Chicago schools under pressure go remote

In a swift turnabout Chicago Public Schools announced on Wednesday that they were going to begin the new school year completely remote, rather than the hybrid version it had approved with input from local health officials and a poll of parents and caregivers.

The move has the support of many teachers that are fearing a return to the classroom; especially those that are older, or have pre-existing health conditions to consider, but some are also saying that CPS, as well as Mayor Lori Lightfoot caved under the threat of a threatened strike vote from the Chicago Teachers Union, that had already decided to present the issue for a vote in their House of Delegates.

Mayor Lightfoot

It’s no secret that CTU has no love for the mayor, and in turn, Janice Jackson, the school superintendent, the former because they backed her rival, Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle, and the latter as being in cahoots with ousted former head, Forrest Claypool.

The resulting bad blood has spilled into the arguments on how and when to begin the new school year for elementary and high school students, and then there is the memory of the recent strike, where there were chants of “Lightfoot get on the right foot!” and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, coming to town and proclaiming, “We’re going to teach the new mayor a lesson!”

While those voices have receded into the background, the political winds have not abated and the harsh words of Stacy Davis Gates during the mayoral campaign also remain in memory..

To be fair, there were many understandable fears on both sides of the fence, but the specter of another teachers strike amidst the pandemic and its grip on public health, plus the increasing homicide rate would have created a public relations nightmare with the world watching, and President Trump sending in federal help, with a major tweet about the demise of a great city, for all to hear.

Sharkey’s own tweet seemed to secure the enmity: “. We have to strike or threaten to strike to be heard, but when we fight, we win.” 

Mr. Sharkey

The mayor on the other hand struck a more unified tone when she said, “The decision to begin the 2020-2021 school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we've received from parents and families,” said Lightfoot in a statement.

Politics aside, and that is only momentarily, Jackson has promised that the new remote learning model will be one that is vastly improved from the earlier effort in March, which faced a variety of technical and accessible issues, and that many families did not have the necessary hardware, or access, needed for remote learning.

This time there will be an emphasis on teacher training for remote instruction, plus the baselines seen with in-person learning: accountability on both sides of the desk and including attendance, to name but a few.

“CPS’ remote learning plan must vastly improve on student and family experiences from the spring, and experts on the ground — our members — must be equal partners with the district in crafting those remote learning plans,” Sharkey said.

With legitimate safety concerns, the city’s health commissioner, Allison Arwady, noted “we’ve added between 80 and 100 cases and not seen signs that turning around makes us concerned.”

Also concerned were many teachers who in a Chicago Tribune poll said some of the following in reaction to the initial news: :

“What if a student or educator dies? Or what if a 14 year old comes to school with COVID and is asymptomatic, passes it onto his best friend and kills his best friend's mom?”

“What people don’t realize, outside of actual classroom instruction, is there is a huge nurturing portion of pre K that outsiders normally aren’t privy to.”

“These students who are missing school right now will move past this. . . and may even benefit from experiencing this unusual time in history. The greatest education in the world will mean nothing to our students if they are dead.”

Many of those teachers may not have been comforted by the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci who told a collection of educators in a recent virtual town hall meeting, “In many respects, unfortunately, though this may sound a little bit scary and hard, I don’t mean it to be that way, is that you’re actually going to be part of the experiment of the learning curve of what we need to know.”

Dr. Fauci

Cross infections cannot be ruled out, and the emphasis on masks and social distancing might not have worked in the lower grades, and the probability of a hybrid model, still a possibility for Nov. 9, maybe a nod to that reality.

Of course, there are those that advocate for the role of social interaction in K through 5 classes to help them form social skills later on, and as a developmental tool, and this has been adopted by the American Pediatric Association.

The concern is still there and in some southwestern states there have been accusations that with in person learning, there might be blood on the hands of school administrators.

On the other side of the equation, a report from the National Academy of Sciences, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also underscores this point, but also said that “health risks to school personnel and students’ families,” should be take into consideration, but also that a partnership and task force should be considered to address the costs.

For Chicago with its racial, and financial polarization, not to mention that over 90 percent of the student body in its public schools are black and brown decreases the support that might be garnered in a whiter and wealthier city.

With a $700 billion deficit in the city budget, simply paying for the costs of cleaning alone, is problematic and one of the sticking points in the Congressional debate for another rescue package, is the size of the increase for state and local governments that the Republican Senate has balked at, and that the Democrats have advocated for, in situations, such as these, in dealing with the pandemic.

In a joint study the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital and the University of Chicago noted that children under five years old, “with COVID-19 have a higher viral load than older children and adults, which may suggest greater transmission, as we see with respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV.”

Specifically, they noted that those children “with mild to moderate COVID 19 have much higher levels of genetic material for the virus in the nose compared to older children and adults.”

While they are careful to note that the study was no proof positive that children spread the virus as much as adults, “but it is a possibility.”