-2.17%
HAUGAN	-5.38%	$9,282,887	$9,082,499	-2.16%
CALMECA	-5.67%	$6,556,729	$6,417,792	-2.12%
NORTHWEST	-14.44%	$4,885,232	$4,783,139	-2.09%
NOBEL	-6.22%	$6,034,882	$5,911,100	-2.05%
COLUMBIA EXPLORERS	-5.64%	$8,444,869	$8,274,277	-2.02%
LINCOLN	-10.45%	$6,189,543	$6,066,423	-1.99%
CARTER	-7.38%	$3,081,241	$3,020,203	-1.98%
SKINNER	-5.70%	$8,634,323	$8,465,076	-1.96%
EARHART	-11.11%	$2,186,135	$2,143,286	-1.96%
DYETT ARTS HS	-7.89%	$5,691,617	$5,581,213	-1.94%
JACKSON M	-10.61%	$4,402,956	$4,321,507	-1.85%
FULLER	-7.67%	$3,699,379	$3,632,201	-1.82%
CURTIS	-6.40%	$4,221,931	$4,145,351	-1.81%
NEW FIELD	-5.06%	$6,554,364	$6,441,253	-1.73%
COOK	-10.78%	$4,010,508	$3,943,760	-1.66%
CLINTON	-5.10%	$9,577,404	$9,421,440	-1.63%
SOUTH LOOP	1.91%	$6,644,826	$6,538,493	-1.60%
LITTLE VILLAGE	-6.69%	$7,206,086	$7,092,303	-1.58%
HERZL	-11.25%	$5,862,571	$5,770,136	-1.58%
LLOYD	-6.66%	$8,319,157	$8,188,289	-1.57%
NEW SULLIVAN	-6.03%	$6,127,436	$6,034,882	-1.51%
MORTON	-10.84%	$2,982,909	$2,938,413	-1.49%
CRANE MEDICAL HS	-8.97%	$4,597,510	$4,530,168	-1.46%
BEASLEY	-7.17%	$10,362,964	$10,211,193	-1.46%
NETTELHORST	-5.46%	$6,419,785	$6,327,079	-1.44%
SUTHERLAND	-11.92%	$5,969,964	$5,886,639	-1.40%
SHOESMITH	-8.82%	$3,097,682	$3,058,190	-1.27%
LINCOLN PARK HS	-2.41%	$17,984,851	$17,768,524	-1.20%
KANOON	-5.79%	$4,901,706	$4,846,145	-1.13%
LAWNDALE	4.35%	$2,798,968	$2,767,705	-1.12%
PULASKI	-5.56%	$7,367,705	$7,286,607	-1.10%
EBINGER	-11.69%	$6,736,581	$6,666,069	-1.05%
SAUCEDO	-4.56%	$9,262,919	$9,166,355	-1.04%
HANSON PARK	-9.89%	$15,032,678	$14,882,491	-1.00%
DE DIEGO	2.20%	$6,360,650	$6,297,168	-1.00%
CARVER MILITARY HS	-8.14%	$5,267,898	$5,215,592	-0.99%
BELDING	-2.20%	$5,194,638	$5,145,811	-0.94%
STOWE	0.17%	$6,519,916	$6,470,984	-0.75%
ELLINGTON	-5.32%	$5,270,622	$5,232,725	-0.72%
RAVENSWOOD	-3.19%	$4,717,868	$4,687,954	-0.63%
TWAIN	-6.38%	$8,429,307	$8,376,433	-0.63%
MCCUTCHEON	-4.92%	$5,271,329	$5,238,861	-0.62%
MCKAY	-2.40%	$7,201,604	$7,159,510	-0.58%
NORWOOD PARK	-10.54%	$3,470,788	$3,451,106	-0.57%
PETERSON	-2.15%	$8,186,700	$8,141,871	-0.55%
NORTH RIVER	-6.16%	$2,891,381	$2,876,184	-0.53%
BURBANK	-4.27%	$8,192,394	$8,150,721	-0.51%
SOUTH SHORE ES	-5.41%	$4,652,375	$4,629,536	-0.49%
FARADAY	-11.11%	$2,630,058	$2,618,297	-0.45%
NIGHTINGALE	-2.59%	$10,116,119	$10,071,226	-0.44%
BEAUBIEN	-5.49%	$8,396,531	$8,364,388	-0.38%
NATIONAL TEACHERS	-5.71%	$6,619,863	$6,595,025	-0.38%
STEVENSON	-3.98%	$11,967,294	$11,923,293	-0.37%
BARRY	-7.74%	$5,079,671	$5,063,106	-0.33%
GRISSOM	-2.80%	$3,109,283	$3,099,155	-0.33%
FARRAGUT HS	-6.30%	$7,549,572	$7,525,054	-0.32%
MURPHY	-11.90%	$5,756,535	$5,738,028	-0.32%
ROGERS	-0.41%	$7,752,670	$7,728,098	-0.32%
HEALY	-5.51%	$10,373,193	$10,348,199	-0.24%
LOVETT	-2.24%	$3,248,840	$3,241,188	-0.24%
JOPLIN	2.71%	$4,027,449	$4,023,411	-0.10%
PRUSSING	-6.96%	$6,057,744	$6,053,274	-0.07%
PROSSER HS	-8.24%	$11,834,606	$11,826,382	-0.07%
ORIOLE PARK	-7.59%	$5,586,996	$5,587,112	0.00%
SCAMMON	-4.67%	$6,010,726	$6,010,866	0.00%
TARKINGTON	-1.96%	$8,599,043	$8,601,599	0.03%
BOONE	-6.59%	$7,804,737	$7,810,637	0.08%
WELLS ES	-10.57%	$3,911,591	$3,915,467	0.10%
CAMRAS	-7.97%	$8,533,841	$8,542,411	0.10%
IRVING	-4.19%	$3,919,833	$3,924,332	0.11%
PERSHING	-7.97%	$5,323,449	$5,333,841	0.20%
GREELEY	-16.22%	$4,627,684	$4,637,525	0.21%
FALCONER	-7.52%	$9,233,444	$9,258,753	0.27%
RICKOVER MILITARY HS	-0.22%	$5,291,981	$5,308,239	0.31%
SCHURZ HS	-8.76%	$16,528,748	$16,584,413	0.34%
GREENE	-14.13%	$3,745,385	$3,759,319	0.37%
PULLMAN	-1.47%	$3,834,366	$3,848,647	0.37%
MARSHALL HS	-6.58%	$3,187,680	$3,201,572	0.44%
BROWN R	-5.28%	$3,286,081	$3,300,461	0.44%
SHOOP	3.80%	$4,896,185	$4,921,739	0.52%
FORT DEARBORN	-4.41%	$4,554,005	$4,581,331	0.60%
CHOPIN	-8.28%	$4,815,112	$4,846,479	0.65%
WEST RIDGE	-8.38%	$6,895,235	$6,942,072	0.68%
COONLEY	-9.21%	$7,327,851	$7,378,356	0.69%
WALSH	-14.95%	$4,320,070	$4,351,283	0.72%
OWEN	-1.84%	$2,791,637	$2,811,808	0.72%
DAVIS N	-9.12%	$6,932,513	$6,990,062	0.83%
MARINE LEADERSHIP AT AMES HS	-5.91%	$8,689,633	$8,764,073	0.86%
PHOENIX MILITARY HS	-5.71%	$5,775,375	$5,826,778	0.89%
STEM	-4.91%	$3,664,744	$3,697,769	0.90%
BARNARD	-1.50%	$2,940,631	$2,967,738	0.92%
GRAHAM ES	-4.68%	$3,718,382	$3,754,456	0.97%
FARNSWORTH	-7.95%	$6,927,647	$6,995,825	0.98%
HALEY	2.68%	$5,206,112	$5,262,778	1.09%
SWIFT	-7.58%	$6,591,799	$6,664,203	1.10%
BELL	-7.85%	$7,672,640	$7,761,758	1.16%
TILTON	-1.94%	$3,233,595	$3,271,492	1.17%
HIRSCH HS	-13.33%	$2,091,991	$2,117,055	1.20%
INTER-AMERICAN	-2.85%	$6,364,281	$6,441,324	1.21%
ESMOND	14.17%	$3,048,226	$3,087,598	1.29%
CHAVEZ	-1.79%	$8,429,750	$8,539,535	1.30%
METCALFE	11.71%	$3,712,712	$3,762,315	1.34%
DEVER	5.33%	$6,728,449	$6,818,418	1.34%
TALCOTT	4.47%	$5,142,266	$5,216,359	1.44%
BELMONT-CRAGIN	6.82%	$5,740,546	$5,823,357	1.44%
HAWTHORNE	1.23%	$4,856,183	$4,927,681	1.47%
ARMSTRONG G	-0.49%	$11,074,137	$11,239,447	1.49%
PEIRCE	3.92%	$10,061,292	$10,217,506	1.55%
MARSH	-6.08%	$7,264,296	$7,380,178	1.60%
HOLDEN	-3.51%	$4,058,122	$4,124,213	1.63%
RUIZ	-14.53%	$5,922,268	$6,020,387	1.66%
SPENCER	-0.92%	$4,734,475	$4,817,366	1.75%
HENDERSON	-4.08%	$2,546,399	$2,591,290	1.76%
MASON	-10.37%	$3,407,862	$3,469,125	1.80%
HITCH	-5.59%	$4,775,210	$4,864,027	1.86%
LELAND	-0.27%	$4,944,236	$5,038,388	1.90%
MITCHELL	1.09%	$3,418,643	$3,485,485	1.96%
OTOOLE	6.15%	$3,600,555	$3,671,151	1.96%
GUNSAULUS	-6.89%	$6,868,138	$7,005,919	2.01%
ONAHAN	-2.22%	$5,643,643	$5,758,089	2.03%
DISNEY	-4.62%	$12,370,124	$12,624,105	2.05%
BOUCHET	-1.32%	$6,700,125	$6,838,476	2.06%
DAWES	2.15%	$10,115,074	$10,325,181	2.08%
JEFFERSON HS	11.81%	$6,147,367	$6,275,544	2.09%
MCAULIFFE	-10.50%	$5,961,352	$6,085,655	2.09%
BATEMAN	-0.90%	$8,294,350	$8,467,523	2.09%
BUDLONG	0.77%	$6,709,723	$6,854,390	2.16%
POE	2.53%	$1,776,017	$1,814,498	2.17%
BROWNELL	-4.00%	$2,106,008	$2,152,125	2.19%
PASTEUR	2.30%	$5,892,286	$6,022,943	2.22%
EDISON	2.40%	$2,020,683	$2,066,954	2.29%
HAMMOND	-18.71%	$3,757,502	$3,844,002	2.30%
GAGE PARK HS	-6.81%	$4,290,735	$4,391,197	2.34%
HOLMES	-1.54%	$1,850,062	$1,893,617	2.35%
CASALS	-5.36%	$3,930,263	$4,023,276	2.37%
ORTIZ DE DOMINGUEZ	-4.58%	$5,307,374	$5,437,443	2.45%
SMYSER	-6.77%	$7,367,058	$7,550,153	2.49%
PEACE AND EDUCATION HS	-23.26%	$3,068,214	$3,144,639	2.49%
MONROE	-3.31%	$7,315,897	$7,500,830	2.53%
BASS	-0.52%	$4,523,469	$4,641,333	2.61%
WOODSON	-4.95%	$3,589,173	$3,683,784	2.64%
ROOSEVELT HS	-1.08%	$10,769,321	$11,056,977	2.67%
CHICAGO VOCATIONAL HS	-10.66%	$9,075,934	$9,320,876	2.70%
BURR	-0.61%	$3,905,683	$4,012,062	2.72%
AIR FORCE HS	-11.22%	$2,993,243	$3,074,921	2.73%
CAMERON	-2.61%	$6,471,145	$6,649,649	2.76%
PICCOLO	5.20%	$6,134,912	$6,304,455	2.76%
MCNAIR	-0.87%	$5,581,834	$5,741,908	2.87%
DRAKE	4.46%	$3,529,940	$3,632,567	2.91%
FULTON	-4.41%	$3,988,667	$4,104,685	2.91%
FOREMAN HS	-5.79%	$7,711,719	$7,937,365	2.93%
RANDOLPH	-7.33%	$4,138,395	$4,259,975	2.94%
TALMAN	-3.59%	$4,284,758	$4,412,393	2.98%
HAYT	1.14%	$8,555,251	$8,813,864	3.02%
PORTAGE PARK	-5.07%	$7,982,928	$8,227,598	3.06%
NEWBERRY	-7.66%	$4,721,482	$4,866,773	3.08%
LASALLE II	1.05%	$5,604,211	$5,778,530	3.11%
ALCOTT ES	-1.95%	$6,467,062	$6,668,611	3.12%
LANGFORD	-11.22%	$2,503,059	$2,581,187	3.12%
CHAPPELL	-5.05%	$5,509,880	$5,682,371	3.13%
LOCKE J	-1.59%	$11,134,708	$11,484,481	3.14%
DENEEN	-3.14%	$4,872,882	$5,027,244	3.17%
SAUGANASH	2.76%	$4,388,044	$4,527,152	3.17%
CLEVELAND	-0.76%	$6,391,523	$6,596,183	3.20%
BURNSIDE	-7.14%	$4,437,333	$4,579,970	3.21%
TELPOCHCALLI	5.98%	$3,166,949	$3,268,874	3.22%
POWELL	-1.15%	$5,129,340	$5,296,615	3.26%
TAYLOR	-3.06%	$4,106,550	$4,243,925	3.35%
DARWIN	1.10%	$5,750,283	$5,943,546	3.36%
COLEMON	-15.17%	$2,519,535	$2,605,076	3.40%
CLAREMONT	-0.24%	$5,933,270	$6,134,913	3.40%
MOUNT GREENWOOD	-7.04%	$8,389,833	$8,677,378	3.43%
RABY HS	-19.51%	$3,912,441	$4,050,811	3.54%
REVERE	8.96%	$2,178,811	$2,255,921	3.54%
VON STEUBEN HS	0.12%	$14,711,677	$15,255,410	3.70%
DULLES	1.12%	$6,387,844	$6,627,703	3.75%
HURLEY	-3.43%	$6,864,536	$7,127,736	3.83%
HOYNE	-4.09%	$2,263,514	$2,351,618	3.89%
WELLS HS	-0.63%	$4,453,700	$4,627,714	3.91%
BRIDGE	-1.69%	$8,634,705	$8,972,289	3.91%
LANE TECH HS	-0.95%	$33,220,241	$34,525,030	3.93%
LASALLE	-7.68%	$4,492,709	$4,672,218	4.00%
VANDERPOEL	-1.92%	$2,526,890	$2,628,281	4.01%
ARIEL	-8.82%	$4,589,126	$4,775,379	4.06%
PEREZ	-5.59%	$3,490,269	$3,634,130	4.12%
ASHE	-2.44%	$3,578,967	$3,728,713	4.18%
STEINMETZ HS	-1.63%	$12,022,390	$12,527,229	4.20%
DIRKSEN	-0.22%	$8,716,935	$9,083,384	4.20%
MURRAY	0.21%	$4,354,589	$4,538,073	4.21%
MCPHERSON	4.84%	$8,221,610	$8,570,376	4.24%
JUAREZ HS	-0.18%	$16,374,064	$17,070,919	4.26%
SENN HS	-1.49%	$14,457,645	$15,075,534	4.27%
EARLE	-12.09%	$3,621,290	$3,776,111	4.28%
HAMLINE	4.31%	$6,051,228	$6,312,097	4.31%
WATERS	-2.63%	$4,869,102	$5,083,905	4.41%
DEVRY HS	2.53%	$1,835,358	$1,916,343	4.41%
DETT	-8.57%	$4,718,832	$4,927,271	4.42%
CANTY	1.18%	$7,521,194	$7,855,810	4.45%
YOUNG HS	-2.94%	$17,561,308	$18,345,604	4.47%
KENWOOD HS	5.98%	$17,578,391	$18,364,716	4.47%
HUGHES L	7.96%	$6,033,584	$6,303,784	4.48%
ARMOUR	1.19%	$3,634,921	$3,798,231	4.49%
PAYTON HS	-1.89%	$9,948,695	$10,399,876	4.54%
SHERWOOD	-6.08%	$3,543,138	$3,704,381	4.55%
GRESHAM	-0.55%	$3,768,378	$3,940,442	4.57%
CHICAGO ACADEMY ES	0.00%	$5,439,561	$5,688,030	4.57%
LAKE VIEW HS	6.65%	$14,474,992	$15,144,602	4.63%
NASH	-4.33%	$3,061,915	$3,205,073	4.68%
FUNSTON	-4.73%	$5,431,971	$5,687,416	4.70%
HOWE	3.46%	$4,029,174	$4,220,930	4.76%
BARTON	-6.65%	$4,309,110	$4,514,552	4.77%
CLAY	5.31%	$6,068,946	$6,359,070	4.78%
CURIE HS	2.24%	$28,484,031	$29,853,587	4.81%
KING ES	2.94%	$3,100,936	$3,251,284	4.85%
KILMER	-3.50%	$8,598,017	$9,019,588	4.90%
WESTINGHOUSE HS	-5.02%	$11,320,309	$11,878,588	4.93%
HENRY	-1.75%	$5,068,281	$5,318,379	4.93%
DEWEY	2.06%	$4,166,637	$4,375,166	5.00%
HARTE	16.14%	$3,099,266	$3,254,482	5.01%
AMUNDSEN HS	2.12%	$13,662,591	$14,349,458	5.03%
WORLD LANGUAGE HS	-7.54%	$3,923,328	$4,120,602	5.03%
GALILEO	-2.33%	$5,265,972	$5,531,885	5.05%
HANCOCK HS	0.00%	$8,934,761	$9,388,149	5.07%
RUDOLPH	6.59%	$3,464,952	$3,640,873	5.08%
ALDRIDGE	15.43%	$2,650,071	$2,786,109	5.13%
DECATUR	8.74%	$2,344,565	$2,465,125	5.14%
BROWN W	-3.61%	$3,459,029	$3,637,813	5.17%
CULLEN	-4.84%	$1,978,859	$2,083,080	5.27%
NEIL	-0.38%	$5,787,213	$6,092,051	5.27%
CLARK HS	-0.19%	$6,705,317	$7,059,750	5.29%
FAIRFIELD	2.78%	$5,003,418	$5,268,042	5.29%
SOUTH SHORE INTL HS	3.92%	$6,123,261	$6,448,711	5.31%
KELLY HS	-2.47%	$17,870,374	$18,832,577	5.38%
TANNER	0.32%	$4,066,690	$4,285,871	5.39%
ROBINSON	-5.36%	$1,720,956	$1,813,819	5.40%
MATHER HS	6.68%	$15,811,911	$16,680,527	5.49%
MADISON	-0.53%	$2,589,559	$2,732,097	5.50%
OWENS	-1.45%	$4,617,722	$4,878,888	5.66%
KELLER	-2.30%	$1,790,636	$1,892,356	5.68%
SOCIAL JUSTICE HS	-9.25%	$3,556,479	$3,759,611	5.71%
WESTCOTT	1.20%	$4,646,645	$4,916,293	5.80%
PLAMONDON	-13.48%	$2,026,693	$2,146,348	5.90%
DISNEY II ES & HS	1.35%	$10,897,264	$11,547,047	5.96%
NORTHSIDE PREP HS	-1.61%	$8,914,400	$9,454,348	6.06%
BACK OF THE YARDS HS	-1.86%	$9,744,080	$10,341,390	6.13%
FENGER HS	-14.69%	$3,506,418	$3,724,232	6.21%
DOOLITTLE	8.97%	$2,768,957	$2,943,655	6.31%
SIMEON HS	-4.37%	$12,808,186	$13,624,587	6.37%
JONES HS	-0.20%	$14,858,723	$15,807,965	6.39%
LINDBLOM HS	-0.64%	$12,807,234	$13,627,854	6.41%
OTIS	-7.76%	$5,159,342	$5,491,015	6.43%
FOSTER PARK	-0.62%	$4,406,741	$4,692,458	6.48%
KINZIE	-1.91%	$7,067,274	$7,533,322	6.59%
FRANKLIN	-1.10%	$3,041,990	$3,243,937	6.64%
MCCLELLAN	-8.43%	$4,556,577	$4,861,451	6.69%
VOLTA	-3.18%	$6,636,105	$7,081,887	6.72%
COLUMBUS	-10.40%	$1,966,484	$2,099,889	6.78%
BRIGHT	-5.43%	$3,912,430	$4,182,211	6.90%
REINBERG	3.94%	$8,224,248	$8,796,437	6.96%
CHICAGO AGRICULTURE HS	-0.49%	$9,633,115	$10,306,177	6.99%
HARLAN HS	-1.35%	$4,171,145	$4,468,721	7.13%
MANLEY HS	-26.44%	$2,246,667	$2,406,961	7.13%
HAMPTON	5.90%	$5,193,278	$5,565,119	7.16%
KELLMAN	-1.39%	$2,575,032	$2,760,036	7.18%
SOLORIO HS	1.13%	$11,996,374	$12,858,556	7.19%
JAHN	0.97%	$4,123,516	$4,420,787	7.21%
KENNEDY HS	2.58%	$14,193,089	$15,219,667	7.23%
SADLOWSKI	0.48%	$6,833,503	$7,329,878	7.26%
WILDWOOD	-6.54%	$4,378,360	$4,697,471	7.29%
PARKSIDE	-3.60%	$3,045,162	$3,267,418	7.30%
NORTH-GRAND HS	4.62%	$11,254,052	$12,083,816	7.37%
GALE	5.19%	$3,842,947	$4,127,756	7.41%
HUBBARD HS	5.81%	$16,751,573	$17,997,896	7.44%
EDGEBROOK	-6.98%	$3,531,065	$3,794,911	7.47%
JORDAN	4.04%	$5,314,811	$5,713,093	7.49%
LIBBY	-7.17%	$3,484,600	$3,746,412	7.51%
SHERMAN	6.07%	$3,000,151	$3,225,700	7.52%
BEETHOVEN	24.05%	$2,982,363	$3,208,610	7.59%
BLAIR	8.46%	$5,131,962	$5,521,918	7.60%
WEST PARK	2.52%	$5,092,571	$5,488,154	7.77%
THORP O	-5.22%	$7,679,651	$8,283,438	7.86%
GOODE HS	2.14%	$9,348,948	$10,084,138	7.86%
VAUGHN HS	-9.83%	$6,209,861	$6,701,727	7.92%
DUNBAR HS	19.37%	$5,780,828	$6,239,242	7.93%
CHRISTOPHER	-2.36%	$8,029,448	$8,671,960	8.00%
LOZANO	-11.68%	$3,621,851	$3,911,961	8.01%
KERSHAW	2.49%	$3,747,383	$4,048,012	8.02%
GOETHE	-1.35%	$6,129,056	$6,622,161	8.05%
YATES	-6.21%	$4,785,191	$5,171,318	8.07%
KING HS	35.21%	$7,231,197	$7,819,100	8.13%
TURNER-DREW	-5.19%	$2,576,672	$2,788,990	8.24%
BRENTANO	11.50%	$5,469,268	$5,920,038	8.24%
FIELD	2.19%	$1,648,890	$1,785,594	8.29%
CHICAGO ACADEMY HS	-1.58%	$5,701,193	$6,174,069	8.29%
CARVER G	14.52%	$4,665,296	$5,055,289	8.36%
TAFT HS	3.79%	$33,018,913	$35,780,833	8.36%
CATHER	-8.47%	$4,521,343	$4,904,871	8.48%
VICK	4.98%	$4,155,867	$4,509,147	8.50%
YORK HS	-4.07%	$6,097,150	$6,617,004	8.53%
SOUTHSIDE HS	13.46%	$8,936,079	$9,698,014	8.53%
FERNWOOD	14.56%	$2,651,975	$2,879,321	8.57%
SHERIDAN	-3.64%	$4,539,375	$4,930,750	8.62%
DORE	-1.37%	$7,368,971	$8,004,412	8.62%
MOZART	-5.51%	$5,583,247	$6,065,360	8.63%
RUGGLES	-8.33%	$3,713,574	$4,039,074	8.77%
ENGLEWOOD STEM HS	21.91%	$10,731,984	$11,680,573	8.84%
LOWELL	-4.01%	$4,640,160	$5,052,597	8.89%
BROOKS HS	0.41%	$8,761,917	$9,550,264	9.00%
MOOS	1.41%	$4,969,639	$5,418,458	9.03%
GREEN	1.88%	$4,156,804	$4,532,925	9.05%
BEARD	47.69%	$7,720,601	$8,421,279	9.08%
NINOS HEROES	11.68%	$3,561,012	$3,885,766	9.12%
CLEMENTE HS	-0.58%	$8,341,887	$9,112,271	9.24%
CHASE	1.55%	$6,064,295	$6,624,642	9.24%
KELLOGG	0.72%	$2,703,081	$2,952,988	9.25%
HIGGINS	-3.46%	$3,044,216	$3,327,455	9.30%
AVALON PARK	-0.88%	$2,697,437	$2,962,425	9.82%
GARVEY	9.83%	$2,722,493	$2,990,705	9.85%
WHISTLER	-9.55%	$3,789,647	$4,169,439	10.02%
BOGAN HS	1.77%	$8,422,927	$9,269,529	10.05%
HEARST	-0.96%	$4,640,368	$5,123,911	10.42%
HENDRICKS	-3.47%	$3,623,878	$4,001,862	10.43%
PARKER	-2.24%	$4,557,451	$5,032,996	10.43%
SOLOMON	-0.85%	$3,959,687	$4,377,216	10.54%
WASHINGTON HS	2.39%	$14,302,607	$15,839,001	10.74%
MORGAN PARK HS	5.47%	$10,692,236	$11,843,776	10.77%
PALMER	-0.27%	$6,527,762	$7,238,390	10.89%
FINKL	-7.88%	$3,659,998	$4,062,275	10.99%
BYRNE	-1.29%	$5,802,688	$6,445,198	11.07%
HARVARD	6.50%	$4,750,883	$5,278,235	11.10%
DRUMMOND	-10.09%	$2,978,195	$3,309,938	11.14%
CALDWELL	-2.44%	$2,545,616	$2,829,519	11.15%
JULIAN HS	0.51%	$5,507,072	$6,122,624	11.18%
ALCOTT HS	7.21%	$3,963,114	$4,408,717	11.24%
SUDER	-0.23%	$4,683,289	$5,212,344	11.30%
WHITTIER	1.14%	$2,413,962	$2,695,361	11.66%
WARREN	11.85%	$2,420,838	$2,708,924	11.90%
INFINITY HS	0.75%	$4,393,333	$4,919,706	11.98%
MULTICULTURAL HS	3.56%	$2,854,032	$3,198,218	12.06%
THORP J	3.94%	$4,091,012	$4,584,885	12.07%
MOUNT VERNON	6.55%	$2,560,297	$2,874,408	12.27%
TILL	1.29%	$3,653,827	$4,109,367	12.47%
ORR HS	-11.84%	$3,129,518	$3,523,294	12.58%
KOZMINSKI	2.46%	$2,800,985	$3,155,101	12.64%
COLLINS HS	8.66%	$3,539,557	$3,992,932	12.81%
SAYRE	-1.37%	$4,952,916	$5,588,521	12.83%
STOCK	15.31%	$3,374,838	$3,808,441	12.85%
PECK	-1.83%	$7,999,974	$9,038,573	12.98%
WENTWORTH	4.90%	$5,450,131	$6,164,557	13.11%
MIRELES	7.86%	$4,358,594	$4,941,189	13.37%
BRENNEMANN	16.71%	$5,174,515	$5,886,773	13.76%
MOLLISON	4.56%	$2,948,724	$3,364,340	14.09%
RYDER	3.12%	$5,729,730	$6,537,547	14.10%
CORLISS HS	12.32%	$4,650,440	$5,313,350	14.25%
DOUGLASS HS	-12.00%	$1,577,486	$1,805,642	14.46%
KELVYN PARK HS	23.80%	$5,772,677	$6,612,841	14.55%
JUNGMAN	-0.40%	$4,212,123	$4,827,826	14.62%
GRAHAM HS	11.41%	$5,292,273	$6,068,377	14.66%
BRONZEVILLE CLASSICAL	22.01%	$2,739,721	$3,145,369	14.81%
THOMAS	0.00%	$2,781,601	$3,195,111	14.87%
TILDEN HS	-10.84%	$3,186,979	$3,668,402	15.11%
WEBSTER	-9.76%	$2,859,904	$3,325,705	16.29%
REAVIS	18.07%	$3,385,044	$3,959,927	16.98%
RICHARDS HS	3.86%	$3,142,085	$3,711,023	18.11%
SPRY HS	-9.28%	$2,424,674	$2,879,066	18.74%
BOND	-2.94%	$3,535,658	$4,238,279	19.87%
NORTHSIDE LEARNING HS	6.69%	$7,609,655	$9,152,552	20.28%
SCHMID	9.88%	$2,390,554	$2,891,062	20.94%
SIMPSON HS	9.52%	$1,457,679	$1,831,614	25.65%
AUDUBON	-5.95%	$4,335,166	$6,078,959	40.22%
SOR JUANA	25.30%	$2,881,819	$4,102,352	42.35%

CPS Budget for FY23

Inside a Chicago high school’s year of uncertainty

2022-03-18T11:00:00+00:00

The first game of the 2021-22 boys varsity basketball season was not going well for Richards Career Academy, and Keshawn Arnold, the team’s star player, paced by the bench.

He was too wired to sit as the gap on the scoreboard widened.

“Put me in!” the 18-year-old, in a crisp white Warriors uniform, pleaded with Corbin Leeks, his coach and the dean of students at the 240-student high school in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the Southwest Side. “Put me in for just two minutes.”

Leeks barely shook his head, eyes on the game.

Keshawn and Leeks both knew the senior, one of the team’s top scorers, could shift the course of the game. But they also both knew why Keshawn was sitting that November evening.

He had struggled to regain his stride academically that fall amid Chicago Public Schools’ high-stakes return to full-time in-person learning — lackluster attendance, lackluster grades, and a blowup with Leeks over wearing a face mask at school that almost scuttled his basketball season. Then again, nearly everyone at Richards has struggled this school year, from the hard-charging principal, Ellen Kennedy, to the especially restless freshman class.

Students like Keshawn Arnold, a standout basketball player for the Richards team, have struggled to regain their momentum with in-person learning.

For schools across the country, this school year was supposed to be the moment to recoup academic ground lost during the pandemic and tend to the outbreak’s traumas before high school careers and lives got derailed. It was supposed to be a time to start reinventing public education for teens like Keshawn and the other students Richards serves: half of them Black, another half Latino, almost all from low-income families, a third learning English as a second language, and another third without a stable place to live.

It hasn’t turned out that way.

At Richards, a tough comeback has overwhelmed the students and staff. Attendance is down. Behavioral issues are up. COVID has waned and surged, exploding any semblance of certainty.

By Thanksgiving, two students had been shot in the neighborhood. Staffing shortages turned each day into “an intense puzzle we have to solve really quickly,” as Kennedy put it that November.

Such setbacks have played out across the country, in district after district, at school after school. Here and elsewhere, amid a race to re-engage students in learning, the desire to find new ways of approaching school has collided with the need to just make it through another trying week.

August: Richards braces for the unknown

At the start of the 2021-22 school year, Ellen Kennedy gathered her faculty and staff in a room off the main office. Kennedy, in a Black Lives Matter face mask and ripped jeans, had already drained her large cup from Dunkin’, the only shop she trusts to serve coffee without the caffeine she does not need. Her PowerPoint slides mentioned “elevating our game” and “achieving a vision” — her appeal for that lofty goal of reimagining education.

But standing before her team, she worried she had no clue what the coming weeks would bring.

For Chicago Public Schools and other districts, the school year’s start was meant to be a milestone of normalcy restored. Instead, they grappled with the delta variant, the push to launch testing and vaccination programs, and thousands of children and families who had disengaged from school.

That day, Kennedy told her team they had to help our students catch up, but shouldn’t charge ahead as though the past 18 months didn’t happen.

“First, we have to figure out how to function together again and do school,” said Kennedy, who was tapped four years ago to lead Richards.

Principal Ellen Kennedy and her team have seen improvements in several areas since her arrival in May 2018, but the chaos of the pandemic has slowed the school’s progress.

Kennedy, who had been an assistant principal at Tilden High School, arrived at Richards in May 2017. She found a case study in the disinvestment and dysfunction that have plagued high schools across the city’s South and West Sides: low staff morale, a chaotic campus culture, and enrollment losses that had chipped away at the school’s academic offerings. One seemingly minor issue summed up what she describes as “a school on life support”: No one had set up the bell to ring automatically, so the clerk had to do it manually. She often forgot.

Kennedy and a close-knit team she assembled sought to build a healthier school culture, strengthen academics, and shift the school’s reputation. On the eve of the pandemic, work remained: The school’s graduation rate had improved, though it still lingered shy of 60%, well below the 80% district average at the time. But enrollment had inched up, and the bell now rang automatically.

Then the last, largely virtual school year slowed Richards’ progress. Case in point: Keshawn.

He had been a promising sophomore when COVID hit, with low grades that often did not live up to his smarts but with strong connections to teachers and staff. Last year frayed those bonds. He was an extrovert marooned at home with three younger siblings, his mom a harried nurse assistant who pleaded with Leeks to make sure Keshawn logged on to class.

By the spring, Keshawn wasn’t doing so for days at a time, though he never disconnected completely. The school went all-out in the battle against student disengagement: gift cards for families, virtual school assemblies, weekly home visits by security guards turned “attendance ambassadors.” Leeks enlisted Keshawn’s cousin Gerlia Baker, also a basketball standout and junior at the time, to nudge him to step up his school game.

Even the return of basketball that February did not inspire Keshawn to catch up on school work and improve his grades. He knew he wouldn’t be allowed to play otherwise, but the prospect of getting back on track was too daunting. When Chicago high schools reopened for optional part-time in-person learning that April, Gerlia was there, but Keshawn and more than two-thirds of the school’s students stuck with virtual learning.

Now, in the early fall of 2021, Kennedy confessed to her staff she, too, was daunted by the unpredictability ahead. She had no road map for recovering from the disruption.

She clicked on her last slide. It read “Whoa! It’s here. It’s happening. Let’s be great.”

Senior Gerlia Baker had returned to Richards craving a sense of normalcy. What she got instead were masks, quarantines, and classmates who were struggling to remain focused on school.

October: Students search for an elusive normal

Gerlia Baker sat in the Richards gym, where staffers had arranged rows of chairs for an awards assembly, one morning last October. The senior’s earbuds muffled the commotion of students filling up the room – her effort to ward off anxiety.

“Please check your face mask,” called Taryn Miller, the student special services advocate, into a microphone at the front. “Let’s protect each other.”

Gerlia, whose red-tinged locks fell down to her seat, watched as Kennedy took over the mic.

“We made it to the end of Quarter 1,” said Kennedy, who wore a blue Richards basketball jersey. “We had highs. We had lows. All of us deserve that deep breath, that pat on the back.”

As “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang poured out of the loudspeakers, students with perfect attendance marched to the front to collect a medal and a Richards blanket to applause from classmates.

Gerlia sat still, chin cradled in her hand, gazing straight ahead. She had come back craving normal. What she found was not what she calls “normal-normal.” Instead, there were masks, quarantines, students tuning in and out of school.

On the Wendy’s job she got earlier in the pandemic, Gerlia kept landing the closing shift, working the fryer, washing dishes, or taking drive-thru orders until 1:30 a.m. She sometimes dozed off in second period math. Assignments piled up. She lagged on college essays. Her senior seminar teacher, Thomas Conley, gently prodded her: Which of her many interests might she pursue after high school? Basketball? Cosmetology school? Studying journalism?

Many of Gerlia’s classmates felt more rudderless than usual, having missed out on 18 months of hashing out plans with friends and teachers in person. As Conley summed it up, “How can I prepare for life after high school when I don’t know what next month will look like?”

At the assembly, the student-of-the-month recognitions celebrated small victories: “participated even when he’s sleeping,” “not afraid to ask questions,” “consistent effort for being on time,” “more engaged in the past couple of weeks.”

“I need to wake up,” Gerlia chided herself, too nervous to open her report card. “This is senior year.”

Then, Kennedy announced the Principal’s Scholars – the straight-A kids – who marched to the front to collect certificates and track jackets.

Kennedy called the next name to loud applause.

Gerlia Baker.

But the teen remained completely motionless, her face impassive. She did not get up to collect her award, loath to draw even more attention to herself.

She was still on track to be valedictorian, but the pandemic had taught her how easy it was to fall behind in school.

Senior Gerlia Baker receives an academic award during a school assembly in February. Despite the challenges of the school year, she is on track to be her school’s valedictorian.

Early December: Basketball season raises the ante

In first period culinary arts class, Keshawn scrambled to add sugar, flour, and margarine to a mixer. Students in chef Mark Soltis’ kitchen were making batter for gingerbread houses, and Keshawn was cutting it close to the end of the period. He pulled up his disposable face mask and got to work. He was trying to be on his best behavior.

When he walked back into Richards several months earlier, Keshawn had hoped the return would set everything the pandemic had broken right. But a year and a half of remote learning seemed to have drained him of the stamina to make it through an in-person school day. Even the simple routine of getting up, getting dressed, and getting to school was hard to recapture. He often showed up late — or not at all.

He and other students chafed at the masks required by the district and the state, that inescapable reminder that normal remained elusive. In hallways where Enya crooned soothing tunes during passing time, Miller, the special student services coordinator, who sometimes wore a Superman mask, would reach out to pull face coverings up from chins, intoning, “Masks! Masks!” Reminders came constantly over the PA system, in every classroom, at each school gathering.

Then, Keshawn and Leeks, the dean of students, got into an argument over Keshawn’s refusal to mask up. Keshawn raised his voice, blustered for a while, and stormed out of the building.

What Keshawn didn’t know: Leeks would tear up at times when he thought about Keshawn, his charisma, his energy, all the momentum the COVID outbreak arrested. In Keshawn, Leeks saw himself as a teen growing up in Englewood: flush with potential but bent on living in the now.

Student Keshawn Arnold was optimistic that the return to school would fix the challenges he and fellow students faced during remote learning, but it drained him instead.

With Keshawn, Leeks was firm: He was not sure if he could allow the teen to play basketball that season after the disrespect Keshawn had shown him in front of his classmates. But alone in his office — with a towering 2016 freshman girls basketball champions trophy and a wall calendar clinging to the long-lost normalcy of August 2019 — the coach worried about losing scarce leverage if he kept Keshawn off the team.

Now, in culinary arts class, Keshawn rushed to finish his batter as the bell rang. Soltis walked over to inspect the mixture.

“Perfect,” he said. “Everybody, this is the way it’s supposed to look — over here in Keshawn’s bowl.”

Keshawn glanced down at his bowl and smiled.

Later in December: Principal feels ‘a March level of exhaustion’

One evening right before winter break, Kennedy sat on a bench in the Richards gym, taking in the varsity boys basketball game against Catalyst Maria, a charter school.

She looked over at Keshawn, who sat across the gym, hugging a basketball and leaning into the court. After making him sit out the first game and watch his team lose, Leeks let him play this one. But he still kept him on the bench for the opening minutes — his way of keeping his player on notice.

A few minutes into the game, and with the Warriors down by 10, the coach put Keshawn in. Kennedy cheered as the senior glided across the court, driving to the basket. He got fouled, and Kennedy held her breath as Keshawn, his eyes on the hardwood floor at the foul line, dribbled the ball three times, shutting out all distractions.

Then, he looked up and sent the ball sailing into the net.

Richards would go on to lose the game by just three points, but Keyshawn was back on the court and playing well. Despite sitting out the start of the game, he wound up scoring 24.

Keshawn Arnold returned to the court after sitting on the bench during the first game of the varsity boys basketball season. He scored 24 points as the team lost by three.

The principal hung on every pass and each point, though her mind often drifted to the break ahead. It was pajama day at Richards, and Kennedy was wearing candy cane-patterned plaid bottoms. Only three months into the school year, she already felt a “March level of exhaustion.”

After a string of pandemic-era departures in positions that were tougher to fill than ever, she was down three teaching assistants, a bilingual teacher, a science teacher, a security guard, and a custodian. Teachers were out sick, home with a quarantined child, or tending to surgeries postponed earlier in the pandemic.

Most days, Kennedy had to spend two and a half hours substitute teaching and pulling lunch hour security duty in hallways. She helped a custodian clean before the Friday vaccination clinic. When new substitute teachers arrived, she asked if she could fetch them something to drink — desperately needing them to come back.

During the new virtual meetings, district CEO Pedro Martinez hosted with principals twice a month, Kennedy and other school leaders pitched the idea several times of drafting central staffers to substitute teach or handle other campus duties. But the district was short-staffed too: Some 250 central office employees had resigned or retired since July.

Kennedy had to juggle her other duties with the ongoing battle against COVID. By November, the district’s voluntary testing program was finally up and running after a rocky start. But at Richards, only five out of 240 students and 20 out of 65 staff members had signed up for weekly testing. Roughly only a third of students were vaccinated, despite the in-house vaccination clinic. These challenges reflected deep districtwide disparities in vaccination rates and testing buy-in, with rates at whiter, more affluent North Side schools dramatically higher than those at campuses on the South and West Sides. And the struggle to get students to mask continued.

Principal Ellen Kennedy has spent the school year juggling multiple duties including working to fill staff vacancies, ramping up COVID testing, overseeing the school’s in-house vaccination clinic, and dealing with some students’ resistance to masking.

Kennedy remained focused on her students. The school’s bookends classes struggled the most: By late November, freshmen had racked up more than 130 conduct code infractions, including fights, a marked uptick from the previous pre-pandemic fall. Too many Black boys in that freshman class hovered in the “D club.” Seniors, on the other hand, had seen their attendance dip below 70%, a good 10 percentage points lower than before the outbreak.

Earlier that year, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told CNN that billions in federal stimulus dollars would allow schools to “really reimagine education and make it better than it was in March 2020.” Randi Weingarten, the head of the country’s largest national teachers union, spoke of a “renaissance in America’s public schools.” And shortly before he was named Chicago schools chief in September, Pedro Martinez said: “It’s not enough to go back to normal. We have to be better with a capital B.”

But if Kennedy heard talk about “reimagining” education one more time, she felt that she might scream. Across the country, evidence of any wholesale overhaul of how public schools serve vulnerable students was still scarce. School leaders and educators had little energy and brain space amid a string of daily crises, large and small. And school systems stayed set in their ways, ringing that period bell manually simply because that’s the way it has always been done.

Why not a half-day schedule for teens teetering on the brink of dropping out as they juggle school and jobs?, Kennedy wanted to know. Why not more virtual coursework for the handful of kids who actually thrived during remote learning?

“Overall, we have lacked the courage to do things differently,” Kennedy said in December. “Here we are — back to the old ways. Our imagination is stifled, and our courage is failing.”

A historic influx of federal dollars for school pandemic recovery — including roughly $2.8 billion for Chicago Public Schools — had bought Richards two math tutors, with one more slated to start in January, and a full-time college and career coach. But, so far, the money had not been a game-changer.

Just when it felt like it was all too much, last fall threw even more at the school. A student was shot in the leg a couple of months into the school year, and another student was shot over Thanksgiving break. The day of that December basketball game, Kennedy got a call from the husband of a custodian known for her upbeat, bubbly personality. She had died of COVID.

Kennedy urged her staff to think of the school year in manageable chunks: Can we make it through the next week together? The next three weeks until winter break?

January: A standoff over COVID protocols shuts down classes

During winter break, standing at the Wendy’s fryer with a basket of chicken nuggets, Gerlia had been seized with anxiety: What if the district reverted to remote learning amid the omicron surge?

The return to classes that January had heightened her fears. At Richards, more than a third of students did not show up on the first day after the break. Neither did 17 teachers and staff members. Then a standoff over COVID protocols between the district and its teachers union shut down classes just two days later.

Gerlia Baker and fellow student Terrell Clark prepare red velvet cupcakes in culinary arts class at Richards. Gerlia worked at a Wendy’s while Chicago schools were closed due to the standoff between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union. She also took care of her four younger siblings.

Gerlia worked while school was canceled, but didn’t take on many extra hours beyond the 25 a week she usually put in. She had to help take care of four younger siblings who were also out of school during this stretch and wanted to be ready when classes started again, though nobody seemed to know when that might be. Students missed five days of school by the time the district and union worked out a new safety agreement.

Gerlia worried about students like her cousin Keshawn, who were just regaining a fragile foothold at school. She worried about missing out on the final months of her high school career. She worried about depression creeping up on her again, that feeling of “I’m over everything. It’s a lot in life.”

As another Wendy’s shift ground on, she decided she would no longer give Keshawn a hard time about his grades or his tardies. She told herself: “Everybody’s going through something.”

February: Some students catch their stride

As the second semester — with its “back-to-school” buzz — got underway, Kennedy took a breath. She considered the headway her team had made and what still needed to be done:

Leeks, the coach and dean of students, was spending less of his time holding peace circles to mediate conflicts between students, often freshmen. But attendance had slipped to 73%, far off the school’s 85% goal and decidedly worse than before COVID. He wondered out loud, “Is behavior actually getting better, or are the students just not here?”

Richards head coach and Dean of Students Corbin Leeks found himself spending less time mediating student conflicts as school attendance dipped.

Still, the students who were coming were more engaged, and the school was starting to restore a sense of community. The freshman class was almost all deemed “on track,” meaning they had failed no more than one core course.

With 50-some students on the first semester A and B honor roll, there were too many names to print and hand out certificates at an early February awards assembly — “a happy problem,” Kennedy said.

Gerlia and Keshawn were also looking to the future.

Gerlia is still on track to be valedictorian. She secured academic scholarships to several colleges and was leaning toward Western Illinois University, where she hoped to play volleyball as a walk-on and study journalism.

A wrist injury marred the final games of Keshawn’s basketball season, a reminder that he couldn’t count on the sport to bail him out after high school. He pledged to bring a new focus on showing up and doing the work. So far, his attendance is still spotty, but he passed all his first-semester classes and is on track to graduate. Leeks and Monica Wright, Keshawn’s mom, were talking about college options.

At Richards and other schools, the pandemic upheaval has changed how educators and families think about school, with more grace for students, a new regard for mental health, a deeper empathy for both teens and employees. But Kennedy’s heart was “still heavy for the seniors.” And she was still waiting for public education to be reimagined.

Despite the grueling school year, principal Ellen Kennedy has not given up on seeing a bolder reimagining of the public education system.

Two years after COVID shut down schools and shined a spotlight on stubborn inequities, that much-heralded rethinking largely remains a vague idea. In district after district, the status quo persists: traditional class schedules and calendars, piecemeal efforts to ramp up hiring a more diverse workforce, few bold initiatives to bolster the most vulnerable students.

Still, Kennedy has not given up on bigger changes. Perhaps the coming months — with the latest COVID surge receding and Martinez signaling a new three-year district plan — will finally set the stage for that promised reinvention.

In the meantime, Kennedy and her team will keep focusing on just getting through the week.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago school budgets, federal COVID relief pays for existing staff

2022-03-16T20:15:24+00:00

At Perkins Bass Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, principal Carolyn Jones has welcomed an infusion of federal COVID relief dollars that brought a second school counselor, a new social and emotional learning curriculum, and classroom technology upgrades.

But at some Chicago schools, principals are questioning why a good chunk of the $2.8 billion in federal funding the district received for use over three years is paying for existing staff — and what the district is doing with the money it is saving as a result.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat shows the district swapped out millions in these federal pandemic relief dollars for state and other funds previously budgeted for educator and support staff salaries and benefits. The district has previously spelled out plans to pay for existing positions with the money. But the campus-level data through January from the district’s accounting system is the first glimpse at real-time spending midyear, and it took some school leaders by surprise.

District officials have said that steering federal relief dollars toward teachers and other staff allowed it to pump more money into campus budgets this school year. Some principals say they have felt and appreciated the extra budgetary breathing room they got despite steep enrollment losses, which typically would result in cuts to their school per-pupil allocations.

As Jones notes, the staffing expenses are only a portion of more than $1 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funds the district budgeted this year, which are also going toward academic and mental health interventions, COVID mitigation measures, and other support.

But other school leaders say too much of this historic influx of federal funds meant to help schools bounce back from the pandemic’s disruption is going toward run-of-the-mill staffing expenditures. As the district gears up to unveil its campus budgets for the next school year, leaders said they crave a larger infusion of flexible dollars to address pressing needs and ensure students don’t fall further behind.

“There is an unbelievable, heartbreaking need in our schools — right now,” said one elementary principal, who like some of his colleagues spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously because they did not have the district’s permission to discuss the issue. “This money was supposed to give us more, but instead it’s giving us the same.”

Overall, despite the enrollment declines, the district’s fiscal outlook remained fairly stable this year, leading some educators to ask whether it needs to use much of its COVID relief dollars to supplant previously planned staffing expenses. Some wonder if it’s socking away some of the money for looming financial uncertainty, or giving CEO Pedro Martinez, who arrived after the start of the school last fall, more flexibility to tailor his own spending plan. He said last week he will soon unveil a new three-year vision for the district.

The data Chalkbeat obtained does not offer a complete picture of spending. The district budgeted a major portion of the funds this year in central pots from which schools draw, but it appears that this spending is not yet classified as ESSER expenditures in accounting system data. The district said a fuller campus-by-campus picture of spending will emerge at the fiscal year’s end.

Federal relief dollars cover big portions of some school budgets

Based on the data, the district put $446.2 million of the almost $1.1 billion in ESSER dollars this year directly into its schools’ budgets. Schools got a fraction, about $47 million, as flexible “unfinished learning” dollars last summer for principals to spend as they saw fit. The bulk of federal dollars in school budgets arrived later last fall, replacing previously budgeted funds for staffing and other essential expenditures.

Another $403 million was budgeted for various districtwide departments. Charters got almost $53 million, and the district was required to pass on a small portion of the money to private schools.

Overall, the district and its campuses had spent $381 million on salaries and benefits — mostly existing positions — by midyear, including a small portion for substitute salaries. Other, much smaller categories are $27 million for equipment, with the biggest chunk going toward computers and other technology, and supplies, at $26 million.

Spending appeared to be proceeding at a different pace from school to school. Some campuses had spent almost all their budgeted ESSER dollars while others, including district-run and contract alternative high schools, had barely started spending.

District leaders have noted that anticipating the influx of federal dollars, Chicago put $225 million more into school budgets last spring, despite marked pandemic-era enrollment losses. In applications for the latest two rounds of federal funding the district submitted to the state, it said it would use about $764 million to pay for existing instructional positions. It would also cover some support staff and pre-kindergarten personnel with these dollars.

Still, several principals who reviewed the data for their schools said they were surprised to see how much of their staffing budgets is now covered out of the district’s ESSER fund.

The Chicago elementary principal said he strongly agreed when district leaders cautioned last summer against hiring many new staffers with the money. Schools would be forced to let those new employees go when the money runs out in the fall of 2024, causing disruption to students and school communities.

But he said his thinking on the issue changed as the school year got underway and his campus faced the profound academic and mental health needs of students returning from 18 months of disrupted learning and trauma.

The return to full-time in-person learning amid staffing shortages, COVID surges, and other setbacks has been more challenging than many educators expected, he said. Bringing in more adults, even if it’s only in the short term, can help kids bounce back.

In mid-October, Chicago Public Schools told principals it would shift some of their schools’ budgeted spending to the district’s COVID relief fund. The shift was in keeping with the district’s multi-year strategy to make use of those dollars, the note said. Their budgets wouldn’t change and they didn’t have to do anything.

Still, that principal said it was jarring to see more than $1 million in ESSER dollars replacing other funds previously budgeted for existing staff and supplies in the Chalkbeat data he reviewed. That amount surpasses other help his school got with the federal dollars: COVID mitigation measures, student reengagement funds, and a new social and emotional learning curriculum that arrived after the school year started.

He would use the money to hire a social worker or other support staff, reduce class sizes, and place more special education classroom assistants in the school.

“This makes me so angry,” he said. “The idea that there could be more people helping in our schools right now, and there aren’t, just kills me.”

Another elementary principal, who also expressed surprise that the district had replaced previously budgeted staffing funding with ESSER dollars, wishes more of the federal money was flexible.

School communities have a much better handle on their students’ needs than they did on the eve of this school year. The principal said would like to steer more dollars toward ongoing efforts to re-engage students, including by giving them more of a voice in school decisions. She said schools like hers are still scrambling to address students’ social and emotional needs so they can tackle academic catch-up in earnest.

“I don’t think people realize just how dire some of the situations we have seen can be,” she said.

Some principals tout ‘quality investments’

But other principals said the district is doing a good job stewarding the federal resources.

At Perkins Bass, more than $1 million in ESSER dollars is now in the school’s $3.4 million budget, largely to cover existing positions.

But Jones, the principal, says the school separately received much more help through the federal funding influx. As part of the district’s two-year Moving Forward Together pandemic recovery initiative, the school got a second counselor — one of 64 new counselor positions the district is adding this year and next.

Perkins Bass also got three early literacy tutors — part of a new Tutor Corps the district launched this fall — and an academic interventionist to guide their work. Although it took a while to hire and train that team, the effort will be in full swing this semester. Also new: a post-secondary counselor, 250 new devices to replace those lost or damaged during remote learning; and upgrades to classrooms.

“All these materials were provided without touching any of our building dollars — things that are invaluable resources,” Jones said. “There have been some thoughtful, quality investments made on our behalf.”

The school also used the flexible “unfinished learning” dollars in its budget for reengagement efforts earlier in the school year: family events, book bags, and Friday attendance incentives such as ice cream and popsicles for students.

“This money went to bring back the j-factor — the joy of school,” Jones said.

One principal at a high-needs high school said that besides the dollars covering existing staff at his school, he can only point to a few new investments with these federal COVID funds.

But he said this has also been a largely worry-free year when it comes to his school’s budget. Despite a drop in the school’s enrollment last spring, the campus did not take a budget hit, giving it some breathing room as it serves fewer students with slightly more dollars.

“They could have taken away per-student money, but they did not,” he said. “That has helped a lot. They let us off the hook for a while to regroup and rebound. I’m in a really good spot financially.”

The district provided a brief statement in response to questions from Chalkbeat.

“Chicago Public Schools is committed to making the best use of all funding aligned to district priorities, eligible expenses, and timing constraints,” the statement said in part, explaining that reclassifying expenditures in various district funds can happen routinely throughout the school year.

Chicago faces financial uncertainty

Experts tend to agree that no simple, foolproof prescriptions exist for making use of federal COVID relief dollars — a major windfall for districts, but ultimately onetime influxes that they must spend by fall of 2024.

Ralph Martire of the Illinois-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability notes the federal government gave districts a lot of discretion on how to spend the dollars. One suggested use is retaining employees who might face looming layoffs. But he notes that Chicago’s teachers and other staff did not appear in danger of imminent layoffs this year. The district’s state revenue dipped, but that decrease was more than offset by an increase in local tax revenue. However, projected expenditures rose as well, including for employee salaries and benefits.

“I don’t see how you can make the argument that you need to use this money to avert layoffs because there was no dip in district revenue,” he said. “The federal money is freeing up state and local revenue for other purposes. If this is supplanting, what’s happening with the other revenue?”

Laura Anderson, associate director at the Edunomics Lab, a research center at Georgetown University focused on school finance, said districts’ reluctance to go big on new hires they might not be able to afford in the long run is understandable.

Still, Anderson said that at some schools that serve students from low-income families, bringing in more staffers in the short term to address pressing student needs might be a valid approach — as long as officials are clear that these are two-year temporary positions. But she cautions that these educators and other staff would still build relationships with students that would eventually have to be severed unless those new staff can fill positions left open by attrition.

“I understand the argument of, ‘We need to get the adults in the building, with all the credentials — now,’” she said. “Communication is the key point. But in the end, it’s still going to hurt.”

Another Chicago elementary principal said he appreciates that the federal dollars might help ward off per-student budget cuts. But he worries the backfilling can create a false sense of complacency. In addition to underwriting existing positions, his school got math and reading coaches through an outside vendor as part of Moving Forward Together.

The district must have an unflinching discussion with school leaders about what budgets will look like in 2024 without an enrollment reversal and without any more federal funds, the principal said.

Schools need to kick off enrollment campaigns to try to get back students lost to private schools and home schooling, especially in the early grades. And they need to start having tough conversations about adapting to a shrinking student body, including the possibility of sharing some programs and support staff positions, the principal said.

“There are just not enough kids in the district any more to justify the budgets schools have,” he said. “The district can’t just say, ‘We’ll have a reckoning down the road.’”

There’s also the question of what will happen with unspent ESSER funds this year.

Jones, the Perkins Bass principal, and other school leaders noted schools also received significant allocations earmarked for after-school and summer programs — more than many campuses will likely be able to spend.

Jones said the ongoing pandemic hampered efforts to beef up after-school programs amid staffing challenges, lower family interest, and student quarantines. Between the ESSER out-of-school time dollars and a separate grant for after-school programming, the school got almost $450,000.

“Right now, we’re really in a state of what’s to come because it’s almost budget time, and we have no clue if this money is going to roll over into next year,” Jones said. “If it does, it would make budget season joyous and celebratory. If not, we’ll be back to biting our fingernails to figure out how to make everything fit.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

End of mask mandate in Chicago schools prompts mixed feelings from parents

2022-03-14T19:07:25+00:00

For the first time in roughly two years, students in Chicago Public Schools were not required to wear masks on campus Monday morning. But that doesn’t mean the end of debates about masks.

For some families, the end of the mask mandate brought anxiety. Others welcomed it as a milestone on the way to normalcy amid the pandemic.

The district’s change in mask policy comes as federal, state, and local guidance have aligned. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late last month said schools could drop masks unless COVID cases and hospitalizations in the community were high.

“CPS was one of the first to require universal masking in schools, and we would not be moving to a mask- optional model unless the data and our public health experts indicated that it is safe for our school communities,” CEO Pedro Martinez said last week. “We will support our staff and students as we enter this new phase in the pandemic and continue to move forward together.”

At Florence Nightingale Elementary on the Southwest Side, many children still entered the campus wearing face coverings.

Clarita Salas adjusted her daughter’s mask before saying goodbye near the entrance to the school. She said for now, her second- and sixth-grade daughters would keep their mask on.

“I prefer that my kids continue wearing their masks,” parent Clarita Salas said in Spanish, “because you might have a child without a mask pass the virus to the other kids in their class.”

But at Kinzie Elementary, also on the Southwest Side, Robyn Peterson, the mother of a kindergartener, said the end of the district’s mask mandate comes as a relief to her family. She said her child took a month to get used to wearing a mask at school, which has felt arbitrary at times given unmasked school meals and afterschool playtime with classmates.

Peterson’s daughter went to school without a face covering on Monday morning, joining some masked and some unmasked peers.

“This was the easiest decision I have ever made,” she said.

The district will continue its school-based COVID testing and quarantine policy. Students who test positive will have to quarantine for five days and then wear a mask for five days after returning to school, officials said.

Last week, Dr. Allison Arwady, the city’s health commissioner, and Martinez said the school mask mandate could return should cases begin to climb, but they didn’t provide a metric for when they would move to reintroduce masks on school campuses.

The sudden change in Chicago’s mask policy — just weeks after the Chicago Board of Education voted to affirm its commitment to masks and other COVID mitigation strategies — has prompted swift criticism from the teachers union, which said the district violated a safety agreement the district and union signed in January.

The agreement was forged after district officials canceled five days of classes when teachers walked out over safety concerns amid the rise of COVID-19 cases across the city

The union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint that is being investigated by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. Union leaders said dropping the mask mandate would put students and staff in danger, especially at South and West Side schools where a push to vaccinate students appears to have stalled.

About 49% of students from 5 to 17 are vaccinated, but three dozen schools on the South and West Sides had fewer than 10% of their students fully vaccinated. And more than 470 schools had less than 50% of students fully vaccinated as of March 3, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago.

Across the district, about 47% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 64% of 12- to 17-year-olds have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, according to the district’s latest figures.

On Monday, the Chicago Teachers Union and some educators took to social media to advocate for continued mask wearing, tweeting with the hashtag #maskingforafriend.

‘A teaching moment for my kids’

For Sheila Vogt, low COVID case and transmission rates, the omicron’s lower risk of serious complications, and higher vaccination rates mean it might be time to relax some pandemic rules, including universal masking.

The mom of a kindergartener and a seventh grader, she shares concerns that mask-wearing in classrooms has affected young learners’ development.

However, Vogt believes the district should empower Local School Councils to make decisions about universal masking that make sense for their school communities. At Edison Regional Gifted Center, her seventh grader’s North Side school, almost 90% of students are vaccinated. The school is small, clean, and diligent about COVID mitigation measures, so going mask-optional feels safe.

But, Vogt said, “The schools in this city are so different. A one-size-fits-all policy doesn’t seem appropriate.”

On Monday, Vogt’s children headed to school with their masks on. The family still feels the slight discomfort of masking is worth the reduced risk of getting sick or transmitting the virus to others. She said she worries her children might feel alienated if a lot of their classmates go maskless.

“But I also see this as a teaching moment for my kids — that we need to do what we believe in, even when it’s hard or others make us feel bad,” she said.

Rosalyn Walker, a South Side parent whose son attends LaSalle Language Academy on the North Side, strongly disagreed with the district’s decision to go mask-optional.

Last Thursday, she rushed to LaSalle after her seventh grader asked to be picked up when his classmate had tested positive for COVID — the third case in the classroom that week and the fourth schoolwide.

Walker, who serves on LaSalle’s Local School Council, knew her son would have a math test the following day, and she tried to persuade him to stick around until that Thursday’s math class, to review material for the exam. But he insisted on leaving right away.

She greeted the district’s decision to stop requiring face coverings by donating KN95 masks to her school.

Her son, who tested negative last week, headed to school Monday feeling on edge. But she reassured him that his vaccine, booster shot and mask would give him solid protection — even if classmates, some of whom have been pulled down their masks in defiance of the rule already, ditch the face coverings altogether.

“If you keep the mask on, it will continue to do its job,” she told him.

Parents drop off their children at Florence Nightingale Elementary School on Chicago’s Southwest Side on the first day the district has moved to make mask optional after roughly two years.

Outside Florence Nightingale, where 42% of students are fully vaccinated and 61% of the students have at least one dose of the vaccine, Andrea Hernandez said she was OK with the change in policy. Hernandez wore her mask, but said her daughter, who is vaccinated, didn’t want to wear her mask.

“She didn’t want to use it anymore,” Hernandez said.

Still, most parents at the school accompanied their children who were mostly masked to one of the school’s entrances.

Parent Martha Sandoval said her two daughters would continue to wear their masks until they see what kind of impact the shift in mask policy will have on COVID-19 cases.

“What I’m seeing is that the majority of people are still sending their kids with masks,” Sandoval said.

Maribel Martinez feels as though the district changed its policy due to political pressure from people who no longer see COVID as a threat.

But in a working-class neighborhood that has been hard hit by COVID, Martinez said it’s still very much a threat. For the time being, Martinez said she is making sure her 8-year and 12-year-old daughters continue wearing their masks to protect everyone in the family.

“We have an option so I’m choosing my kids to keep their masks on,” Martinez said, “because COVID is still out there.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago poised to end controversial school ratings system

2022-02-23T22:48:12+00:00

Chicago will suspend its controversial school ratings for the third year and give itself more time to design a new campus accountability system.

But the new approach likely will no longer involve a number or letter grade for each campus — a practice that educators, principals, and others have decried as reducing a school’s offerings and often complex challenges to a single designation.

Officials said Wednesday that the district’s leadership transition over the summer and the singular focus on safely reopening schools this fall delayed a push to redesign Chicago’s school accountability model, known as School Quality Rating System, or SQRP. So the district is extending an April deadline to unveil a new policy until spring of 2023 at the latest.

In April, the district is slated to vote on a resolution spelling out broad outlines of the new system that has been in the works since early 2020. Those will likely include doing away with the current practice of assigning a number to each school in a bid to telegraph quality quickly to parents.

“The idea of one summative designation is something we’ve heard almost unanimously from our stakeholders has been a negative experience,” said Jeff Broom, the district’s director of school quality research and measurement, who addressed the school board during its Wednesday meeting. “It has been more punitive than informative.”

The district’s policy has been under fire from the teachers union and others who have argued it weighs test scores too heavily and penalizes schools that serve high-need student populations. The number designations in particular have contributed to a vicious cycle for some schools on the city’s South and West sides, critics have said: Low numbers turn off prospective parents, hampering schools from buttressing their enrollments and thus their ability to boost their academic offerings and draw more families.

Over the past year, the district has held community town halls and a family survey to get feedback on the overhaul. But CEO Pedro Martinez’ arrival in early fall and the push to reopen schools for full-time in-person learning put the process on hold for almost six months.

“We decided as a district this (process) is too important to rush and get something half-baked in,” Broom said.

The school board voted this past summer not to renew a contract with the nonprofit NWEA to administer the Measures of Academic Progress on all campuses — the math and reading assessment the district used to rate its schools. Schools can now choose between two new optional sets of standardized tests, making unclear what role, if any, math and reading proficiency and growth scores will play in the new accountability model.

School board members, who will ultimately approve the redesigned evaluation system, backed the idea of giving the district extra time to craft a new approach. Some said they were glad to hear the committee tasked with leading the process is planning to scrap the single ratings.

“The board charge was never to create a new SQRP,” said member Elizabeth Todd-Breland. “It was to reimagine accountability.”

Board member Lucino Sotelo also urged the district not to lose sight of the ways in which the current accountability system offered families key information about campuses as they navigate the school choice decisions.

“Let’s not forget the components that worked well,” he said, “while making it easy to understand yet equitable.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago Public Schools, more principals and teachers are leaving

2022-02-23T21:16:36+00:00

Chicago Public Schools has seen a sharp increase in employee departures since this past summer, including its principals, with resignations and retirements more than doubling since the same period last year.

In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the pace of turnover picked up among all employee groups, from central office administrators to school support staff. Teacher retirement and resignations jumped roughly 85%.

Those increases mark a shift: The number of educators and staff leaving the district had previously dipped during the pandemic, continuing a pre-COVID trend of marked declines in employee retirements and resignations.

One notable increase was among school leaders, whose departures tend to be especially disruptive to a school community — more so during this school year’s high-stakes, challenging transition back to full-time in-person learning. In all, 72 principals and assistant principals have left the district since July, already more than the number that retired or resigned during the entire 2018-2019 year.

Nationally, there is still little evidence that teachers and other school workers are leaving their jobs en masse, despite a string of surveys over the past couple of years capturing low morale, COVID fears, and thoughts about switching careers.

Still, the Chicago data obtained by Chalkbeat might be an early harbinger that some educators are starting to act on these thoughts, as the pandemic drags on and the return to campus full-time tests schools.

Here, after years of steady declines, the district’s turnover rate remains relatively low even with this year’s uptick.

Amid severe staffing shortages and heightened student needs, the transition back to full-time in-person learning has stretched principals across the country to the limit, said Scott Treibitz of the American Federation of School Administrators. This school year, some of the group’s members have driven school buses, served as crossing guards, cleaned school bathrooms, served food in cafeterias, and stepped in to substitute teach.

“School leaders are overwhelmed by the mounting workload, the mental health of students, teaching staff, and support staff,” Treibitz said. “I call them the unsung heroes of what’s going on in education right now.”

At Wednesday’s CPS board meeting, Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s new chief education officer, said the district is hosting a principal summit later this week to discuss how schools are navigating the district’s pandemic recovery.

“The support and engagement of our school leaders will continue to be a priority of mine,” she said.

This year brings a reversal in CPS employee departures

Until this past summer, Chicago appeared poised to continue a steady trend of declining employee turnover. During the 2020-21 fiscal year, departures across employee groups were down by more than a third compared to 2017-2018. The district did see a 25% jump in retirements over the previous years, but because of those earlier declines, their numbers remained well below pre-pandemic levels.

Officials and educators have said that a tangle of factors likely played a role in employees staying put: lingering economic uncertainty, the district’s stepped-up retention efforts, and pay and benefits that are markedly higher in Chicago than many suburban districts. The district last summer also touted gains in hiring for tough-to-fill special education positions and in hiring more Black and Latino educators.

This year so far, however, more teachers and other employees are leaving than right before the pandemic.

During the first seven months of this fiscal year, 1,842 employees resigned and another 524 retired, a more than 50% jump over the 2019-2020 year. The district employs about 39,000 workers.

This fall’s numbers also show that nonunionized central office workers left at higher rates than before the pandemic. About 250 left since the start of the fiscal year, compared with roughly 110 during the same period two years ago.

Those resignations and retirements continue a string of high-profile departures since former CEO Janice Jackson and her second- and third-in-command announced last spring they were leaving the district.

More than 1,240 teachers left earlier this fiscal year, up from 770 during the same period in 2019-2020. Support staffers saw a significant increase in resignations and retirements over last year, but because those numbers had plummeted from the year before, the overall jump compared to pre-pandemic times was not as sharp.

The bulk of the retirements and resignations across employee groups took place in the final months of the summer before the start of the school year. The district saw higher-than-usual numbers in August, which officials at the time said might be due in part to an employee vaccination mandate that the district has since relaxed.

But some departures have trickled in since. About 120 teachers and six principals retired or resigned in January, when the district customarily sees a slight uptick in departures ahead of the start of the second semester.

At Wednesday’s school board meeting, member Luisiana Melendez urged the district to step up efforts to support the mental health and wellness of teachers and school leaders.

“This has been a tremendous stress on them,” she said. “If the adults who take care of the children are not well, the children can’t thrive.”

Statewide, according to data from the Illinois Teacher Retirement System, educator retirements increased during the 2020 calendar year over the year before after years of declines. But they dipped again last year, to about 4,200, remaining only slightly higher than they were on the eve of the pandemic.

Chad Aldeman of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, who has closely tracked data on school district turnover, said fall numbers from a few states he has seen so far suggest an rise in turnover heading into the current school year, though one that remains roughly in line with historical trends.

But there has been little data out yet on the school year underway, which has challenged educators and administrators with staffing issues, a rise in disruptive student behaviors, and the draining task of addressing the pandemic’s academic and mental health fallout.

Clearly, the pace of turnover in Chicago appears to be picking up, Aldeman said. After hitting a low of less than 5% last year, turnover this year is on pace to exceed the 2017-2018 rate of roughly 8%.

But Aldeman notes, “That’s still very low compared to national averages for teachers, let alone all employees in other sectors.”

Pandemic took a toll on principals

In Chicago, the turnover rate was highest among school leaders. Treibitz said the pandemic has been especially hard on principals and assistant principals, who have been on the frontlines of public schools’ response.

They were often in their buildings during last year’s remote learning stretch, overseeing the distribution of meals, computers, and other tasks. They have been in charge of enforcing COVID safety protocols — and sometimes on the receiving end of parent anger at how schools have navigated the outbreak.

The pandemic has also brought a slew of campaigns to unionize principals in districts across the country, including Chicago, Treibitz said.

In a statement, the district said it stepped up engagement with principals this years: Martinez is hosting biweekly calls with school leaders, and the district is reviving its principal advisory council. It also boosted its compensation package for assistant principals.

“Like other industries, our staffing and retention rates have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the CPS statement said. “The district strives to create a working environment that allows for career advancement in an effort to retain its staff.”

Here, the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association is pursuing a push to allow district school leaders to form a union in the state Legislature, an effort the school district opposes. Since 2019, the American Federation of School Administrators, with which the Chicago group is affiliated, has added 11 new locals, including in Denver, after years of relatively flat membership. The group is also working with a number of districts where principal unionization drives are in the early stages.

Over the past year, the association has pushed its members to prioritize self-care, cautioning them against neglecting their mental health needs as they scramble to troubleshoot on campus.

“You have to put your oxygen mask first,” Treibitz said, “or in the long haul, it won’t be good for the community you are trying to serve.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

The big-ticket item in Chicago’s COVID relief spending plan? Pay of current staff.

2022-02-11T12:00:00+00:00

The federal government is funneling billions in COVID relief funding to help school districts respond and recover from the pandemic. In Chicago, new documents show, the district will use a hefty portion of that money on pay and benefits for thousands of teachers, lunchroom workers, and other staff already on the payroll.

Chicago is slated to put more of its federal pandemic dollars into footing the bill for pre-existing staff and programs than some other large Illinois districts. District officials say this spending is preventing disruptive layoffs and freeing up other resources that allowed it to boost how much campuses got per pupil for their budgets this school year.

CPS also plans to spend a chunk of the $1.8 billion in federal stimulus it received from the last funding round on new or improved after-school, summer school, tutoring, mental health and other programs. The spending plan it submitted to the state — the most detailed to date and obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request — offers new insight into how the district proposes to make use of the money over the next two-and-a-half years.

The district’s recently approved application for the American Rescue Plan, the third infusion in federal pandemic recovery dollars for schools and by far the largest, doesn’t offer an exhaustive picture: The state’s form makes it hard at times to tell apart spending on existing programs and new efforts, and includes some sweeping catchall categories. Adding up three federal relief packages for schools, Chicago received almost $2.8 billion.

Districts across the country are trying to strike a balance between using the federal dollars to shore up their budgets and addressing the many student academic and mental health needs brought on by the pandemic. Experts say many districts are rightfully reluctant to make new hires and launch new programs with the money, which needs to be spent by the fall of 2024.

“I would never expect a district to hire new people with temporary money from the feds,” said Lori Taylor, a school finance expert at Texas A&M University. “It’s not prudent to make a long-term commitment using short-term money.”

Still, investing heavily in warding off layoffs and other budget cuts can set districts up for a fiscal cliff as well. And some experts say that while extremely flexible spending guidelines from the federal government allow districts to spend on existing staff and programs, that could go against the spirit of the law: responding to the immediate needs brought on by the pandemic.

Personnel costs loom large in CPS plan

In Chicago’s application to the state for the funding from the American Rescue Plan, also known as the third installment of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, staffing is clearly a big-ticket item. One catch is that the state’s form asks districts to list staff “created or retained” with the federal dollars, sometimes making it tough to say where the planned spending for existing employees ends and new hiring begins.

Overall, CPS plans to cover 11,312 existing and new employees, almost 30% of the district’s workforce. That’s roughly 56% of the district’s grant going to salaries and benefits, which include pensions, unemployment, and workers compensation coverage.

The bulk of that is paying for existing instructional positions. Between salaries and benefits for 4,524 such positions, the district is earmarking almost $517 million of ESSER III money to keep these teachers on. In a publicly released plan last summer, the district had said it would spend $247 million of that money on preserving school-based instructional positions. But that smaller amount did not include positions that schools cover out of their own flexible “learning loss” allocations and some included in a programmatic bucket in that original plan, the district said.

Separately, Chicago also included almost $450 million for salaries and benefits to cover 3,080 instructional positions in its ESSER II application, which the state approved this past fall — nearly 83% of the district’s roughly half a billion ESSER II allocation.

These numbers far exceed those for teachers and staff who have received layoff notices in recent years — employees the majority of whom the district eventually rehires.

In the American Rescue Plan application, Chicago’s early childhood learning program, which in previous years has been powered with dollars from the state, is another big-ticket item. The district is spending more than $100 million in salaries and benefits for about 600 teachers and 475 teaching assistants, also largely existing positions.

Chicago has grappled with steep declines in its pre-K enrollment, but officials have said they are forging ahead with a plan to offer each child a seat in the program — and the federal dollars are allowing them to pick up the pace, covering some new positions.

The money will also underwrite pay and benefits for:

about 2,400 nutrition worker and 740 crossing guard positions, largely existing positions
roughly 320 school nurse and 528 social worker positions, some already on staff and some newly hired in keeping with the district’s commitment to staff a nurse and a social worker in each of its campuses, enshrined in its 2019 contract with the Chicago Teachers Union
the district originally included 320 school nurse positions in the plan but eventually decided to cover them with other federal funds
64 additional counselors and 20 student promotion coordinators, all new positions to be created this school year and next

CPS is also putting about $12 million toward its school breakfast and lunch contracts with Aramark and Heartland. It is investing about $51 million for additional pay for staff and substitutes to accommodate small-group instruction, interventions for students with disabilities and English learners, before and after-school and summer programs, and more.

Aside from staffing expenses, some of the biggest price tags are attached to broad catchall items on the district’s spending plan list. Some of them are also likely ongoing expenditures that precede the pandemic though that’s hard to gauge without a more detailed breakdown.

One such item — the second most expensive after salaries for retained instructional positions — includes $130 million on planned spending for:

instructional licenses, materials, and fees
the district’s new tutor corps
the previously planned rollout of the district’s Skyline universal curriculum
a slew of contracts with vendors providing social-emotional learning and enrichment programs, some of which already work with the district

Another large category features supplies and materials, from computers to science experiment kits to pens and pencils, for a total of $100 million.

The district said the plan in the application gives it flexibility to respond to evolving needs at the school and district level in the next couple of years.

“CPS is focused on using this funding to provide students with the resources they need to successfully complete a high-quality education and succeed in the future,” the district said in its statement, adding, “The application is built to preserve existing positions and also make sure we have the authority to create new ones.”

The district did not make a finance official available for an interview, but provided detailed responses to questions in writing.

Chicago earmarks 30% of funds for learning loss

More than half of a federal stimulus grant for Chicago schools will go to salaries and benefits for staff. Another chunk will go to address learning loss.

Chicago noted that it’s also using the money to power its full-time in-person reopening and address the mental health, academic, and other needs heightened by the pandemic.

The district categorized about $525 million, or almost 30%, of its planned spending as resources to address learning loss, to which districts were required to dedicate at least 20% of their American Rescue Plan allocations.

Largely under the banner of the district’s two-year “Moving Forward Together” initiative, that amount includes about $215 million for summer programs and enrichment, $125 million for after-school programs, $107 million for extended day expenses, and $76 million for social and emotional learning and student engagement. More than $33.5 million was earmarked for COVID mitigation measures (not including air quality upgrade projects), such as expenses for testing, contact tracing and care rooms, where students who show symptoms during the school day can wait for parent pickup.

The state approved the district’s ESSER III application in December after some back and forth in the preceding months, based on correspondence between the district and board obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago. CPS redacted portions of these emails that outline the revisions the district was required to make as well as the reasons why it sought expedited approval.

In a survey conducted by the state’s school business official association, about half of Illinois districts said they had to tweak their ESSER applications before the state signed off on them.

On a virtual panel on the COVID relief funding this week, Krish Mohip, deputy education officer at the Illinois State Board of Education, said the state sometimes pushed districts to better explain how proposed expenses tie to needs created by the pandemic, nixing some such as the replacement of an entire school bus fleet.

“That’s not responding to COVID,” Mohip said. “That’s just you trying to use the ESSER funding to pay for something you normally have to pay for.”

Other Illinois districts to spend big on facilities, academic overhaul

Shoring up existing programs and investing in the retention of existing staff are allowed expenses under the federal law, said Bree Dusseault of the nonprofit Center on Reinventing Public Education, which has been tracking district ESSER spending and pandemic recovery efforts. So far, because spending data is still limited and varies significantly from state to state, it’s difficult to say how broadly this type of spending is happening nationally.

In some cases, warding off the disruption from staff layoffs and program cuts might be the best use of dollars to help students, Dusseault said. With already declining public school enrollment taking a steeper dive during the pandemic, she said, “If the ESSER funds weren’t in place, districts would be making staff cuts. The funds were unrestricted so districts could do what they needed to do.”

Still, she said, districts must strike a balance between backfilling — and creatively addressing the needs of this unprecedented moment for education.

“The money isn’t given to plug enrollment-driven budget holes,” she said. “It’s to be put in places that best serve students.”

Taylor at Texas A&M University said given the risks of extensive new hiring with temporary money, districts have somewhat limited spending options: existing personnel, one-time purchases such as curriculums or technology upgrades, and “shovel-ready” programs or projects — initiatives that were already in the works. Districts such as Chicago should be transparent about how they are using any money freed up thanks to the federal windfall — or any of the federal money they are unable to spend as planned because of hiring or supply chain challenges.

“Bureaucracies love to have discretionary funds,” Taylor said. “Sometimes, they make decisions with those discretionary funds that aren’t aligned with what the taxpayer might want them to do.”

Other large Illinois districts also tried to strike that balance between maintaining what was already in their budgets and forging new ground.

Springfield is using about $15 million of its almost $70 million in American Rescue Plan dollars on retaining employees over three years, a move the district said would allow it to avoid any layoffs during that time.

The district is also investing into a grow-your-own-educators partnerships with two universities, where it will cover tuition and other expenses for support staff members who are seeking to become teachers — an effort the district says will also help it achieve a more diverse educator workforce. State officials such as Mohip praised that program as an example of a proactive approach to staffing challenges. (CPS launched its own version of a grow-your-own teacher residency program in 2018)

In Elgin, the state’s second largest district, a significant portion of the money will go toward a sweeping initiative called U-46 Rising. The initiative aims to promote academic teams in all school buildings and empower principals to serve as instructional leaders. It involves an investment in professional development and some additional hiring. Separately, the district is hiring 28 elementary teachers in a bid to lower class sizes.

“Our intent is to take these resources and use them to transform our system for the long run,” said Superintendent Tony Sanders. “If we exit this stretch looking the same as we did before the pandemic, we will have failed.”

In Peoria, the big-ticket items are roofing and other facility repairs, furniture, and technology upgrades. The district also plans to install security cameras in buildings and on school buses, saying in its public plan that the goal is to monitor whether students are wearing masks properly. It will update outdated curriculums and textbooks and upgrade some buses and driver’s education cars.

Superintendent Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat said that she looks at this spending as “leveling the playing field” for students in an under-resourced district with a relatively high low-income population. The district is also expanding some existing programs, including tutoring and summer programs.

Said Michael Jacoby, the head of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials, “Districts are trying to avoid expenses that go into the future — trying to creatively utilize those resources without going off a cliff.”

Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey to step down in June

2022-02-02T23:30:02+00:00

Jesse Sharkey, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, will step down at the end of his term this summer after two tumultuous decades of involvement in union leadership that saw the organization become a political powerhouse. He is backing his second-in-command, Stacy Davis Gates, in a May union leadership election.

Sharkey said he will return to the classroom in the fall, though when asked about a possible mayoral run, he did not rule out that possibility. He said he has been mulling the decision to not seek reelection for several months, noting that an “all-encompassing” role has taken a toll, and becoming entrenched in the top position would go against the union’s spirit.

As second-in-command to the late president Karen Lewis, Sharkey took the helm of the union during a resurgent period of flexing its political power. Describing himself as more of a pragmatic, traditional trade unionist, he once said he worried about following on the heels of the charismatic Lewis. At times, his blunt approach could rankle City Hall, such as when he called Mayor Lori Lightfoot “relentlessly stupid” and “relentlessly stubborn” during a recent standoff over COVID safety protocols after winter break.

During his tenure, clashes with Lightfoot led to three school shutdowns in the past three years, starting with a two-week strike during 2019 contract talks when the union pressed for an ambitious slate of proposals, including smaller class sizes, that went well beyond salary and benefits issues.

Acrimonious negotiations over COVID safety and remote learning last school year again brought school to a halt and delayed students’ return to the classroom, ultimately yielding a reopening agreement that has been held up as a national model. This past January brought five days of canceled classes in a bruising clash with Lightfoot over coronavirus protocols, which resulted in an agreement members narrowly approved and some criticized as falling short. Sharkey stressed the standoff had nothing to do with his decision to step down.

On his own list of proudest accomplishments, Sharkey included the “groundbreaking” 2019 contract that mandated a social worker and nurse in every school by 2024, and a successful effort to unionize more charter school educators. He also noted last year’s move by the state legislature to phase in an elected school board in Chicago — a shift for which the union lobbied aggressively and which Lightfoot vocally opposed.

“It’s a difficult job,” Sharkey said. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, and it’s time to do something different.”

Sharkey’s Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators will have the final say on whether Davis Gates will lead its slate in the upcoming election, union officials said. They balked at naming names for potential vice president candidates.

Sharkey, Davis Gates, and other top officers met with reporters virtually Wednesday morning to discuss the announcement, embargoed until Sharkey could share the news with rank-and-file members at an evening meeting.

He called Davis Gates the union’s “most effective spokesperson and most effective strategist,” voicing confidence that their caucus will back her as union president candidate.

Reflecting on his time in union leadership, Sharkey said he has no regrets and wouldn’t point to anything he would do differently. He took over the top job in 2018 from Lewis, who died last year after a battle with brain cancer. He did note the union failed in its push to avert Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 closures of 50 schools on the South and West sides that disproportionately affected Black students and educators.

Davis Gates, who taught in one of those shuttered buildings, said union members were demoralized in the closures’ aftermath. She credited Lewis and Sharkey with presiding over a resurgence in morale and purpose: “They gave us our dignity back.”

Her voice cracked as she talked about Sharkey’s decision to step down.

“I’ve depended on his leadership,” she said. “It has been a partnership that has challenged me to be better, to be thoughtful, to take my time.

“I am also mad at him because we’re already in an election cycle and I don’t want this to be politicized because Jesse doesn’t deserve that,” she added.

Some educators and parents have argued that the COVID protocols agreement the union negotiated with the district amid the recent cancellation of classes did not move the needle enough to justify the potential loss of four days of pay for educators who chose not to report to school buildings in person. Many have placed the blame on Lightfoot.

But Sharkey and Davis Gates also have come under fire from a group of educators calling themselves the Members First Caucus, who planned to challenge them in the May election. The challengers said Sharkey has been too quick to resort to labor actions that have disrupted the district. A membership vote on a resolution to stop teaching in person until the omicron surge subsided or the district agreed to more stringent protocols was held on a Wednesday evening, with families waiting until 11 p.m. to find out the outcome.

In a brief statement Wednesday evening, Mary Esposito-Usterbowski, a school psychologist and Members First president candidate, said the union needs new leadership.

“This May, the CTU can start building stronger relationships with community stakeholders and city leaders so we can deliver more for CTU members and better serve Chicago’s students,” the statement said.

Sharkey said Wednesday that lively debate within the union speaks to its democratic spirit and called pushback after the school shutdown in January “a mainstream media backlash.”

Robert Bruno, an expert in labor relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a close observer of the Chicago Teachers Union, said Karen Lewis conceived the union’s “more expansive, aggressive stance” at the bargaining table and beyond.

But, he said, pointing to the 2019 contract and successful lobbying to remove limitations to CTU’s bargaining power at the state legislature, “it was under Jesse Sharkey’s leadership as president that the union fulfilled the goals that had been set.”

Davis Gates said that if she is elected the union’s next leader, she will let membership input inform her agenda and priorities. Based on what she’s heard from the union’s rank and file recently, she said she wants to give an overwhelmingly female membership a forum to advocate for themselves as women and mothers contending with their own child care challenges.

She also wants to promote more arts and music programming in schools and challenge the high-stakes, high-pressure application process to selective enrollment and other competitive high school programs.

Asked about rumors that she’s mulling a run for mayor, Davis Gates said the speculation has focused on “the wrong officer.” She noted other former CTU officials are politically active, and the union has helped raise up allies such as aldermen Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Jeanette Taylor. And she noted Sharkey himself might choose to run.

Asked to comment on that possibility, Sharkey chuckled and said, “I am going to have more time,” stressing that for now he is looking forward to a return to the classroom but plans to remain active in advocacy.

COVID surges, ‘re-entry anxiety’ hamper Chicago’s efforts to boost attendance

2022-01-31T12:00:00+00:00

At one Chicago elementary school, educators were so concerned about some students’ lackluster attendance they created a hall of fame — a bulletin board in the main hallway recognizing students who made the most gains in showing up to school.

The school’s efforts illustrate the district’s intense focus on attendance amid the high-stakes return to full-time in-person learning this fall. In September, Chicago Public Schools leaders touted a higher-than-expected rate on the first day of the school year and during its second week, evidence that stepped-up outreach to families was paying off.

But school-level data obtained by Chalkbeat shows that campuses have continued to grapple with the plunge in attendance the district saw during remote learning last year. At just below 90%, average attendance has remained squarely below pre-pandemic levels, dipping slightly compared to the virtual first quarter period last year.

Comparing virtual and in-person attendance is tricky: Last year, educators reported that some students logged on to classes, with cameras off — but did not participate or respond to questions, seemingly tuning out the instruction. Still, these numbers are a crucial early gauge of how efforts are going to re-engage students and address the pandemic’s fallout.

Regular attendance has been especially elusive at high-needs high schools on the city’s South and West sides, with some campuses reporting average rates of 70% and below for the first quarter. However, many of those campuses have also seen dramatic jumps in attendance from last fall, increasing as many as 27 percentage points.

In recent weeks, the troubled return from winter break amid the omicron surge in Chicago and nationally has trained a spotlight on the ongoing pressures on attendance. But data from the first part of the school year — a time to build all-important bonds with teachers, school staff, and peers — is telling as well.

“We wouldn’t expect attendance to be the same as pre-pandemic,” said Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. “It’s still a pandemic.”

Nationally, emerging attendance data is also showing that fewer students than normal are consistently coming to class. Statewide attendance in Illinois near the midpoint of the school year stood at 92.5%, almost one-and-a-half percent below the pre-pandemic rate.

Chicago Public Schools initially denied earlier in the fall a Freedom of Information Act request for attendance data, saying it did not maintain daily attendance rates by campus and was not obligated to pull the information for Chalkbeat. Eventually, the district did provide those first-quarter rates for each of its district-run campuses.

High schools continue to struggle

The pandemic disruption of last school year brought attendance setbacks across the country. That was especially true for high schoolers, preschoolers, and kindergartners, and for districts’ most vulnerable student groups, including children with disabilities.

In Illinois, statewide chronic absenteeism rose to 21.2% last year, up almost 5 percent from 2019. Students who are considered chronically absent miss 18 or more school days for the year. The increase was more pronounced for homeless students, those with disabilities, and especially Black students, for whom chronic absenteeism jumped from about 31% to 39% over those two years.

After years of improving attendance in Chicago Public Schools, the districtwide attendance rate dipped almost 4 percentage points during the 2020-21 school year compared to 2018-2019. But those drops were much sharper for high school students, especially seniors, whose rate plummeted 7 percentage points, dipping below 80%.

At the start of this school year, district officials celebrated a roughly 91% first-day-of-school attendance rate. Though a few percentage points lower than such rates before the pandemic, officials saw the turnout as reassuring, given the ongoing uncertainty brought by the delta surge at the time and an earlier school year start. They also noted the rate then ticked up to more than 93% in the second week of school.

However, the data obtained by Chalkbeat shows attendance waning in the later months of fall, following a long-standing pattern. It has largely remained just below the 90% mark, dipping to as low as 85% occasionally and inching up to slightly above 90% during some stretches. Schools marked students who logged on remotely after being quarantined because of COVID exposure as present.

Ongoing struggles with attendance are not surprising, notes Allensworth at the Consortium on School Research.

“This is a transition year,” she said. “Last year, we had major disruption. Now there’s this hope to go back to some kind of stability, yet there’s still all this uncertainty.”

High schools that serve predominantly Black students on the South and West sides have continued to struggle with attendance. But they also rank high on the list of campuses with the most marked attendance gains. District officials have argued that remote learning was especially challenging for the student population these schools serve.

During the first quarter of last school year, Austin College and Career Academy, with a student population that’s almost entirely Black and low-income — and in a neighborhood hard hit by COVID and an uptick in gun violence — saw average attendance of about 45%. This fall, average attendance there jumped to 73% — the most dramatic increase over last fall. Douglass, Manley and Spry — also among campuses with the lowest rates last year — also saw substantial improvement.

Overall, attendance at majority-Black schools improved the most, though it remained lower than that at predominantly Latino and white schools. Comparing this fall to the previous year, high school attendance overall rose by roughly a percentage point, to almost 84%, even as the rate fell slightly at the elementary level, to just more than 90%.

The return to full-time in-person learning has brought its own attendance challenges: A school bus driver shortage left thousands of Chicago students without a reliable ride to school this fall. Then, there was COVID and other health issues, which led to more absences than in pre-pandemic times because students are now generally discouraged from showing up to school even with mild cold symptoms.

Students grapple with COVID fears and other hurdles

At Communities In Schools, a national nonprofit that provides full-time clinicians and other support to 30 Chicago district-run and charter schools, those campuses were more focused on attendance this fall than ever before, said Lo Patrick, senior director of intensive student supports. Many schools expanded and elevated the work of their attendance teams during remote learning, and more intensive outreach to students and families has continued into this school year.

Patrick said the group’s clinicians have confronted what national experts are calling “re-entry anxiety” – a blend of COVID fears and social anxieties borne of prolonged isolation that has crimped attendance for students returning from extended virtual learning.

There’s also the ongoing work of reengaging students and helping them readjust to the routines of in-person school, including getting up, getting dressed, and making it to school on time each morning.

“This was a much bigger lift and it took a lot longer to reestablish those routines than schools were anticipating,” Patrick said.

Families have struggled to get back into routines, said Sabrina Jackson, who heads a parent mentor program at Teamwork Englewood, a community group that worked with the district last summer on family outreach.

For many, COVID fears run deep, and complaints about school cleanliness and the availability of protective equipment at some Englewood schools have added to the uncertainty. Meanwhile, student quarantines during the fall had a destabilizing effect, sometimes curbing attendance even after students were cleared to return to classrooms.

“Families were getting back into the routines, and then their kids would be quarantined,” Jackson said. “A lot of momentum is lost.”

The omicron surge this winter has brought fresh attendance challenges.

Roughly a third of district students missed the first two days back from winter break, before a standoff over COVID protocols between the district and its teachers union canceled school for five days. In some cases, they stayed away because they or their family members were sick; in others, families chose to keep students at home because of concerns about the virus’ spread.

More clarity in communicating about COVID safety and faster notification of school-based cases would help, Jackson said. She also would like to see now more of the school community building events for families many district schools held in the first week or two of classes.

At Communities In Schools, Patrick said she’s hearing about more schools that are offering classroom-level or schoolwide attendance incentives, such as the middle school attendance hall of fame. In the meantime, the group’s school-based clinicians are helping students one-on-one with re-entry anxiety, practicing breathing and positive self-talk techniques. But perhaps the most crucial work to boost attendance involves continuing to foster strong bonds between students and educators or school staff.

In a growing number of schools, all adults — from the principal to the security guard or custodian — are in charge of checking in daily with each student in their assigned groups, even if it’s just a quick hello.

“Knowing there’s a friendly face that cares about you and notices whether you are at school on any given day makes a huge difference that’s often overlooked,” Patrick said.

Cam Rodriguez and Thomas Wilburn contributed data analysis to this report.

How Chicago schools became an outlier in the latest COVID disruption

2022-01-14T11:00:00+00:00

In the span of a few days, Chicago canceled classes just before midnight on a Tuesday evening, the teachers union chief called the mayor “relentlessly stupid,” and the mayor on national television bashed the union for “abandoning” students. Working parents scrambled for babysitters and dropped off children at “safe haven” sites for emergency child care.

The return from winter break amid the omicron surge has severely tested school districts across the country, forcing them to grapple like never before with staffing shortages, glitchy testing programs, and spiking COVID case counts. In some cities — such as Oakland, where a teacher sickout closed some schools — the crisis is ratcheting up labor tensions.

Still, Chicago was an outlier. Nowhere has discord over COVID protocols escalated so quickly and shut down learning entirely as it did in the country’s third-largest district.

At a moment of heightened stress for educators, Chicago’s COVID protocols after winter break were less strict than those at some other large urban districts. But the situation ignited because a longstanding power struggle and deep mistrust between the powerful teachers union and the mayor left leaders primed for conflict — turning Chicago into a national example of dysfunctional education governance.

Meanwhile, stark disparities in vaccination rates and COVID testing participation across this deeply segregated city helped stoke anxiety among teachers, who argued Chicago wasn’t doing enough to bolster protections at schools on the South and West sides.

Then, just as the public was growing increasingly impatient and the rhetoric became even more heated, the two sides reached a deal to reopen Chicago classrooms earlier this week. Some teachers and parents have argued the deal does not go far enough in pushing the district to step up its COVID safety game; an unusually narrow majority of rank-and-file educators backed it.

Still, labor experts say the agreement is detailed and forward-thinking in some ways, and might inspire other districts to craft their own blueprints for navigating the seemingly unyielding vicissitudes of the virus.

“The district is better off with this agreement,” said Robert Bruno, an expert in labor relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Chicago will be seen as a template — and a warning.”

‘This is not Chicago’

In Chicago, the teachers union trained a spotlight on missteps by the district in the build-up to the latest standoff.

A voluntary student testing program, originally promised for the first day of school, took months to roll out and has been plagued by low participation. Despite district outreach to parents and a string of school-based vaccination events, the student COVID inoculation rates here — just more than 50% for those 12 and older, and a quarter of 5- to 11-year-olds — remain below those in some other large urban districts.

And the union has recently pointed to districts such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., which took a more aggressive approach on testing and vaccinations.

Although the United Teachers of Los Angeles shares a philosophical bent with the CTU and also went on strike in 2019, teachers in that city returned to school Tuesday without labor strife. The district required all students and staff to have a negative COVID test. Los Angeles will also continue a massive and expensive mandatory weekly testing program of all students and staff through at least January — part of a written agreement the district and union have touted as setting shared expectations for navigating the pandemic.

The district — one of the slowest large districts to return to in-person learning last spring — also reports a 90% vaccination rate among students following a student vaccine mandate the district recently delayed.

“If you look at a place like Chicago, they’re really fighting for some of the same safety protocols that we already have here in Los Angeles Unified,” Kelly Gonez, the school board president, told Chalkbeat.

However, technical issues with the rollout of the test-to-return program snarled the resumption of classes at some Los Angeles campuses this week, demonstrating the kinds of logistical challenges that ultimately led the CTU to back off its demand for a similar program in Chicago.

And Los Angeles’ massive testing operation remains relatively rare. A December survey found that just four of 100 large districts required testing of all students and staff. The far more common approach has been to simply make tests available.

Washington, D.C., where the district and union had clashed over reopening campuses last school year, also required students and staff to present negative COVID tests after the break. It canceled classes for two days to give families time to pick up free rapid tests at their schools. That district dealt with technical glitches as well and saw a relatively low positivity rate on the rapid tests, but eventually buildings reopened and learning went on.

Washington requires families who do not want students to participate in weekly COVID testing to opt out, though it only tests a random sample of 20% of students — the kind of program the union in Chicago was calling for. Like Los Angeles, that district did enforce a vaccine mandate for employees even as Chicago backed off its own mandate at the union’s urging.

In New York City, the return from winter break amid the surge has also caused some tension between educators and city leaders. Incoming mayor Eric Adams has stressed keeping schools open to address children’s basic needs and mental health, but after more than a week of dismal attendance, he seemed to relent on a possible remote option. The city’s teachers union — which did not endorse Adams in the election — has repeatedly called for a temporary shift to virtual learning.

At a small number of schools, teachers have staged sickouts, forcing central office staffers to cover classes; they have held rallies as staffing shortages have disrupted learning across the city. But overall, union leaders there have seemed to want to play nice rather than go to the mats with a new mayor and his team, and the mayor downplayed any strife.

“This is not Chicago. This is New York,” Adams said Thursday. “We are communicating with each other because we’re both emotionally intelligent.”

Nationwide, a growing number of districts have opted to revert briefly to learning online, but a large majority have stuck with in-person instruction through the surge so far. Many still struggle to get student COVID testing right.

Lingering resentments

In Chicago, an especially stressful turn in what was an already draining school year for educators and administrators collided with a political dynamic different from that in other cities.

Over the past decade, the Chicago Teachers Union has built a national reputation for flexing its muscle on a slew of issues, challenging the idea of unilateral decision-making in a mayoral control district and setting the tone for labor fights in other cities. It has also aimed to position itself as responsive to rank-and-file sentiment, and, says Jon Shelton, who studies labor unions at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, leaders were undoubtedly picking up on growing strain among educators.

“A lot of rank-and-file teachers feel devalued,” Shelton said. “They feel stressed. They feel they have been on the frontlines of keeping schools open.”

The high-stress return from winter break was just the kindling to ignite a deeply contentious relationship with Lightfoot, with roots going back to her 2019 election, when the union vocally backed a rival candidate. The acrimony escalated during the protracted 2019 teacher strike and during one of the country’s most contentious school reopening battles last spring.

That kind of tension isn’t new to the city. Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, and the late CTU leader Karen Lewis clashed repeatedly and exchanged harsh words publicly, said Sylvia Puente, who leads the nonprofit Latino Policy Forum and served as an education point person on Gov. JB Pritzker’s transition team. But these two leaders also had high-profile moments of reconciliation, easing tensions by appearing together, Puente said. Lightfoot and union President Jesse Sharkey have not done that.

“With that acrimony, there was never really the opportunity to build trust,” she said. “It takes a spark to explode.”

The deep mistrust was on full display again over the past week, when the union and mayor traded accusations of failing to negotiate in good faith. District CEO Pedro Martinez, who took over in September, said he could not accede to a brief virtual pause because he feared the union would then try to extend it indefinitely.

“The conditions in Chicago perpetually keep the district in a volatile state,” said Bruno.

Bruno said he watched the latest stalemate with rising frustration because he knows both the district and union are sending capable, pragmatic negotiators to the bargaining table.

He points to the groundbreaking teachers contract that came out of the 2019 strike and last spring’s reopening agreement, which became a gold standard for other districts. Union leaders sharply criticized that deal in its immediate aftermath, but have more recently touted it as a model.

But this moment was especially charged for the key players: Lightfoot went into this standoff smarting from a recent state legislature move to shift to an elected school board in Chicago, which she vocally opposed and the union backed. With that looming change, her appointed school board has stayed largely on the sidelines of the COVID protocol battle.

Meanwhile, the union is heading into a spring leadership election. Speculation that CTU vice president Stacy Davis Gates might challenge Lightfoot in the next mayor race is intensifying; Lightfoot’s political action committee sent an email blast Thursday heralding her firm stance on in-person learning.

Martinez “walked into a maelstrom,” as Puente puts it — arriving almost a month into the school year from a district and state with weak teacher unions, and scrambling to play catch up in efforts to expand testing and vaccination. Like his predecessor, Janice Jackson, he was caught between the mayor — not one to shy away from inflammatory statements at the podium — and the union, rendering him and his negotiating team middle managers.

Then, there is the deep mistrust of the district that has buoyed the union in times of crisis — a legacy of historic disinvestment and unpopular school closures under Emanuel on the city’s South and West sides. In Chicago, this history has fueled the rise of an active community nonprofit scene — organizations that have often amplified messaging by the CTU, which has supported some of them financially.

The district’s faltering efforts to provide sufficient student transportation and keep schools clean this fall did not help, said Jitu Brown, the national director for the nonprofit Journey for Justice Alliance, who led a 34-day hunger strike to save a South Side school from closing in 2015.

Ultimately, roughly a third of district students did not show up at schools early last week after the break, reflecting heightened fears about school safety. The district has not meaningfully reached out to parents on safety and other questions this school year, said Brown, a district parent.

“If you are assuming what people need, that’s top-down and often off-base,” he said. “Decisions are made that are not rooted in our lived experiences.”

A sudden end to the impasse

The stalemate in Chicago ended abruptly just when the district seemed poised for a protracted battle. The district agreed to some testing and contract tracing changes and to a school closure metric that sets a relatively high bar for shifting to remote learning. The union gave up on the opt-out testing program and the districtwide closure metric it had insisted on.

Some district insiders said Sharkey and Martinez have made headway in recent months in staying in close touch and striking a more constructive tone. They said the tenor at the negotiation table this time around was much more positive than the public exchange of fire would suggest.

Shelton noted that public support for teachers union labor actions tends to erode the longer they drag on. As a backdrop, there is growing Democratic pressure against shuttering school buildings — an imperative that national union leaders such as American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten have increasingly embraced. Pritzker and the Biden administration stayed in touch with the district and reiterated support for keeping schools open during the impasse.

“A lot of Democrats feel their party’s political future is tied to keeping schools open,” Shelton said.

Peter Cunningham, a Chicago communications consultant and a former assistant U.S. education secretary in the Obama administration, noted that it was increasingly clear Lightfoot was not backing down from her positions. Teachers were not getting paid, and some CTU members — about 15% on the eve of the agreement — were reporting to buildings in defiance of the in-person work stoppage, a development that threatened to erode solidarity long term.

Cunningham said families and teachers paid “a high price” for an agreement that did not significantly move the needle on COVID protocols, though he thinks it strikes the right balance on some issues such as virtual learning metrics.

To Brown, the agreement falls short of what many South and West side families wanted to see, including opt-out testing.

But Bruno believes the agreement will once again set the tone nationally, by affirming that districts need a road map for navigating the pandemic’s disruption now more than ever, and showing that a robust testing program and guidelines for remote learning must be in the mix.

However, community leaders such as Puente worry that this agreement, presented to the public at separate and overlapping press conferences, will not be a salve for the district’s contentious relationship with its teachers union.

She said she’s bracing for more quickly escalating tensions: “The whole city feels battered and bruised from these fights.”

Matt Barnum, Kalyn Belsha, and Amy Zimmer contributed reporting.

‘I have to accept that we lost’: Some Chicago teachers still undecided on union reopening vote

2022-01-11T23:41:09+00:00

With mixed feelings and frustration with their bosses, Chicago teachers began voting Tuesday afternoon on a tentative agreement that would end a standoff between Chicago and its powerful teachers union.

The city’s students, who missed five days of classes as the two sides negotiated over COVID safety measures to reopen schools, will return to classrooms Wednesday — but the teachers’ vote will ultimately determine whether they stay there.

Several teachers on Tuesday said they were undecided and were consulting colleagues, while others took strong positions: voting for it out of concern for students and or against it because they worried it didn’t buttress schools enough from the highly contagious omicron variant.

Following the lead of union delegates, who voted Monday night 63% to 37% to send the proposed agreement to the 25,000-member body, the union’s rank and file are expected to pass the agreement. Voting will start Tuesday afternoon and end Wednesday at 4 p.m.

A simple majority will determine the outcome.

Union leadership planned to meet with teachers Tuesday evening, and the group’s House of Delegates — which has the power to stop or start a work action and would make the call on next steps should the proposal get voted down — is scheduled to meet again Wednesday evening.

“Remember, we weren’t fighting to make something good a little better. There was zero metric,” President Jesse Sharkey said in a message to members about what the next 24 hours would bring. “Whichever way you vote, every last word of protection in that document, you fought and sacrificed to gain.”

The agreement establishes school-level metrics that will determine when campuses are flipped remotely, boosts contact tracing by paying teachers extra to fortify the district’s efforts, and sets a goal of securing 100% of parents to opt-in to COVID surveillance testing by Feb. 1 through phone banking and joint CPS-CTU efforts.

But it falls short of some of the union’s key demands: districtwide metrics for flipping schools, an opt-out program that would automatically sign students up for testing, and a temporary period of remote learning.

Teachers say the vote, even a passing one, won’t end the rancor, and as of midday Tuesday, some were still trying to decide what to do.

“This (proposal) is clearly inadequate,” said Andrew Johnson, a teacher at Westinghouse College Prep, a selective enrollment high school on Chicago’s West Side. “But I am still thinking through the consequences of rejecting this agreement.”

He said employee attendance at his school Tuesday was relatively low, and the mood was subdued, with little appetite among educators for rehashing the developments of the past week.

Johnson and other teachers expressed concerns that some of the provisions in the plan, such as paying unionized staff to step up and help with contact tracing at schools, will add another burden to a near-burned out workforce.

Johnson’s colleague, Anne Prendergast, a union delegate at the school, said she planned to vote against the measure. She said she did not trust the mayor or the district to uphold safety protections when they “go on network media and say one thing and what we are experiencing is something different.”

Leslie Russell, an English teacher at Walter Payton College Prep, also intended to vote no.

Russell is vaccinated yet recently contracted COVID; she still has a cough and congestion and is quarantined until mid-January. When schools reopened after winter break and she had to stay home sick, the students in her enrichment seminar — geared toward helping Black teens find their place at the school — were put into open gym.

Staffing shortages have forced tough choices that penalize students, she said.

“We have to literally be unable to deliver an education and then be reactive,” said Russell, who thinks the school district should pause in-person learning until the omicron spike subsides and then implement universal testing.

Her children attend a charter school where every child is tested once week. The school offered a testing drive-thru to kick off operations after winter break, a reassurance to parents like her.

Samson Widerman, who teaches English at Solorio High School on the city’s South Side, was undecided as of mid-afternoon Tuesday. While many teachers were expressing disappointment, he thought the proposal did contain some key wins for educators, most notably metrics for flipping whole schools to remote — a factor he called “vital.”

But he still had lingering concerns as the omicron variant causes numbers to surge. “I am not convinced the specific percentages in the proposal are acute enough to keep teachers, staff, and students safe,” he said.

Cooper Elementary teacher Hilario Dominguez, a CTU delegate at the Pilsen school, also remained undecided Tuesday afternoon. He expressed frustrations with the mayor’s handling of the negotiations.

Still, the union, Dominguez said, pushed the mayor on more testing, a metric on flipping schools, and masks. The fact that “we had to fight for the basics in a pandemic is outrageous,” he said.

Dominguez, who teaches students with disabilities, was “baffled” by the mayor’s stance against temporary remote learning.

Dominguez learned only minutes earlier that Mayor Lori Lightfoot had tested positive for COVID and said she did what she needed to do for herself, which was to isolate.

“I’m glad she is taking care of herself and quarantining, but I wish that would be the same decision for our families, our students, and our staff right now,” Dominguez said. “We are in danger. Rates are dangerously high.”

Teachers also wondered Tuesday how they will talk about the abrupt cancellation of school midyear with their students. After teachers voted to teach remotely last week, the city canceled classes for five days and locked teachers out of their digital accounts, severing communication with students and families.

Some teachers found workarounds to reach out to families or posted letters to social media, and about 16% of teachers reported to school buildings amid the standoff. Many others lost communication with their classes entirely.

Dr. Winnie Williams-Hall, who teaches students with disabilities at Nicholson STEM Academy in Englewood, said she planned to hold conversations with her students Wednesday so they could ask questions and express their feelings about the abrupt break.

“I plan to incorporate social emotional learning activities throughout the week and help them ease back into classroom routines and protocols,” she said.

Williams-Hall said she will vote for the proposal because students such as hers are at a “clear disadvantage” during remote learning.

“I am not opposed to remote learning,” she explained, “but I would prefer to have that in-person connection to my students.”

Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union need to come together to hold a conversation with teachers of all networks to move forward, Williams-Hall said. “I would love for there to be accountability for things that we are supposed to have in place such as equity of resources, ongoing COVID testing, and accurate and timely contact tracing.”

Despite feeling deflated in the outcome of negotiations, some teachers were resigned about returning to in-person instruction.

A teacher at Benito Juarez High School on the city’s Lower West Side, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the union, said the fight was ultimately a “loss” for teachers.

“It has been pretty upsetting to be a teacher,” they said.

Last week, the teacher voted against working remotely because they felt the call should fall on the district and the mayor to protect students and staff.

“It should be on her conscience,” the teacher said. “It shouldn’t be up to the teachers union to make that call. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of the union. I’m sick of us being the bad guys all the time.”

At the same time, the teacher said the union failed with its messaging, which should have focused on the staffing shortages stretching teachers thin.

At the Lower West Side campus, the return to school has been mired with staffing shortages. In some instances, up to three classes are being held in the auditorium. After the break, the school had 31 staffers out with COVID and empty classrooms because many students weren’t returning after the holidays, the teacher said.

Last Monday, 58% of students were in attendance and only a slight uptick to 63% before the walk-out, they said.

The district, the teacher said, did not accurately represent what was happening with testing and undercounted COVID cases at her school — a case count that put a strain on the staffing problems.

The quality of education suffers when schools aren’t fully staffed, they added.

Still, the teacher planned to vote for a return to classes.

“We tried our best to protect people in the best possible way,” they said, lamenting that teachers got “nothing” from negotiations other than masks.

“I have to accept that we lost and move on and hope people don’t get sick,” the teacher said.

Chicago, union agree to reopen schools Wednesday as rank and file weighs final deal

2022-01-11T04:09:51+00:00

Chicago Public Schools and its teachers union have agreed to restart in-person classes Wednesday after a tense standoff that canceled four days of classes for the vast majority of the district’s 330,000 students.

A tentative agreement that will bring teachers back to school Tuesday now goes to the rank and file for a vote. It includes a joint effort to boost COVID-19 surveillance testing and school-level safety metrics that would shutter individual campuses and shift them to remote learning for five days should 30% of teachers be absent for two consecutive days or 40% of students be quarantined.

The union and district leadership did not appear together to make the announcement about reopening campuses. Ballots likely will go to teachers Tuesday, union officials said.

The question of whether union members will receive pay for the four canceled days of classes will be left up to district CEO Pedro Martinez, union lawyer Robert Bloch said Monday, though the district could reschedule missed instructional days and plan to pay teachers for them, effectively making up the gap.

Chicago Public Schools did not agree to a districtwide threshold to shutter schools as the union had wanted. It also refused to implement a testing program that would automatically sign up students and require parents to opt out.

The proposal, which passed the union’s House of Delegates with 63% voting to send it to membership, comes after teachers voted last week to stop reporting to work in person and instead teach remotely — and district leaders canceled classes for four days in response.

Even as districts across the country struggled with post-winter break staffing shortages and rising case counts, the standoff in Chicago once again drew national attention for its uncommon acrimony and disruption.

Despite sharp words and seemingly intractable discord, both sides were under pressure to find a way out of the stalemate.

The third abrupt halt to learning in as many years was fueling rising parent frustration, at a time when the district is already grappling with a sharp increase in families leaving for private schools, suburban districts, and homeschooling — a development with major implications for the district’s long-term financial health.

The district and union negotiations team spent hours at the table last week, through the weekend, and on Monday, frustrating parents who said neither the district nor the union were asking families to weigh in a bid to avert a second week of uncertainty and disruption for children.

‘We worked hard to find a compromise’

Following the tentative agreement, Mayor Lori Lightfoot Monday night said parents and guardians could now “breathe a sigh of relief.”

Lightfoot reiterated the importance of in-person learning, especially after seeing the devastating impact of remote learning over the course of the pandemic.

“We know this has been very difficult for students and families,” Lightfoot said. “Our goal was to get our students back to in-person learning as quickly as possible and prevent work disruptions for the rest of the school year.”

Lightfoot said they heard parents loud and clear. “It’s been extremely helpful to hear from you,” she said. “We need you at the table, always.”

Union officials said the agreement will boost testing and contact tracing in schools, deliver more face coverings to staff and students, and boost campus-level safety metrics — but they described an arduous negotiation process and said the proposal had some shortcomings.

“We worked hard to find a compromise. I’m not going to say anyone on our team feels like this is a home run,” said union President Jesse Sharkey. “It was cold out in Chicago, we were locked out of schools, and we were going without pay and we were watching our students reach out … We tried to put together something that would work.”

Under the proposal that the union’s 25,000-person membership will weigh midweek, schools would suspend in-person learning if schoolwide teacher absences due to COVID-19 exceeded 30% — or above 25% with the use of substitutes and internal staff. During a COVID surge, a school could also flip to remote learning if 40% of students were instructed to quarantine. School-level safety committees will review school situations and vote to flip a school to remote learning — and the district will provide additional testing on those campuses.

School would resume in-person learning after five days, in accordance with recent recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois State Board of Education.

On the contentious matter of testing, the proposal states that testing will continue on campuses and that the district and union will work together to boost testing with a goal of achieving 100% participation by Feb. 1 through phone banks and stepped-up promotion of the testing program. At schools with fewer than 10% of students opting into testing, there will be some random testing. Data obtained by Chalkbeat show testing opt-in rates vary widely by campus.

The proposal also aims to fill in gaps in the district’s contact tracing program, adding school-based staff to contact tracing teams and training and paying them for the additional hours. The addition of campus-based staff to the district’s efforts will help fortify a program that principals, educators, and parents have complained has considerable lags, union leaders said.

“(Educators) know the staff, they know the students, they will have a much better time making connections and sharing it appropriately,” said Jen Johnson, the union’s chief of staff. “We think this is a critical shift.”

Martinez said he looked forward to welcoming all staff Tuesday and bringing students back Wednesday. The district was committed to the safety of students and staff and would work together, Martinez said.

The proposal, Martinez said, would strengthen current safety protocols by expanding testing and contact tracing efforts.

A long, arduous process

On Monday, union leaders described a long, arduous process that stretched six months and started before schools reopened in September.

“This agreement is only a modicum of safety,” said Stacy Davis Gates, the union’s vice president. “This should have never gotten this far. We had to go on a remote action to get more testing in our school communities in the middle of a pandemic.”

At first, it seemed both sides had dug in with irreconcilable positions.

The union demanded a test-to-return program, pointing to districts such as Washington, D.C., which had required negative COVID tests from students and employees returning from winter break amid a steep surge in coronavirus cases.

Union leadership also wanted the district to switch from a weekly student testing program families opted into to one that would require them to opt out if they did not want their children tested — an approach that has resulted in higher participation at other districts in Illinois and beyond. And the union insisted the district should spell out a metric for closing schools when the number of infections among staff and students rose.

The union blasted the district for canceling classes and locking teachers out of their accounts instead of allowing students to learn virtually until the two sides could reach an agreement. Some educators and principals also criticized a district directive to principals to try standing up in-person instruction or enrichment programs Friday if enough staff and teachers showed up.

But Lightfoot and Martinez shot back, arguing that shutting down in-person learning for an entire urban district was unconscionable, especially in light of data showing attendance and grades had dipped disproportionately for the district’s most vulnerable students during last year’s extended remote stretch.

Lightfoot said she was dead-set against testing students without their parents’ explicit permission, which she deemed “repugnant” and “immoral.” And district leaders balked at a metric that would set what they consider too low of a bar for shuttering entire schools or the district, with the inevitable disruption for families and learning.

They accused the union of holding families who need in-person learning hostage and made it clear: Teachers who did not report to work in person would not be paid.

In the face of the impasse, some schools started to welcome students back with a handful of teachers returning to classes and teaching students, an elementary school principal told Chalkbeat.

The teachers feared CTU backlash for returning back to classes, said the principal, who declined to use their name because they aren’t authorized by the district to speak with the media.

On Monday, Martinez said 16% of teachers returned to schools, allowing 159 schools to offer in-person enrichment activities and three schools to provide in-person instruction.

Families caught in standoff

The confusing messaging, late night decision-making, and acrimonious words left Chicago parents anxious and worried.

Chicago parent Megan Hasse expressed frustrations with the walkout, saying the union had “single-handedly made a decision on what is best for our children,” but acknowledged the district wasn’t blameless in the current situation.

Her 9-year-old daughter struggled “massively” during remote learning and now she needed to prioritize her child’s mental health, Hasse said.

Two years into the pandemic, Hasse said there are more resources and knowledge now on how to protect ourselves.

“We are in a different phase of the pandemic, and we need to start acting like it,” Hasse said. “We cannot move to remote every time there is a surge and definitely not on a moment’s notice.”

At a virtual press conference hosted Monday by the nonprofit Kids First, parents serving on the group’s advisory council had sharply different takes on virtual learning and COVID safety. But they were in agreement on one thing: Many parents didn’t feel that their perspectives and needs were reflected in the standoff between the mayor, district and union officials.

Luz Maria Flores, the mom of a student at Seward Elementary, said the district should provide N95 masks to all students and staff and step up testing and outreach to promote vaccination, but the union should acknowledge the hardships remote learning presents for some families.

“We need to unite as a big family,” she said in Spanish. “It’s on all of us to learn how to live in this new reality.”

Cassie Walker Burke contributed reporting.

Chicago’s mayor and teachers union say they speak for parents. Parents say no one asked them.

2022-01-11T00:06:18+00:00

KT McClure stood bundled up outside her Far North Side Chicago school in 20-degree weather Monday morning to call for reopening classrooms for in-person instruction.

But McClure, whose daughter Lucia Gonzalez is a second grader at New Field Elementary, also wants a clear metric for shutting school buildings when COVID cases spike — just as the Chicago Teachers Union has demanded.

“It shouldn’t feel like a whimsy,” she said.

McClure says parents like her don’t feel included in the increasingly heated debate between the district and the union over COVID protocols and reopening schools. It’s a perception that parents across the city echoed on Monday, the fourth day of canceled classes, as talks between the two sides continue.

Both Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the union have laid claims in recent days to safeguarding the interests of families. But some parents and students say neither the city nor the union have polled them, making it impossible to quantify where the majority of parents and students stand.

Nor has the city or the union offered a meaningful forum for parents and students to voice their opinions or brainstorm solutions. Letters to some aldermen have received canned responses, and the district, which polled families on school reopening last school year, has not tried more recently to collect citywide data on where parents stand amid the latest COVID surge.

Often, where parents stand is not a simple pro-district or pro-union proposition. McClure supports a return to in-person learning but other parents feel caught in the back-and-forth that has forced a standoff.

Some teachers — while locked out of their emails and direct communications to parents — were taking their case directly to families at the start of the week, standing outside schools to talk to families in the neighborhood; hosting small meetings with parents and students via Zoom; and posting letters to their school communities on social media.

At a virtual press conference hosted Monday by the nonprofit Kids First, parents serving on the group’s advisory council had sharply different takes on virtual learning and COVID safety. But they were in agreement on one thing: Many parents don’t feel that their perspectives and needs are reflected in the war of words between the mayor, district, and union officials.

Karonda Locust, whose children attend Cather Elementary and Uplift Community High School, believes virtual learning exacts a steep academic and mental health toll, especially in the city’s communities of color. She said the district has done a lot to put COVID safety measures in place, and she feels her children are safe at school. She said she appreciated that Uplift reopened to provide enrichment activities for students Friday, and Cather followed Monday.

In contrast, Tierra Pierson, a mom of three Chicago Public Schools students at DePriest Elementary and Clemente High School, said she kept her children home after the break because it did not feel safe amid the surge in cases. She said she was taken aback when she reported one of her children had COVID-like symptoms, and the schools encouraged her to send the other two, who are fully vaccinated, to campus.

But Locust and Pierson both said parents should have more of a voice in the standoff between the district and union.

“Our kids are used as pawns in a political battle over power and control,” Locust said. “These decisions being made are affecting our babies, not just CTU and CPS.”

Luz Maria Flores, the mom of a Seward Elementary student, said the district should provide N95 masks to all students and staff, and increase testing and outreach to promote vaccination. The union should acknowledge the hardship remote learning can be for some students and working parents.

“We need to unite as a big family,” she said in Spanish. “It’s on all of us to learn how to live in this new reality.”

At another community meeting hosted by Raise Your Hands Illinois, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, and other community organizations on Monday, parents raised concerns about school safety while highlighting unmet demands for how the city should use federal funds. The district should engage parents and students on how those funds should be used to make schools better, they said.

Rousemary Vega, a parent and organizer with Raise Your Hand, said CPS families need to feel safe and supported during the pandemic but this wasn’t the case.

“The city should be doing more in response to omicron,” Vega said. “That’s why the federal government gave the city of Chicago over $2 billion. We are here to ask: Where is the money?”

“We want transparency. Where is the money?,” she said. “Where is the parent and student involvement in the decision-making for those funds?”

Since her mother has to go to work, Lucia Gonzalez, the second grader, was scheduled to spend the rest of her Monday at a “safe haven” site at a nearby church. She said previous days there involved educational games on a tablet, recess, and coloring with other stranded children.

“I feel like we should be able to go to school in person,” she said.

Mauricio Peña contributed reporting.

Talks ‘productive’ as Chicago families wait for school reopening news

2022-01-11T04:37:04+00:00

This is a developing story.

9:00 p.m. A deal in the works

A tentative agreement that will bring teachers back to school Tuesday now goes to the rank and file for a vote. Read more here.

6:56 p.m. Talks ‘productive’

In a brief statement Monday night, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Pedro Martinez said Monday negotiations were productive.

“We are waiting to hear back from the CTU. We will update parents, students and members of the public as soon as we are as able,” they said in the statement.

The statement came as the Chicago Teachers Union convened a meeting with its delegates.

5:00 p.m. No decision on classes for Tuesday

As negotiations between the district and its teachers union stretch on, Chicago Public Schools said no decision had yet been made regarding classes Tuesday.

The district said in a tweet that it remained in negotiations and would provide an update as soon as possible.

The announcement came as some schools began notifying parents and students that classes would be canceled yet again on Tuesday.

Both Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the union have laid claims in recent days to safeguarding the interests of families. But some parents and students said Monday that neither the city nor the union have polled them, making it impossible to quantify where the majority of families stand. Read more here.

4:00 p.m. Some parents seek third party relief

As some Chicago schools started to send out cancellation notices for Tuesday, some parents turned to the state labor board for help.

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board told Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Mila Koumpilova Monday that several Chicago parents have sent emails urging the board to act swiftly on dueling complaints the district and the Chicago Teachers Union filed last week.

But the board may not be a source of quick relief. The Labor Relations Board could decide as early as later this week to dismiss the complaints or let them go forward. But even if it ultimately finds later this month that injunctive relief (such as requiring teachers to report in-person) is merited, a circuit court judge will need to sign off.

Judges are often unaccustomed to these cases and could take some time to rule. They might be reluctant to step in the middle of a labor dispute, a board spokesman said. “It’s usually better if the two sides settle their own disputes.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona spoke at an Indianapolis public high school on Monday about the importance of keeping schools open for in-person learning. Chalkbeat Indiana bureau chief Stephanie Wang followed up by email to ask if the federal government was involved behind the scenes to try to find resolution between Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union.

A spokesperson said the department had been in contact with the district and the American Federation of Teachers, the national union to which CTU is a member, and was encouraging both sides to come to a resolution using federal stimulus money.

9:00 a.m. Advocacy efforts underway as standoff enters fourth day

As the standoff over Chicago Public Schools COVID protocols enters its fourth day of no classes, parents and community groups are gearing up to host a string of events Monday to call for an end to the impasse.

The district and the Chicago Teachers Union continued talks until about 9:30 Sunday evening but were unable to arrive at an agreement. The district announced shortly before 8 p.m. that classes Monday would be canceled though some schools are working to set up enrichment programs and other activities for students this week. At an early Monday press conference, union leaders said the two sides remain far apart on key issues.

Union members voted last Tuesday evening to stop reporting to work in person until the district and union reach an agreement on stepped-up COVID safety measures or the omicron surge subsides. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and district officials, who have argued that a districtwide return to remote learning would unnecessarily disrupt learning, moved to cancel classes, blocking teachers’ access to their work emails and virtual classrooms.

Talks between the district and union resumed at 10:30 this morning.

On a frigid morning, parents demanding a prompt return to in-person classes gathered at New Field Elementary in Rogers Park, Phillip Rogers Fine Arts, and Byrne Elementary in Oak Park.

The nonprofit Kids First Chicago is scheduled to host a virtual meeting with parents at 11:30. A press release said the parents, whose children attend schools on the West and South sides, feel their perspectives have been overlooked in the debate.

Eight community groups, including the parent advocacy groups Raise Your Hand and Illinois Families for Public Schools, are planning to hold a virtual event at noon in support of a slate of demands titled “Trust, Learning, Care” that the groups first promoted last spring. Those include mandating weekly COVID testing for all students and staff, with the option for families to opt out, and hiring more mental health professionals and nurses.

The teachers union said educators would fan out in neighborhoods across the city today to canvass families. Car caravans would then head downtown, where they would converge on City Hall at noon.

At a Monday morning press conference outside Spry Elementary in Little Village, Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey said that bargaining had reached a “serious” phase — “that’s good news,” he said — but key points of disagreement remained, including a metric for closing schools when COVID rates spike. Teachers said some classrooms at the school had been flipped to remote before winter break, and that attendance had been high.

Read our recent coverage:

Here’s where CPS and CTU have reached agreement — and a list of issues where there is ongoing disagreement.
Here’s a first look at data that show school-level vaccination and surveillance testing opt-in rates by campus and why these numbers are at the heart of debate.
How Chicago’s abrupt shutdown impacted parents, students, and educators
Illinois’ state school board wants schools to stay open. It’s an uphill battle.

Chicago teachers union issues new proposal, but mayor says no deal

2022-01-08T20:25:53+00:00

The Chicago Teachers Union is now calling for remote learning starting Wednesday, a return to in-person classes the following week, an opt-out testing program that would randomly test students and staff, and a metric for flipping the entire district to remote learning in its latest proposal to the district.

The union released its offer publicly Saturday in a bid to put pressure on Mayor Lori Lightfoot and district leaders after three days of no classes in the city. But a metric for districtwide remote learning and a testing program that would require families to explicitly opt out are both conditions that Lightfoot has said she cannot accept.

Indeed, the mayor and district CEO Pedro Martinez promptly released a statement suggesting the latest proposal does not cut it.

“Students need to be back in person as soon as possible,” the statement said. “That’s what parents want. That’s what the science supports. We will not relent.”

Union members voted Tuesday to stop reporting to work in person until the district reaches an agreement with the CTU or the omicron surge subsides.

The union is backing off a demand that all students get tested before returning to school buildings, acknowledging the inherent logistical challenges. But it wants employees to get tested next week — and it’s calling for randomly testing 10% of all students and staff weekly after that, what union president Jesse Sharkey described as “a significant compromise” on testing.

The latest proposal preserves a demand that the district as a whole transition to remote learning if conditions laid out in a spring 2021 agreement with the district are met; those include steep increases in the positivity rate over the course of a week and a rate of more than 10% at the end of that week. (Chicago’s positivity rate was 21% on Friday, but Sharkey said it is unlikely the city would see the continued steep growth required to shutter school buildings in the coming weeks.)

The proposal also includes staff and student absence metrics that could trigger a campus closure and transition to remote learning.

“This impasse is hurting students,” Sharkey said at a press conference Saturday afternoon with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “We are suggesting a way out of the impasse, and we hope (the mayor) takes it up on it.”

Sharkey criticized plans to reopen school buildings for enrichment activities next week, which he described as providing glorified “babysitting.”

Union leaders said under their proposal, members would return next week to hand out computers for remote learning and help get students signed up for testing and vaccinations. Union members would also join new contact tracing teams at each school to address delays in notifying staff and families about positive cases.

Jackson said he aims to help broker an agreement, saying Lightfoot’s stance that in-person learning must be prioritized is “solid,” but teachers’ demands for safer learning conditions are important as well.

Teachers at some schools began releasing letters directly to families over the weekend.

At Lane Tech, the city’s largest high school, teachers reiterated the union’s proposal in a letter: “We realize the actions of CPS have greatly disrupted learning this week and we assure you that all of our efforts right now are aimed at continuing teaching and learning together in a safe manner.”

Chicago is poised to start next week with most schools closed, and frustration is building

2022-01-07T22:17:38+00:00

Schools started letting families know Friday afternoon that classes will be canceled for the fourth day Monday as the district and its teachers union again struggled to reach a COVID safety agreement.

Many schools said they planned to be closed. But late Friday the district said it would continue talks with the union “day and night” over the weekend, aiming to resume in-person learning as early as Monday. It said families would be updated over the weekend.

Both sides are under pressure to find a way out of the stalemate. Teachers who are not reporting to school buildings are not getting paid. The district might have to make up these missed days by either shortening spring break or cutting into the summer vacation.

And the third abrupt interruption to learning in as many years is fueling parent frustration, at a time when the district has already seen a sharp increase in families leaving for private schools, suburban districts, and homeschooling — a development with major implications for the district’s long-term financial health.

In a brief statement, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Pedro Martinez said bargaining continued into Friday evening.

“The sessions remain productive but must be concluded this weekend,” the statement said.

A group of 25 state legislators on Friday called for the two sides to reach a resolution and said they were working with the governor’s office to step up vaccine uptake and bring additional testing to schools in an effort to step up safety measures. They urged Chicago Public Schools to agree to short-term remote learning while the two sides develop “mutually agreed upon” safety metrics.

The district’s principals, who are not unionized, have been caught in the middle of the impasse, charged with coming up with enrichment activities if they can on short notice. They have fielded calls from frantic parents and stood at the door of school buildings in the morning to hand out lists of “safe haven” sites, such as churches, where families can access child care.

“It’s mass chaos,” said one principal of a South Side elementary, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the district. “Sadly, we’ve been here before.”

She said principals have not been consulted in the district’s proposals and were surprised by the district’s midweek announcement that some school buildings would be open.

“It’s really hard when we have no voice in the decisions,” she said.

To reopen, she said, the district must fix its contact tracing program and set reasonable metrics so principals can quickly flip their entire building to remote learning when staffing shortages get too high. Many families at her school, she said, are pushing for a period of remote learning out of fear of the rising COVID positivity rate.

A letter penned by the district’s principals group this week criticized the district’s call for principals to try reopening for classes or activities — “an ad hoc reactionary response that creates inequities that are predictable along social and economic lines.”

The union has demanded a test-to-return program, pointing to much smaller districts such as Washington, DC, which had required negative COVID tests from students and employees returning from winter break amid a steep surge in coronavirus cases. Union leadership also wants the district to switch from a weekly student testing program families opted into to one that would require them to opt out if they did not want their children tested. And the union insisted the district should spell out a metric for closing schools when the number of infections among staff and students rose.

District leaders have argued that shutting down in-person learning for an entire urban district was unconscionable, especially in light of data showing attendance and grades had dipped disproportionately for the district’s most vulnerable students during last year’s extended remote stretch. Lightfoot said she was dead-set against testing students without their parents’ explicit permission, which she deemed “repugnant” and “immoral.” And district leaders balked at a metric that would set what they consider too low of a bar for shuttering entire schools or the district, with the inevitable disruption for families and learning.

Parents and students were bracing for another week of uncertainty and interrupted learning. At the nonprofit Brighton Park Neighborhood Council on the city’s Southwest Side, parents are discussing the possibility of organizing child care support for families who are unable to stay home with their children.

“Parents are really trying to come together and support one another,” said the nonprofit’s Jazmin Cerda. Although the group is supportive of the teacher’s union, she said, “We cannot forget that the people affected daily by CPS and CTU decisions are the families.”

The council held a virtual meeting with 75 parents Thursday that ended up stretching out for three hours as they voiced anxieties and asked questions, said Cerda, the mom of a first grader in the district.

Cerda kept her daughter at home on Monday and Tuesday because her family didn’t feel safe sending her to school amid the surge. Like Cerda, some parents in that virtual meeting want a remote learning option for their children. Others want to see stepped-up testing, more robust contact tracing, and the return of the daily COVID screener (CPS said schools will now be able to bring it back) to feel more comfortable sending their children to school.

In contrast, Chris Brusznicki, the father of four students at Franklin Fine Arts Center, a magnet school on the North Side, said his family will sit out remote learning if the district reverts to it. He said his second grader had a panic attack and started sobbing when he heard earlier this week that his school might bring back virtual instruction.

Brusznicki was outraged that parents like him went to bed Tuesday not knowing how the teachers union vote came out and whether schools would be open the following morning — what he described as a “power move” by the union inconsiderate of working families.

“My kids are emblematic of how terrible remote learning was,” he said. “We can roll with the punches; that’s not the case for thousands of parents.”

‘Are we going to school?’: What Chicago’s abrupt shutdown looks like for students, parents, educators

2022-01-06T00:39:04+00:00

A rising COVID positivity rate due to the omicron variant. A fast-turnaround teachers union vote to force remote learning. Chicago’s abrupt school shutdown. In mere days, the lives of Chicago educators, students, and families have been upended.

Chicago Public Schools has not yet said what learning will look like over the coming days and weeks, as union officials and district leaders return to the bargaining table to talk proposals and counter proposals. At issue are COVID safety measures and metrics that would govern operations of the nation’s third largest school district for the rest of the school year.

Chalkbeat Chicago and student journalist Norah Hendrickson checked in with several educators, parents, and students about how this moment of uncertainty feels and the potential impact of the suspension. Here’s what they told us.

Cristina Hernandez’s 4-year-old son, who recently tested positive for COVID.

Cristina Hernandez, parent of a preschooler

Hernandez’s 4-year-old son has been at home since winter break because he tested positive for COVID last week. Even if he had tested negative, Hernandez would likely not have sent him to class because he is too young to be vaccinated and she has not been able to find him a high filtration mask recommended by public health officials.

But it didn’t matter since many students didn’t show up to class on Monday, according to what other parents told Hernandez.

Even though school buildings shut down because the Chicago Teachers Union voted to stop in-person teaching for safety reasons, Hernandez is supportive of teachers.

“I believe that like our kids all come first,” she said, “and I believe that the teachers are trying to do what’s best.”

With COVID cases spiking, Hernandez still worries if her child will be safe in classrooms after school starts again. But she knows being in school will be good for him – academically and for his mental health.

— Samantha Smylie

N, parent of a middle school student who attends Bell Elementary

With the Chicago Teachers Union vote coming late last night without little to no time to prepare, the sudden shock of not having school today was upsetting for N.

N — who asked that Chalkbeat not use her full name — said that Chicago Public Schools, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and the teachers union should have come together to create a plan that shows respect for parents and their priorities.

“When it really comes down to it, if it really is a priority, Mayor Lightfoot should have called all the health workers in the city available to us and said ‘We’re gonna test everybody’ on the first day,” said N. “They’ve got resources, but they’re not being utilized.”

While she understands the calls from the teachers for safe schools amid a spike in positive COVID cases, she wished she had 24 hours to prepare. As a working parent, she had to call off her job.

Her son woke up Wednesday morning an hour later than usual, but was upset, saying “It’s horrible to not be able to go to school.” He spent the day working lightly on projects for school and reaching out to friends to see if they were available to hang out.

N and her son got through the first day of the standoff, but they are nervous about what the rest of the week will look like.

— Samantha Smylie

Robert and Nariana Castillo with their two children, Mateo and Mila. Their children both attend Talcott Fine Arts and Museum Magnet.

Nariana Castillo, mother of a kindergartener and first grader at Talcott Fine Arts and Museum Magnet

At the dinner table Sunday evening, Nariana Castillo gently broke some news to her two young children: They would sit out the following day’s return to school after winter break. Castillo and her husband, Robert, had decided COVID was just too rampant in the city. The children, Mila and Mateo, had already missed the last week before the break because Mateo’s class had to quarantine and skipped Christmas and New Year’s celebrations because relatives got sick. (Chalkbeat profiled the Castillo family in a first-day-of-school story.)

Now, in the kitchen of the family’s McKinley Park home, there was disappointment and apprehension. Mila, Castillo’s first grader, had especially relished in-person school. Then, she had an idea: They could create a schedule for school at home and post it on the fridge, restoring some of the school day’s structure.

They did just that. On Monday morning, Mila donned a favorite dress and was ready for school with her mother and brother by 7 a.m. They have since watched YouTube videos about deep-sea creatures, painted, built Lego structures, worked out virtually with Castillo’s friends, and conducted a kinetic fan science experiment.

The district has not said how many students were absent this week; a principals group said it believes as many as a third were, based on a survey of school leaders on 225 campuses.

Castillo says she was planning to reassess her decision to keep her kids home before next week — when news came that school once again had come to a halt amid a stalemate over COVID protocols between the district and its teachers union. She says she sympathizes with educators’ safety concerns. A stay-at-home mom, she also feels for parent friends who don’t have the option of remaining home with their children.

Now that classes are canceled, her children are no longer racking up unexcused absences. But a sense of uncertainty has deepened.

Castillo says she hopes the district will return to virtual learning — but for only a short while.

“I don’t think anyone is a huge fan of remote — students, parents, teachers,” she said. “It’s so frustrating as a parent because you just know CPS and CTU are not going to see eye to eye.”

— Mila Koumpilova

Anika Matthews, mother of a fifth grader at National Teacher Academy

Anika Matthews started awake Wednesday when she got a robocall from Chicago Public Schools, with the news she had anxiously awaited the previous night before giving up and going to bed. There would be no classes that day.

Mathews got out of bed and went to talk with her daughter, Paninah.

“Are we going to school?” the girl asked as soon as she saw her mom. “Are we doing remote?”

Matthews told her that they would once again brush up a routine they had perfected during a largely virtual last school year and a November spent almost entirely in quarantine: Paninah would spend the day in the office of her mother, an attorney.

The girl has been thrilled to be reunited with all her classmates this past fall — but it has been a challenging run for the family. Substitute teachers have stepped in repeatedly, and once, when no sub could be found, a support staffer covered the classroom. Then, November brought back-to-back quarantines after a student and an educator tested positive.

“The whole semester has been very, very stressful,” Matthews said. “Our school has done the best they can.”

Matthews said Paninah’s teachers sent materials for remote learning home with students Tuesday, and she is grateful her daughter is prepared. After a Wednesday sharing an office with a bored and restless youngster, Matthews hopes virtual learning will return Thursday — followed by a quick agreement between the district and its teachers union.

But given the unpredictability of the virus and the district’s staffing crunch, she is bracing for a rough winter and spring.

— Mila Koumpilova

Megan Camacho is a senior at Lane Tech College Prep High School.

Megan Camacho, high school senior at Lane Tech College Prep High School

When she heard schools were going to shut down again, Megan Camacho realized she was potentially poised to spend more of her high school career in remote learning flux than in class — a depressing prospect. Fall’s reopening had given her the opportunity to salvage her senior year and finish out with her peers. Now, that seemed to be in jeopardy.

Camacho has mixed feelings about the shutdown. She thinks the crowded hallways in her school — the largest in the state, with 4,400 students — present risks to students. A temporary shift to virtual learning seems reasonable as COVID rates rise due to the omicron variant, but she’s worried about a remote period stretching past the eight day timeline the union has laid out. (The union resolution asked members to vote to stay remote until Jan. 18, but the city has not yet agreed to that.)

She is working on her college essays and eager for teacher feedback – much easier in person, she says.

“In a remote situation, having to ask a teacher a question can be hard. Some days you are feeling antisocial or anxious or you don’t want to interrupt their spiel,” she said. “Even asking after class, we have a tight virtual passing period of five minutes where you can run to the bathroom or get water. It’s hard to talk to a teacher online.”

One bright spot is her campus newspaper.

Since things have shifted online before, the editors have figured out how to communicate remotely.

“Obviously we lose the classroom experience of pitching and scheduling and laying out the paper,” she said — but there’s no shortage of stories to write at the moment. “We’re very focused on this issue.”

— Cassie Walker Burke

Ajibola Junaid is a senior at Wendall Phillips High School.

Ajibola Junaid, high school senior at Wendell Phillips High School

Ajibola Junaid sat in her Englewood home Wednesday with her school closed and her paid internship at the University of Chicago Trauma Center paused because of rising COVID rates. She has witnessed the wrath of COVID firsthand at the trauma center.

She says she’s glad the city’s teachers union has pushed to temporarily close school buildings.

“We don’t know what people do after school or where they go,” she said.

But remote learning has proven difficult in the past, and the lockout of teachers from their accounts feels like it’s punishing students.

“I need my teachers to send my transcripts and letters of recommendation to schools,” she said. “Applications are closing soon. I honestly don’t know what to do. Communications from home with teachers are extremely difficult.”

One safety issue weighing on Junaid’s mind is the lack of enforcement over social distancing and masking rules at her school. Since an outsider recently snuck past the front desk and started a fight with a student, students have been required to leave their hooded sweatshirts in the auditorium each morning. The auditorium gets crowded, and it’s hard to social distance.

“The school needs to enforce more rules and space out students,” she said.

She’d like to see remote learning continue until the omicron spread slows. She’d also like her school to figure out ways to address students’ mental health needs virtually.

“Last year all the school cared about was our academics,” she said, “but there are so many students who have issues going on with them.”

— Cassie Walker Burke

Maggie Clark is a junior at Jones College Prep.

Maggie Clark, high school junior at Jones College Prep

During winter break, high school junior Maggie Clark contracted COVID and recovered, so she was ready to reunite with friends. She was disheartened to see that school had been canceled on Wednesday and remote learning was a possibility.

“I was upset that we weren’t able to go to school because today was a perfect opportunity for us to go,” said Clark. “I feel like there was no reason why we had to stay home.”

She doesn’t think online learning is sustainable in the long run.

“It will definitely impact students’ mental health,” Clark said. “It’s very hard for students to be engaged in school without any social interaction with teachers or other students.”

On Wednesday, she was using the cancellation to spend time with friends and revise an English essay. But every few minutes, she went online and to Twitter to keep up with the latest news about what school will look like in the coming days.

“I would like to see more information being available to parents and students because I feel like they’re the people being most affected by this issue,” said Clark.

As decisions get made, she hopes students are on the forefront of the teachers’ union mind.

“I feel that CTU isn’t taking an interest in what the parents and students need,” Clark said. “They’re putting the needs or feelings of teachers before the students or parents and that’s unacceptable.”

— Norah Hendrickson

Marley Olivera, 8th Grade Language Arts and Social Science teacher at Melville Fuller School of Excellence

Marley Olivera’s eighth grade students were supposed to spend this week learning about heroes – comparing the fictional Black Panther of Marvel Comics with real-life civil rights icons such as John Lewis and Fred Hampton.

Instead, on Wednesday morning, Olivera, who teaches language arts and social science, tried to log onto Google Classroom only to find herself locked out. She tried her Chicago Public Schools email. Locked out. Other district learning apps. Locked out.

The Melville Fuller School of Excellence teacher had no way to contact her students. No way to make sure they had work to do. No way to check if they were safe or shaken by the standoff between the Chicago Teachers Union and the school district.

So, Olivera snuck into her third floor classroom, grabbed papers and packets and Post-it notes – anything that might help her students navigate the next few days without classes – and dropped off the materials at the school’s front desk. That way, she hopes, any student who needs the supplies can get them.

Even before she and other union members voted to stop in-person teaching over the district’s COVID protocols, Olivera says, school was far from normal.

The week before winter break, her classes were quarantined after COVID exposure.

This week, barely a handful of students had come to school. In one class, only eight of 24 made it in – the rest stayed home because they were sick or quarantined or because fearful parents chose not to send them.

The students who showed up were nervous about contracting COVID, and spent a good chunk of time wiping down desks and washing their hands. Olivera tried to bolster their spirits, but she also worried.

She hopes the standoff ends quickly and the district agrees to better contact tracing, wider testing, and remote learning for two weeks, until the latest COVID surge subsides.

“It is true that in-person learning is the best-case scenario,” said Olivera, an eight-year teaching veteran. “But, it’s also true that, right now, school may not be the safest for all parties involved.”

– Mónica Rhor

Juanita Nave is a math teacher at South Shore International High School.

Juanita Nave, math teacher at South Shore International High School

Juanita Nave kept willing a miracle to happen. She kept hoping that somehow Chicago Public Schools leaders and the teachers union could agree on COVID protocols.

The math teacher at South Shore International High School willed it as she prepared to return to school after winter break, while she checked emails from her students, making sure they were on track with an extra credit assignment. She willed it as she packed the KN95 mask a colleague had given her.

She willed it even as she thought of the COVID surge swirling around her, leaving many of the desks in her classroom empty as students got sick or were quarantined, flooding her inbox with worried notes from parents, and filling the 55-year-old with unease because of the Type 1 diabetes that puts her at high risk.

Nave pulled for a miracle right up until she watched Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez at a livestreamed press conference on Tuesday night, just hours before the teachers union vote.

Lightfoot seemed so angry, thought Nave, so lacking in empathy for the city’s teachers. Nave knew then that no miracle was coming.

“She’s trying to stick it to us again and doesn’t care about us or the children,” Nave said Wednesday, as the 29-year educator sank into a mix of relief, concern, and frustration.

With COVID “popping up” all around her, Nave had worried about spending six hours in a classroom with more than two dozen students, with lax mask-wearing and no room to social distance. She wants the district to agree to flip to remote learning for two weeks, or until COVID case numbers subside.

But she is also worried about her students, whom she is now unable to reach because CPS teachers have been locked out of district accounts.

That special project researching mathematicians of color could boost their grades. But, until the standoff ends or teachers are allowed to access remote learning tools, she can’t help them.

“They are on their own,” Nave said. “They are being cut off from us.”

– Mónica Rhor