Chalkbeat

What’s next for the Illinois Department of Early Childhood? Secretary Teresa Ramos gives a sneak peak.

2026-07-01T10:01:00+00:00

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The Illinois Department of Early Childhood is officially open after years of development by state and local leaders.

The Wednesday launch serves as the first major milestone for the fledgling agency, which is tasked with consolidating most early childhood services previously split across three state departments. Despite the behemoth undertaking to house early childhood programs under one roof, the hard work has only just begun.

At the Illinois Department of Early Childhood’s helm is Teresa Ramos, the first secretary of the new agency. Ramos, who earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, most recently worked as the first assistant deputy governor for education in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. Before that, she held leadership positions at education nonprofits Illinois Action for Children and Advance Illinois.

Chalkbeat sat down with Ramos last week just before she addressed a lecture hall of providers, educators, and advocates attending a conference put on by Northwestern University’s Early Childhood Research Alliance of Chicago. The interview was forward-facing, aimed at getting Ramos’ perspective on the new department’s future beyond its July 1 start date.

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

As you’re rolling out the department, one of the main things is getting information out to families and providers. What is your plan over the next year to make sure that families and providers are informed about the department and know how to get the services they need?

We have, since the fall of 2023, been listening to families and providers about what they want. We have been really clear about setting up multiple ways of communicating and receiving communication from families. So we have work groups, we have our own internal and external infrastructure. We have conversations with you and others locally, and then preparing letters to providers. We sent one out last month, and then we’ll send one out to families in a couple of days.

Our short-term goal is a seamless transition, which means families shouldn’t really feel a big disruption in their services or care. They should feel like where they’ve gone before is where they can go again, and over time it should feel easier to navigate. For childcare providers who are out there supporting those families directly, we want to make it easier for them to do that work.

Obviously, the department doesn’t exist in a bubble. We’re in a time where, at the federal level, things are volatile, especially in the childcare and special education sector. How are you approaching leadership of this new department given this tumultuous period?

The volatility at the federal level means a lot of uncertainty and confusion for parents, but especially providers who might get information from a Tweet or commentary on the news. We have been really intentional about continuing to collaborate with the State Board of Education, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Children and Family Services, to make sure that we are all aligned and using every communications vehicle possible to share what we know definitively and what we don’t know.

That way, we are limiting the confusion and noise, and again, we become this place where providers and parents can go to ask their questions and get them answered. That’s how we’re managing that volatility in practice. I think, should it turn into our worst fears, there might be cuts or changes in priorities, meaning our programs will look very different than they look today.

With the new state budget going into effect at the same time as the Illinois Department of Early Childhood rolling out, there were some programs that did get an increase in funding. Others didn’t, they were just kept at a flat rate. What’s your vision for the new department’s role in advocating for early childhood funding at the state level to make sure programs are meeting families’ needs?

Our role is to listen to families’ wants and needs, and to understand what it takes for providers to deliver that across the racial, regional, cultural, linguistic diversity of the state. It’s also figuring out how to orient our grants, contracts, and funding to be aligned to that, and be in a cycle of continuous improvement, continuous listening as families’ needs and dynamics change.

We have to then take that information and say, ‘OK, this is what it would take to make sure that this is not a one size fits all program that only works for some.’ It’s a program that has to work in a rural community, in Chicago, across the diversity. So our job is to listen and really try to understand the costs, and do that in partnership with the field. We will share that with the many decision-makers in state government — the agency, the governor’s office, the General Assembly — to get incremental progress, which I see in the investment in early intervention and our operating infrastructure this fiscal year.

I’m curious what this role means to you personally given the significance of leading this department. How do you feel about taking that on?

It is an honor to get to do this work every day. I love it. It is so purpose driven, and I have a team of folks who are really early childhood education and care public servants. They want to work to make government services work for other people, and that fuels all of the work.

I’m also a mom of a 6-year-old. It is hard to juggle being a mom with a full-time job and having a 6-year-old and care options and piecing those together. I want to make it simpler. I understand the juggle, and it’s not even the most extreme for me. I know we can do better. I want to be accountable and responsible for doing better to drive equity and efficiency, and ultimately programs that work for everybody across the diversity of the state.

In a year from now, what in your mind would be considered an accomplishment that shows you’ve done your job well running the Illinois Department of Early Childhood?

We will have turned on July 1 into a central place of truth for the field, for parents, and for providers on where to get accurate information. In a year from now, it will feel like people know where to go to ask a question and someone is accountable to get them an answer or to keep them updated on that. That really leads our orientation toward serving the field.

I hope by next year at this time, we should see a launch of new technologies that support an improved operation infrastructure. Nothing will be done, but we’ll probably be in some user testing with parents and providers to make sure that how we are transforming how people engage with the state or our contract and grant partners is better.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois opens a new agency handling services for kids under 5. Here’s what it means for families.

2026-07-01T10:00:00+00:00

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Illinoisans raising young children now have a one-stop shop to get assistance for most of their needs — including childcare, early intervention, and preschool — thanks to a new state agency that opened Wednesday.

Three years after its inception, the Illinois Department of Early Childhood officially launches today, marking the start of its mission to streamline services for families. Instead of splitting programs across three state agencies, the Department of Early Childhood will house most of the services Illinois’ youngest children have relied on for decades.

Illinois now joins a growing list of other states that have opened their own agencies dedicated to providing early childhood services. But unlike most of its peer departments across the country, the Illinois Department of Early Childhood is entering its inaugural year amid a much more unpredictable federal landscape, especially in regard to Head Start and childcare subsidies.

The agency is headed by Secretary Teresa Ramos, who will oversee more than 500 staffers. Those include about 340 employees who will transfer from the state’s Department of Human Services, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the State Board of Education.

Illinois Department of Early Childhood Secretary Teresa Ramos answers a question from an attendee at the Northwestern University Early Childhood Research Alliance of Chicago's research conference in Chicago on June 25, 2026.

While Wednesday’s launch marks a milestone for state officials, who have a $86 million operating budget to work with, progress on improving historically labyrinthine services won’t happen overnight. In the coming months, the department will continue to roll out new initiatives — meaning families and providers will need to stay up-to-date on changes that could affect them.

Still, understanding the role of the new agency might feel overwhelming for families and providers unaware of the change. Here’s what we do — and don’t — know about the Illinois Department of Early Childhood so far.

Why is Illinois creating a new department for early learning and care?

Magda Zalewska, a mother to three young children from Romeoville, has wanted the intricacies of Illinois’ fragmented early childhood services to be simplified for a while. She’s become all too familiar with waiting on the phone for hours trying to get an answer about one of her children’s benefits while working a full-time job.

“I’ve been dealing with the system for half a decade, and it’s just very treacherous from a parental perspective,” she said. “Hearing that there’s change coming to the system is very relieving.”

Experiences like Zalewska’s are largely what prompted the formation of the Illinois Department of Early Childhood. Policymakers had long known how “bewildering” parents found the early childhood system in Illinois, but the state had always lacked a “whole system approach” to address those concerns, said Elliot Regenstein, a Foresight Law + Policy firm partner who specializes in early education.

Then came the pandemic, which only made it clearer that the state’s approach to early childhood was “never as coherent as it needs to be,” Regenstein said.

Edna Navarro Vidaurre is a regional council manager for Birth to Five Illinois’ Region 1-A, which encompasses Chicago and is a part of a broader network of 39 regions that provides community feedback for the state’s early childhood policymaking process. In her role, she often speaks with families, who she said often describe the tangle of early childhood services as a “spaghetti noodle.”

“It’s like a spider web, and so all of it is so complicated,” she said. “At the end of the day, the parents don’t really care where the money’s coming from. They just want to get into a program.”

In 2023, Pritzker announced his intent to create the Illinois Department of Early Childhood, which was shortly followed by a bill from state lawmakers codifying it into law in 2024. That legislation kickstarted the multi-year process to build the department, which opened up opportunities for community input on what people wanted out of the agency, said Bela Moté, president of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago and chair of the department’s transition advisory committee.

“Historically, we as a state came to providers and parents and community members at the end of a design process,” Moté said. “This kind of flipped it to say, we actually need to design it with them.”

What programs will be under the Illinois Department of Early Childhood?

The Illinois Department of Early Childhood, or IDEC for short, is consolidating programs from ISBE, DHS, and DCFS — as well as the Governor’s Office for Early Childhood Development.

That means several vital early childhood services will no longer fall under those departments’ jurisdiction, and will instead move to IDEC. The total budget for implementing those programs totals $4.4 billion, according to the department. These include:

Childcare grants
Early intervention
Head Start and Migrant & Seasonal Head Start
Home visiting programs
Preschool for All
Early Childhood block grant system
Childcare licensing
Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health aid

The unification of services may be especially helpful in Chicago, where families have a diverse array of childcare and preschool options available to them, Navarro Vidaurre said. Some children receive money from a couple funding streams to get a slot at a local center. By housing the different programs under one department, Navarro Vidaurre said it should hopefully ease the process in Chicago.

Will state services for my child be disrupted or delayed?

Ideally not. The department has repeatedly assured families that there should be no noticeable change to the way they access services for their child.

But major updates are still under development, which Moté said is an intentional feature of the agency’s incremental opening to avoid significant interruptions to care.

“There is a danger to flipping every light switch on and saying ‘We’re going to do this this way, and this way, and this way,’ and not having people be able to process the change and catch up with the expectations,” Moté said. “Taking it in bite-sized pieces, I actually think will go a long way.”

Zalewska, who also works as a developmental therapist in early intervention, has attended meetings to inform providers like her, as well as discussions catered to the public. But she said she still doesn’t have a clear idea on when to expect shifts that affect her profession. Most answers she said she receives include one qualifying phrase: “for now.”

“‘For now’ means there’s change to come, right?” Zalewska said. “But no one’s addressing that change to come, no one’s addressing any timelines.”

What about impacts to childcare providers?

Not much should be different for providers right away, either. Providers will still be paid through the current payment systems they have used before, according to the department. Ratios and teacher qualifications will also remain the same for childcare center licensing.

The only big change the department has flagged for providers is a shift to unify grants under one management system called EUNA. That system will be used to distribute all of the department’s grants for the next fiscal year, such as the Early Childhood Block Grants.

Where can I ask questions or give input?

All questions on early childhood programs in Illinois can be directed to the department’s customer service team by emailing Questions.IDEC@illinois.gov.

The agency’s bottom-up approach to creating policy and informing its decisions is also expected to continue. By the end of the year, the department’s transition advisory committee will submit a set of recommendations to the governor’s office and the early childhood department based in part on community members’ feedback on what issues they need fixed in the space.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois lawmakers define play-based learning as full-day kindergarten requirement rolls out statewide

2026-06-09T19:10:39+00:00

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For six weeks, Melinda Martinez-Epperson’s preschool students immersed themselves in studying the medical field — all because one of their schoolmates arrived to class with a cast on their broken arm.

Their classroom was turned into a makeshift hospital. The students crafted an email to a physician with questions on x-rays, and they molded their own casts on dolls.

At the Play Lab, a home-based preschool in Albany Park, students take the lead on what subjects to focus on and learn through something all kids love: play.

“They become researchers,” said Martinez-Epperson, the school’s founder. “So it’s really high-order thinking.”

Martinez-Epperson’s teaching style, known as play-based learning, isn’t an anomaly. It’s part of a larger nationwide movement to give students more hands-on and exploratory learning experiences — notably against the backdrop of an education system still grappling with pandemic recovery and how to address artificial intelligence and screen time in the classroom.

Now, kindergarten teachers in Illinois have a clearer understanding of how to implement play-based learning in their classrooms after state lawmakers passed an official definition for the practice last month.

School districts were already required to incorporate play-based learning — though originally left undefined — into classrooms as part of a state law passed in 2023 requiring all districts to offer full-day kindergarten by the 2027-28 school year.

The legislation defines play-based learning by underscoring two types of play: teacher-initiated and student-initiated. In teacher-initiated play, an educator intentionally sets up and leads students through activities “aligned to learning goals or standards,” according to the bill. For instance, a teacher might create a scavenger hunt for students to do on a nature walk as a way to learn about the environment. Student-initiated play lets children explore learning activities curated by their teacher, such as open-ended arts and crafts.

By clearly outlining play-based learning into law, Edgebrook Elementary School pre-K teacher and Teach Plus fellow Margi Bhansali said educators will have “a little bit more to stand on” if their administrators aren’t supportive of the practice.

Bhansali, who helped draft the bill’s wording, has used play-based learning on a daily basis for about 14 years teaching preschool in Chicago Public Schools. But that hasn’t always been the case in kindergarten, which she said has been turned into “the new first grade, second grade, third grade” to meet academic standards.

Play as an answer to the ‘schoolification’ of kindergarten?

Many schools cater their activities to improve standardized test scores and other metrics, even at the kindergarten level— something University of Chicago Medicine professor Dana Suskind refers to as the “schoolification” of early childhood education.

But a formal, traditional school experience doesn’t offer what Suskind, who is also director for University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, says is the main way young kids learn: through play. That doesn’t mean children get extra recess, but instead, they participate in activities that allow them to explore concepts and ask questions.

Play-based learning isn’t intended to replace direct instruction but rather serve as a way to enhance it, said Cristina Carrazza, a NORC at the University of Chicago researcher.

For example, students might learn their letters by forming them with sticks or Play-Doh rather than tracing them on a worksheet. It’s fun for the kids and gives them a memorable experience that makes them excited to learn.

Those types of activities are especially useful in a kindergarten classroom where children might experience a tough transition from daycare or home to attending elementary school. Teachers can observe students’ skills through play, as well as individualize their teaching approach, Carrazza said.

It’s also a learning concept that applies to children of all ages. Diana Zepeda, another teacher who worked on the new definition, often encountered misconceptions in her advocacy about applying play-based learning in older classrooms. As a second grade teacher at Haugan Elementary School in Albany Park, she instructs 7- and 8-year-olds through play, such as taking them to the school parking lot to measure a car with different unit measurements.

“When I see students are struggling, I’m like, OK, this is my cue to plan something,” Zepeda said. “In second grade, we call it more like ‘hands on’ instead of play-based, but it’s basically the same thing.”

How play pays off in the long run

Researchers and teachers emphasize many benefits for students as a result of play-based learning.

Students who are too shy — or too bored — to participate in a lesson might find themselves more engaged and less likely to have behavior issues when given opportunities to learn through play, Carrazza said. It can also reinvigorate educators’ motivation to teach, she said.

“There’s like a buzz in the room. Students are excited, they’re on task, and you know, they look forward to it throughout the day,” Carrazza said.

One of the biggest developments Bhansali sees in her pre-K students is improving their soft skills — things like negotiating, building relationships, problem-solving, and sharing with others. Children can’t “necessarily show [those abilities] on a test score or on a report card,” Bhansali said, but they are important for students’ success later in life.

A ‘step in the right direction’ but more work to be done

Play-based learning requires a lot of creativity from a teacher to form intentional experiences for their students. That translates to a larger undertaking, which Suskind said could be a barrier for educators already balancing a heavy workload.

“We need to think about what we can take off their plate so that they can be more present,” she said.

Reducing classroom sizes could be part of the solution, said Martinez-Epperson, the educator at the Play Lab. Investing in play-based learning training for teachers is another gap to be addressed.

Then, there’s the need to ensure equitable access to play-based learning opportunities — an issue personal to Martinez-Epperson. Students from under-resourced communities, especially Black and brown children, often miss out on play in the classroom when they are “the children who need it the most,” she said. Instead of play-based learning, those children are pressured to focus on testing, Martinez-Epperson said.

As a first-generation Mexican- and Cuban-American, Martinez-Epperson recalls her childhood as difficult. Her own hands-on school experiences affected her positively as a student and ignited her passion for teaching, she said.

That shouldn’t be a unique educational experience because “every child deserves play,” she said.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

5 things to watch in 2026 in Chicago Public Schools and across Illinois

2026-01-16T12:00:01+00:00

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2026 is a big year for Chicago Public Schools.

The school board is looking for a new CEO as it stares down a possible half-billion-dollar budget deficit. And later this year, the city will hold school board elections — this time for every seat.

On the state level, there are questions about what education funding and child care will look like as the Trump administration threatens to withhold federal funding for Illinois child care services.

Here are five things we’re watching this year.

Who will be the next leader of Chicago Public Schools?

When Chalkbeat previewed 2025, we wondered who the next CEO would be. That question remains more than a year later.

The school board began searching last spring for CPS’ new CEO, who is charged with carrying out the board’s vision for the district’s schools and recommending policy changes for board approval.

The board was expected to choose one of two finalists by the end of 2025. But the process appeared to come to a halt in November after the Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ, and Chalkbeat revealed finalist names. Later that month, one board member said they were “reconsidering the process,” while another said they were rescheduling finalist interviews. A November statement from the board said the process is “ongoing.”

Whoever is hired will face thorny issues like chronic absenteeism, budget problems, and declining enrollment. Notably, that person will be less than a year into the job before a new, fully elected school board takes over in January 2027.

Who will Chicago elect to be on the school board?

Chicago voters will elect a new school board on Nov. 3. But unlike the last election in 2024, voters will choose all 21 board members, including an at-large president.

Currently, the mayor appoints people to 11 of the seats, including board president.

Many board members have said they plan to run, but board President Sean Harden has said he won’t. Candidates who win seats currently held by mayoral appointees will have two-year terms; those who win seats held by elected members will have four-year terms.

It will also be key to watch who is donating to candidates’ campaigns. Last election, some of the biggest spenders were political action committees tied to the Chicago Teachers Union, Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and Urban Center.

Prospective candidates can begin Feb. 24 to collect petition signatures from registered Chicago voters – a requirement of getting on the ballot. The lists of signatures must be submitted to the Chicago Board of Elections between May 18-26.

By Aug. 27, the Board of Elections will have a final list of who will appear on the November ballot.

Are we in for another budget fight at CPS?

The short answer is, probably.

Chicago Public Schools and its school board navigated a bruising budget process last summer as it grappled with a $734 million deficit, or about 8% of the operating budget. Board members argued over whether to take out a short-term loan to cover expenses and whether to forgo a pension payment to the city. They ultimately avoided a loan and direct cuts to classrooms but slashed elsewhere, including vacant positions at central office, custodians, and hot meals.

For the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, CPS officials have so far projected a $520 million deficit, and it’s unclear if more federal cuts are coming. Board members may need to consider cuts right as many run for election. Some may try to find more revenue, such as lobbying the state for more money or changes to help alleviate the district’s structural deficit.

But the state is also facing a challenging financial picture.

What can we expect from the state budget?

The Illinois State Board of Education wants a $350 million increase to the main funding stream for school districts. The 4% increase, if ultimately approved by state lawmakers, is in line with past years, but some organizations say that increase is not enough, especially in the face of possible federal cuts. Roughly one-third of Illinois school districts are considered 90% or more adequately funded, according to state figures.

The state is facing a $2.2 billion deficit. Still, the legislature is unlikely to provide much less than the amount ISBE requested.

Illinois House Speaker Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, wants a new tax on millionaires. And some groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union, have been pushing since last year for state leaders to impose new taxes on Illinois’ wealthiest residents and corporations. If such proposals go through, it’s possible some of the additional revenue will flow to schools.

But the state has many other areas of government to focus on, including a possible loss of federal dollars for child care and social services assistance.

What will child care look like?

There are fresh concerns about child care after the Trump administration announced a plan to freeze about $1 billion in federal assistance for Illinois child care for low-income, working families and other social services programs.

Tens of thousands of Illinois children are in programs supported by those federal funds, including 152,000 kids who attend programs partially funded by the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, according to Pritzker’s office. Thousands of other children go to licensed child care providers who receive federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, dollars, the governor’s office said.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration from withholding that money. But if the Trump administration is successful, the loss of these funds could mean a drastic drop in the state’s child care providers and could leave many families without help, advocates and policy experts have said.

Some unions and state lawmakers are calling for Illinois to expand funding to keep those programs afloat through new taxes on corporations and billionaires. It’s unclear if there is broad appetite on the state level to do so.

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

Chicago Head Start providers are waiting for the federal government to approve funding

2025-11-26T20:23:40+00:00

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Three out of six of Chicago’s Head Start grantees have yet to hear from the federal government if their grant has been renewed for next year.

The federal government shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 until mid-November, delayed the process, causing uncertainty for providers and families across the country.

Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the National Head Start Association, said the process to approve grants typically takes some time, but this situation is different.

“We’re so delayed that we need to make this a priority. We need the administration to make this a priority,” Sheridan said. “The fact that it hasn’t been done yet is something that, I think, we’re just kind of in a holding pattern. It does not feel good when there is the possibility of programs having to close down their doors.”

Head Start grantees have to notify the federal government about their plans for funding each year. Once those plans are approved, they receive a “Notice of Award” that allows them to start using federal funding to provide services to families. For grantees whose start dates were Oct. 1, Nov. 1, and Dec. 1, the process was postponed.

Overall, four Head Start grantees in Illinois have seen delays. One organization in southern Illinois had a Nov. 1 start date, while three Chicago Head Start grant recipients, including the City of Chicago, Carole Robertson Center for Learning, and Henry Booth House, have Dec. 1 start dates, according to the Illinois Head Start Association.

The National Head Start Association estimates that about 17 programs across the country and over 6,000 children have been affected by full or partial closures as of Nov. 20 because grant letters were delayed. None of those are in Illinois.

The City of Chicago and the Carole Robertson Center confirmed that they have not received a letter to renew their funding.

The Carole Robertson Center, which receives about $28 million in funding across two grants, said in a statement that uncertainty at the federal level has created some “administrative hurdles” for Head Start grant recipients.

“The start-and-stop conditions divert our attention from our main priority, which is to deliver high-quality programs and supports to the children and families we serve,” the statement said.

The organization said the federal dollars pay for services for about 1,350 children between birth and 5-years-old at their three flagship sites in North Lawndale, Little Village, and Albany Park, along with other services and community partnerships.

A spokesperson for the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services said the city’s award amounts to over $82 million across three grants. The city’s Head Start programs serve about 3,400 children, but said the delay will not affect families. However, if the funding is not renewed they plan to work with the city’s Office of Budget and Management to develop a transition plan.

“We, as required by Head Start, will work with agencies to ensure children and families have access to continued services either at the current site or assist them in locating a new program,” a city spokesperson wrote in an email.

A spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families, housed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the Office of Head Start is “working as quickly as possible to expedite awards” to grantees who were expecting to be renewed during the government shutdown.

“The office is in direct contact with affected grantees to process and approve their annual funding applications,” the statement said.

Head Start has been around for over 60 years and has had bipartisan support. In Illinois, Head Start providers serve around 28,000 children and families and employ almost 9,000 people, according to the Illinois Head Start Association. Across the nation, the program serves around 750,000 children and families between birth and 5-years-old, according to the National Head Start Association.

Head Start providers have faced many disruptions since the Trump administration’s second term started.

The Department of Health and Human Services declared that Head Start will be considered a public benefit in July. The move would have blocked undocumented immigrants from accessing Head Start, and it could have required providers to verify childrens’ immigration status. The guidance sowed uncertainty amongst Head Start providers in Illinois, but a federal judge blocked the motion in September.

In April, the federal government closed five out of ten regional Head Start offices around the country, including one in Chicago, that served states throughout the Midwest, raising concerns from U.S. lawmakers.

The Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal grants a week after entering the White House in January. Although the decision was reversed within a few days, many child care programs struggled to access funding in February, and some had to temporarily close their doors to families.

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.

Families ‘horrified’ after daycare teacher pulled out of preschool by armed federal agents: parents

2025-11-05T23:42:37+00:00

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Federal immigration agents pulled a teacher from inside a North Center daycare Wednesday morning, causing a chaotic scene and “traumatizing” workers, parents and children, neighbors and officials said.

At least three agents showed up about 7 a.m. Wednesday at Rayito de Sol daycare, 2550 W. Addison St., where they detained a worker who cares for infants, witnesses said. A video shows them taking the worker out of the daycare while holding her arms behind her and at her sides, with screaming and shouting audible.

The agents had followed the woman as she drove to her job and chased her inside the daycare and preschool, Ald. Matt Martin (47th) told Block Club after the incident. The teacher got into the daycare’s vestibule, but the agents “tore her away,” Martin said. The agents, who were armed but did not draw their weapons, pushed other people who were looking to intervene, he said.

Agents also went into the daycare and preschool center to inquire about other staff, disputing a claim from a Homeland Security spokesperson that the officers did not “target” a daycare, elected officials said at a press conference.

Both incidents happened in front of parents and children, said Martin, citing video of the incident. Other workers became afraid to come in, and the center closed for the day, parents said.

“It’s some of the most chilling video footage I have ever seen, certainly in my time in office,” Martin said. “We are, of course, demanding that she be released immediately.”

The teacher who was taken works with infants at Rayito, and she is a mother, said Tara Goodarzi, a parent with a child at the center. Parents and officials said they believe the woman had permits to work in the country.

“I am horrified by what has happened here today,” Goodarzi said. “Our community has been shattered. Our families have been traumatized. The children were crying; the parents were crying.

“It’s a scene that I don’t think any of us have ever witnessed before and will ever forget.”

Children, teachers left ‘terrified,’ parents say

The immigration law enforcement operation caused a chaotic scene at the bilingual daycare and preschool, teachers and parents said.

Nathaniel Meadow, a parent at Rayito de Sol, said parents arriving during the incident left their kids in their cars “to spare them from their teachers crying.” A crowd of parents formed by the agents shouting “shame.”

Several teachers fled with a student and hid in a back of a pickup truck, “terrified of being found,” Meadow said.

“They weren’t sure what was going on. ICE, an attack on the school — they didn’t know,” Meadow said.

One Rayito teacher was working with a 3-year-old when the agents arrived, U.S. Rep Delia Ramirez said. The teacher took the young student and hid because the teacher “was afraid that she may die today,” Ramirez said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the local immigration enforcement campaigns, said agents attempted to pull over the woman while someone was driving her, but she proceeded to her place of employment. The woman who was arrested is from Colombia and does not have legal immigration status, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

“ICE law enforcement did not target a daycare,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

Despite the arrest occurring in the facility’s vestibule, security video from the incident shows the federal agents walking into other rooms throughout the daycare and preschool, according to Martin and Ramirez.

Ramirez said security footage from the center shows agents entering the building multiple times. Agents were also seen in footage questioning a worker and escorting them to their locker to “prove she has papers,” Ramirez said. Rayito has yet to release any security footage.

“They didn’t just walk in chasing one person, they went into multiple rooms asking and looking for teachers while children were present,” Ramirez said. “This is an agency that has gone rogue and it an agency that believes that as long as they can cover their face, they can get away with anything.”

The detention was “traumatizing,” said parent Abby Salat, whose son goes to the center. Salat said her husband arrived about 7:15 a.m. and said federal agents were gone by then.

“The idea of a child seeing their caretaker with whom they have a strong attachment to being taken away in distress, it’s going to impact every single child whether they saw it or heard about it,” said Salat, who works as a school psychologist.

Rayito de Sol is a Spanish immersion daycare and preschool with locations in Edgewater, Lincoln Park, Uptown and the suburbs. The Addison Street location sits across from Lane Tech High School.

Sarah Wirth said her husband was on his way to drop off their young son at the daycare when the parents were “bombarded with messages not to go.”

“Other teachers are not coming into work because they’re terrified,” Wirth said.

‘They’re Supposed To Be Going After The Worst Of The Worst’

Rayito parents, who have been communicating in group chats since the incident, believe the employee taken had legal documentation to work in the United States, Wirth said.

“These are human beings we trust to take care of our children every day,” Wirth said. ”We’re all shell-shocked.”

During a Wednesday news conference, U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said he and his colleagues are demanding the teacher be released. He said the teacher had a work permit. The congressman also said daycares, schools, shelters, churches and hospitals were considered sensitive locations and were protected from immigration enforcement under former President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump ended these protections in January.

“They can say they aren’t targeting a daycare, but that’s where they were this morning,” Quigley said. “They’re supposed to be going after the worst of the worst, if they’re now trying to tell us that what’s left of the worst of the worst is someone with papers whose educating kids at a daycare than I think everything they say comes into question.”

Parents have already organized a GoFundMe to help with the teacher’s legal fees. As of Wednesday evening, the GoFundMe had raised more than $10,000. Parents also started a Change.org petition calling for local and federal elected officials to take action and help get the teacher released.

Martin’s office is coordinating with other North Side groups to stage a rally against immigration officers targeting educators at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Northcenter Town Square, 4100 N. Damen Ave.

This story originally appeared in Block Club Chicago.

Trump administration’s changes to Head Start sow uncertainty among Illinois child care providers

2025-07-23T15:58:38+00:00

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In DeKalb and Kane counties west of Chicago, more than 240 low-income families depend on Two Rivers Head Start Agency for child care, a food pantry, car repairs, baby items, and other services. But over the last six months, since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Executive Director Kelly Neidel has seen families stop coming out of fear of being deported.

Now, she worries that a new Trump administration directive, which bars undocumented children from accessing Head Start, will further erode the bonds between families and providers.

“Head Start is all about building trust,” said Neidel, whose organization operates three centers across the two counties and receives funding from Head Start and the Community Service Block Grant among other funds. “And I think this will do the opposite.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced earlier this month that it is rescinding an almost 30-year-old guidance from the Clinton administration that allowed undocumented immigrants to access Head Start and other programs because they were not considered federal public benefits. Under the change, Head Start is now classified as a public benefit, meaning undocumented immigrants do not qualify for the program.

The change has caused confusion among Illinois Head Start providers and advocates who are concerned for the families they serve, unsure what they are expected to do, and worried about a drop in student enrollment that would mean losing funding.

Head Start serves almost 29,000 children and pregnant women across Illinois, according to the Illinois Head Start Association.

Under current Head Start rules, providers are responsible for checking a family’s eligibility to enroll in the program. But they’ve never been required to collect citizenship data, according to some Illinois Head Start providers. While the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has yet to say how Head Start providers should check for immigration status, some providers are concerned that it will place an administrative burden on staff at child care centers.

Nadia Gronkowski, program manager of advocacy and policy at Start Early, an early childhood advocacy group and Head Start grantee that distributes federal funding to community-based organizations, worries about the consequences of having this policy and its impact on staff.

“It sort of all depends on how it’s implemented, but there’s a possibility that [staff] would now need to be checking out citizenship verification for every student,” said Gronkowski. “That’s a significant amount of staff time and costs to do that sort of verification.”

Other Head Start providers are concerned about a possible drop in enrollment. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Head Start rolled out a “full enrollment initiative,” which required providers to keep enrollment levels at or above 97% every year. If enrollment drops below that, the federal Office of Head Start can reduce annual funding.

Brenda Berman, spokesperson for the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a Head Start grantee that reaches over 15,000 children and adults through direct service and community partnerships and runs three child care centers in Chicago, said withholding funding could create a “spiraling effect.” If the Carole Robertson Center loses funding, it would lose slots for children, impacting families and communities.

For now, Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, said her organization is encouraging Head Start providers not to implement any new policies until there is further guidance from the Trump administration. However, she doesn’t know when that will happen.

“From what we hear, the Office of Head Start has been told by the administration to work on guidance,” said Morrison-Frichtl. “It’ll be weeks before any guidance comes out, or months. I’d be surprised if we have it by the end of the summer.”

There has been pushback to the Trump administration’s policy changes. The Illinois Head Start Association along with other state Head Start associations are a part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing that changes to Head Start are “unconstitutional and unlawful” and requesting a stop to all “actions to dismantle Head Start.” The lawsuit was originally filed in late April, and the ACLU is seeking to amend the lawsuit this month to include a challenge to the recent directive barring undocumented children from the program.

Additionally, 20 states, including Illinois, and the District of Columbia announced on Monday they are suing the Trump administration over new rules to restrict undocumented immigrants and some visa-holders from federal programs that provide early childhood education, health care, and other services saying the administration did not follow procedures to establish new rules, misinterprets federal welfare laws, and puts an excessive burden on Head Start providers to verify immigration status of students and their families.

Head Start has provided access to child care, preschool, and other services for low-income families for 60 years and historically received bipartisan support. Now, the program is facing challenges under Trump’s second term and is at risk of being eliminated.

Earlier in April, the federal Department of Health and Human Services closed five of ten regional Head Start offices around the country, including one in Chicago that served Illinois and states throughout the Midwest.

When Trump ordered a freeze on federal grants in January, child care programs were unable to access funds used for their day-to-day operations. Even when the decision was reversed within days, child care providers still struggled in February to access funding. Some even had to close their doors temporarily to families.

Despite the uncertainty, some child care providers and advocates are staying optimistic.

“Earlier this year when Head Start was proposed for elimination, the Head Start community rallied like we have never seen it rally before,” Gronkowski said. “They stood up and said, ‘You can’t do this, this is important to our communities, and this is important to our families.’”

She hopes people will continue to rally around the program.

Neidel, of Two Rivers Head Start Agency, said she wants to ensure kids are safe and to maintain relationships with families, but it’s hard with the changes happening at the federal level.

“You just want to, sometimes, break down and cry,” said Neidel, describing her worries about the families she serves. “Because you’re looking at them and thinking, ‘God, what’s going to happen to them?’”

Correction 7/23: This story has been updated to include the full name of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning and clarifies how the center reaches 15,000 children and adults.

Chicago mayor commits $7 million to raises for early childhood education workers

2025-05-13T19:21:05+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday that Chicago will spend $7 million on increasing salaries for 3,000 early childhood workers, as part of an effort to pay them closer to what their counterparts at K-12 schools earn.

The money will boost wages by 5-10% for a range of staffers whose jobs are funded by state money, including teachers and teacher assistants at dozens of community-based early childhood providers. These providers are part of the city’s early learning system overseen by the Department of Family and Support Services, or DFSS, city officials said.

In addition, workers at Head Start, a federally funded program that serves kids from low-income households, will get a one-time 2% bonus, according to a city press release.

These programs are separate from Chicago Public Schools’ preschool programs, which provide half- and full-day programming for 3- and 4-year-olds at schools.

Many early childhood education providers have struggled to fund their programs and stave off a teacher shortage that they say stems from low wages — especially since federal relief from the pandemic ended. Officials say low pay and high stress are contributing to the teacher shortage in the early childhood field.

Full-time early childhood teachers in Chicago earned roughly $36,000 a year, according to a 2023 state survey. A 2022 study found that Chicago’s early childhood educators are paid on average $18,000 less than elementary school teachers, even if they have the same degree.

Johnson noted that almost 20 years ago, as a new CPS teacher with a master’s degree, he earned close to $45,000.

“It’s time we have salaries that are showing up for the people that are showing up for the families,” Johnson said during a press conference at the North Lawndale YMCA, which is one of at least 86 early childhood providers where workers will receive wage increases.

DFSS uses state and federal funds to provide early childhood education to about 13,000 kids, according to the city press release. The city’s $7 million contribution towards pay raises comes from the city budget’s corporate fund, which is used for basic city services.

Johnson’s announcement came after SEIU Healthcare, a union that represents thousands of early childhood workers in Chicago, pushed the city to address pay parity for their members. The union held town halls and testified to the City Council, according to Brynn Seibert, vice president at SEIU Healthcare Illinois.

Seibert said the next step is to push elected officials to ensure the wage increase “becomes permanent.” The wage increases, which will be implemented by child care agencies, will go into effect after July 1 for one fiscal year. Johnson said he plans to whip up support in the City Council for future raises.

Tahiti Hamer, an early childhood teacher at North Lawndale YMCA and an SEIU union leader, said she’s struggled to financially support her two children with her salary for the past 25 years. While she’s stuck it out, others have left the profession, leaving teachers like her working through their prep time and even struggling to eat lunch or use the bathroom.

“For kids, it means the family’s faces they’re used to seeing every day are gone and there are fewer staff to support them,” Hamer said, “and it is hard for parents, too, who are entrusting us with their children every day … who face a huge burden when classrooms close because there are not enough staff to keep them open.”

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

Illinois Head Start providers worry about the future as Trump eyes potential cuts

2025-04-15T22:53:05+00:00

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Amy Blythe stays up at night thinking about what will happen to kids and families if federal funding is cut for Head Start, an early childhood education program serving low-income families.

Blythe is the assistant vice president of Early Learning Services at Easterseals, which serves 1,500 kids throughout Chicagoland and Rockford. Some of those children receive Head Start services through community-based programs her organization partners with.

Head Start providers such as hers are able to support families with formula, diapers, and food throughout the day and in cases of an emergency, such as a house fire or when a family can’t find transportation to get to work, Blythe said. But since President Donald Trump took office in January, there have been disruptions to child care services for families and kids.

“That’s what keeps me up at night, what will happen to those children and those families if we’re not there?” said Blythe.

Blythe and other Head Start providers in Illinois are concerned about the future of the 60- year-old federal program that serves children from birth to 5. Almost $500 million flowed from the federal government directly to Illinois Head Start providers during fiscal year 2024, according to the Illinois Head Start Association.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering a budget proposal that would eliminate Head Start, according to a report from USA Today published Friday. That comes after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services closed the Chicago-based regional office that provides technical support and funding to child care providers throughout Illinois and several other states in the Midwest earlier this month.

Early childhood education providers are increasingly on edge after many were unable to access funds for their day-to-day operations when the federal government put a freeze on all grants in January. Even when the decision was reversed after a few days, child care providers were still having issues in February. In some states, providers had to temporarily shut their doors to families.

The Illinois Head Start Association noted that the Head Start program serves over 28,000 children and has employed almost 9,000 people across the state. Across the country, the Head Start program was funded to serve about 780,000 children during fiscal year 2023.

Most kids who are enrolled in Head Start programs come from low-income families whose income is at or below the poverty level or receive Temporary Assistances for Needy Families, Supplementary Security Income, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For a family of four, the income would have to be $32,150 according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2025 rules.

Julissa Cruz, vice president of community-based advocacy at the Carole Robertson Center which receives Head Start funding, said she believes there is “a lack of understanding on what early learning is and how it impacts a child’s life, how it prepares young children for kindergarten, how it supports families to be able to participate in the workforce.”

The Carole Robertson Center serves about 15,000 kids and families across Chicago through partnerships and at three centers in Little Village, North Lawndale, and Albany Park. Despite recent changes to the federal government, there has not been a disruption in services. Cruz said she remains hopeful that lawmakers will continue to see the importance of Head Start.

“This is a program that exists in urban communities, suburban communities, and rural communities, so every elected official likely has a Head Start program in their community,” said Cruz.

Marcy Mendenhall, chief executive officer of SAL Community Services based in the Quad Cities near the Iowa border, said the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle Head Start “has nothing to do with best practice, nothing to do with children outcomes, and nothing to do with best interests of children.”

Mendenhall’s organization provides Early Head Start services to almost 168 kids in Rock Island, Henry, and Mercer counties out of the 700 kids they serve. She said she is not concerned about child care centers that her organization operates closing because of their partnerships. However, Mendenhall feels like this is “the time for advocacy” because child care programs are important for student learning and provide a safe environment while children are developing.

For over six decades, Head Start has received bipartisan support in Congress and around the state. However, Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, executive director of Illinois Head Start Association, worries whether Republican lawmakers in Congress will continue to speak up for Head Start under the current administration.

“When it comes to push and shove and Trump hanging over them, will they actually stand for what they believe in and know it’s good for their district? ” she said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been an advocate for increasing access to child care for families across the state. He created the Smart Start Illinois initiative to expand early childhood education programs. Pritzker’s $53 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 included a $10 million increase for child care programs in the state, such as Early Intervention, which serves children with disabilities and $85 million for Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income families pay for child care.

However, it would be hard for the state to come up with the money to fund Head Start programs in Illinois if the Trump administration eliminates the program, according to Morrison-Frichtl Illinois is facing a $3 billion budget deficit and the situation could get worse if federal funding is pulled from the state.

In Illinois, state lawmakers last year approved a plan by the governor to create the Illinois Department of Early Childhood to streamline funding and coordination around all early childhood education and child care programs.

A spokesperson for the Governor’s office said that while Head Start providers are able to access federal funding now, the office is “deeply concerned about the potential for disruption moving forward based on the actions of the Trump administration.”

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.

U.S. lawmakers want to know what is next for Head Start amid Chicago office closure

2025-04-09T18:35:39+00:00

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Democratic U.S. senators from the Midwest want to know the Trump administration’s plans for Head Start programs in their districts after it closed a key office in Chicago this month that provided support and funding to workers and families.

Six senators — Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both of Illinois, Gary Peters and Elisa Slotkin, both of Michigan, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — sent a letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , secretary of Health and Human Services, on Wednesday. They said that federal employees and grantees did not receive any notice that the Chicago-based regional office, which serves several states, was closing, or receive any guidance for what’s next.

The senators worry that the abrupt closure of the office will lead to disruptions in service for families, many of whom are low-income, relying on Head Start for child care.

“Head Start centers run on tight budgets, and without a regional office, grantees will not be able to receive approval to draw down funds, forcing many to consider laying off staff — or even shuttering their doors,” they wrote in the letter.

The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, closed five of its 10 regional Head Start offices in several cities, including Chicago, last week, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. According to the letter from the Midwestern senators, the Chicago-based regional office served 125,000 children, employed 40,000 child care workers, and provided support and funding to 2,600 Head Start centers across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The senators asked HHS to provide more information about whom child care providers should reach out to for guidance and accessing federal funds. They also asked if federal workers will be given the option to relocate to one of the five remaining offices.

Lawmakers want a response from HHS by April 22.

As mentioned in the letter, prior to HHS closing the regional Head Start office, the federal program experienced challenges to funding at the start of the year. President Donald Trump froze federal grants in January through an administrative order, which was rescinded a few days later. For Head Start providers, it meant that they were unable to access funds needed for daily operations.

However, child care providers still struggled to access funding throughout February, impacting around 21,000 students. Some Head Start providers in New York and Wisconsin had to temporarily shut their doors to families.

Parents of premature babies struggle to get help their children are entitled to

2025-01-23T12:00:00+00:00

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JOLIET, Ill. — After several challenging and stressful months in the neonatal intensive care unit, Karen Heath couldn’t wait to take her triplet sons home. The boys had been born severely premature at 25 weeks, each weighing a bit over a pound. In the early hours, doctors cautioned they would not survive long. The triplets, thankfully, proved the doctors wrong. But for about three months, Heath was not allowed to hold them, satisfying herself with photos, videos, and kisses blown.

The long-anticipated discharge in the early summer of 2019 was joyful, but also rushed, and, as Heath recalls it, somewhat cavalier. An hour before release, a physical therapist showed Heath how to help the babies gain strength by gently stretching their legs out. A nurse gave her a quick tutorial on how to use the oxygen tanks they would need for the next couple of months. And Heath gathered together basic necessities and a few mementos: diapers, pacifiers, blood pressure cuffs, and tiny hospital bands.

But no one at the hospital — one of Chicago’s largest — told Heath or her husband what she felt would have been the most helpful advice in the long run: The triplets’ low birth weight alone meant they were automatically eligible for what’s known as early intervention services, which can include speech, physical, occupational, and other therapies.

“This should have been a conversation way before the boys were even released,” said Heath, who lives in Joliet, a city in the suburbs of Chicago. (She declined to identify the hospital to The Hechinger Report because her children still receive regular treatment there.)

Doctors, and science more broadly, have made astounding gains in their capacity to save the lives of extremely premature babies, defined as those born before 28 weeks. In the 1960s, just 5 percent of premature infants with respiratory distress survived; now it’s about 90 percent.

Despite these encouraging gains, there’s an abysmal record across the country, exemplified by Chicago, of helping these babies after they exit the NICU, particularly with access to the therapies that most reduce their risk of needing intensive, and expensive, special education services as schoolchildren. Many children who receive early intervention do not require special education services in kindergarten, including slightly less than half of those with developmental delays, according to one 2007 study.

“We have so much information on early brain development now,” said Alison Liddle, a physical therapist in Chicago who is part of a team that studied access to early intervention in the city. One of the findings was that the system is difficult for parents to navigate. “Support systems have to catch up. We have a critical window to help families.”

Federal law says children with developmental delays, including newborns with significant likelihood of a delay, can get early intervention from birth to age 3. States design their own programs and set their own funding levels, however. They also set some of the criteria for which newborns are automatically eligible, typically relying on qualifying conditions like Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, extreme prematurity or low birthweight. Nationally, far fewer infants and toddlers receive the therapies than should. The stats are particularly abysmal for babies under the age of 1: Just 1 percent of these infants get help. Yet an estimated 13 percent of infants and toddlers likely qualify.

“It’s like people being told at 65 that they are eligible for Social Security and a year later they are not on either Social Security or Medicare,” said Dr. Michael Msall, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician who has led efforts on early intervention access at the University of Chicago’s hospital system and is on the study team. “We’d have riots in the streets.”

In addition to early exposure to critical therapies, Vasquez says that strong sibling relationships and support has helped her children to thrive.

The stakes are high for these fragile, rapidly growing babies and their brains. Even a few months of additional therapy can reduce a child’s risk of complications and make it less likely that they will struggle with talking, moving and learning down the road. In Chicago and elsewhere, families, advocates, and physicians say a lot of the failures boil down to overstretched hospital and early intervention delivery systems that are not always talking with families very effectively, or with each other hardly at all. “They really put the onus of helping your child get better outcomes on you,” said Jaclyn Vasquez, an early childhood consultant who has had three babies of her own spend time in the NICU.

Hospitals use different processes for educating families about early intervention, which often occurs at an overwhelming time for parents. “That initial connection with the families is tricky, because the families tend to be very busy when they take the baby home,” said Dr. Raye-Ann deRegnier, the lead physician on the study and director of the Early Childhood Clinic at Lurie Children’s.

At Lurie and Chicago’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, where deRegnier works, the physical therapists are generally responsible for informing families of early intervention. “I wouldn’t say that happens in every NICU,” she said. “Sometimes it’s discharge nurses, sometimes discharge coordinators, sometimes others.”

Under the current landscape, it’s helpful when physical therapists have conversations with families early and often, deRegnier said. But even when that happens, miscommunications can occur. The doctor said she recently made a point to talk to a mother about early intervention, and the woman said she had never heard of it. Yet the physical therapist had previously had a lengthy conversation with the mother about the program.

In Illinois three years ago, the state’s Legislative Black Caucus urged the creation of demonstration projects at neonatal intensive care units in hospitals, intended to model how to better connect families to services. The state’s General Assembly supported the idea, but no funding was attached to the recommendation, and it has not become a reality.

However, a coalition of therapists and hospital physicians, including deRegnier, has been working on a pilot study that included a look at barriers that families face after they leave the NICU at several of Chicago’s largest hospitals.

Their findings, published in late December, show that only 13 percent of the 60 families — all of them Medicaid eligible and with infants who automatically qualified for early intervention — were receiving those therapies three to four months after discharge. In Illinois, the therapies are overseen by the state’s Department of Human Services and its Division of Early Childhood. While the specific reasons varied, most of it came down to bureaucracy and bad communication, according to the study team.

“When you make the system so difficult to navigate, families give up,” Liddle said. “There were many families just waiting out there for services that they really need.”

Illinois is in the midst of transitioning the Early Intervention program to a new Department of Early Childhood by July 1, 2026 in an effort to streamline services for the state’s youngest children.

Every weekday afternoon after play time, Karen Heath’s children, including her 5-year-old triplets, read books with their grandmother.

By the end of June 2019, Heath’s triplets were all at home along with their 1-year-old brother. Although her husband had to return to work, Heath’s mother was around to help. The family had little idea of how best to support their growth. Doctors had warned her that the boys might never be able to sit up, walk, or communicate like other children. “My main focus for so long was on coming home,” she said. “Once we got home, I’m like, ‘Now what?’”

About two weeks after the homecoming, a nurse from the county stopped by to check in on the 6-month-olds. Heath can’t say for sure, but she believes that the woman must have made a referral to early intervention because several weeks later, in August, the family got a call saying that the triplets might be eligible for therapy. By that time, they were more than 7 months old.

Heath leapt at the opportunity, but the process moved slowly after the initial call. In October, when the boys were 9 months, the mother got word that they had been automatically eligible all along because of low birth weight. But it wasn’t until early 2020, after the boys celebrated their first birthday, that the therapy was scheduled to start.

Then the pandemic hit, so the initial physical and developmental therapy sessions with three near-toddlers were all attempted over Zoom. “The boys were uninterested,” their mother recalled. “Try doing therapy on an iPad with triplets and (a toddler) hanging around.”

It wasn’t until the summer, when the children were 18 months, that they got their first in-person therapy. “The hospital should have had something in place so these kids could have gotten the services as soon as they came home,” Heath said. “I really feel like they dropped the ball. No one can blame the pandemic because they came home way before COVID started.”

The families participating in the multihospital pilot study had a leg up on Heath: They were at least told about early intervention, with an initial referral made before leaving the NICU. But even that was not enough for most of them to connect successfully with help. A lot of the struggle came down to “logistical and technological barriers,” said Zareen Kamal, a policy specialist in Illinois for Start Early, which advocates on early childhood issues.

The early intervention system in Illinois is decentralized, with 25 coordinating offices across the state. Caseloads are supposed to be capped at 45, but due to underfunding and short staffing, average much higher, with some reports of service coordinators juggling over 100 families. Many of the offices rely on fax for communications, with no statewide electronic system in place. Incoming phone calls to families from the coordinators often register as spam. And most of the offices don’t staff the phones in the evening or weekends, when working parents are most likely to reach out.

All this means that case workers sometimes remove families from their list as “uninterested” when, in fact, the parents are unaware, or unsure how to take the next step.

The state is currently taking steps to ensure equitable access to early intervention, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services in an email. That includes updating the standardized referral form and exploring options for electronic referrals. “We realize that technology needs to be modernized,” wrote Rachel Otwell, the spokesperson.

That said, phone and fax remain the primary means of communication due to privacy concerns, she said.

Otwell said the agency is engaged in ongoing surveys and focus groups with thousands of early childhood community members. The state has made progress with staffing vacancies in early intervention, she added, and remains focused on “lowering caseloads to recommended levels.”

As the early intervention system currently exists in many cities and states, inequities are baked into every step of the process. Lower-income families are less likely to receive timely referrals, get screened and approved expeditiously, and then connect with therapists available for in-person work. Families with private insurance can often bypass the multistep bureaucratic process by having the therapies covered through those benefits. Studies have shown that Black newborns for a host of reasons, including higher poverty rates and weaker early medical care on average, are five times less likely than white ones to receive early intervention services.

For newborns, there is pervasive confusion around who is automatically eligible, even among those who work in the early intervention system, Liddle says. “Some children are turned away from receiving services despite being autoeligible, because they do not show a delay on a specific assessment tool,” she said.

Complicating matters, states have different eligibility criteria: In some states, an infant with lead poisoning or a parent with a mental health diagnosis qualifies for the therapies, whereas in others they do not.

There’s also a disconnect between the medical and early intervention systems, said Msall, the University of Chicago-based physician. His colleagues in NICUs routinely fax referrals over to early intervention, he said, but the information disappears into the ether, with no follow-up or technology in place for the physician to know if the connection was made or what an initial evaluation found. DeRegnier agreed that the follow-up process is complicated, partly because families may need to sign a consent form for information to be shared even with physicians.

Three of Vasquez’ four children received early intervention services as infants and toddlers.

In a nutshell, families too often have to navigate through the system entirely on their own — with only the most knowledgeable and well resourced likely to find their way to a successful outcome.

Vasquez felt immensely grateful her background as a special education teacher made it easier to supplement the work of overstretched hospital staff when her twin daughters were born at 27 weeks four years ago. The smaller of the two spent over a year so medicated in a Chicago NICU that she was essentially in a medical coma. But as soon as possible, Vasquez and her husband stepped in to help provide some early therapies. Following the advice of hospital therapists, they helped her sit up, roll over, learn to play with toys and regularly gave her full body massages. (She didn’t want to name the hospital because she believes any shortcomings were reflective of systemic issues, not specific to that hospital.)

Then, when the baby was finally released after 19 months in the NICU, Vasquez knew to call early intervention without delay. The family wasn’t more than five minutes into their drive home before she picked up her cellphone and rang them up from the back seat. “There was no second to lose,” said Vasquez, whose work as an early childhood consultant focuses on equity.

Within weeks of arriving home, the baby started upward of a half dozen different therapies, including speech, nutrition, and mobility.

Partly because of the quick introduction to therapies, formal and informal, Vasquez’s daughter is thriving today at the age of 4. The girl had to spend only a few months in a self-contained classroom for children with severe disabilities before teachers said she was ready to join the “blended” class. It’s a milestone that seemed unreachable just a couple of years ago.

“After six months (in school), they said she is doing awesome,” Vasquez said. “I was told my child would need a wheelchair by kindergarten. She is running, dancing, chasing siblings, dancing on trampolines — all because of the amount of time we poured into therapies at a very young age.”

Jaclyn Vasquez credits her daughter’s strong start in school partly to the comprehensive therapies she received as an infant.

Physicians, advocates, and families all agree that parents shouldn’t have to wait until leaving the NICU to begin lining up services. The coalition of groups working on the study recommend staff embedded at the hospitals who can help families enroll in early intervention before discharge. Each family who is automatically eligible would also leave the hospital with a legal document entitling them to therapy. “Our ultimate dream is to have the connection between [early intervention] and families be completed before they go home, and have the therapist assigned before they leave,” said deRegnier.

Many advocates also believe that for those babies on an extended stay in the hospital, those therapies should be available in the NICU. “Early intervention is birth to 3 — it shouldn’t matter if you are living in the hospital or at home,” Liddle said. “You are still entitled to those services.”

In Illinois, advocates say they hope to get funding to pilot a program at a few NICUs that would finally create the demonstration sites the Legislative Black Caucus called for years ago. If successful, the model could be expanded statewide. “Even if we are in one or two NICUs and can see how it turns out, that would be helpful,” said Illinois state Rep. Joyce Mason, a Democrat, who chairs the House committee focused on early childhood education.

In the meantime, too many families still find the crucial therapies to be elusive.

Even when Heath’s children finally started in-person therapy, it was limited in scope. The physical therapist, whom Heath describes as an “angel,” quickly recognized that they should also be receiving other help as well, including speech and occupational therapy. Yet by the time the family worked through the bureaucratic machinery to get some of those in place, the boys were nearly 3 — close to aging out of early intervention. They received a few months of speech, but never got the occupational therapy they were entitled to.

If they had gotten the therapies earlier, “they would be in a different place at this point,” Heath says. The boys, who were diagnosed with cerebral palsy shortly before their fourth birthdays, struggle with speech and reading skills, in particular, with one of them requiring a device in order to express himself. “If you don’t know them well, it’s hard to understand what they are saying all the time,” Heath says. “If they had gotten all the services right off the bat, they wouldn’t be as far behind.”

Yet the triplets have long surpassed doctors’ early warnings that they might never sit up, walk or reach other developmental milestones. Newly arrived home from school on a clear fall afternoon not long before Halloween, the triplets, now in kindergarten and dressed as Spider-Man for “superhero” day, played exuberantly in a finished basement space. They cried out gleefully while zooming after each other in miniature bumper cars.

Heath is grateful her sons are progressing with the help of school, devoted family, and the committed physical therapist who still works with the boys. But she looks back at their first nine months and laments that, so focused on how to help the babies survive, no one in a vast team of doctors, nurses, and social workers thought to discuss how the family could best help them thrive. “There was no next step for my family when we left the hospital,” she said. “It was all on us.”

Contact Sarah Carr at carr@hechingerreport.org.

This story about early intervention services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.

Pritzker announces first secretary for the Illinois Department of Early Childhood

2024-12-02T23:25:00+00:00

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Teresa Ramos, who currently serves as Illinois’ first assistant deputy governor of education, will be the first secretary of the newly created Illinois Department of Early Childhood, pending state Senate confirmation, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced in a press release on Monday.

Ramos’ “expertise across education, child care, community engagement, and early childhood development make her a leader in her field that I know will lead the new Department to success,” said Pritzker in the press release.

Since being reelected in 2022, Pritzker has put more funding and resources towards the state’s early childhood education and child care programs for families. He boosted funding for early childhood education with his Smart Start Initiative and proposed the early childhood department in October 2023.

Illinois lawmakers passed legislation this spring to create the Department of Early Childhood. The state allocated $14 million in the fiscal year 2025 budget to help streamline early childhood education and child care programs. The department is expected to begin managing programs such as early intervention for young children with disabilities and the Child Care Assistance Program to support low-income families by July 1.

“I’m eager to get started working with an incredible team of state employees, parents and families, advocates, and early childhood providers to create something exceptional that will give every infant, toddler, and young child an opportunity for a strong and healthy start,” said Ramos in the press release.

Ramos has served as first assistant deputy governor of education under Pritzker since 2022, according to the press release. Prior to working in the governor’s office, Ramos had a long career in early childhood education and children. She was the vice president of public policy, research, and advocacy at Illinois Action for Children, a nonprofit that focuses on child care and early childhood education and the largest administrator for the Child Care Assistance Program in Cook County — a program that provides financial aid for child care to low-income families.

She was the director of Community Engagement for Advance Illinois, a nonprofit education advocacy organization, and helped with the governor’s education transition team in 2018.

Ramos is expected to begin serving as secretary of the department in January if she is confirmed.

Currently, Illinois operates and funds child care and early childhood education programs through the state’s Department of Human Services, Illinois State Board of Education, and the Department of Children and Family Services.

Kindergarten readiness in Illinois is linked to academic success in third grade, new report says

2024-10-28T17:00:00+00:00

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Illinois’ Kindergarten Individual Development Survey, or KIDS, can predict how students will perform on state standardized tests, such as the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, in third grade, according to a new report.

Researchers also found that white and Asian American students scored higher in KIDS than their Black and Latino peers and students who were eligible for free or reduced lunch, English learners, and students with disabilities – a gap that continued to grow larger in third grade.

High scores in kindergarten readiness for Black, Latino, and students eligible for free or reduced price lunch did not guarantee that students will meet or exceed state standards in third grade, the report found.

The Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative’s report, “Inequity in the early years: Student development trajectories from Kindergarten to Grade 3,” released on Monday, found a link between KIDS scores and third grade scores on state standardized tests. It is the second of four reports looking at inequities in kindergarten readiness.

Study researchers followed two cohorts of students between kindergarten to third grade.

The first group had about 70,738 students who started kindergarten in 2017-18 — when the KIDS assessment was first rolled — and who went into third grade during the 2020-21 school year. The second group of about 97,608 students entered kindergarten in the 2018-19 school year and started third grade during the 2021-22 school year. The authors of the report looked at math and reading scores for each cohort.

Illinois requires students to start school at the age of 6, when some students would start first grade. This study does not include that group of students, since researchers only followed students to whom they could link KIDS and IAR scores.

In their first report, researchers found that white and Asian American students scored between 15 to 25 percentage points higher than Black and Latino students in social-emotional learning, language and literacy, and math between school years 2017-18 and 2021-22 on KIDS. Black students saw the biggest declines in scores between 2019-20 and 2021-22, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic when schools were remote.

Students who were eligible for free or reduced price lunch, English learners, and students with Individualized Education Programs were less likely to be ready for kindergarten.

The report also found that teachers were not using an alternative language and literacy assessment for the majority of English learners. The Illinois State Board of Education “strongly recommends” that teachers use the alternate assessment in bilingual classrooms, which make up 20% of the English learners. For English learners not in bilingual classrooms but are in general education classrooms or English as a second Language Classrooms, which make up 80% of English learners, the state board’s guidance allows teachers to decide if they should use the alternative assessment.

While the second report in the series linked kindergarten readiness to third grade academic success, the authors caution against making conclusions for four reasons: KIDS is a new survey for schools, KIDS and the IAR are different assessments not designed to be compared, scores for these assessments would have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, and assessments are not perfect measures of students’ learning and development.

Unlike the Illinois Assessment of Readiness for students from third through eighth grades, KIDS is considered an “observational tool” by the Illinois State Board of Education.

Kindergarten teachers are required to observe students in the first 40 days of school to determine where students are on social emotional development, literacy and language development, and math skills and if they are ready for K-12 schools.

Meg Bates, director of the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative and one of the report’s authors, said the research collaborative has a statewide research advisory council that was interested in KIDS since it is relatively new and had changed over time – originally designed with 55 measures, then streamlined to 14.

“People hadn’t really looked at it that hard in terms of its technical properties and if it was predictive of anything.,” said Bates. “I think a lot of people had concerns like ‘it was designed one way and it’s being used another way. What is it doing for us and is it a useful tool?”

When looking at disparities in KIDS scores and between kindergarten and third grade, Bates said that “the story is about systemic inequities, resources and opportunities.”

According to Bates, some children do not have access to pre-kindergarten, day care, health care, nutrition, and community resources. As students get older, there is a need to look at the access to schools that different students have plus the funding and resources those schools have.

For Sebastian Kiguel, one of the authors of the report and a research associate at the research collaborative, the big takeaway from the report should be, “Where you are in kindergarten is not destiny, but it does say a lot about where you might end up In third grade.”

Students who are kindergarten-ready are three times more likely to be proficient in math and reading, Kiguel said. However, some students scored low on KIDS and went on to be proficient.

The next two reports in the IWERC’s kindergarten readiness series will look at the impact of early childhood education programs like preschool and home visiting programs and K-12 schools and district resources.

Chicago considers giving pre-K students priority in kindergarten admissions at same school

2024-10-23T19:40:31+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is considering an enrollment policy change that would give pre-K students priority to stay in the same school for kindergarten, even if they live outside the school’s boundary or are at a magnet school.

Currently, if a pre-K student lives outside a school’s boundary or attends full-day pre-K at a magnet school, they are not guaranteed a seat in kindergarten. If approved, the proposed policy would give current pre-K students priority after siblings and children of staff, but ahead of other applicants. For neighborhood schools, students living in the boundary would still get top priority. After them, siblings of students and children of staff, and then pre-K students would be offered seats before other students from outside the boundary. The policy would not apply to selective enrollment schools.

If approved, the changes would take effect in next year’s application cycle for attendance in the 2026-27 school year.

Full-day pre-K for 4-year-olds in Chicago is a relatively new program. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised universal pre-K in 2018 shortly before announcing he wouldn’t seek a third term. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot followed through on the promise, and now, the school district offers 4-year-old full-day pre-K across the system.

Leslie McKinily, head of the Office of Early Childhood with Chicago Public Schools, said the goal is to increase the number of pre-K students who remain in the same school for kindergarten.

It’s unclear from the data why families change schools for kindergarten, McKinily said. For some, it may be that their child got an offer in a selective enrollment program or different school the family prefers. But McKinily said there are instances where pre-K students do not want to leave.

“There are a small number of schools that are forced with telling families, ‘No, you cannot stay here for kindergarten because I just don’t have the space,’” McKinily said.

That can be difficult for principals who have used universal pre-K as a recruitment tool to build enrollment at their school, McKinley said.

Seth Lavin, principal of Brentano Elementary Math & Science Academy in Logan Square, said his school has faced this issue. After the school was spared from closure in 2013, they worked to boost enrollment — and offering pre-K helped.

“Even if families have apprehensions about CPS or one particular school, they’ll often feel good when they walk into a preschool classroom and see great preschool teachers doing great preschool work,” Lavin said. “Then once you’ve got a family in your school, and they realize this is a nice place to be, my kid is happy here, it’s easier to convert them to kindergarten.”

But as Logan Square gentrified and Brentano grew in popularity with neighborhood families, Lavin said it’s been harder to continue offering seats to students who live outside the boundary. Because pre-K enrollment is still a lottery based on income and other hardship factors, Lavin said his pre-K classrooms are often more diverse than the kindergarten classes.

“Nothing is magic. This one policy change is not going to entirely stop segregation and inequity and how people can all go access school in Chicago,” Lavin said. “But it can be a step that helps give families facing economic hardship access to schools that are gentrifying when they’re in neighborhoods that are gentrifying.”

The proposed changes to the district’s enrollment policy would also allow students to stay enrolled in their neighborhood school in later grades, even if their family moves out of the attendance boundary.

The proposed policy will be posted for public comment for 30 days and is expected to go before the school board for a final vote in December.

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

CPS five-year plan aims to get more kids to attend neighborhood schools

2024-09-16T22:08:41+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools unveiled a new five-year strategic plan Monday that sets out to increase the number of students attending schools in their neighborhood and redefine what it means to be a successful student.

The plan did not call for specific changes to selective enrollment, magnet, or charter schools, a possibility signaled in December when the board first announced its intention to rethink school choice. But the plan does seek to bolster resources for neighborhood schools “with an intentional focus on disinvested communities.”

Roughly 44% of elementary school students enrolled at a school other than the one they were zoned for in the 2022-23 school year, while about 75% of high schoolers did the same, according to district data.

Twenty years ago, when Chicago started expanding magnet, selective, and charter schools, just about a quarter of elementary school students enrolled in schools outside of their attendance area and 46% of high schoolers did the same.

The plan outlines priorities and specific goals to reach by 2029 in three different areas — students, schools, and communities — but did not signal policy changes. Officials, however, left the possibility open for future changes as a result of the plan.

“I don’t think this document is intended to indicate new policies,” Chicago Board of Education Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland told reporters. “As engagement continues around the different topics and areas there, if a policy change is seen as necessary, then perhaps that will be the case.”

The board will vote on the plan on Wednesday at a special meeting.

Under the plan, the district set the following goals to reach by 2029:

Increase the percentage of students who attend a school in their neighborhood or community area. The district said it does not have a specific percentage it wants to reach, and that this is not just limited to a student’s zoned school.
Increase the number of students in grades 3-8 who pass the state’s reading and math exams by 20%.
Reduce chronic absenteeism – when a student misses 10 or more days of school – by 15%.
Reduce teacher vacancies by 25% in schools that serve majorities of Black and Hispanic students.
Increase funding for improving school facilities by $250 million.
Increase internet bandwidth by 400% at elementary schools and by 900% at high schools to prevent outages and slow internet connections.
Ensure that all schools will have a “robust” behavioral health team.
Decrease class sizes, with priority on schools with higher needs.
Ensure that all schools have the capacity to hire arts, P.E., and other “special instruction” staff.
Increase the percentage of students enrolled in at least one district after-school program by 8 percentage points, from 42% currently to 50%.
Transition 25% of personnel who come from the private sector, such as custodians and bus drivers, to district employees.

District wants to redefine student success

The plan also outlines specific priorities for certain groups of students. For example, the district said it wants to improve achievement and opportunities for Black students, who are disproportionately less likely to read and do math on grade level compared to their peers and are disciplined at higher rates; ensure students learn more than one language by the time they graduate and boost support for English learners; and improve quality of education and instruction for both students with disabilities and kids in pre-K through second grade.

District officials and school board leaders also want more emphasis on how students experience school.

Officials said the district will continue to track things like graduation rate and student growth and proficiency on subjects for their grade level. But it will also consider other factors when considering student and school success, such as how well schools are supporting students who are chronically absent, how many students are participating in early college and career credit programs, and if schools are providing “high quality curriculum,” according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova.

The district has also set an explicit goal to improve the number of schools rated strongly as “supportive environments” on the annual 5Essentials survey, which comes from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and is supposed to measure a school’s culture and climate.

“Social-emotional learning, student well-being, it’s not an add-on,” Todd-Breland said. “If it’s not deeply integrated into everything that we do, then learning cannot happen.”

The district also included priorities to increase funding for all of its schools.

Todd-Breland said board meetings will soon be restructured so they monitor the plan’s goals, “so that every month when you come to a board meeting, you’re going to find out something new about how the strategic plan is being monitored and how things are moving.”

But it’s unclear if that meeting structure will remain come January when the school board grows from 7 appointed members to 21 members, 10 of whom will be elected by Chicago voters on Nov. 5.

Strategic plan comes amid change, tensions at CPS

Martinez and his administration unveiled the plan eight months after the school board passed a resolution signaling the district’s intent to curtail a choice system that leaders said has undermined many neighborhood schools and bred inequities in the experience of students in different parts of the city.

That resolution was in keeping with campaign promises by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, who called the district’s system “a Hunger Games scenario” in which families scramble to flee their neighborhood campuses for spots in coveted test-in and lottery programs across the city. Chicago’s selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools are also prized by many families, and district leaders have spent the intervening months reassuring state lawmakers, parents, and others that they won’t close or severely weaken these choices.

Asked why the plan revealed Monday did not include explicit policy changes for choice schools, Todd-Breland said the board heard from people who valued schools beyond their neighborhood options, including selective enrollment and charter schools.

“What felt more important, and what continues to be the more important thing … is that the lever of change in Chicago Public Schools is to invest in neighborhood schools and our communities furthest from opportunity to make sure there are pathways that families are confident in and have high quality education provided in them from pre-K through high school in their neighborhood,” Todd-Breland said.

Still, the strategic plan says academic gaps among students and challenges have worsened because of “our current competitive enrollment policies and previous accountability policy, which pitted schools against each other and sorted students based on academic performance in an under-resourced system, reinforcing cycles of inequity.”

Martinez is putting out the plan just as reports emerged that Johnson might be gearing up to replace him following disagreements with City Hall over how to tackle budget deficits and rocky contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. Those reports raise questions about the district’s ability to see the new blueprint through, after a run of frequent CEO comings-and-goings that have destabilized CPS.

In a statement, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said the “best parts” of the plan mirror the union’s current contract proposals with the district and that, at the bargaining table, Martinez is “out of step” with his own district.

“If the district actually led with this plan, then we’d have the partner we’re looking for to deliver for our students,” Davis Gates said.

Efforts to reinvigorate Chicago’s neighborhood schools date back to the tenure of Martinez’s predecessor, Janice Jackson, who served for three and a half years. She launched “equity grants” to give campuses with shrinking enrollment a funding boost as well as a program in which schools applied for dollars to start specialized programming, such as arts or STEM, in a bid to lure families seeking distinctive learning options. Jackson’s own five-year plan also emphasized improving how the district serves its Black students, especially Black boys.

After the school board’s December resolution, Martinez’ administration disclosed few details about the development of a new strategic plan, with officials saying they wanted to first hear from community members at a series of public meetings this spring. Officials said Monday that nearly 14,000 people “engaged” with the plan by providing feedback or attending community meetings.

But for some, the wait for more details on the plan produced anxiety about the future of school choice in Chicago. Families in the district’s selective enrollment and magnet programs worried those schools would be diminished – a claim CPS officials repeatedly denied and is not a part of the strategic plan released Monday. On some campuses, those worries spiked as the district unveiled a new approach to school budgeting in the spring that district leaders said would steer more dollars to campuses with the highest needs and correct for historical inequities in how Chicago distributed resources. At some selective schools, officials and parents said newly tight budgets made it hard to staff specialized programs.

The plan released Monday calls for the district to monitor both the strengths and weaknesses of the new funding formula.

In the spring, state lawmakers introduced a bill threatening to intervene if Chicago moved to close any of its selective and magnet programs. The bill didn’t gain traction during the legislative session, but it elicited reassurance from Johnson and district leaders that there were no plans to shutter these schools.

Anxiety has also run high among charter operators and families, who felt that the December resolution was taking clear aim at their schools. Last week, charter officials and parents rallied at a school board meeting to demand more clarity on the plan and a promise that it won’t undermine the city’s charters, which serve roughly a fifth of its students.

The plan calls for revisiting the district’s renewal process for charter schools in a couple of years, but provides no additional details.

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

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

It’s time to pay student teachers

2024-04-05T10:00:00+00:00

I fell in love with teaching while working as an assistant educator at a preschool 16 years ago. I had not studied education, so I enrolled in an alternative certification program specifically designed for people who were already working in education. There were many advantages: evening classes, minimum tuition, and, most importantly, no need to quit my job. My classroom, where I planned to continue teaching after student teaching, even counted toward my student teaching requirement. That program made a teaching license and a master’s degree accessible.

My coworker Liv, meanwhile, has yet to earn her license. When she started as an assistant teacher in my classroom nearly five years ago, she was nearing the end of her teacher preparation program with only the student teaching requirement to complete. To this day, her student teaching has remained beyond reach.

That’s because her program requires 11 weeks of student teaching and specifies that candidates cannot get paid. Liv already works at a preschool, and, as she put it, “leaving a job for three months is really challenging.” She relies on her income and on employer-sponsored health insurance.

Katie Viernum

Liv’s situation is not unique. While many other professions have shifted to paid internships or apprenticeships, student teaching continues to be largely unpaid. Many teacher preparation programs that prohibit paid student teaching offer no explanation for the practice; others justify it by saying that the requirement is part of the learning experience.

Considering the current teacher shortage, it’s time to rethink the teacher preparation and certification process. This is especially true in the early childhood space, where retention and advancement are notorious problems.

Student teaching should be authentic and valuable. It should not be a financial burden, particularly for people already working in the field. Paraprofessionals, unlicensed lead teachers, childcare providers, and teaching assistants like Liv make up a great pool of racially and economically diverse teacher candidates. These educators stand poised to fill essential roles. Additionally, their presence in classrooms will promote diversity and equity in the field. Removing any barriers to their advancement makes sense all around.

Many teacher preparation programs that prohibit paid student teaching offer no explanation for the practice; others justify it by saying that the requirement is part of the learning experience.

Here in Illinois, the State Board of Education specifies that student teachers may be paid for student teaching. While not all teacher certification programs have gotten on board, there has been progress. Grow Your Own and teacher residency programs provide limited financial support, and the Early Childhood Access Consortium for Education, or ECACE, allows participants to complete their student teaching in their place of employment if the teacher and site meet certain state and university requirements.

Recent data indicates that most programs participating in ECACE allow such flexibility for at least some portion of student teaching. The remaining programs should adjust their policies to allow that same flexibility for people already working in the field.

In a recent brief from Teach Plus Illinois Early Childhood Policy Fellows, my colleagues and I recommend ways in which the state education board, universities, and other stakeholders can further reduce barriers to student teaching. All programs should allow student teaching to be paid. To achieve this standard, the state must explicitly prohibit programs from preventing paid student teaching. For incumbent educators, that could mean student teaching for their regular salary at their place of employment.

Allowing educators to student teach where they work would require no additional funding. It would necessitate fewer transitions and offer more stability for children. In addition, schools would not need to fill positions temporarily while staff left to student teach elsewhere. For people not currently working in a classroom, the state or individual school districts should provide stipends to student teachers. The Teacher Vacancy Grant Pilot Program offers an avenue for school districts to support student teachers financially as a way to strengthen teacher pipelines.

Teachers, education organizations, and the Illinois Education Association have drafted a state bill, HB4652, to establish a stipend program for student teachers in Illinois. If passed and fully funded, it would provide a $10,000 stipend for a full semester of student teaching.

As a Teach Plus fellow, I worked with fellow educators, researching the history of and current policies around student teaching, and surveying educators about their needs. Our research-based recommendations helped inform this bill.

Because of the flexibility of my alternative certification program, I obtained my professional educator license and became a lead teacher. It has given me a stronger voice in the classroom and the school, a higher salary, and the ability to assist others on their professional journey.

But five years after joining our classroom, Liv still is waiting on her teaching license. We need to make changes to allow Liv and other teacher candidates to advance in their careers and help fill teacher vacancies in Illinois.

Katie Viernum is a lead teacher at Loyola University Preschool in Chicago and a 2023–2024 Teach Plus Illinois Early Childhood Educator Senior Policy Fellow.

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

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

Public preschool has been a lifeline for Kristen Larson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preschool expansion plan predates pandemic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicago shrinks reliance on federal COVID dollars for pre-K

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What lies ahead for pre-K?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illinois families will have access to over 5,800 additional pre-K seats, says Pritzker

2024-01-19T19:53:50+00:00

An additional 5,800 preschool seats for Illinois children received funding under the first year of the state’s Smart Start Illinois initiative, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday.

“For too long, child care has been either unavailable and affordable or both,” Pritzker said at a press conference on Thursday.

Pritzker, who has long promised to make universal preschool a reality around the state, noted that the state’s reimbursement system was unpredictable and made it difficult for child care providers to retain staff and offer seats to parents.

Smart Start Illinois, which launched in 2023, added $250 million to the state’s early childhood education programs. The initiative is focused on expanding access to preschool for low-income families and families living in “preschool deserts,” regions of the state where there are not enough pre-K seats for at least 80% of low-income families with young children, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

The initiative included funding for the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant and for the state department of human services’ child care assistance program, home visiting program, and early intervention services that support young children with disabilities.

The plan’s initial goal was to create a total of 20,000 preschool seats for 3- to 4-years-olds within four years. The state planned to create 5,000 preschool seats for young children within the first year of Smart Start. The state surpassed the first-year goal by 18%, Pritzker said on Thursday.

The state board provided new funding to 95 programs statewide to create 5,886 new preschool seats. Once these programs are up and running, over 82,000 preschool seats will be available.

In the state’s 2024 budget, the state board of education received $75 million for its Early Childhood Block Grant as part of the Smart Start Initiative — the overall budget for the grant went from $598.1 million in 2023 to $673.1 million. With the additional funding, the state board plans to provide and administer seats for 5,383 additional children in half-day preschool programs and 503 additional seats for full-day preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds.

At Thursday’s press conference, State Superintendent Tony Sanders noted that preschool is important because it is where children and families form their first relationships with schools.

“We’re going to keep working until we transform every preschool desert into places where our youngest learners have a chance to thrive,” said Sanders.

Under Smart Start Illinois, the state board allocated $8.4 million to existing child care programs. According to a press release from the state, the state board encouraged programs to consider using funding to boost salaries for early childhood educators.

Many child care workers at centers have the same education levels as preschool teachers in public schools, but often make significantly less money. Many have reported having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet or being forced to leave the field altogether. More funding could decrease the pay disparity, especially for women of color who dominate the workforce.

The coronavirus pandemic slowed down Pritzker’s efforts to expand preschool. After he was reelected in 2022, he vowed to make good on his promise by increasing funding and increasing pay for workers.

Smart Start also included two new initiatives to help support child care providers. The Childcare Workforce Compensation Contract was aimed at increasing the salaries of child care workers and bringing more educators into the field and the Childhood Construction Grant Programs was created to help improve current child care facilities.

In the spring legislative session, Illinois lawmakers will decide how much to approve for the second year of the governor’s plan. Pritzker is expected to give his State of the State address and budget proposal later in February.

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 Gov. J.B. Pritzker announces new agency to oversee early childhood

2023-10-24T23:28:41+00:00

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Illinois is planning to create a state agency focused on early childhood, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office.

The new agency would oversee preschool funding and regulation and day care licensing, as well as early intervention, home visiting, and child care assistance programs.

Currently, those programs operate under the Illinois State Board of Education, the Department of Human Services, and the Department of Children and Family Services.

“When you have pieces of agencies that you’d like to bring together, we want to make sure that’s done in a way that’s cost effective,” Pritzker said Tuesday. He said the current system can be an “impossible bureaucracy” that’s difficult for both parents and providers to navigate.

“We need to make it so much easier,” he added.

Pritzker will be signing an executive order to begin a “multi-year process” to create the new agency. The governor’s office said he will work with the legislature next spring to pass legislation to bring together programs for the state’s youngest residents and their families.

The governor’s office said Ann Whalen will serve as transition director as the new agency is formed. Whalen has served as director of policy for the education advocacy organization Advance Illinois since 2019.

An advisory committee will provide input and gather feedback. It will be led by Bela Moté, the chief executive officer of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, the governor’s office said.

Creating a separate agency focused on early childhood is another step in Pritzker’s work to make Illinois “number one” for child care access. In last year’s budget, the governor announced a $250 million four-year effort to expand preschool and child care.

It’s not clear the size of the new agency or what its new budget will look like. The governor is expected to make his 2025 budget proposal in January.

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

Chicago child care providers appeal for local funding as federal aid dries up

2023-10-06T21:22:31+00:00

Jamila Wilson said that providing child care services to families of essential workers during the height of the coronavirus pandemic made her feel like she was doing “something in a time of crisis.”

Now that the coronavirus pandemic has eased and work has returned to normal, Wilson worries that she might not be able to continue serving families in her community. The emergency federal funding that helped her and other providers keep their doors open expired on Sept. 30.

During a town hall meeting on Thursday, Wilson and members of the Illinois Child Care for All Coalition called on state and local officials to step in to prevent what they see as a looming child care crisis. The child care providers and parents who spoke Thursday night want more funding to ensure that providers are able to make a living wage, and that all families are able to access services, regardless of their income or work status.

The coalition wants state lawmakers to direct funding to Chicago and is calling on the City Council to create a revenue line in the city’s budget for child care.

Without more local funding, they warned, they risk losing their businesses or having to cut jobs, and families who are already struggling to find affordable child care for young children would be even worse off.

“It’s kind of scary,” said Wilson, who has provided home-based child care for over 18 years, when asked about the end of COVID relief funds. “I’ve already picked up a lot of debt during COVID, just so I can keep things afloat.” Wilson mentioned that she has to pay her mortgage, a business loan she took out, and student loans, and support her daughter who is in college.

Kia Jackson has a similar experience. Jackson has worked at a YMCA for 19 years and in child care for 17 years. When she first started working, she had four children and was living on an income of $10 an hour.

“As you all know, that wasn’t enough, and it was difficult,” Jackson said Thursday.

Jackson and her colleagues have unionized at the YMCA and received raises every year, but she said they still have had to take on second jobs just to make ends meet.

“We need to win child care for all in Chicago, so that families can have the child care they need and deserve, and so that we, as workers, can support ourselves and our families,” she told the crowd Thursday.

Long before COVID hit, child care centers struggled to find and retain workers and pay employees living wages or provide benefits like health insurance.

And many families, especially low-income families, have long struggled to find affordable child care, or live in child care deserts. A report from Illinois Action for Children, a nonprofit organization that helps refer parents to child care providers in Cook County, found that families in the county spend $11,500 per year for a preschool-age child at a child care center, on average, and almost $16,500 a year for an infant.

During the pandemic in 2021, the federal government under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act gave states $24 billion in child care stabilization grants to help parents access child care, and help providers stay in business and increase staff. Illinois received $796.3 million in funding.

But now that the federal coronavirus emergency funding has ended, advocates warn that families and child care providers will be facing the same challenges as before if the city and state don’t help fill the gap.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is expected to put forward his first budget proposal next Wednesday. The city has previously reported a projected $534 million budget shortfall.

There is some hope that the state will step in. Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared that he wants Illinois to be No. 1 for child care during his second term in office. He promised to make new investments in early childhood for the next four years with his Smart Start Illinois plan.

Also, Illinois lawmakers increased state funding in early childhood education and child care.

This year, the General Assembly approved a $250 million increase for early childhood education in the 2024 budget. About $40 million of that went to the Department of Human Services’ early intervention program for young children with disabilities; an additional $70 million went to the Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income families access child care; and the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant program, which supports creating early childhood education programs, received an additional $75 million.

As the state board prepares for the 2025 budget, early childhood education advocates want to see more money in the budget. One of those groups, Start Early Illinois, wants the state to invest another $75 million in the early childhood block grant and $5 million for children with disabilities.

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

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

COVID relief helped Cook County child care providers stay open, but advocates say more support is needed

2023-09-11T19:13:56+00:00

Child care providers in Cook County were able to stay open during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic due to federal funding, but a new report finds that the region still lacks licensed home-care providers, spots for infants, hours in the evening, and affordable options.

For working families, having a safe affordable place to send their children during the work day is essential, but child care in Cook County continues to be expensive — on average $11,500 per year for a preschool child at a child care center and almost 16,500 a year for an infant, according to the report by Illinois Action for Children — a nonprofit organization that helps refer parents to child care providers in Cook County.

To address some of the barriers, the report recommends expanding eligibility for the state’s Child Care Assistance Program to make child care less expensive for families, increasing reimbursements for child care providers to help cover the costs of running their business, and using state funds to increase the number of licensed home-based care providers.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said he wants to make Illinois “the number one” state for child care access. The state invested $250 million in early childhood education for Pritzker’s Smart Start Illinois program with the hope of making child care affordable for families.

Illinois Action for Children’s 2023 report examined the state of child care in Cook County, which includes Chicago and surrounding suburbs, from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022 using their database of providers. Despite a mix of child care providers and settings, such as a center or care in someone’s home, there is a shortage of child care providers.

Here are four things you should know about the state of child care in Cook County from the report:

Child care centers stayed open with help from COVID-19 funding

The coronavirus pandemic “had the potential to devastate” an already fragile child care system, the report said. While some Cook County providers did close — 2% of child care centers and 12% of home-based care providers — the $980 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds distributed by the state’s department of human services helped to stabilize the industry.

Marcia Stoll, assistant director of research at Illinois Action for Children, said that the Illinois Action for Children data reveals just part of what Cook County’s child care providers went through during the pandemic. Stoll said she learned from providers that a workforce shortage in the industry has created challenges for providers and limited access to care for families.

“We’ve heard anecdotally that some have closed classrooms because they don’t have enough staff or operate shorter hours,” said Stoll. “So, it has made finding care harder for families. It’s not all a rosy picture.”

Home care providers declined during pandemic years

Cook County saw a 12% decrease in home-based providers, or 343 homes, from 2019 to 2022. The report noted that while the drop is “concerning,” the year-to-year decrease is similar to the trend prior to the pandemic. Over the past decade, there has been a 31% decline in the number of home-based providers.

Juliet Bromer, a research scientist at the Erikson Institute — a Chicago-based higher education institution that focuses on early childhood education — said home-based providers disappear because they are expensive to run, providers often work long hours, and the state’s current child care system is hard for an individual to navigate in order to receive funding that a child care center might have. A mix of these issues create burnout causing some providers to leave.

“In every study I’ve done, I heard a version of this quote, ‘I am the cook, the bookkeeper, the psychologist, the teacher, the parent,’” said Bromer.

Illinois Action for Children recommends that the state provide funding to help providers get a state license, offer startup grants, and reimburse home-based providers at a higher rate.

Early morning, evening, or weekend child care is often unavailable

Parents who don’t work a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job often can’t find child care early in the morning, in the evening, on the weekend or overnight, the report found. An analysis of census data for Cook County found that 34% of parents with low incomes need early morning child care from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m and 16% need child care in the evening from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., according to the report. For parents looking for child care at these times, the report found that licensed home-based child care providers are more likely to offer services.

The report says the state could create policies that would allow families to mix the type of child care they need to ensure that they have care throughout the day. For instance, the state could allow parents to use home-based care during the evenings and center care during the daytime.

Child care is still expensive for families

The federal Department of Health and Human Services says child care should only cost 7% of a family’s income according to the report. For many families who don’t meet the threshold for the state’s child care assistance program and have infants or two or more children, child care consumes a large portion of household income. In 2022, the monthly income limit to qualify for assistance for a family of four was $5,203.

According to the report, the average price for center care for a 2-year-old accounted for 15% of family income in 2021, two times higher than what’s recommended. Illinois Action for Children recommends increasing eligibility for the state’s child care assistance program to support more families.

The report also recommends that the state increase reimbursement rates for providers so they pay staff a higher salary and continue to give families high-quality care.

Correction: Sept. 11, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that Marcia Stoll is the assistant director of research for Illinois Action for Children, not the director of research.

More early childhood workers are attending colleges and university, report says

2023-08-18T22:45:29+00:00

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More early childhood workers in Illinois are pursuing higher education degrees — moving closer toward a goal set out by state officials two years ago, a new report found.

The Illinois Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity’s first annual report, released on Wednesday, found that since 2020 about 500 additional students who already work in early childhood education have enrolled in bachelor’s degree and applied associate programs, an increase of about 18%. The report also found an increase in the number of Latino and African American child care professionals who enrolled in college since 2020.

Ireta Gasner, vice president of Illinois Policy at Start Early, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that advocates for early childhood education, said it is important for child care professionals to get degrees to understand child development and to get higher wages.

“A lot of folks want to go back to school, but it’s difficult to do so because there’s a lot of systemic barriers between two-year and four-year schools,” said Gasner. “There is a lack of financial support that fits the needs of adult students like paying for transportation, child care, tuition, and books.”

A March 2020 report from Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies said “an estimated 28,000 early childhood education teachers and assistants would benefit from an opportunity to seek postsecondary credentials.”

The Illinois legislature passed a law in 2021 creating the consortium to pressure public universities and community colleges to create faster pathways for current child care professionals to earn college degrees. According to the report, over $200 million in funding for the consortium comes from the Illinois Department of Human Services’ federal COVID relief funds.

In order for the consortium to reach its goal of enrolling almost 5,000 members in higher education programs, it will need to complete this task by September 2024 when emergency funding expires.

Christi Chadwick, ECACE co-project director, said that when the legislation was passed in 2021, the consortium knew some funding for the work would expire in three years, so the group’s focus has been on building infrastructure to make sure that students have access to pathways in institutions of higher education.

“A lot of work has been happening in institutions around program redesign. So that pathways are smooth at two-year institutions or four-year institutions and between the two, and also working to put systems in place within institutions to better support the workforce,” said Chadwick.

For years, child care professionals and advocates have raised alarms about low wages and note that early childhood educators often have to work multiple jobs to make a living wage

A report from the Chicago Early Childhood Workforce Partnership Employer Council last fall found that Chicago’s early childhood educators are paid $18,000 less on average than elementary school teachers in Chicago Public Schools, despite having the same degrees. The gap is even wider for early childhood educators of color compared to white educators.

In addition to the consortium, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Smart Start Illinois initiative includes $130 million for an effort called the Childcare Workforce Compensation Contracts, which is aimed at increasing the salaries of child care workers and bringing more educators into the field.

According to a press release from the state on Wednesday, state agencies and universities who are a part of the consortium have worked on several initiatives to ensure that finances are not a barrier for current early childhood workers, the majority of whom are women and people of color.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Community College Board, and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission launched the ECACE Scholarship in 2021. In the first year of the scholarship, over 400 students were awarded $5.7 million. In the first six months of the second year of the program, $7 million was awarded to over 1,000 students.

Colleges and universities that are a part of the consortium have created their own initiatives to tackle financial barriers preventing workers going to school and to support them once they are on campus. According to the press release, some universities have given students laptops, academic tutoring, and test preparation to help them pass early childhood education licensing exams.

The report from the consortium shows a lot of promise, but figuring out how to expand the program will depend on whether it is sustainable after federal coronavirus relief funds expire in 2024, said Gasner.

“Once people feel like this is going to be here in four years or in two years, they’re going to be more likely to continue to engage,” said Gasner. “We’re going to be able to talk more about whether the scholarship needs to be further further tweaked. But all of that growth and progress is going to rely on sustainability.”

Correction: Aug. 23, 2023: A previous version of this story said $7 million had been awarded during the second year of the ECACE Scholarship. The story has been updated to reflect that $7 million was awarded during the first six months of the second year of the program.

Dolly Parton sending free books to all Illinois kids 5 and under

2023-06-14T21:30:00+00:00

The state is partnering with music icon Dolly Parton to help get more books in the hands of young kids.

The legendary country singer and philanthropist just inked a $1.6 million deal between the state and her reading program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

The program will mail “free, high-quality books” to Illinois children from birth to 5 years old, no matter their family’s income. Imagination Library has already partnered with a few cities and school districts around the state, but the deal made with Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration will take the program state-wide.

Pritzker said in a statement the partnership will “bring Dolly to every doorstep.”

“As a longtime early childhood advocate, I’m incredibly excited for what’s to come,” Pritzker said in the statement. “These are some of the most crucial years for learning of a person’s lifetime, and this initiative will connect low-income families to resources their children will need for lifelong success.”

The Imagination Library was founded by Parton in 1995 and is now under the wing of her Dollywood Foundation, according to the news release. Parton started out giving books to kids in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up. But the program took off and is now offered in five countries: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland.

One in 10 children in the United States under the age of five are enrolled in Parton’s book program, according to her foundation. A child enrolled in the program at birth could receive 60 free books by the time they turn 6, according to the Dollywood Foundation.

The program offers braille and bilingual books and negotiates the wholesale price of the books while state and education partners handle the cost of shipping.

The Imagination Library has increased kindergarten readiness in children by 29 percent, according to the news release.

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton joined Pritzker Tuesday at a school in downstate Cahokia to announce the program and other investments in early childhood education.

“Thanks to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, children in every corner of Illinois can receive free books mailed directly to their home,” Stratton said in the statement. “I applaud early childhood advocates like Dolly Parton, who are helping our children find joy in reading and creating future generations of avid readers.”

This story originally appeared in Block Club Chicago.

Full-day kindergarten will be required in Illinois public schools by 2027 under bill headed to governor’s desk

2023-05-23T22:07:52+00:00

Every public school in Illinois could have full-day kindergarten by 2027, thanks to a bill passed on Friday. The bill passed 84-24 in a final house vote and is heading to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk.

Under HB 2396, school districts around the state will have to offer full-day kindergarten to families with children between 4- and 6-years-old by the 2027-28 school year. School districts can continue to offer half-day kindergarten classes for families that want the option. The bill also creates a task force that will look into how school districts should implement full-day kindergarten.

First-year state Rep. Mary Beth Canty, a Democrat representing Arlington Heights and lead sponsor of the bill, applauded the general assembly for passing the bill with bipartisan support.

“I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done,” Canty said. “From the stakeholder group to advocates, to the Senate, everyone worked really hard. Not only that, I am excited because we’re helping a lot of people and that is the only reason I do this job.”

Previously, Illinois only required schools to have a half-day kindergarten program.

Early childhood education advocates have been pushing for schools to have full-day kindergarten programs. They say teachers will have more time in full-day classes to help students learn foundational skills such as the alphabet, colors, and numbers and prepare them to enter elementary school.

Canty told Chalkbeat Chicago in April that she advocated for the bill to help working families, especially working mothers who have left the workforce since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to watch their young children.

While a majority of districts in Illinois report having full-day kindergarten, about 150 do not offer a full-day program. Some have only recently started offering it. School districts around the state such as River Forest School District 90 and Downers Grove Grade School District 58 — two wealthy districts in Chicago’s suburbs — are making the switch to full-day kindergarten this fall.

Even though the bill had bipartisan support in the general assembly, school district leaders voiced concern that creating full-day kindergarten would be expensive for school districts as they try to find space for more children and hire more staff.

The bill addresses those concerns by allowing school districts to waive transitioning to full-day kindergarten by two years if the district is funding below 76% according to the state’s evidence-based funding formula, is ranked in the top 25% of needing more capital funding, or meets a criteria set by the State Board of Education based on the task force’s recommendations.

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 preschool applications are open. Here’s what you need to know.

2023-04-14T23:20:01+00:00

Chicago families can now apply for preschool for the 2023-24 school year — marking the culmination of a yearslong effort to offer free universal access to the city’s 4-year-olds.

The initial application period runs through May 2 and offers will be made on May 19. After that, people can apply and will be admitted on a rolling first-come, first-served basis.

The Chicago Early Learning portal includes all full-day and half-day programs for 3- and 4-year-olds operating within Chicago Public Schools, including public Montessori options, as well as early childhood programs run by community-based organizations through the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.

Families can also apply by calling 312-229-1690 or at select public libraries. Registration events will also be held across the city during the month of April.

Is there a spot in CPS preschools for everyone?

Four-year-olds living in the city, regardless of family income, can now attend preschool for free at most of the city’s public schools.

“We’re pretty close to being fully universal,” said Leslie McKinley, chief officer for the Office of Early Childhood with Chicago Public Schools.

The district said it has 15,755 full-day spots for 4-year-olds and 6,704 half-day spots for 3-year-olds in Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, the city is funding 13,091 seats in community-based programs, 7,424 of which are for children over the age of 3. The remaining are for babies and toddlers.

Last year, 12,460 4-year-olds and 3,943 3-year-olds enrolled in district preschool programs. That’s up since the first year of the COVID pandemic, but enrollment has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, when 14,300 4-year-olds and 3,192 4-year-olds attended pre-K in Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, roughly 3,500 spots went unfilled in the city’s public pre-K classrooms. Many were in high-poverty neighborhoods, an analysis by WBEZ found. Overall, birth rates and the number of school-aged children in Chicago has declined in the past decade. But a Chalkbeat analysis of census data indicates there are nearly 65,000 3- and 4-year-olds living in Chicago.

How do I find a preschool near me and apply?

Families can apply to up to five programs and are able to search what’s offered using an interactive map. The application can be submitted through GoCPS, which is also where results will come through.

Applicants should rank programs in order of preference. The application asks for demographic, residency, and income information, but no paperwork is required until you enroll. You can save your application and come back to it later if you aren’t ready to submit it right away or need to dig up information that you don’t have at your fingertips. This video provides a helpful walkthrough.

Many public schools are offering tours and information sessions April 24-28. The district recommends calling schools directly or visiting their websites to find out when they’ll be offering these sessions.

When will I know if my child got into a preschool program?

All applications submitted by May 2 will receive an offer on May 19. Families can still apply after that, and will get offers on a rolling first-come, first-served basis.

For full-day pre-K offered through Chicago Public Schools, 4-year-olds get priority. Children are also prioritized based on their proximity to a school, whether or not they have siblings enrolled, their family’s income, and whether or not they have a disability.

Unlike previous years, applicants will be given waitlist numbers for programs where they do not initially get offers. If an applicant gets waitlisted and wants to apply to a different program, they can call the Chicago Early Learning hotline at 312-229-1690.

Another word of caution: Waitlist numbers could change almost daily, McKinley said, because spots are prioritized based on need.

Once I get an offer from a pre-K program, then what?

Applicants can accept or decline offers through the GoCPS portal, using the hotline, or by calling or visiting the school directly.

In order to enroll, families will need to provide a birth certificate or passport to prove the child’s age. They will also be asked to provide documentation confirming income and showing they live in Chicago, though alternative forms are available if a family has no income or is in a temporary living situation. Proof of citizenship is not required.

If your 3- or 4-year-old attends their neighborhood school or is admitted into the public Montessori programs at Drummond or Suder for pre-K, they are guaranteed a spot in kindergarten and beyond. But if your child chooses a pre-K outside their neighborhood or at another magnet school, they may need to reapply for kindergarten.

More details are available on the Chicago Early Learning website. And if you still have questions, send them our way at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

This story has been updated with new information from district officials clarifying how waitlists for preschool programs work.

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

How will Chicago’s next mayor shape early childhood education? Advocates warn of challenges ahead.

2023-03-31T19:00:16+00:00

Chicago’s youngest residents cannot vote for the city’s next mayor, but their parents can.

As Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas face off in an April 4 runoff election to become the city’s next mayor, both have promised to support early childhood education and provide families with accessible and affordable options for high-quality child care. Johnson said he would focus on affordable child care and increasing wages for staff, while Vallas’ plan would support children from birth until they reach the classroom.

But experts, advocates, and child care providers say both candidates have given few details about how they would help the city’s over 200,000 youngest learners. They hope whoever is elected will increase funding for early education, address current staffing shortages, work across several agencies, and make child care more affordable.

Chicago Public Schools currently offers full-day free preschool for 4-year-olds. Community-based organizations also offer pre-kindergarten with full and half day programs for 3- and 4- year-olds. Head Start, which is federally funded and administered by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, also offers child care and preschool for low-income families. In addition, some parents pay for private child care centers.

Kyrsten Emanuel, senior policy manager at Start Early, a nonprofit organization in Illinois that advocates for early childhood education and child care, said the mayor’s office is influential in shaping the city’s early childhood education and child care landscape, especially as community-based organizations and public schools are competing for students.

“Every time Chicago Public Schools expands pre-K, it impacts enrollment and staffing in community-based programs,” said Emanuel. “To mitigate that impact, there really needs to be intentional coordination happening both at the city and the community level.”

Johnson, a Cook County commissioner, has proposed “child care for all.” He says he would focus on making child care affordable for families and wants to increase wages for child care workers. In a statement to Chalkbeat Chicago, Johnson said he will work with Gov. J.B Pritzker and the general assembly to increase state funding for early childhood education.

“I will advocate in Springfield to end the system of giving wealthy corporations tax breaks at the expense of working families who desperately need safe, reliable child care,” Johnson said.

Vallas, former Chicago Public Schools CEO, wants to expand support for young children from birth until they enter the classroom — with a focus on teen mothers and their children. In February during an early childhood education mayoral forum, Vallas said he wanted to use under-enrolled school buildings for child care centers and create tax incentives for private centers to make child care more affordable for families.

Chalkbeat Chicago reached out to both campaigns for details on their early childhood education and child care plans. As of publication, Vallas’ campaign had not responded.

No matter who wins the election, Chicago’s next mayor will face a series of challenges while shaping the city’s early childhood education and child care landscape.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has continued rolling out universal preschool to families with 4-year-olds in the city, continuing the work of her predecessor Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Under Lightfoot’s administration, the city’s early learning chief stepped down in the second year of the rollout and the early days of COVID-19 slowed down the city’s efforts.

Bela Moté, president and CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, who has seen the expansion of universal preschool under Emanuel and Lightfoot, hopes the next mayor has a dedicated team working on early childhood education issues. This is especially important, she added, because in Chicago early childhood programs are run by a mix of agencies, including Chicago Public Schools, the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, and community-based organizations.

“The machine doesn’t work if these three pegs aren’t moving together,” Moté said.

There are also challenges when it comes to staffing. Child care providers are struggling to attract and retain workers, who are often paid less than their elementary school peers. The early childhood education workforce is mostly women of color, who are often paid less than their white colleagues.

Meghan Gowin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Erikson Institute, said that as the city grows capacity for more 3- and 4-year-olds to enter pre-K in Chicago Public Schools and community-based organizations, the next mayor needs to look at what resources are currently available and the needs of the workforce.

“What are some of the supports and resources that are going to be provided to those centers and educators to make sure that as they’re getting in more children, they’re able to actually support those children in ways that are culturally sustainable and inclusive?” Gowin said.

Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed a four-year plan called Smart Start Illinois that would increase funding in order to serve more children. In the coming fiscal year, the governor is proposing an additional $250 million that would add 5,000 seats statewide in preschool classrooms for 3- and 4-year olds.

The state board of education’s early childhood education block grant would receive an additional $75 million — of which 37% would go to Chicago Public Schools. Pritzker’s budget still needs approval by the legislature.

Even with the state increasing funding to early childhood education, the city should look for additional ways to boost revenue, said Emanuel of Start Early. She also recommends addressing the staffing shortage through increased funding for Chicago Early Learning Workforce Scholarship, a program that supports Chicagoans who want to become early childhood educators in schools or community-based organizations.

Correction: March 31, 2023: This story has been updated to correct Bela Moté’s title from founder and CEO to president and CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning.

Chicago mayoral candidates promise to raise wages for early childhood educators, but differ on how to do it.

2023-02-09T23:03:53+00:00

Chicago’s mayoral candidates say the city needs to increase wages for early childhood educators, make child care affordable for families, collaborate with local providers and state agencies to make funding easier, and even allow child care providers to move into public schools that are underenrolled.

The candidates detailed how they would reform child care and early childhood education at a forum organized by Child Care Advocates United — a professional organization in Illinois that supports early childhood educators and providers — on Wednesday night. All of the mayoral candidates except incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot attended the session.

Art Norman, a newscaster at NBC5 Chicago, and Tia Ewing, from FOX 32 Chicago, moderated the panel.

The mayor and City Council play a critical role in licensing and funding child care providers. Many candidates have promised to make child care more affordable, with few promising universal preschool for 3-years-olds.

Lightfoot continued rolling out universal preschool to families with 4-year olds in the city, expanding the plan promised by her predecessor Mayor Rahm Emannuel. However, the initiative hit bumps when the city’s early learning chief stepped down in the second year of the rollout and the early days of COVID-19 slowed down the city’s efforts.

Across Illinois, childcare providers are struggling to attract and retain workers, who are often paid less than their elementary schools peers. Parents of young children also struggle to find affordable child care, often comparing the cost to college tuition. The state has increased funding for early childhood education, but advocates say that more can be done.

At the Wednesday forum, candidates offered plans for early childhood education that included increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour for child care providers, taxing cannabis sales and gambling for additional revenue, and working with state agencies to make it easier for all child care providers to receive funding.

All eight candidates in attendance agreed that child care providers need to be paid more.

Ald. Sophia King, who represents Chicago’s south lakefront neighborhood, proposed increasing pay for child care providers and offering incentives such as zero-interest loans for mortgages and dollar lots to prevent educators and child care providers from leaving the city.

King was a part of the push to get the city to increase minimum wage for workers to $15 an hour. Child care providers with more than three employees already have to comply with the city’s rules.

State Rep. Kam Buckner, who represents the city’s South Side in Springfield, said he doesn’t believe there is just a workforce shortage in early childhood education and child care, but an issue of where the city is putting resources. In addition to raising wages, he said the city needs to collaborate with Chicago Public Schools and the city’s community colleges to streamline a pipeline to get more workers into child care centers.

Forum moderators asked the candidates how they would work with state agencies to make accessing funding easier for child care providers and prioritize additional money for community-based organizations. Currently, child care providers in Chicago and across the state get funding from the Illinois State Board of Education, the Department of Human Services, and the Department of Child and Family Services.

U.S. Rep. Jesús Chuy García, whose district includes the city’s south west sides and surrounding suburbs, proposed creating a new city agency to look into early childhood education.

“There isn’t an overarching structure monitoring the status and effectiveness of those services,” García said at the forum. “That is how you wound up last year with the Department of Family Services cutting 4,000 slots that community providers had.”

Neighborhood advocate Ja’mal Green said there is a disconnect between city hall and providers. To fix this, he said he would hire more people from local communities, put mobile city halls throughout neighborhoods, and create resource centers in communities across the city so child care providers could be directed to available resources.

The candidates agreed that the city needs to collaborate with different organizations to ensure families know what options are available for child care.

“It’s about streamlining processes and creating collaboration. We’ve said this a few times tonight, but way too often we’ve created spaces for competition and we need to be creating spaces for collaboration,” said Buckner. “ I think the city has to lead that process and has to lead the conversation.”

Most candidates also said they would use cannabis and casino tax revenue for additional funding to support early childhood education and child care providers who are dependent on state and federal funding to survive.

Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who released his education plans earlier in the day, said he supports using revenue from cannabis and casino tax revenue and finding ways to tax the wealthy Chicagoans.

“From a corporate head tax to a real estate transfer tax to a financial transfer tax, the ultra rich get to put skin in the game,” said Johnson. “Over 70% of Chicagoans said that the wealthy have to pay their fair share. My budget plan articulates that.”

King and Ald. Roderick Sawyer, whose district covers the city’s south side, agreed that cannabis and casino tax revenue should be used toward education, but noted that the revenue has been marked for other funding.

The city’s gambling and entertainment tax revenue will go to the city’s pension fund for city workers, while the state’s cannabis tax revenue will go to state agencies and community-based organizations to address substance abuse, mental health, legal aid, and housing. Any remaining funds go to the state’s general fund. Sawyer said that if he becomes mayor he would look into changing where the revenue goes.

In the last two questions of the night, the moderators asked mayoral candidates how they would work with the state to address accessibility for families and ensure that they understand their choices for child care and early childhood education.

Former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas proposed using underenrolled CPS schools as community centers in addition to tax revenues and tax incentives for private child care centers to make child care more affordable for families.

“Give community organizations access to schools,” Vallas said. “You see stories about schools at 20%, 30%, 40%, or less than 50% capacity, and we don’t have room to provide early childhood centers?”

Correction: Feb. 10, 2023: The story has been updated to reflect State Rep. Kam Buckner’s comments.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker promises free college, preschool for all in second term

2023-01-10T02:00:31+00:00

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is promising to expand preschool to all Illinois families and make college tuition free for working-class people by the end of his second term.

In a speech after being sworn in Monday, Pritzker said the state’s “long-term ambitions must begin with a focus on the people for whom we are building.”

“No policy proposal I could advance will have a greater impact on our future than the quality care and education we afford to our very youngest residents,” he said. “It’s time for Illinois to lead.”

The governor didn’t give specifics about how much it would cost to expand preschool and make college more affordable. The inauguration is mostly pomp and circumstance, but in early February, Pritzker is expected to release a budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year. The legislature must approve a state budget by June 30.

For decades before becoming governor in 2018, Pritzker supported early childhood education through his family foundation. His education platform both in 2018 and 2022 focused on expanding programs that serve children under 5. He has said he would work to lower Illinois’ mandatory school attendance age from 6 to 5.

Chicago began expanding public preschool in 2014 with help from Pritzker’s foundation and Goldman Sachs. In 2018, then-mayor Rahm Emanuel promised universal preschool for all 4-year-olds, which officials now say is a reality.

Many Illinois families struggle with the cost of child care, which has been deemed one of the least affordable among states.

In an interview with Chalkbeat last October, Pritzker said he would once again offer more families financial assistance for child care. Currently, any family earning 225% of federal poverty level income is eligible, up from 185% when he took office. He said he plans to raise that to 300% of the federal poverty level.

Last week, Pritzker visited two early childhood programs — a non-profit in Chicago and a public preschool downstate — to tout investments his administration made during his first term. They claimed to have increased funding by about $1 billion.

But during the first three years of Pritzker’s first term, there were no increases to the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant, one the largest sources of early childhood funding. This year, it got a 10% increase to nearly $600 million.

Though he gave no details in his inaugural address, Pritzker said it’s the state’s “obligation to make college more affordable” and said he wanted to “focus on making tuition free for every working-class family.”

The state’s key financial aid program for college students is known as the Monetary Award Program, or MAP. Those scholarships grew to $601 million in the most recent budget. The maximum annual award increased from $6,438 to $8,508. In-state tuition at the University of Illinois this year ranged from $17,000 to $22,000.

Despite increasing costs and declining college enrollment nationwide, Illinois saw a 5% increase in students enrolling in college this fall, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

In his speech Monday, Pritzker also took a moment to acknowledge the victims of gun violence, citing specific high-profile events, including a shooting just before winter break outside Benito Juarez Community Academy High School.

“I’m tired of living in a world where a mass shooting needs a title so you know which one we’re referring to,” Pritzker said, noting that he campaigned on a promise to ban assault weapons. The Illinois legislature is debating a measure during its lame-duck session, which is scheduled to end this week.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that lame-duck session ends this week, not on Monday.

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

Gov. J. B. Pritzker vows to prioritize access to child care for Illinois families in second term

2023-01-04T20:51:46+00:00

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday he hopes to make Illinois “number one” for child care access during his next term.

After winning a second term in November and heading into a spring legislative session that will determine the state’s early childhood education and child care budget, Pritzker said he intends to prioritize child care to support families throughout the state and provide more funding for child care centers and their workforce.

“There is so much more that we can do to make it easier for young families to access quality child care, and early childhood education,” Pritzker said at a press conference Wednesday at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning’s site in Little Village. “But already our improvements have made a profound change.”

According to Pritzker, prioritizing child care is fiscally responsible and will result in positive outcomes throughout a child’s lifetime.

“It yields a higher high school graduation rate, a higher college attendance rate, greater lifetime earnings, lower health care costs, lower crime rates, and an overall reduction in the need for human services spending throughout the lives of these young children,” Pritzker said on Wednesday.

Access to early childhood education and child care provides children with cognitive and emotional development, improved self-regulation, and improved academic achievement, according to reports cited on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Later in life children who have had access to early childhood education also show improved health outcomes and reductions in crime rates, welfare dependency, and child abuse and neglect, the CDC notes.

Illinois has a number of ways of funding child care and early education across multiple government agencies. One of the largest is through the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant.

The state was unable to put additional money into that block grant in the 2020, 2021, or 2022 budgets, primarily due to the economic slowdown spurred by the coronavirus pandemic However, the state was able to increase that budget line by 10% for the state’s 2023 budget.

In addition to the state board of education’s block grant, the state funds early childhood education and child care programs throughout the state’s department of human services. The department of human services supports the state’s youngest learners through its Early Intervention Program, which supports children with disabilities from birth to 3 years old and the Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income working families with child care costs.

Early intervention had $7 million in funding restored in the 2023 budget after a cut last year. However, the Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income working families with child care costs, did not receive an increase.

During the pandemic, the governor’s administration made it easier for parents who lost their jobs to receive three months of child care while searching for work or in a skills training program. Over the summer, the state increased eligibility for the Child Care Assistance Program by lowering the income limit and expanding benefits, increasing the number of families. Also, child care centers received more funding to retain staff.

Grace Hou, secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, said Wednesday at the press conference that the state has invested over $1 billion in child care that has reached more than 12,000 child care providers across the state and over 50,000 child care workers.

Pritzker said the state’s investments have funded programs such as the Carole Robertson Center’s Grow Your Own Program Workforce Initiative, which trains community members to be educators. At the press conference, Bela Moté, CEO of the Carole Robertson Center, said the center has hired more than 30 people through the program over the last 15 months.

Pritzker is preparing his budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year where he will make funding requests to the legislature for everything from education to public safety. Lawmakers will ultimately approve a budget in late May or June. However, the state’s budget is uncertain as the economy could be hit by a recession or another economic slowdown.

Changes to Illinois’ early childhood education funding needed to fix pay disparities, advocates say

2022-11-22T22:25:01+00:00

The Chicago Early Childhood Workforce Partnership Employer Council is urging state and local lawmakers to re-evaluate how they fund early education, similar to how the state overhauled and increased K-12 funding five years ago.

A funding overhaul is needed, the council says, to fix disparities found in a study it commissioned late last year to identify pay gaps between early career educators, public school elementary teachers, and other job sectors.

Among the findings from the study and the council’s policy position paper released last week, Chicago’s early childhood educators are paid $18,000 less on average than elementary school teachers, despite having the same degrees. The gap is even wider for early educators of color, almost 4% when compared to white educators. Educators in K-8 and other industries outside of education often receive better benefits than early educator teachers.

In the policy position paper, the council calls on Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and other state and local elected officials to implement policy that will increase salaries and pay transparency in early education programs, examine gaps between white staff and staff of color, and provide a 5% cost-of-living increase, among other things.

Creating equity between teachers of infants and toddlers and teachers of elementary students is key to addressing a staffing crisis, improving retention, and providing low-income and middle class families with high quality care, said the council. Without better pay, the council says in its policy position paper, a quarter of Chicago’s early childhood educators and more than a third of administrators and home-based providers are projected to leave the field in the next five years.

Bela Moté, the president and CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning and co-chair of the Early Childhood Workforce Partnership said the study repeats what early childhood education advocates, educators, and providers have long been saying and provides better data about what is happening in Chicago.

Her hope is the information will help the council make its case to lawmakers.

“We can’t be responsive. We can’t be competitive. We can’t be equitable if we’re at the mercy of formulas that don’t even consider a cost of living.” Mote said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

The council commissioned the Policy Equity Group — a Washington, D.C.-based policy organization — at the end of last year to look at Chicago’s Head Start programs. The group surveyed about 500 participants from private, public, and home-based early childhood providers in Chicago. The study focused on wages, benefits, and bonuses in early childhood education in comparison to Chicago Public Schools.

While Chicago Public Schools does not employ educators that work with children between the ages of 0-3 years old, the study compared salaries based on credentials that educators in K-12 and early childhood both have — such as college degrees and professional licenses.

The study found that the salary range for teachers in Chicago Public Schools is higher than the salary range for Head Start educators. One major gap was found in the role of “lead teacher.” The salary range for entry-level Head Start lead teachers is between $16 to $25 per hour, while Chicago Public Schools lead teachers start at $34.78 per hour.

The study also compared early education teachers’ pay to other industries such as transportation, food services, nursing, and ride-sharing. It points out that a Head Start lead teacher could make more in non-education jobs. For instance, the study found, Uber and Lyft drivers start off earning $19.01 an hour and Amazon pays between $18 to $24.

The results align with national findings that show early childhood educators in Illinois are paid about 30% less than public elementary school teachers in kindergarten through eighth grade despite having the same degree and license.

When looking at employee benefits, the study found that both early childhood education programs and Chicago Public Schools have good benefits. However, Chicago Public Schools provide more benefits including 10 days of paid parental leave, protection under the Families and Medical Leave Act for eligible employees, and the ability to take the summer off.

When looking at industries outside of education, the study found better benefits and bonuses for workers. According to the study, Amazon’s benefits include medical, dental, vision, prescription drug coverage, and parental leave. Amazon provides up to $3,000 sign-on bonuses, while Lyft offers a $2,000 sign-on bonus for drivers who complete 170 rides in the first 30 days and Uber gives drivers $2,400 in earnings for completing 200 rides/deliveries in the first 30 days in Chicago, the study says.

Chicago schools encourage preschool sign-up, with thousands of open seats

2022-08-09T21:49:55+00:00

Rebecca Rodriguez sits on a multicolored rug reading to more than a dozen 3- and 4-year-olds in her classroom at Haugan Elementary in Albany Park on the Northwest side.

She’s been teaching preschool for more than a decade, including during the summer. But, since the pandemic began, Rodriguez said she has been dealing with new challenges in the classroom.

“The last two years, we have received students who don’t know how to play with each other. They don’t have social skills,” she said. “They’ll sit back-to-back instead of face-to-face if they are in the block center.”

The pandemic took a toll on the city’s youngest learners, who were often attending school for the very first time online. Many just didn’t enroll.

Now, Chicago Public Schools is hoping to bounce back from that pandemic enrollment decline in the early grades. Officials are urging parents to sign their children up for preschool this coming school year, citing about 4,000 open spots in full-day programs and 1,000 spots open in half-day ones.

The push comes after Chicago saw a 34% decline in young children enrolling in preschool in 2020. State law doesn’t require children to go to school until age 6, making preschool and even kindergarten optional.

Chicago has long offered free preschool to low-income 3- and 4-year-olds, but in 2018 former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised to offer free universal pre-K to the city’s 4-year-olds by 2021.The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the effort, but this year, a district spokesperson said, there are spots for 14,500 children to attend a full-day of pre-K.

In the spring, the district rolled out a new process for applying to all preschool programs, but a glitch in the system frustrated parents. A Chalkbeat analysis also showed that the district had a net loss of 19 classrooms. Officials said these classrooms could reopen depending on enrollment this fall.

As of Aug. 1, more than 20,000 applications had been submitted by 9,400 applicants for full-day pre-K programs at 367 district-run elementary schools, according to CPS records obtained by Chalkbeat. Of these applications, two-thirds were for 4-year-olds.

Haugan Elementary School provides summer programs to help boost its yearly pre-K enrollment.

Haugan Elementary received 166 applicants for its 100 seats offered, according to Leslie Mckinily, deputy chief of early childhood education. Nearly half of the applicants were 4-year-olds, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. The last two years, district records show, the school enrolled around 60 pre-kindergarteners, down from close to 100 the year the pandemic started.

The district engaged in a “robust” outreach and marketing for pre-K this year, Leslie Mckinily said. CPS placed advertisements online, on billboards, and in bus shelters, in addition to partnering with libraries, doctor offices, local offices of the Women Infant Child Program, the Chicago Housing Authority, and aldermen in various wards to get the information out.

The Early Childhood Office is regularly reviewing data and working with Community Organizing and Family Issues, better known as COFI, to reach communities that struggle with enrollment. Mckinily said there are 26 community areas with historically low preschool enrollment that the district is targeting.

The family engagement team in the district’s early childhood office has also worked with schools to build customized recruitment plans. Mckinily said resources that went to schools allowed staff to go door-to-door and for clerks to work additional hours to make calls to families.

At Haugan, summer programs, such as the one Rodriguez teaches, help boost pre-K enrollment for the year, said Melissa Sanchez, the school’s assistant principal.

Community events, which are held throughout the school year, are another key method of encouraging enrollment in preschool at Haugan, Sanchez said. By the end of summer, the school will have hosted parent workshops, ice cream socials, bike safety events, and movie nights.

To enroll children in pre-K, families start the three-step application process online. Those in temporary living situations, with income 100% below the federal poverty line, and with children who have Individualized Education Programs are prioritized, according to CPS. Families who apply to schools close to where they live are also prioritized.

Dipali Bharadwaj, whose 4-year-old daughter is in the summer pre-K program at Haugan Elementary, said it’s convenient and affordable. Her family lives close to the school. This will be the first year her daughter will attend pre-K, instead of day care.

“She’s a little nervous going to a big school where there are older kids too, so there’s some anxiety about transitioning into the school year,” Bharadwaj said. “But I like the idea of a public school system where she’s just going to interact with a broader range of more diverse kids.”

Students learn socialization skills and are introduced to rules, expectations, and creativity during the summer program.

During the summer programs, Rodriguez said, she introduces children to routines, expectations, creativity, and rules. Children also learn how to play with different materials and socialize with each other.

Many of the summer students return for the pre-K program during the school year and the transition programs help prepare them for a full day of instruction, she said. They are introduced sooner to the use of “red and green rules” and songs to cue transitions such as clean-up, she said. “Quiet time,” used for naps, reading, and similar activities, is implemented in full-time programs.

Family involvement is also a key part of pre-K at Haugan. Teachers speak to families to learn about cultural sensitivities and encourage parents to celebrate different holidays with the students, Rodriguez said. Last year, some parents came to class to read books to their children.

Sanchez said Haugan Elementary will be hosting a parent volunteer meeting ahead of the first day so its parents can better understand how they can get involved.

Families interested in applying for pre-K can visit the CPS early childhood website at this link: https://www.cps.edu/schools/attend-a-cps-school/apply-for-next-year/.

Eileen Pomeroy is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Eileen at epomeroy@chalkbeat.org.

Could COVID vaccines for young children help Illinois child care centers return to normal?

2022-07-28T11:00:00+00:00

Laura Byes has had her hands full trying to keep the coronavirus from disrupting her child care center over the last school year – from ensuring that she had enough staff to fill vacancies to closing classrooms when students were diagnosed with COVID-19. This year, she’ll also be working to persuade parents to vaccinate their children.

“If one child in the classroom tests positive,” said Byes, “the whole classroom shuts down, which affects up to 15 children per classroom.”

Byes is the executive director of Learning Bridge Early Education Center, a child care center in Evanston, Illinois that serves low-income families of children under 5. With the rollout of COVID vaccines for children in that age group, Byes hopes the center can return to some level of normalcy.

The last couple of years have been hard for Illinois child care providers, who have gotten little reprieve from COVID-19. While vaccines for young children may bring some relief to child care providers and parents, they may not get the same uptake as the adult vaccines.

Since COVID vaccines were approved for children under 5 in June, about 5.6% of Illinois children have gotten their first dose. Data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, which lags a few days, indicates 39,000 out of 700,000 children between 6 months and 4 years old have gotten shots.

In Chicago, 12,474 of the more than 162,000 children under 5 – about 7.7% – have received their first dose of a COVID vaccine as of Tuesday, according to data posted by the Chicago Department of Public Health

The vaccination rates for children ages 5 to 11 have stagnated since the initial wave of enthusiasm last fall. Statewide, only 38.6% of children in that age group are fully vaccinated and 10% are boosted out of a population of more than 1.1 million.

Michael Claffey, a spokesman for the state’s department of public health, says the department has been working with the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and local health departments across the state to promote vaccination for all ages.

Parents have a lot more questions about vaccinating their children than they did about vaccinating themselves, says Dr. Kristin Kan, an assistant professor at Lurie Children’s Hospital/Northwestern University School of Medicine.

Educating parents about the vaccine could help get more children vaccinated, Kan says.

“As a primary care pediatrician, I found in my practice that there’s a certain group of parents who have been waiting for this to be approved,” Kan said. “But, there are other parents who want to understand why there’s a lower dose and what (did) they find in the trials as far as safety and efficacy?”

Kan says more work needs to be done to build relationships between medical professionals and communities across the state, not just in a time of crisis. Many low-income families and people of color still lack access to medical care.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5 in mid-June. Moderna’s vaccine for children under 5 requires two doses four weeks apart, while Pfizer’s vaccine requires three doses over the course of 11 weeks.

Needing multiple shots and more than one return visit for vaccinations could be a barrier to children receiving the required dose to be fully vaccinated, said Kan.

However, she doesn’t anticipate that it will be a large problem because it is common practice in early childhood to prevent other infectious diseases such as chickenpox and measles.

Laura Byes, executive director of Learning Bridge Early Education Center in Evanston, is hoping children at her center receive their COVID vaccinations. She wants to see all classrooms operating in the center and for parents — who were not allowed in the center over the past year — to get the chance to meet other parents and children.

Mauricio Peña contributed reporting.

Chicago parents scramble to find summer child care

2022-07-25T22:57:53+00:00

Every summer, Nathan La Porte and his wife face a parenting challenge: Finding child care for their two school-age children.

This year, their 4-year-old son could continue attending private preschool like he does all year. But with their 6-year-old daughter finishing the school year at their local public school, they had to find summer child care that worked with the parents’ full-time work schedules.

Like many Chicago parents, La Porte continuously refreshed the Chicago Park District registration page at 9 a.m. in early May to enroll his daughter in camp.

“It’s identical to buying very popular concert tickets,” he said.

La Porte said they lined up six weeks of camp through the Park District for about $400 total. A week of private camp costs $350-500. La Porte said they also enrolled her in two separate one-week private camps for about $500 each.

Putting together a summer child care plan always has been challenging for parents, but is even more difficult since the COVID pandemic and the resulting facility closures, child care staffing shortages, changing work situations, and economic hardship.

Chalkbeat Chicago surveyed readers to learn more about the challenges.

“Cost was our number one factor,” said Cortney Ritsema. She and her husband enrolled their three children in Chicago Park District camps after hearing about them from fellow parents. Ritsema lives in Rogers Park and said private camps for three children would cost more than their rent.

“We have had to change our work schedules to accommodate the camp schedule, but for us having childcare we could afford was worth these accommodations,” Ritsema wrote in her answers to the Chalkbeat survey.

Park District camps are sought after by parents because they run for six weeks and cost less than most other camps in the city. A total of 14,582 children are registered across 189 Park District day camps this summer.

Megan Lawless navigated summer child care for the first time for her older child, who is 6 years old. She passed on trying to secure a spot at a Park District camp.

“I don’t take advantage of it because it’s ‘The Hunger Games’ to get a spot and it doesn’t feel very equitable, the way that they do it,” Lawless said.

She worries about taking spots needed by families who have less resources and limited options during the summer.

Instead, Lawless cobbled together a schedule of private camps and time at her mother’s house.

Park District day camps are limited by facility size and staffing, which they struggled with this year, according to Michele Lemons, director of communications. The district is still ramping up to pre-pandemic numbers.

Many parents said that availability has long been an issue in the organization’s programming.

Camp enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis, but the district determines the number of spaces for online registration based on community needs and does not turn anyone away because of ability to pay, Lemons wrote in an email.

At the YMCA, about 5,000 children were registered for summer camps this year, according to Katy Broom, director of public relations and communications for YMCA Metropolitan Chicago. Although there were over 22,000 registrations, children are often signed up for multiple weeks of camps, according to Broom.

Finding child care is especially tough for single parents, like Dawna Harrison, who lives with her 4- and 5-year-old sons in University Village. This was also the first time Harrision had to find summer care, and it felt isolating to figure it out on her own, she said.

Ultimately, she was able to do a combination of YMCA camp and private and public summer schools. But the limited hours of these programs are a challenge, she said.

Isbeth White, a single parent with two school-age children in Ravenswood, couldn’t afford child care this summer, she said on the Chalkbeat survey. Instead, her children are living with their father and attending a camp in the suburbs, where there was more availability.

When Edgewater parent Silas Dameron lost his job in May, he and his wife were left scrambling as to how they would afford child care this summer for their 4- and 10-year-olds.

“We were looking at a choice between me staying home as free child care and me going back to work knowing that full-time child care was likely to eat up some or all of what I brought in,” Dameron said.

After considering the cost of care, expected income, mental health, and insurance, Dameron and his wife decided he would stay home to watch their daughters. Affordable child care has always been a challenge for his family, especially for their older daughter, who is on the autism spectrum, but Dameron feels fortunate they are able to make this summer work, he said.

Keana Russell, a CPS parent and bus aide in Austin, also had difficulty finding affordable child care for her 14-year-old daughter who has a learning and life skills disability. Although she was able to find care, getting her there around work hours is hard and the facility is struggling with staffing shortages, Russell wrote in the Chalkbeat survey.

Maddy Brigell signed up her two children for summer camp at the YMCA in Irving Park, which she said is affordable and convenient for her family. Her children already attend an after-school program run by the same staff during the school year. When camp is closed, she relies on her parents or a high school-aged neighbor for child care.

Many parents who responded to the Chalkbeat survey suggested solutions to the issues in summer child care, including more spots in Park District programs, a comprehensive list or database of available programs, and holding registrations earlier in the spring.

Naadia Owens, a parent of two children living in Woodlawn, said that parent communities play a critical role in finding care, especially because there is no easy way to find out what is available in the city.

Through these groups, Owens has learned about different camps, their cost, and what they provide for children. Many parents also coordinate carpooling, which can be especially helpful for working parents.

Eileen Pomeroy is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Eileen at epomeroy@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: July 25, 2022: A previous version of this story misspelled Nathan La Porte’s last name without a space.

Chicago parents: What are you doing for child care this summer?

2022-07-11T17:38:49+00:00

Finding child care for the summer is no easy task. In 2022, the ongoing pandemic, staffing shortages, rising costs, and the return to in-person work has made the endeavor even more challenging. So how’s it going?

Chalkbeat Chicago wants to hear from local parents who have children under 10 about what you are doing for child care this summer and any issues you’ve encountered. We’re looking for input by Tuesday, July 19. Our submission form is below. If you prefer a phone call, you can also reach our reporter Eileen Pomeroy at (717) 816-8032. Questions? We’re always listening at community@chalkbeat.org.

If you are having trouble viewing this form on mobile, go here.

COVID vaccine rollout expected for children under 5 next week in Chicago

2022-06-17T16:33:19+00:00

Maria Paula Fitz has been waiting a long time for the COVID vaccine to be approved for children under 5. Her 2-year-old son is the last in her household to be inoculated and she sees it as a safety decision that will help her pandemic-weary family.

“He hasn’t been to preschool and he stays at home with our nanny,” Fitz said, “so it’s hard for him to just have a normal childhood.”

The mother, who lives in Evanston, said the vaccine will provide her family with some relief as her youngest attends preschool in the fall.

Fitz and other parents of children under 5 could be able to get their youngest family members vaccinated as soon as next week after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines by Modern and Pfizer on Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must still approve the vaccines, which could happen within days.

Children under 5 are the last age group to become eligible for COVID vaccines. While only 3% of U.S. COVID cases were in children from 6 months to 4 years old, according to the FDA, case numbers shot up during the wave of the omicron variant. About 75% of children 11 and under showed evidence of previous infection in February, compared to 44% in December, according to the CDC. The rates of hospitalization in this age group also increased during the omicron wave.

In Chicago, officials expect the city to receive about 15,500 doses each of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, with future shipments based on uptake, according to Dr. Allison Arwady, the city’s health commissioner. There are 169,000 children younger than 5 in the city, Arwady said in her weekly online segment “Ask Arwady” earlier this month.

The Biden administration and local officials expect most children in the youngest age group to receive vaccines from their pediatrician or primary care doctor. Earlier this month, Arwady said the department of health has “done extensive training” for local pediatric providers.

At Esperanza Health Centers in Southwest Chicago, which pre-ordered the Pfizer vaccine, children younger than 5 will be able to get vaccinated in already established appointments or schedule appointments to get the vaccine, said Dr. Mark Minier, medical director of pediatrics and school-based health services. Three- and 4-year-olds will also be able to get vaccinated at smaller, scaled-back versions of a vaccination clinic currently in operation.

These children will be vaccinated in an environment with a medical provider because of their young age, Minier said.

“While some of it is safety, we also realized that many of those kids need other vaccines that they’ve kind of gotten behind on during the COVID pandemic,” Minier said, “and we really want to use those opportunities to kind of check all of their vaccines to make sure they’re up to date.”

Esperanza’s pop-up, temporary spaces for mass vaccination clinics in previous rollouts are no longer in use because of declining demand, he said.

Some people may be suspicious because the vaccine for children under 5 took longer to come out and waning case numbers may have caused less appetite for the vaccine, Minier said. He encouraged people to talk to their health care providers for more information and said he trusts the regulatory process and agencies reviewing the vaccine.

“I’ve only had probably a handful of people specifically ask me about it,” Minier said.

The families asking about the vaccine are typically those in families where everyone else is already vaccinated, he said.

It is uncertain how many eligible children will get vaccinated. Only 47% of children ages 5-11 in Chicago have gotten the first two doses of a COVID vaccine since approval for the age group in October, according to data provided by the city.

A national poll by Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in April showed only 1 in 5 parents of children under 5 are planning on vaccinating their children right away. Thirty-eight percent of parents surveyed said they planned on waiting to vaccinate their children and 27% did not plan to vaccinate at all.

The Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a local provider of child care and early childhood programming, has been preparing for the vaccine rollout by providing families with information in its weekly newsletter and by pointing them to Chicago Department of Public Health webinars, said Sangeeta Solshe, senior health manager at the center.

The center will likely host an informational town hall as it has done previously during the pandemic, said Solshe, who has also contacted local health officials in hopes of scheduling a vaccination clinic.

“Even with the vaccines being rolled out very soon, it will be a much longer time before there’s any real change in the number of children at our centers who have been vaccinated and who are fully vaccinated,” said Meg Helder, senior director of monitoring and support at the Carole Robertson Center, earlier this week.

For now, policies will continue to be based on city health department guidance and case numbers in its child care facilities and Chicago, Helder and Solshe said. The center will encourage vaccination, but while there is a vaccine mandate for staff, there are no plans to do so for children.

Illinois health officials also announced earlier this week that they will support the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in a campaign to get children under 5 vaccinated, which they had been preparing in anticipation of authorization. States were able to place orders on June 3, but no vaccines will be shipped until after federal approval, White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha said earlier this month.

The Biden administration asked states to prioritize children with highest risk and in the most difficult to reach areas as well as sites that could handle large volumes of people, Jha said. The vaccines will also be available at community-based organizations and pharmacies, according to the administration.

An FDA assessment of Moderna’s vaccine, which will be administered in two doses four weeks apart for children from 6 months to 5 years old, found it to be 37% to 51% effective against symptomatic COVID. The FDA assessment of Pfizer’s vaccine, which will be distributed in three doses over the course of an 11-week period to children 6 months to 4 years old, found it to be about 80% effective.

As a parent of a child younger than 5, Helder is excited about the vaccine rollout, but not all parents she has spoken to feel the same way.

“There’s definitely some parents similar to me who are, you know, thrilled,” Helder said. “But then, there’s a lot of people, and I’ve spoken to many, who are a little nervous about anything new for small children.”

Helder, on the other hand, is trying to figure out a way to get the first appointment available with her pediatrician.

Eileen Pomeroy is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Eileen at epomeroy@chalkbeat.org.

As city, state drop mask requirements, Chicago schools face period of mask limbo

2022-03-03T18:12:44+00:00

This story has been updated to include CDC data for Cook County.

Days after the city and state lifted their mask mandates, Chicago Public Schools is signaling it could soon be moving to make masks optional, aligning itself with federal guidance but potentially setting district leadership up for another confrontation with its powerful teachers union.

In an email to parents Wednesday evening, CEO Pedro Martinez said universal masking is still in place in Chicago schools, but the district expected to move to a “mask-optional model for all students and staff in the near future.” The district declined to clarify the timeline.

“This change will be consistent with updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding masking, and guided by rapidly declining case counts within CPS and the City of Chicago,” Martinez and Bogdana Chkoumbova, chief education officer, said in the letter to parents.

In a letter to members, the teachers union argued that its agreement would require masking through the end of the school year.

“We are all in a better place with COVID-19 today than we were a month ago,” CTU vice president Stacy Davis Gates said, “but we also understand that schools are congregate settings, and less than 25% of students in many are unvaccinated.”

During a rally outside City Hall Monday, some parents and activists with the People’s Response Network voiced support for the mask mandate, encouraging the district to uphold its safety agreement and require masks through the remainder of the school year.

The district has stood firm on its mask stance amid legal challenges, citing a legal agreement with its teachers union forged after an acrimonious battle over inadequate safety mitigations.

Last week, the CDC said schools could drop masks unless COVID cases and hospitalizations were high. Cook County, where Chicago is located, is considered low transmission, according to the county’s data. Under the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, however, the county’s transmission level is considered “substantial.” The guidance comes as many districts across the country and elsewhere in the state have already moved to go mask-optional in the classroom.

For the past month, Gov. J.B Pritzker has been battling in court to keep Illinois’ emergency school mask mandate in place even as he lifted a mask requirement across the state. Earlier this month, a judge granted a temporary restraining order against masking, vaccination, and testing protocols in schools. Pritzker lost an appeal to get that judgment overturned last week.

After the Illinois Supreme Court declined to take up the case, Pritzker said students and staff would no longer be required to wear masks at Illinois schools.

The back-and-forth over masking has caused confusion on the ground and chaos in some Illinois school board rooms, with late night meetings and votes stirring heated debate.

The end of mandates has also put the state’s child care providers in limbo. Earlier this week, the state’s Department of Children and Family Services, which licenses child care providers, said that children and staff at early learning centers were no longer required to wear masks, but that it was up to individual sites to decide.

That has presented a quandary for some providers, since vaccinations have not been approved yet for children under age 5.

Sonja Crum Knight, chief programs and impact officer at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, which oversees child care and after-school programs for about 2,000 children across multiple sites in the city, said her organization will continue to require masks — and quickly communicated that to parents on Monday when the city mandates lifted.

Several factors weighed in the leadership’s decision, she said, including status as a federal Head Start grantee (the federal government has not technically lifted mandates for its centers) and the fact that most children in Carole Robertson’s care are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Also, quite simply, masking has proven effective so far and helped keep classrooms open, she said.

“We’ve been rooted in masking,” said Knight. “It’s not an abstract arbitrary thing, it’s keeping everybody safe, and that’s keeping us open.”

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said the decision to move toward making masks optional was made because of the low number of positive cases at schools and declining hospitalization rates.

About 22% of all 5- to 11-year-olds in the district have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 34% have received at least one dose, but uptake varies widely by neighborhood. About 54% of 12- to 17-years were fully vaccinated as of Feb. 14, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago.

The mask-optional announcement comes a week after Chicago Board of Education members approved a resolution during February’s board meeting to maintain COVID safety mitigations, which include a mask mandate.

Martinez told board members at February’s board meeting that he predicted there would be a day for the district to go mask-optional, possibly before the end of the year. Still, he cautioned against lifting the mandate too early.

During the board meeting, a dozen parents challenged the district to drop the mask mandate.

In affirming the board’s commitment to masks, board president Miguel del Valle last week said that while COVID cases were improving within the district, vaccination rates among students lagged behind the city.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said being “cautious was the right thing to do,” especially since the pandemic had disparate impacts on communities of color.

Samantha Smylie contributed to this report.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois will no longer require masks in child care centers, but sites can set own rules

2022-03-01T23:09:06+00:00

Day cares and child care centers no longer must require masks for children age 2 and over, the governor’s office confirmed Tuesday, following the state’s adoption of new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Individual daycares and child care facilities may still choose to require masks, a spokeswoman from Chicago’s public health department told Chalkbeat. More guidance is expected to come specifically for child care settings from the federal government.

Some large providers in Chicago said Tuesday they planned to continue with masking rules for students, educators, and visitors until more information is available.

Julio Paz, the chief development officer of Chicago Commons, said the nonprofit organization would continue to require masks at its multiple sites across the city for now. “If we adjust our policies in the future, we will take into consideration guidance from the state/health departments, input from our families and employees, and data on the local COVID-19 context,” he said.

The shift in Illinois follows new CDC guidance that says masks can come off in schools as long as community case rates are not too high.

Specifically, the CDC said mask mandates aren’t necessary if COVID cases and hospitalizations are low or moderate, and hospitals aren’t overburdened in a community. Across the country, about 70% of Americans live in areas considered “low” or “moderate;” in Illinois, about two dozen counties, mostly concentrated on the western border with Iowa and downstate, are still considered “high” per the CDC’s community level rubric that factors in new cases and hospital bed availability.

When COVID cases and hospitalizations are high, schools should still require masks, the CDC recommended in its latest round of guidance issued Friday.

Masking school children, particularly young children who are developing language skills, has been a fraught issue throughout the country, including in Illinois. There’s scant research that comes down firmly on the pros and cons of masking children.

Illinois had been locked in a legal battle throughout February about emergency mandates involving masks, vaccinations, and testing protocols in K-12 schools. After parents and educators representing more than 170 school districts filed suit against Gov. J.B. Pritzker over emergency orders, a circuit court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking such mandates — a move later upheld by the state’s appellate and supreme courts.

Legal battles, parent opposition, and declining case rates have quickly brought an end to emergency masking orders in many Illinois K-12 school districts. Without an order to continue masking, many have implemented mask-optional policies.

The battles have created confusion in classrooms and in school district board rooms, but early education centers have largely flown under the radar in the debate. Some early educators have argued that mask requirements hamper communication with young students and make it harder to teach them letters and sounds, while others contend that children should continue to wear masks until they qualify for vaccinations. (Currently, federal authorization for vaccinations for children only applies to those aged 5 and older.)

The state’s largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, continues to require students and adults to wear masks on campuses and in offices. According to the district’s safety agreement with its teachers’ union, students should continue to wear masks through the end of the school year. District CEO Pedro Martinez said last week he is reviewing the latest requirements in conjunction with labor and public health officials.

Cassie Walker Burke is the Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief. She covers early learning and K-12. Contact Cassie at cburke@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie contributed reporting.

‘Something I really needed’: States are revamping reading instruction. Illinois is just catching up.

2022-02-24T12:00:00+00:00

It’s the second straight day of torrential rains in Chicago, and the gym of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center is leaking. Moses, one of eight students in a literacy program for teens, pays it no mind.

He’s focused on his teacher, Ronica Hicks, who is reviewing prefixes and suffixes.

“Let’s use a basketball analogy,” says Hicks, equal parts playful and stern. “A pre-fix is like the pre-game.”

The lights flicker. The water drips. But, even on this dreary October evening, Hicks — who, like her students, is Black — is undeterred. In one of the most troubled neighborhoods in Chicago, she’s on a mission to help this group of 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds read beyond a first or second grade level.

The pilot literacy program, which is run by a tutoring and training organization called Redwood Literacy, has become a potential lifeline to the teens who’ve been flagged by case managers, probation officers, and judges for slipping through the cracks of public education. Somehow they each made it to high school without fundamental reading skills — skills strongly correlated with future employment, earning potential, even better health.

In Illinois, where curriculum is largely a matter of local control, there’s no centralized tracking of how districts teach children to read or recommended curriculum list. But there’s growing recognition, at least among some teachers, parents, and advocates, that some schools across the state — and even some campuses in large districts like Chicago — are clinging to debunked methods.

Hundreds of miles from where the teens sit in Lawndale, momentum is building for sweeping changes that could bring Illinois more in line with the 38 states that have begun widespread campaigns to tackle stubbornly low reading proficiency rates. A new Right to Read bill is being weighed by the state’s General Assembly, and could bring changes advocates say are long overdue.

At least one national research report has shown that students who don’t read proficiently at the end of the third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school or fail to graduate. Even before COVID upended in-person learning, only one out of three Illinois third graders met grade level standards for reading on a state test. Black students tended to fare worse — only one in five reading on grade level. For Latino students, it was one in four.

Sitting in the back of the literacy class one night, Kait Feriante, the founder and CEO of Redwood, wonders aloud how things got to this point for her students.

Students of Redwood Literacy use the Wilson Reading System, practicing sounds and high-frequency words, reading sentences aloud, and using a letter board to manipulate letters.

“How might their journeys have been different if they had been given the instruction they needed in second and third grade,” she asks, “and not just the last years of high school?”

Hicks, a literacy intervention specialist, follows a strict protocol laid out by a curriculum called Wilson Reading System. Twice weekly, the teens meet in the Lawndale center gym for 90 minutes to practice sounds and high-frequency words, read aloud sentences, and write and manipulate letters on a magnetic letter board.

Mills. Shams. Lashes.

They smile when they get something right, race against each other to read sentences before an alarm buzzes, and engage in some good-natured teasing when asked to draw stick figures to check comprehension after silent reading.

The group also struggle mightily against distractions — emergency phone calls and text messages from friends and family in crisis; nights with too little sleep; and troubles waiting just outside the gym door. Because some participants have had recent involvement in the criminal justice system as juveniles, been homeless, or experienced the death of a parent, Chalkbeat agreed to use pseudonyms for this story.

Hicks has a mantra: In her classroom, there is no shame, only grace. If her students make it to the program’s graduation ceremony in the spring, they will have reached a lofty goal. For attendance of 80% or better, they’ll each earn $1,000.

Moses shows up every week.

“I always wanted to get a (special education plan) because I knew — I knew I couldn’t read as good as other people. I couldn’t spell as good as other people. I never got it. I never got that help,” he said, until a younger sibling’s case manager flagged him to be screened for Redwood’s literacy intervention pilot.

“This is something I really needed, and people have seen that I needed it. It used to hurt my feelings,” that he didn’t get more help, he said. “I was mad.”

Some schools are not following the science

Small but promising, the Lawndale program is an experiment now in its second year.

Even when Chicago high schools were mostly closed to students during 2020-21 due to the pandemic, the Redwood classes met in person and instructors worked mightily to counteract years that students described as full of failure and a feeling of invisibility. For nine students in the first group, attendance was 93% across more than 60 meetings, and the teens averaged 1.91 grade levels of growth on a benchmark assessment.

Particularly frustrating for Feriante is that there’s now a large body of research — known as the science of reading — that describes how the brain learns reading in detail. A key tenet is that explicit, systematic phonics is a must. In other words, teachers must directly and methodically teach children the connection between letter combinations and sounds.

“Structured literacy instruction helps all students and it is life-changing for some — we know what we need to do,” Feriante said. “This isn’t magic, it’s science.”

In Chicago and many other large Illinois districts, some schools still go against best practices by using an approach called “balanced literacy,” though exactly how many is hard to say since, like the state, Chicago Public Schools doesn’t centrally track reading curricula, either. “Balanced literacy” is an approach that mixes some phonics into whole-language instruction, a now-debunked philosophy based on the idea that reading is a natural process and doesn’t require direct instruction on decoding words.

All but about a dozen states now have passed laws focusing on early literacy instruction, and 18 states have used federal COVID relief monies to expand programs. These efforts run the gamut – from statewide curriculum recommendation lists of vetted materials, to widespread teacher retraining efforts, to third grade literacy screenings outside of required assessments, to a wholesale rethinking of how colleges and universities teach future educators.

In Illinois, where curriculum traditionally is the domain of individual districts, the conversation is just getting started.

In Plano, just west of Aurora, for example, a small group of teachers at a local elementary school began researching structured literacy during the pandemic and recently lobbied their principal to adopt a new approach. One of them, Pam Reilly, is a former Illinois Teacher of the Year and reading coach who said it has been a sea change at her school.

“I’ve been teaching for 25 years and to think back on all of the classes that I had been with. Did I do something wrong?” Reilly asks. “But I think when we know better we do better. We’re learning, and I think we have to move forward from here.”

Until it debuted a new curriculum called Skyline last summer, the state’s largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, left reading curricula mostly to the provenance of schools and even individual teachers, though the district described its overall approach in a statement as “grounded in the science of reading and the critical combination of decoding skill and language comprehension.” (CPS declined to make its literacy director available for an interview.)

School-level curriculum selection is still largely the case in Chicago, since Skyline is optional, and according to a Chalkbeat public records request, only 33 high schools, one middle school, and 121 elementary schools — about 30% of district-run schools — have adopted the English Language Arts portion, which has elements of structured literacy instruction for children.

Potentially compounding the problem: Nearly half the state’s teacher preparation programs receive failing marks in how adequately they prepare educators in scientifically based reading instruction methods.

A 2020 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality awarded a D or F to 43% of Illinois’ higher education programs that prepare future teachers — a higher percentage than nationally. The council gave 38% of the teaching programs an A or B, 18% a C, and it did not receive enough information to rate 10. (Some higher education leaders have criticized the report, calling it an unreliable gauge.)

“A lot of teacher programs and (teacher training) residencies are guilty about not paying attention to the science,” said Kate Walsh, the president of the council. “We are captive of higher ed in many respects.”

Causing further delays, COVID-19 and the pandemic’s ripple effects through school districts have effectively pushed out the conversation.

“Generally speaking, the early literacy issue is not a prominent conversation among superintendents,” said Kaine Osburn, the superintendent of Avoca School District 37. “Right now, with COVID, only COVID is prominent.”

About three years ago, school board members, teachers, and administrators in Osburn’s district began taking a hard look at how children there learn to read. Ultimately, the district adopted two sets of curriculum materials, launched teacher training for every educator, and began literacy screenings for every student in kindergarten through third grade.

Avoca school board members became so persuaded by the effort that they sponsored a resolution late last year putting the issue on the advocacy slate of the Illinois Association of School Boards. The resolution calls for the Illinois State Board of Education to require pre-service teachers in early learning to complete a course in their teacher prep programs solely dedicated to scientifically proven methods of reading instruction.

Those efforts dovetail with others bubbling up. A fledgling statewide Early Literacy Coalition has helped draft the Right to Read bill sponsored this session by Kimberly Lightford, a state senator long frustrated that Illinois policymakers have yet to tackle the issue head-on.

The Right to Read bill, which would better regulate how reading is taught to the state’s students, is currently being reviewed by the Illinois General Assembly.

The Right to Read bill takes a three-pronged approach: It would push the state school board to create a list of evidence-based reading programs and develop a menu of support, training, and grants for districts who want to adopt them; require an evidence-based reading assessment for teachers seeking relevant licensure in the early grades; and kick off a process of creating a statewide online training module for current preschool and elementary teachers, including those who work with students with disabilities.

“Some states have been heavy-handed about what they’ve mandated,” said Jessica Handy, policy director for the advocacy group Stand for Children Illinois, which backs the bill. But Illinois doesn’t have a deep bench of specialists trained in scientifically backed instruction, yet, so the goal, she explained, is to “empower people from the ground up.”

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill easily passed committees and have headed to the respective floors for debate this session.

But the bill has come up against some pushback, including from the state superintendent and state school board, which currently oppose the effort. Jackie Matthews, a spokeswoman for the state board, said that officials there have been regularly meeting about the legislation but have “significant” concerns that the effort leaves out English Learners.

“Research has demonstrated that effective literacy models must be comprehensive, culturally responsive, and inclusive of foundational skills,” she wrote in an email, “but not limited by them.”

She said the board is already working with counterparts in higher education to develop a training module or microcredential around evidence-based literacy instruction for existing educators.

Lightford, the bill sponsor, said the state needs a more comprehensive approach. She recalls how, working in the Secretary of State’s office in the 1990s, she encountered adults who couldn’t read the questions on the driver’s license tests. After one older trucker repeatedly failed and admitted the problem, Lightford helped introduce an oral exam option.

The experience stuck with her.

“This is something we should have had on the books a long time ago,” Lightford said.

Poor reading skills are an issue for many children, she said, and the data show the problem has an economic ripple effect.

“Poor literacy can hurt a student’s success,” Lightford said, “but it transfers into their adulthood and causes them all kinds of issues with gainful employment.”

‘Bigger words get me sometimes’

The Lawndale reading lessons take place in a brick legal center next door to the apartments where, in 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. moved in for a time to call attention to Chicago’s fiercely drawn lines of segregation. The original tenement where King lived has been torn down and newer apartments constructed in its place.

Fifty-six years later, the teens in the program next door still confront lines and borders and the legacy of segregation.

The Redwood program budgets the cost of Lyfts to ferry the students to and from classes, since getting to the legal center requires crossing a major gangland boundary, a reality that can threaten participation. The students describe education trajectories full of under-resourced schools, crowded classrooms, and tepid acceptance by adults of their paths in life.

“We have to be very honest and say that we as a society have become callous to our young people failing,” said Kareem Weaver, the founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based group Fulcrum who has become a national advocate for the science of reading. “People look at the violence, and the despair and the seeming dysfunction that’s out there, and if you do a root cause analysis, at the end of it, what do you think is the reading level of the kids out there?”

“That’s not just a question for young people,” Weaver added. “It’s a question for adults: Have we given up on our children?”

Moses, who is 18, struggled to read from early on but his problems were overshadowed by violence on his block and stints sleeping in a car or doubling up with other families. During his lifetime, waves of education policy swept through the system with lofty names like Race to the Top and Renaissance 2010 — but they did little to help him move ahead.

During his elementary years, he attended two different schools, was socially promoted twice to catch up with other students his age, and held back once. He says his mother’s requests for a special education program, or IEP, around that time were ignored.

There was more attention on behavior than learning, he said, and he felt nervous about asking for help.

“I was able to get through it, but it was hard,” Moses said. “I had to start asking for help and sometimes I had to do it myself and get it wrong and fail.”

His classmates also landed in the literacy program through a similar combination of poverty, personal tragedy, and systemic neglect.

Jade, who did not want her real name used, said that after her mother died during her elementary years, teachers gave her extra emotional support but kept passing her to the next grade.

After a run-in with the legal system, a caseworker referred her to the program.

“It’s the only thing I need – I need to read and count my numbers,” she said. “I don’t need the other seven or eight classes I take at school. I go in, and I tell them, I’m not in the mood. I’m not going to argue with you. I’m going to just sit down, and look, and watch you talk.”

She likes the Redwood program better than her Little Village high school, where she’s failing two classes.

Hicks, the Redwood teacher, “is helping us understand the words we need — and she explains it way better,” she said. The method of breaking down words and sounds makes more sense. “Bigger words get me sometimes, and sometimes I don’t understand them.”

Redwood has kept students engaged even while Chicago Public Schools has been closed and struggling with attendance. Eight students regularly attend the program.

Another participant, who’s 17, said that when he’s reading, he sometimes trips up on certain words — they come out differently when he says them aloud than how he pictures them in his brain. He can’t recall ever having been tested for dyslexia or another reading disorder.

He also was recommended to the program by a case manager after getting in trouble with the law, but thinks it’s a good use of his time. It keeps him busy, he said, and when it comes to reading, “things are clicking a little more than they used to.”

He’s been struggling with attendance at the small alternative high school he attends nearby, due to issues outside of school that he doesn’t want to explain in detail.

In October, the program had eight students attending regularly. By February, all eight are still there, showing up even when their schools are shuttered for five days after winter break due to a standoff between the teachers union and district leadership. The program’s classes have moved from the gym, which was hard to keep warm in the winter, to a cozy meeting room with colorful murals.

The teens are adding new words quickly now.

Slate. Frustrate. Cashmere.

Hicks defines cashmere for the group, but she doesn’t have to define frustrate. Someone has pilfered some of the reading group’s supplies and stolen some of the magnetic boards used for manipulating letters and sounds.

“Fun fact,” Feriante tells the group during a quick snack break, “that’s now 60% of the words in the English language that you can read and spell.”

Two students have become or are about to become fathers. High school graduation hovers in the not-so-distant future, a question mark for some of the seniors and far from a certainty.

But the guarantee of small group instruction, transportation help, small weekly stipends, a larger end-of-the-year sum – and heaping amounts of Hicks’ grace — keep the reading program going strong.

Redwood Literacy is going strong thanks to strong student support: small group instruction, stipends, help with transportation, and the success of educators such as Hicks.

Heather Saunders, a case manager at Lawndale Christian Legal Center, which provides legal services and case management for young people ages 24 and under, said it was critical to the program’s launch that the teens be incentivized to attend, so they prioritized the sessions.

“Education gets disrupted because of jail time, safety issues, suspensions — most of our young people are way behind,” Saunders said. “There are reasons that are school-involved but also reasons that are not-school involved.”

She looks forward to the program’s spring graduation ceremony. Last spring after the pilot’s first year, students brought their families and there was clapping, balloons, pride, tears.

“Our young people never get called out for their greatness.” She pauses. “A lot of their needs have gone unmet for so long.”

On this February evening, break time is nearly over, the students have stocked up on Takis tortilla chips and Capri Suns that Redwood organizers supplied. Some are updating the adults in the room about efforts to get high school credit for the program.

Hicks, who has more words to review, calls the class back to order.

“Let’s move on, beautiful people.”

Cassie Walker Burke is the Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief. She covers early learning and K-12. Contact Cassie at cburke@chalkbeat.org.

Pritzker proposes 5.4% increase to education funding in 2023 budget

2022-02-02T18:47:15+00:00

In the first reveal of his election year budget proposal Wednesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker outlined a modest increase to the state school funding formula and more money for bus service, special education, college scholarships for low-income students, and the state’s youngest learners.

Pritzker laid out plans on Wednesday for a smaller 2023 state operating budget of $45.4 billion compared to the previous year’s. But it includes more investments in education as schools continue to confront the academic and emotional impact of the pandemic on children.

This is the first year since the start of the pandemic that the governor has proposed an increase in education spending during his State of the State and Budget Address. Detailing his plans Wednesday, he said those investments “will go a long way toward meeting our goal of making Illinois the best state in the nation to raise young children.”

He touted in particular his administration’s efforts to prioritize grants for child care programs as part of the state’s economic recovery.

This year, the governor plans to increase the state’s education general fund by $498.1 million — a 5.4% increase — for an overall budget of $9.7 billion. This will add $350.2 million to the formula that disperses funding through a tier system and property tax relief grants to the state’s K-12 school districts. Illinois lawmakers will make the final call on the state’s budget at the end of the session.

This year’s budget proposal is mostly in line with a state board of education proposal from December. The board recommended an increase of $475 million with $350 million going towards the evidence-based funding — a bipartisan effort to fully fund all schools and close funding gaps between wealthy school districts and under-resourced districts. The board also said it needed more money to increase spending on transportation, agricultural education, and truancy officers to combat chronic absenteeism.

“Our students and educators are facing the challenge of a lifetime teaching and learning as we emerge from the pandemic,” said state school superintendent Carmen Ayala in a statement, adding that the investments will mean more teachers, wraparound supports, and early childhood programs.

Lawmakers pledged to add a minimum of $350 million to the funding formula each year — with a goal of more — but Pritzker kept the funding formula flat in 2020, which meant no new state dollars flowing to districts.

Last year’s budget proposal also recommended flat funding, but was reversed during the spring legislative session and $350 million was put into the formula, which was later approved by the general assembly.

Some advocates were hoping the Pritzker administration would put in even more money to the funding formula to make up for missed payments and to help keep the pace of rising costs.

Dan Montgomery, the president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday in a statement that the union saw the increase as “a step” toward adequately funding schools but would like to see the governor and General Assembly work together to do more.

Districts have reported rising costs on everything from salaries, amid a crippling staffing shortage, to building upkeep and maintenance. Illinois school districts are receiving more than $7 billion across three federal emergency stimulus packages to help with pandemic-related costs.

Robin Steans, president of the nonprofit Advance Illinois, called the budget proposal good news and said she feels hopeful after hearing the governor’s speech on Wednesday.

“This is one of those rare budgets where we have a fiscally responsible budget,” Steans said, “but it’s one that is proposing needed investments and it’s doing it across the entirety of the educational continuum, which is just wonderful to see and good for kids.”

Pritzker, who is running for re-election, said Wednesday that the 2023 fiscal year budget indicates the state is in a better position than it has been in previous years. His administration has boasted of a balanced budget, an improved credit rating, and rising revenues from state and federal sources.

Pritzker is proposing a $1 billion tax cut, with the state suspending 1% sales tax on grocery purchases, postponing a scheduled hike in the gasoline tax, and a one-time property tax rebate that will give homeowners about $300.

The proposed boost in education funding in Illinois is in line with what has happened in other states. New York announced plans to increase its education budget by $2.1 billion in January, for a total of $31.3 billion. The state’s equivalent of Illinois’ evidence-based funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, will see an increase of $1.6 billion. Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, proposed historic increases to the 2022-2023 education budget in November. The state would increase its K-12 education spending to $6.6.billion, a 3% increase.

Some early education budget lines flat

This year, the governor is proposing a 12% increase for the Early Childhood Block Grant, which insiders say could foot the bill for expanding many of the state’s half-day preschool programs to full-day and to raise salaries of a mostly-female workforce that earns a median $13 per hour.

Pritzker, a billionaire philanthropist who donated generously to early education efforts before taking office, kept spending on the state’s youngest learners mostly flat in the previous budget — a disappointing outcome for policymakers who spent the better part of 2020 studying ways to expand services for children under 5.

This year’s proposal keeps flat some other critical areas of early childhood spending, including an Early Intervention program for young children with developmental delays and other disabilities and the Child Care Assistance Program, a key reimbursement program for child care providers who offer low- or no-cost child care to low-income families and parents attending school.

Ireta Gasner, the vice president of Illinois policy for the national non-profit Start Early, said she appreciated the proposed increase in the education grant. However, she warned of level support for critical efforts such as Early Intervention, particularly when referrals and evaluations for young children are on the rise.

“The proposal doesn’t make significant progress toward the badly-needed transformation of our system,” Gasner said.

Throughout the pandemic, the Pritzker administration nudged up reimbursement rates and issued business recovery grants to stave off closures that have decimated the industry in other states. Advocates had urged the governor’s office to put more money toward child care reimbursements and continue to assist providers, who have struggled with thin margins during the pandemic.

The proposed early education budget increase comes on the heels of a stalled federal investment for universal preschool through President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. In all, Illinois spends a little under $2 billion its young learners — a fraction of what it spends on K-12.

A boost for scholarships and higher ed

Pritzker campaigned on a promise to increase the number of low-income students who receive college scholarships, and his proposal delivers the most substantial boost to that effort of his term. The state’s Monetary Assistance Program, or MAP, would grow to $601 million, a 25% increase that would mean about 24,000 additional high school seniors receive funding, the state projected.

Illinois also plans to boost the maximum award, from $6,438 per student to $8,508, which is roughly half the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Overall, Illinois only spends about 5% of its overall budget on its higher education system. An increase from the previous year, Pritzker’s $2.2 billion proposal includes $68 million more to help stabilize community colleges and public universities and additional monies for career and technical education certification programs and scholarships for minority teachers.

The proposal also includes $230 million to help rescue the state’s prepaid college tuition program, which has been headed for insolvency.

Illinois wants parents, educators in the early learning conversation. Advocates say that is long overdue.

2021-12-07T22:45:15+00:00

Illinois policymakers are moving to recruit parents and educators who would have a say in how the state spends a hoped-for windfall of federal funding for early learning.

The creation of 39 new regional early learning councils would be a marked shift in the top-down approach currently taken by the state, and advocates argue that efforts are overdue to recruit more parents, providers, and classroom educators from all corners of Illinois into the conversation.

Early in 2022, the state will launch the councils and start recruiting policymakers, educators, private providers, public officials and parents — the last group a particular area of priority, advocates say — who will provide community-level views on child care and preschool options in their area, how resources are meted out, and what is needed.

The creation of the councils, whose work would be ongoing, coincides with a massive federal push for states to expand education and child care for children under 5 — and strong encouragement from the feds for states and districts to solicit more community input in spending.

The Build Back Better Plan, which passed the House and is currently the subject of negotiations in the U.S. Senate, would send billions to states to help launch or grow pre-kindergarten programs open to all 3- and 4-year olds. The goal is to eventually reach some 6 million children through a combination of school districts, Head Start, and private programs, the White House has said.

State governments would have the option of signing on for the money and agreeing to expand programs, with the caveat that they’d ultimately foot some of the bill.

Illinois could receive more than $6.5 billion across the next four years, according to preliminary estimates, and the money could help Gov. J.B. Pritzker deliver on a stated goal of building a universal pre-K system. Funding has been a roadblock: The state currently spends just under $2 billion per year on children under 5 — about $1 for every $5 it spends on K-12 schoolchildren.

There would be a deadline for states to spend the federal windfall, a particular point of concern among Illinois policymakers, who are eager for a federal jump-start for early childhood programs — but worry the state doesn’t have the workforce or infrastructure to scale up so quickly.

Illinois typically rates high on quality measures with early childhood programming but struggles with access. In 2019, only about half of children 4 and under from low-income households were served by a publicly funded program. Whether families could find a program depended on where they lived, with pockets of the state severely lacking options.

At a Monday meeting of the state’s Early Learning Council, an influential group of state officials and policymakers who make recommendations to the governor’s office and other agencies, some attendees argued for required numbers of seats of parents in such groups, since they’ve been underrepresented in the past.

“Having parents at the table is not enough — they have to be involved,” said Jesse Rojo, an early learning organizer with the Chicago-based group Community Organizing and Family Issues. One suggestion was a 20% set-aside for parent leaders in executive committees and councils. Others included scheduling the meetings, which are typically in the day, at night and offering Spanish-language meetings.

Illinois could be positioned better than some others to take advantage of Biden’s plan. Under Pritzker, Illinois has issued multiple rounds of grant assistance to help stabilize early childhood providers, staving off closures that have dogged some other states. It has also raised its reimbursement rate to providers who care for low-income children and those in other vulnerable groups.

Illinois’ revamp of its early childhood system was set in motion before Biden took office. The governor convened an early childhood funding commission in 2019 to study the state’s system and lay groundwork for an expansion. Among the group’s recommendations were regional councils and a new agency to oversee early education.

The rollout of the regional councils will be overseen by the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, a referral network and credentialing hub with more than a dozen offices across the state.

Illinois enrollment declines driven by loss of pre-kindergarten, kindergarten students

2021-10-29T14:43:27+00:00

Like many states across the country, Illinois lost public school students last year, and the declines were largely driven by sizable drops in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, according to enrollment data released by the state board of education on Friday.

In districts across the state, enrollment for Illinois’ youngest students fell last spring compared to 2020 as parents worried about safety and struggled with the difficulties of remote learning. Pre-K rolls dropped by 17%, and Illinois reported an 8% decline in kindergarten students from 2020 to spring 2021.

The state board of education reported that nearly 70,000 students, or 3.6%, left schools statewide during the same time frame — compared to a national decline of 3%. That compares to a smaller loss, of 1.4% of students, from spring 2019 to 2020, when the pandemic forced the closure of schools statewide. (The state also released test score data this week; read more here.)

Since 2011, Illinois has lost 9% of its public school enrollment.

State Superintendent Carmen Ayala said this week that the state is working on a campaign with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office of Early Childhood Development to re-engage families and enroll young students.

“The campaign will address barriers to enrollment and ensure that families know how important preschool and kindergarten are and that it is safe for children to attend,” said Ayala.

However, Illinois does not require parents to enroll their children into pre-K or kindergarten. Prior to the pandemic, about a third of Illinois’ eligible 4-year-olds were enrolled in a state preschool program, but access was uneven and pre-K options were not available at all schools.

From 2020 to 2021, the state’s four largest racial and ethnic groups — Asian American, Black, Latino, and white — changed slightly. White student enrollment decreased by 1.86%, while Black student enrollment held steady. There were increases in Asian American student enrollment, by 3.85%, and in Latino student enrollment by 1.5%.

Throughout the state there was an increase in English language learners. The number of students with disabilities remained constant.

The data released this week reflected spring 2021 enrollment, when some districts were struggling to reopen or were partially reopened with hybrid schedules that required some remote learning. How that pandemic school year will affect school rolls will have an impact for years to come, officials have said.

Officials attributed 2.5% of Illinois’ enrollment decline to the pandemic as school districts struggled to reopen school buildings last year. Prior to the pandemic, Illinois estimated losses of about 1.1% per year due to declining birth rates.

Compared to pre-pandemic enrollment in the spring of 2019, the state’s top five largest school districts reported an average enrollment drop of about 6.74% with Rockford School District 205 losing a little over 9% across the stretch of the pandemic and Chicago losing nearly 7% across the same time frame.

In numbers released earlier this week that show 20th day enrollment for fall, Chicago, the state’s largest school district, reported enrollment declines of another 3%, or roughly 10,000 students. Joliet Public Schools saw enrollment fall by 4%, as about 400 students left the district, with declines across several grades. The exception among large districts was Peoria Public Schools, which reported a 4.3% increase in enrollment.

Enrollment is a key factor in how much evidence-based funding districts receive from the state. Illinois officials said this week that school districts will not be penalized for losing students and will retain current funding. However, they will not be eligible for any additional per-student dollars.

Illinois has received nearly $8 billion in federal emergency coronavirus funding across three stimulus packages. Public education advocates have worried that without increased state funding contributions, school districts may struggle to afford hires they made using federal stimulus money. Some districts have been reluctant to hire additional personnel for fear of reaching a funding cliff when the stimulus money runs out.

Illinois test scores show young students were hit hardest by pandemic year

2021-10-29T14:30:00+00:00

Younger learners in Illinois showed major declines in English language arts and math on end-of-the-year exams, revealing the toll the pandemic may have taken on students, according to newly released state data.

Initial data from Illinois Assessment of Readiness and SAT shows the number of students overall meeting the state’s learning standards dropped 17.8% in math and 16.6% in English language arts. Declines were sharpest in third and fourth grades. Third grade scores, for example, fell 8 percentage points in English language arts from 2019 to 2021 and math scores fell 9.6 percentage points. Officials said that translated to 22% fewer third graders meeting grade-level standards in English language arts and nearly 24% fewer third graders meeting those standards in math.

On the SAT, the number of 11th graders reaching proficiency declined 7.7% on the English portion of the test and 14% in math.

When the data was separated by groups — students from low-income families, students with disabilities, and English language learners — the declines were more pronounced. The number of English language learners who met grade level standards fell by half, with younger students being hit the hardest. English language learners currently make up 12.9% of the state’s student population.

Among students with disabilities the percentage of students across all grades who met state standards in English language arts declined by 30%. In math, only 6.5% of students with disabilities met state standards compared with 8.5% two years prior.

The IAR is the annual end-of-year exam that districts administer to test how well third to eighth grade students are doing in math and English language arts. Unlike years prior, the state saw these scores as a way to measure the toll that the pandemic took on students’ learning.

Learning gaps were expected because districts struggled to reopen school buildings and bring students back into classrooms. Even with the data the state has published, it’s unclear whether scores will be enough to measure students’ academic skills because of lower participation rates, drops in enrollment, the change in assessments, and the timing of district exams.

Right now, the state says it believes attendance was a factor for the decrease in learning but can not be sure until it runs more analysis on the data.

“There was a decrease in performance in our early elementary grades overall,” said State Superintendent Carmen Ayala. “Younger students, we know, it was challenging for them to maintain engagement in a remote learning situation. So those are all factors that we do need to take into consideration.”

Even before the pandemic, school district leaders warned that the IAR might not be an accurate measurement of student achievement because the test is administered in the spring and results are given in the fall. By then, schools have passed students to the next grade.

There’s also uncertainty about the makeup of the IAR — and even its future. Currently, the state is changing its assessment approach from an end-of-year exam to an interim exam that will be taken three times throughout the year. That could also result in a change of vendors, which could mean a change in the test.

Last year, the state board of education gave school districts a longer testing window, districts could test students in the spring or fall. About 90% of school districts decided to test in the spring — their final results will be available on Dec. 2. For districts that tested in the fall, results will be available April 27.

Testing experts say that it’s too early to draw conclusions about the latest round of state test scores because of low participation scores. Sean Clayton, the state’s director of assessment, told reporters on Wednesday that school districts did not provide a remote testing option to students — many of whom were learning virtually — and could have affected participation rates.

The state reported that the participation rate in the spring for the SAT was 90% and about 3,000 students took the exam in the last few weeks. For the IAR, there was a 70% participation rate in the spring and the state is still calculating participation rates for the fall.

Nationally, “we’re seeing students of color, students from low income families, English learners, and students with disabilities are the ones that are missing,” said Marianne Perie, founder and president of Measurement in Practice LLC. “So it means we’re looking at a whole different population of kids in 2021 than who took the test in 2019.”

That could, in effect, skew results.

While the state’s data compared the 2018-2019 test results, the state board said that the 2021 exam was not the exact same test.

Perie said that there is a way for states to bridge a previous test to a new test if they use some items from the older test, but in order to make a comparison there would need to be a lot more data.

Even though the IAR and SAT results have shown that students have some declines in learning, Ayala believes the state can catch up by using federal coronavirus funding.

“We have received close to $8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding to address the gaps that resulted from remote learning,” said Ayala. “The federal law requires that 90% of that $8 billion allocation go directly to school districts who will decide locally how to spend these resources to meet their student needs.”

Some districts have already started to invest money into afterschool programs, teacher professional development, and additional staff.

Data about the academic impact of the pandemic is still emerging. So far, what Illinois has reported mirrors initial national data from July. Students of color and students in high-poverty schools were the most likely to have large gaps in learning during the pandemic year. Students of color were the least likely to have an in-person learning option and more likely to opt out of attending on-campus classes.

This Illinois teacher welcomes back her kindergarten students — this time, as second graders

2021-10-15T14:07:30+00:00

The last time Jeanette Delgado was in a classroom was 19 months ago, just before Illinois shuttered all school buildings to control the spread of the coronavirus. She was teaching kindergarten at the time. This year, she’s working with those same students — only now, they’re second graders.

In her eighth year in the Urbana School District 116, Delgado is a dual-language educator, teaching in Spanish for 80% of the school day and in English for 20%.

“I know them, and I knew what they needed back then,” Delgado said of her students. “I can continue that process because I know that they might have not fulfilled those social-emotional goals in first grade since they were remote or virtual.”

While academics are important, Delgado is also making sure her students’ social and emotional needs are met. She spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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

I actually did not have a great experience in elementary, middle school, and high school. I never had any teachers I’ve ever had a connection with. I hear all these amazing stories of “Oh, I love my third grade teacher,” or “I love my high school teacher,” and I never had that. For me, that was something that I thought I needed to change. When I first started teaching, my greater purpose of going into education was to be someone that the students can relate to, especially as somebody of color. I wanted to make sure that students can see themselves be successful in different areas.

What are you looking forward to this school year?

I’m excited to be with kids in the classroom, all together. I’m hoping that we can explore more outside versus inside, take a step away from computers, and start to visualize our learning projects. We just started a community garden at our school. So the first half of our quarter has been spent learning about a garden and how this garden can help not just our school community but our neighborhood community.

What are you doing to meet your students’ needs following two disrupted school years and the trauma COVID brought with it?

I taught kindergarten up until this year. The kindergarteners who were in my class when COVID started are now in second grade. I’m still familiar with their needs. They haven’t had time to socialize with one another. To make sure that my students were successful in school, not just academically, we had to do a lot of getting to know each other. We had to do some bonding, learn how to be with friends, and learn the expectations in the classroom. A lot of students have not had the chance to be around 25 kids or in a school building.

How do you approach news events in your classroom?

In second grade, they’re 8 or 7 and more aware of what’s going on in the world. We’re reading a book about individuality, how we’re all different, and how that is okay. A student brought up the topic of Black Lives Matter into the classroom and the things that were going on. We went into a full discussion of gun violence happening throughout the United States and within our neighborhood, too. So they’re very aware of the topic, and I’m giving them space to actually share their thoughts.

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

I would say right now the closest thing would be COVID, obviously, but also, there is gun violence going around within the area. You know, there are students saying threats to one another in middle school in high school. A lot of our second graders have siblings in middle school and high school, and that kind of gets talked about within our classroom.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

When I started elementary school, I was one of the few Latinas in the school building. At home, my first language was Spanish, but at school, it was always English. I did not receive any support. Growing up, that definitely affected me, my view on myself, and connecting with my own culture and language. Finding out who I really was took me quite a long time. I felt embarrassed about being Mexican and of my family for a long time growing up. That affected me as a student in the classroom. I didn’t have a teacher who connected with me, so I felt like I had to blend in and do what I needed to do just to survive.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Take that time to get to know your students because they are as important as I am in this classroom. Without meeting them halfway on what their needs are, socially and emotionally, I am not going to be successful without getting to know them.

You have a busy job, and this is a stressful time. How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

It’s really hard to disconnect yourself from this type of work, especially if you’re taking care of children. But I would say the biggest thing that I have been doing for self-care is going on walks, listening to audiobooks and podcasts.

Illinois to give child care workers $1,000 and cover costs for unemployed parents

2021-09-13T21:51:17+00:00

Illinois will give every eligible child care worker in the state a one-time $1,000 bonus in an effort to stem high turnover and ease a staffing crunch that has challenged the industry.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the bonuses Monday as part of a broader package of child care recovery efforts, saying that the additional cash will help stabilize a field that is central to the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pritzker also said Monday that his administration will expand a child care subsidy program to cover three months of child care or after school care costs for children whose parents are unemployed and seeking work.

The child care subsidy program, which Pritzker has expanded in his tenure, previously only covered costs for about 93,400 children whose parents are working or attending school. To be eligible, families must have a household income within 200% of the federal poverty level; for a family of four in Illinois, that threshold is about $4,400 a month.

Parents are charged co-pays based on a sliding scale, and the state picks up the rest of the cost. In Illinois, according to the organization Child Care Aware, the average monthly price of full-time child care is $773 per child. Married couple households pay an average of 11% of their income on child care, while single parent households pay 29%.

This expansion would allow unemployed parents to qualify for a limited time while seeking work — and potentially extend benefits for a full 12 months depending on eligibility.

“When our youngest families succeed, our whole state reaps the benefits,” said Pritzker, who made the announcement at Christopher House in Chicago’s Belmont-Cragin neighborhood.

In Illinois, early education is a field marked by low pay and high turnover — a 2019 state staffing survey showed that a startling 32% of teachers in Illinois’ licensed centers leave their jobs every two years, roughly the same percentage as a similar study two years prior.

The state’s child care centers and family-run homes have struggled during the pandemic with declining enrollment and increasing budget pressures. Since the onset of the pandemic, Illinois has offered stabilization grants to more than 5,000 providers, helping stave off closures.

Pritzker said Monday that the state will offer two more rounds of the child care stabilization grants.

The money for the worker bonuses and the expansion of the subsidy will come from federal stimulus dollars, Pritzker said.

Through the bonus program, all staff at licensed and license-exempt child care centers and homes will be eligible to receive the $1,000 bonuses, provided the centers meet certain health and safety requirements. Child care workers will receive the payment through their employer between October 2021 and March 2022.

“Like every state, Illinois continues to experience challenges to our already fragile child care ecosystem,” said Pritzker. “Providers have seen declines in enrollment and administrators are battling tenuous budgets. But we’ve taken a different road than other states — and it has made a difference.”

In Illinois, the median hourly wage for a full-time teacher in an early childhood classroom is $13 an hour, or $27,040 a year, based on March 2020 data from across Illinois’ licensed child care facilities. Two-thirds of those teachers had at least an associate degree, and nearly half of them were women of color. Fewer than half were offered health insurance.

How a Chicago charter school is trying to make sure the kindergarteners are OK

2021-09-13T11:00:00+00:00

Veteran kindergarten teacher Tanya Davis held up a sharp No. 2 pencil as if she were about to write a word in the air. Soon, 26 youngsters were following suit, and Room 10 was a sea of little fingers writing imaginary words in the sky.

The pencil was familiar to many. But, to a few, it still appeared foreign. Davis and her teaching assistant worked the room loosening fists and gingerly repositioning fingers until everyone completed the task: drawing a vertical line on a workbook page.

It was little more than a week into kindergarten at LEARN Charter Schools’ Hunter Perkins campus in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, and Principal Latrice Franklin could already say with certainty that her youngest students will need more — much more — than any kindergarteners in her decades-long career.

During in-person assessment interviews before the first day of school, three youngsters did not recognize their names. Educators observed other telltale gaps, from failing to recognize letters or colors to problems with basic counting.

“We’ve been in a pandemic where most children have only been online or they’ve been in front of screens,” said Franklin. “Some of them can’t hold pencils, color, or cut — because that wasn’t the expectation. They were on a computer the entire time.”

Evidence is starting to emerge about setbacks in math and reading among America’s older schoolchildren, but there’s no consensus yet on how the pandemic impacted the country’s youngest learners — and no clear guidance for how to catch them up. In Illinois, data from a key assessment for kindergarten readiness won’t be publicly available until the end of the school year.

That leaves educators like Franklin adapting as they go. A new kindergarten pre-screener her team designed and introduced before the school year provided critical insight into the incoming class, even if not every young learner showed up to take it. An orientation week for families with a mix of virtual meet-and-greets and in-person visits to the school helped shore up anxious parents — as well as enrollment (citywide, enrollment in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten dropped precipitously last year).

Schoolwide, teachers are doubling down on calm classroom techniques such as deep breathing and mindfulness, and Franklin mandated daily small group instruction in every classroom with 30 minutes each of reading and math, at minimum.

To get teachers ready, Franklin also extended professional development from one week to two and trained a careful eye on increased training and support for aides and teachers’ assistants.

“I wanted to make sure we’re not lowering expectations just because some kids may be behind,” she said of the focus on what she called “mindset” professional development.

Crucial to Franklin’s approach, too, is an of-the-moment philosophy that specialists such as speech pathologists, psychologists, and social workers should be pushing into classrooms in these first few weeks and months more than they are pulling out children who already have Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.

“Mostly I’m trying to see what kids are comprehending, and whether they are able to follow simple directions,” said Paige Cianciolo, a speech pathologist who divides her time between two LEARN campuses. “I’ve noticed that it is taking teachers five to six repetitions of one direction for children to follow and that the processing of language may be more delayed than it has been.”

Just having another adult in the room to provide visual cues and respond to one end of a bustling long table of wiggly five-year-olds has been critical in the early weeks, said Bridget Kuumba, a kindergarten teacher at LEARN Hunter Perkins. “It’s so important.”

Kuumba isn’t so worried about academic gaps. In recent weeks, the real impact of the pandemic has emerged on the playground and in her students’ social interactions. Instead of typical interactions, she’s seen some aggressive behaviors — such as pushing another child on a playground instead of simply asking them to play.

“When it comes looking different from a regular kindergarten class, I think it’s just about managing emotions and figuring out what is a kind and productive way to play with friends,” she said, acknowledging that youngsters must master self-regulation and a new set of COVID rules around masking and social distancing.

As the pandemic wore on this past spring and summer, researchers with the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University documented increasing numbers of parents reporting problems with their preschool children’s hyperactivity, lack of self-regulation, and struggles paying attention. Concerns were consistent across race and family income, said Steven Barnett, the senior co-director of NIEER.

The NIEER research suggests that fall’s kindergarten class may come in needing more from adults, Barnett said. Fewer children had access to formal preschool programs last year as enrollment dropped, programs closed, and parents lost work. Stressed-out mothers and fathers read significantly less to their children. And, passive screen time among youngsters skyrocketed.

“The home learning environment was taking a hit at the same time that preschool enrollment was taking a hit,” said Barnett. “This year’s kindergarteners will need considerable extra supports — and their teachers will need considerable extra supports.”

“It was hard to come back, and some days it seems to not make sense, when these kids are all touching each other on the playground,” said Kuumba. “I am extremely patient with them — now it’s more important than ever as a teacher that you love children and the act of teaching.”

Still, she acknowledges, more behavioral issues can be stressful to teachers and could trigger burnout in some after an already difficult pandemic year. That’s another adaptation at LEARN Hunter Perkins: a mental health day that teachers can take when needed.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot: Chicago Head Start funding cutoff is ‘irresponsible’

2021-09-01T21:05:13+00:00

Arguing that a Sept. 30 cutoff date is “irresponsible” and “inequitable,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has petitioned the federal government to extend the city’s Head Start funding in full until June 2022.

In a blow to City Hall, the federal government confirmed this summer that it is breaking up Chicago’s early learning monopoly and redistributing $95 million of a $145 million annual grant to five community program operators. In that process, nine agencies were defunded entirely.

Without intervention, nearly 1,000 low-income children under 5 could be forced to transfer mid-school year to other preschool programs and child care centers, city officials have said.

According to City Hall sources, the mayor has already directed that $5.6 million of bridge funding would go to prop up the defunded Head Start programs at community agencies through December. The money comes from a pot of federal emergency dollars directed toward cities for coronavirus response.

In an August letter to Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Lightfoot said she respected the bidding process the city underwent earlier in the year and the resulting decision, but a city in the grips of a pandemic needed a longer transition time.

“The shift will undoubtedly have a monumental impact for children and families across Chicago,” Lightfoot wrote. “Given the (Biden) Administration’s appropriate emphasis on the importance of early learning, this dramatic funding shift seems contradictory and decidedly ill-timed.”

A similar letter written by U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth and signed by the Illinois delegation asks the Office of Head Start to find additional funding to secure additional slots, expand programs in four neighborhoods that didn’t receive any Head Start seats in the reshuffling, and conduct a full review of the grant process — including regular updates on how many children are transitioned between programs.

In the shift, City Hall will continue to oversee some early learning programs, but its share of the grant is now much smaller, at $51.8 million. Originally, the grant reduction was set to go into effect July 31, but the federal government extended that to September.

Some insiders say that Chicago will benefit from more community agencies contracting directly with the federal government and that expanded roles and more funding will mean more flexibility to raise salaries for workers, expand capacity for infants and toddlers, and respond more nimbly to demographic changes on the ground.

According to outside analysis, the new grant increased federal early learning funding to Chicago by about 7% and reduced the number of Head Start seats slightly, by 661 spots, to just under 8,000 compared with one year ago. Agencies were awarded more money for each seat — and incentivized to boost the number of openings for infants and toddlers with extra funding. Infants and toddlers cost more to educate and there is considerably less supply in the city for children 2 and under compared to 3- and 4-year-olds.

In trying to argue its case for the funding extension, the city provided data that shows the new grant arrangement will fund considerably fewer seats than prior to the pandemic. In February 2020, about 8,200 children were enrolled in Head Start and Early Head Start programs citywide. The year prior, it was more than 12,000.

The massive reshuffling of Head Start funding is the second significant overhaul of Chicago’s early learning system in three years. In 2019, Chicago held a grant competition that spurred big shifts in which agencies receive public funding to provide child care for low-income children under 5. Then the federal government stepped in — and broke up City Hall’s monopoly, a trend that has happened in other major cities, from New York to Los Angeles, as the feds prioritize sending more money directly to communities and sidestep some of the bureaucracy of city government oversight.

Chicago’s monopoly of Head Start funding gave the city an advantage in kicking off a universal prekindergarten program, which started under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and continues under Lightfoot. The universal prekindergarten expansion will not be impacted by the grant shift.

A spokesperson for the Office of Head Start did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, at least one agency has already closed its doors, while another has decided to divert a major philanthropic gift toward extending its Head Start program through the end of the school year. The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago said it will continue to operate classrooms across nine sites for about 300 children through June, courtesy of a private donor.

“Our families have been through a lot,” said Man-Yee Lee, the director of communications for the YMCA. “We didn’t want to leave them scrambling to find child care at such a short notice.”

‘I have to start all over again’: Chicago parents worry about what’s next if preschools close

2021-07-22T20:01:37+00:00

It was hard for Francisca Bardales, a mother of five, to find a preschool program she could trust with her children. That didn’t come easy for her.

But the neighborhood YMCA near her Humboldt Park home offered her two youngest daughters the safe space she sought. Teachers communicated often, staff called with offers of food and diapers during the pandemic, and her daughters’ enthusiasm for school made early morning drop-offs easier as the single mother headed to work at a factory that makes wires and springs.

Then last week, “out of nowhere,” Bardales learned the program might suddenly close on July 31. Chicago’s City Hall says it plans to help transition families who might be abruptly displaced.

“But it’s really hard,” said Bardales as she finished the early shift. “It’s really hard.”

Bardales is one of possibly hundreds of Chicago parents scrambling to find alternative care for their children after the city announced last week a federal redistribution of money for its Head Start program. Head Start programs enroll about 8,000 low-income children in Chicago.

In the restructure, some agencies are winners, others have lost out, and some families and educators are caught in the middle.

In the wake of similar restructurings in other big cities and a string of safety issues at centers, the federal government dramatically reduced Chicago City Hall’s influence over early education. About a dozen Head Start programs that previously contracted with the city are facing sharp budget cuts, including the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, where the program has about 350 children and 140 staffers across nine sites.

Details are still emerging, and it’s too early to assess the full impact. City officials and providers agree the reshuffling will mean more seats for infants and toddlers and allow programs more flexibility to raise salaries and design programs that help communities.

But the bureaucratic whys and hows aren’t much use for Bardales, who is still trying to assess her options.

Chicago Public Schools’ preschool? Applications opened in late April and families were encouraged to apply in the first few weeks for priority placements.

A city-led transfer to another program? So far, no one has called her from the Office of Head Start or City Hall.

As for a city-run early learning hotline that helps place some families, she’s never heard of it.

Until she finds a long-term solution, her mother may have to help with child care.

For Bardales, the rearranging at the top has meant a messy reality on the ground, where proximity, trust, and relationships matter, not winning grant proposals. Bardales appreciates the five-minute drive from her Humboldt Park home to the YMCA center. When she’s stuck late at work, teachers are gracious and keep her daughters busy.

She’s hoping the YMCA will figure out a way to extend programming. That’s a possibility. A spokeswoman for the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago said that the organization is currently evaluating its options and considering using ancillary funding to extend early learning options.

But without an extension, Bardales said, “I have to start all over again.”

Brandie Knazze, commissioner of the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, told Chalkbeat earlier in the week that the city is drafting a transition plan for families and working with providers to help transfer the children to other Head Start programs. The city would not confirm the number of families impacted, saying that flux from kindergarten transitions and families moving away during the pandemic complicates the count.

For families affected, every day matters and who to challenge or ask for more information isn’t exactly clear.

Eridany Ortega, a mother of three who lives in Gage Park and could lose her Head Start seat at the nearby Rauner YMCA, is beginning a letter-writing campaign among parents. She’s set up a plan for how to translate letters from many parents’ native Spanish to English.

Yet she’s perplexed by the complexity of a system managed by a Venn diagram of federal, state, and local authorities. Ortega is still figuring out to whom to address the letters.

“Who is responsible?” she asks. “Right now, we don’t know who we are going to or who is going to give us the answers.”

It’s just another punch from the pandemic on her family in a year that has brought job loss and instability.

Ortega hopes the YMCA will continue operations for as long as it can, and says it won’t be easy to find another program that offers bilingual instruction in both Spanish and English.

Like other parents who transition out of centers, she’ll probably turn to family, most likely her mother, for care in the short-term and not opt for a formal center.

That’s a common outcome. Recent research on preschool expulsions shows that about 1 in 5 Illinois children who were counseled out of preschool programs did not re-enroll elsewhere but returned home, likely to be cared for by family or friends.

But it’s not ideal. As Ortega points out, her mom can provide the love and the nurturing, ”but not the learning.”

More changes coming to Chicago early learning after feds break up Head Start monopoly

2021-07-20T21:52:50+00:00

The federal government will break up Chicago’s monopoly on $145 million for Head Start programs — the last “supergrantee” among large cities in the U.S.— and divvy up about $95 million to five community organizations, including one led by former Illinois First Lady Diana Rauner. City Hall will hold on to $51.8 million of the grant.

It remains to be seen whether the change will yield stronger competition, higher quality programs, and more seats for children under 5 in the neighborhoods that need them — or create confusion on the ground.

Chicago’s shrinking oversight role is the second major early learning change under Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s watch and has prompted vast reshuffling of early learning programs. The city will go from managing 40 programs that serve 8,000 children to 14 that enroll fewer than 3,000. Twelve organizations, including the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, could lose Head Start funding as of Aug. 1.

Two community organization heads said hundreds of children enrolled in programs that lost funding may need to be enrolled elsewhere, but City Hall officials said it was too soon to confirm that number.

Between children aging out for kindergarten and families moving out of Chicago during the pandemic, the city’s Department of Family and Support Services is still trying to assess the number of children impacted, Commissioner Brandie Knazze told Chalkbeat on Tuesday. She said a transition plan is in the works.

“We are working through understanding what the impact of the changes will be, but there’s no loss to the city of Chicago as a whole,” said Knazze. “This funding is just being redistributed among five grantees, and we are committed to working with them.”

The five new “delegate” agencies say they plan to boost salaries and benefits, do more for parents and grandparents, extend after care and evening programs, and step up marketing and outreach. Enrollment of young children plummeted during the pandemic and not just in the public school system. Across Illinois, only one in five centers was operating at 80% capacity or better toward the end of last year.

“We have a big job around us around reengaging and recruiting new families,” said Claire Dunham, the senior vice president of programs and training at Start Early, one of the five community organizations that received a chunk of the Chicago grant.

Pandemic-related enrollment declines and staffing churn hit Chicago’s early learning system hard, and even then, some programs were struggling. In 2019, the city held a grant competition and, while several new centers picked up public funding, other stalwart community organizations lost out. Some closed classrooms; others closed their programs entirely.

Chicago, meanwhile, was under federal scrutiny after safety problems were reported in centers in 2019 and 2020. The U.S.Department of Health and Human Services said last year that it intended to rebid Chicago’s Head Start grant..

Until this month, Chicago’s City Hall steered the bulk of the federal dollars that flow here for thousands of low-income children, giving the city an advantage when it rolled out universal pre-kindergarten. The grant changes will not impact the universal preschool rollout, now largely being driven by the school district.

Immediately, the changes also will boost the number of seats for low-income infants and toddlers, said Knazze — an outcome advocates had been pushing for as more preschool classrooms opened in public schools.

Under the break-up, six groups including the city will call the shots on early learning, not just one. The fate of the centralized early learning application preschool families are supposed to use as a one-stop shop for applications also remains unclear.

“There are a lot of unknowns currently,” Jennifer Alexander, the mayor’s director of early learning, acknowledged. “But we are continuing to work with our public and private partners to leverage our relationships.”

Program directors say they hope decentralizing administration will boost experimentation and better outcomes for children. At Start Early, one priority will be studying kindergarten transitions and how to boost “kindergarten readiness.” In recent years, new data showed that only one in four Chicago children show up to kindergarten prepared.

Each of the new federal grantees will oversee a small group of partner agencies. Start Early’s roster will include two charter schools that run preschool programs and kindergartens.

Bela Moté, the CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, said she’ll focus immediately on doing more to boost salary and benefits for educators and help stem the loss of teachers to the public school district, where pay is on a unionized pay scale.

“We together need to work on a better pipeline for the early childhood workforce. A pipeline that is quite dry — and work to really retain staff and compensate them,” said Moté.

Edgar Ramirez, CEO of Chicago Commons, said his organization is thinking through how to boost parent engagement and invest in programs that support multiple generations, such as credit repair and job training support for parents and grandparents. He’s also ramping up programs for pregnant women.

It will take time to assess the impact of the reshuffle, said Ty Jiles, a professor of early childhood education at Chicago State University.

On her list of burning questions are whether programs will still have the money, and flexibility, to offer extended day care for working parents — and after-care for students who attend school-based preschool programs that end around 2:30 in the afternoon. She also wonders how decisions will be made among the new federal grantees, how they plan to coordinate with the city, and whether there will be transparency about decision-making.

Mostly, though, Jiles is thinking about the children who could be impacted if their centers have to close classrooms. “For a high-risk population, it’s another transition.”

Illinois is expelling fewer preschoolers. But programs still exclude young children.

2021-07-13T16:00:55+00:00

A state law that limits when children can be expelled from preschool programs has reduced formal expulsions, but emerging data show that programs still find other ways to exclude children under 5 for behavior issues.

A new report from the University of Illinois at Chicago also shows that boys, Black children, and youngsters with disabilities continue to be overrepresented among children who are formally expelled from programs in Illinois, as they are in national data.

Kate Zinsser, an associate psychology professor who led the study at the Social-Emotional Teaching and Learning Lab at UIC, said it was good news that an Illinois law enacted in 2018 has led to sharp decrease in formal expulsions, but that more research — and better data — is needed to address the number of behavior-related withdrawals that families make after meetings with administrators.

Pushing out families or urging them to transfer to other programs is a practice that researchers call soft transitioning, or counseling out.

“We know that inconsistency and change are especially difficult for young children, and yet the kids who need the most support get churned through two, three, four child care centers in a matter of a few years,” said Zinsser. “The disruption to them and their families is only further exacerbating children’s nascent abilities to regulate their emotions and behaviors. But it’s also costly and exhausting for teachers who have to start from scratch building relationships.”

Zinsser’s team found that when Illinois children were “transitioned” out of a program, one in five did not re-enroll elsewhere and instead just returned home under the care of a relative or neighbor.

“You think about the stress that families have been under and now a kid is sitting on the sidelines of preschool,” she said. “That means some children will enter kindergarten or first grade with no early learning experiences, or a very negative one.”

Preschool expulsions have become a subject of debate and a focus area of national research across the past decade: About 17,000 3- and 4-year-olds are expelled from programs across the United States each year, a staggering number that dwarfs K-12 expulsion rates. Nationally, Black children are 3.6 times more likely to be turned away from programs compared to white children, and boys are far more likely to be pushed out than girls.

Studies show that there are serious consequences to those youngsters beyond interrupting learning during critical development years. Children who’d been expelled from preschool were at greater risk for dropping out and involvement with the criminal justice system.

A 2016 study from the Yale Child Study Center identified signs of implicit bias when it comes to how preschool educators and administrators mete out discipline of Black preschoolers. Researchers there found that teachers “show a tendency to more closely observe black students, and especially boys, when challenging behaviors are expected.”

Subsequently, several states have passed laws that limit expulsions for children under 5. The Illinois law, which was enacted in 2018, is considered one of the most aggressive. It requires publicly-funded programs to exhaust every resource available to meet the behavioral needs of a child before expulsion. If a center cannot, providers must work with the family to identify and transition the child into an alternative care setting and document and provide data around the decision.

The law, however, has limitations, as Zinsser found in her previous research. Even a year after it went into effect, many center directors reported inaccurate information about the changes or didn’t know the law existed. Some data reporting requirements didn’t fully go into practice until this year.

As a result, data remains limited, though what’s available does show that overall expulsions are down, Zinsser said.

In a previous study, from the 2017-2018 school year, more than a third of Illinois centers reported expelling a young child in the previous year — a rate that was 12.61 children per every 1,000.

The subsequent school year, fewer children were formally expelled — only 2.72 per 1,000 children. However, Zinsser’s team gathered emerging data that, for the first time, show significant numbers of families withdraw children from programs after meetings with administrators over behavioral issues.

That data showed that, compared to formal expulsions, nearly twice as many children were withdrawn after such meetings and that about three of every 1,000 children enrolled transitioned to another program because of behavior. Those findings increased the number of overall children leaving programs for disciplinary reasons significantly.

And contrary to thoughts that a year of COVID-19 closures might taper the problem, Zinsser said the study identified an uptick in expulsions after child care centers abruptly closed in March 2020 under a state order and then reopened on an emergency basis.

That finding brought a fresh set of questions. Did children come back from the pandemic with greater behavioral issues? Did parents feel like they had fewer alternatives during the pandemic and resist efforts to be transitioned out? Did teachers and administrators feel more stressed and out of options, given the interruption to the typical special education and other consultation supports they rely on?

Zinsser, who previously studied the classroom impact of teacher stress, says researchers need better data to understand what’s happening. “Overall, the news in this report is good: Rates of expulsion are coming down,” she said.

But she added, if children must still leave programs because of how an adult perceives their behavior, it’s a sign that Illinois programs have a way to go to become more inclusive — and that more information should be disseminated on available supports, from mental health consultation to special education resources.

Are you an educator or a parent with a story about being counseled out? We want to hear from you. Write cburke@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: This new study could help build the case for Chicago’s universal pre-K expansion

2021-06-28T22:20:36+00:00

As Chicago struggles to increase enrollment in prekindergarten programs, a new study could help build the case for the district’s universal pre-K expansion.

Opening full-day preschool classrooms closer to where students live is linked with boosted enrollment and academic outcomes through second grade, according to research released this month.

Starting in 2013, Chicago launched a series of policy efforts that increased the number of full-day pre-K classrooms and reallocated them across the city, intentionally placing classrooms in neighborhoods with historically low pre-K enrollment rates. That increased access to full-day preschools was associated with higher reading scores, math scores, and academic grades through second grade, particularly for Black students and those living in low-income areas, researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago, Start Early, and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research found.

These findings, which extend from research published last October and measure six years of Chicago Public Schools administrative data leading up to the pandemic, come as the city’s preschool programs stand at a crossroads. Steep drops in enrollment, especially for Black 3- and 4-year-olds, startled parents, educators, and policymakers last fall. The district plans to open 62 new classrooms in the coming months as it advances toward its goal of universal pre-K, but is having trouble persuading parents to enroll their children.

We sat down with principal investigator and NORC senior research scientist Stacy Ehrlich to learn more.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What were you looking to find that other researchers had not found before?

A lot of the research on preschool so far that people are familiar with focuses on the impacts of those preschool programs — an evaluation of either a curriculum or an approach. In this case, we were more interested in understanding whether access to full day pre-K within Chicago Public Schools looked different after a set of intentional policy changes had been implemented.

By access, we mean: Are those children now living closer to a school that has a full-day preschool option for them? And if there was an increase in access, do we end up seeing a change in enrollment? All of these policy efforts were intended to create more equity in access and enrollment, so we were particularly interested in high-priority student groups, which included students of color, English language learners, those who live in neighborhoods with lower incomes and higher rates of unemployment.

It’s a shift because it’s not just the impact of preschool, but the impact of trying to intentionally geographically place these full-day school-based options in particular neighborhoods for particular student groups.

What did you learn about location and access during your study that policymakers need to know now?

As we’re seeing more of these high-priority students opting into full-day pre-K options under the policy changes, we’re seeing better outcomes. That supports the notion that we should be providing these opportunities, particularly for families who may not have had easy access to them in the past.

Especially under the Biden administration, there’s a lot of talk about the expansion of pre-K. One thing to think about is where you are placing those programs — particularly full day programs. Previous research links enrollment in full-day programs with higher attendance rates, in comparison with half-day programs, and families have said full-day programs are easier to manage logistically than half-day programs. Those kinds of programs may meet the needs of families better than half-day programs, or programs that are further away from where families live. If you understand what families’ needs are, you can have a really great impact on who ultimately attends, and then help to bolster those students’ potential outcomes in the future.

Geographic location is going to be important. Having full-day access, particularly as people need to return back to work, may prove to be very important. But I am sure that there are other needs that families have, and part of the work now is to figure out what those are and how to meet those needs.

What surprised you as you ran the study?

The biggest surprise was how large and consistent our findings were, particularly for Black students. They are the group of students where we see not only the biggest changes in second grade outcomes. That pathway — geographic access to schools leading to increases in enrollment among student groups, and then increases in kindergarten entry skills, which ultimately were related to second grade outcomes — statistically really pops out for those students.

Why do you think that pathway strengthened so much for Black students in particular?

The policies themselves were really focused on communities where Black students are most likely to live, meaning Black students lived closer to full-day school-based pre-K options post-policy. It could have been that you put those options in those neighborhoods and there wasn’t uptake — perhaps those families would have opted to enroll their students in a different program, or chosen not to enroll in pre-K at all — but that wasn’t the case. To us, it does speak to this idea that those programs were offering something that those families felt like they wanted and needed, and took advantage of.

How did you collect your data?

We were using CPS administrative data. We defined our cohorts by kindergarten and took a look back to see which students had been enrolled in pre-K the year before. If there were kids who were in pre-K but did not enroll in CPS for kindergarten and onward, we also included them, because we wanted to try to capture the universe of anyone who could be eligible for pre-K in CPS. The only people who aren’t included in the study are students who were never in CPS, such as students who may have always gone to a private school.

What were some of the study’s limitations?

It’s not a causal study, so you can’t make a direct causal link between geographic access and outcomes. Other factors — even other aspects of these policy changes — could have been happening at the same time to help account for these increases in enrollment and then, ultimately, improvements in outcomes.

Can you point us to some of the other variables that could help explain your results?

Alongside the expansion of full day pre-K within the district, other policy changes were happening at the same time. The process went online, so more information about publicly funded pre-K programs became readily available on the web through the city of Chicago. There were prioritization processes in place in CPS around choices that families were making for pre-K. And there were also some boots-on-the-ground efforts to try and increase enrollment in pre-K, particularly in some of these neighborhoods that are primarily Black, that are lower-income. It’s hard to pull each of those pieces apart.

What question does this study raise for you that you’d like to answer next?

What’s happening in community-based organizations at the same time? It doesn’t look like the policy had negative enrollment in community-based organizations, but anecdotally, people say it may have. There’s always an interest in trying to understand how changes in the district might impact enrollment within community-based organizations.

Two jobs, no benefits: Can Illinois rescue its early childhood workforce?

2021-06-21T22:15:48+00:00

Preschool teacher Devon Jefferson starts work at a child care center each morning at 6 a.m., clocks in for a second job as a home health care aide in the afternoon, and attends night classes several evenings a month.

After two decades as an early childhood educator, she’s tired and frustrated.

“We are overworked and so underpaid, and it is so not right,” said Jefferson, whose hourly wages at the child care center add up to $40,000 annually. She took a second job because she is not offered health benefits and owes student loan debt.

These days, Jefferson is weighing her options — and eyeing a switch to a public school down the street. After all, it pays its freshly minted new hires with one year experience $16,000 or so more than what she’s earning at 43. Plus they get benefits.

Early education is a field marked by low pay and high turnover — a state staffing survey shows that a startling 32% of teachers in Illinois’ licensed centers leave their jobs every two years, roughly the same percentage as a similar study two years prior. But Illinois’ efforts to stabilize the field have, until now, mostly come in fits and starts, falling victim to limp state early education budgets, little-to-no accountability, and the reality of a diffuse system made up of everything from private businesses to nonprofit centers to single-operator homes.

Even this year brings a question mark, with another flat budget for early education programs in Illinois. But insiders say they are still cautiously optimistic that some promising solutions are taking root, courtesy of newfound political will and an influx in federal emergency funds.

One of the most promising efforts appears to be a consortium tasked with designing faster, better ways to help experienced child care workers finish bachelor’s degrees. A product of the high-speed spring legislative session, that compromise bill — which is now headed to the governor’s desk — presses four-year colleges and universities to participate in a wide-ranging consortium with a lofty target: propelling about 20% of registered child care professionals who don’t have four-year degrees toward them by 2024.

The group will help steer $110 million of federal emergency dollars across three higher education organizations to create scholarships, set up loan forgiveness programs, and design more flexible courses. And that should help jumpstart other conversations, said Cristina Pacione-Zayas, an early educator and state senator whose efforts behind a workforce bill spurred the consortium’s creation.

“People understand the compensation issue, but they don’t yet feel it,” said Pacione-Zayas, whose bill requires universities to grant automatic junior status to community college degree holders and mandates bi-annual legislative reports about enrollees and persistence. “We have to push them to do something about it.”

Previous efforts to help experienced workers earn bachelor’s degrees did not go far enough and weren’t really practical for women juggling full-time jobs. Teresa Ramos, the vice president of public policy at the advocacy group Illinois Action for Children, said the consortium effort must really scrutinize what experienced workers need to be successful.

“The challenge we heard is that people want to stay in the field and keep their job. When you are working full-time, you can’t take a college class between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. — and that’s when many four-years offer their classes,” she said. Some of the strict mandates in the consortium bill could pressure colleges and universities to rethink how they set up courses for current workers, she added. “That could shift policy — something that might not just be good for early childhood but other fields.”

New data from the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies show the scope of the problem.

Even across the field, there were big disparities, with teachers in infant and toddler classrooms earning the least.

That’s why Ireta Gasner, vice president of Illinois policy at Start Early, said she’d like to see the conversation shift next to pay — and how to build a more sustainable pay scale for workers who have valuable experience and training with young children.

Some states have been reluctant to use one-time, federal emergency dollars for across-the-board pay increases, but Gasner argues that’s a missed opportunity. “While the federal dollars clearly can be used for bonuses and related compensation for work during the pandemic, they can also be used for overall compensation increases. And we need to move to ensuring that increased compensation is built into our system in an ongoing way.”

She says there are other possible incentives coming from Washington. The Biden administration has pledged more investment in child care and other programs that would help children and families. In Illinois, a new centralized early childhood agency likely would oversee that spending should it come through; until a state funding commission recommended a more streamlined approach earlier this year, programs for young children were spread across three separate agencies and fragmented.

For Tamara Locke, such changes are overdue, but unless they directly boost pay, she worries they could fall short. Locke is 44 and earns $19 an hour as the assistant director of a child care center on the North Side. She earned her bachelor’s degree this month, she says proudly, after more than 15 years of starts and stops across multiple higher education institutions, including for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix.

“it was a long process,” she said, and one interrupted not once, but twice, by family tragedy. A beloved brother’s death from gun violence derailed her at one point; credit transfers between institutions complicated her plan.

Ultimately, she earned her degree. She’s hoping to use it to open her own center.

To Locke, the answer to Illinois’ workforce problem is simple: “Pay us what we’re worth.”

Illinois budget heads to Pritzker’s desk with a boost for K-12, flat funding for early ed

2021-06-01T19:30:42+00:00

The Illinois General Assembly blew past a midnight deadline but lawmakers emerged in the early morning hours with a deal that includes $350 million more for K-12 schools.

The state approved the $42.3 billion budget early Tuesday morning, in the final hours of the spring legislative session. With federal emergency funding heading directly toward the state and an uptick in state revenue, Illinois is currently in a better financial position than predicted earlier this year.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday afternoon that he will sign the budget into law because it is a “balanced budget for Illinois that demonstrates fiscal responsibility works with a progressive vision of governance.”

While K-12 school districts will see a boost, the early childhood block grant that pays for preschool programs across Illinois will remain flat at $543 million. Two other critical early education budget lines saw cuts: the Child Care Assistance Program, which subsidizes the cost of child care for low-income working families, by 4.6%, and the Early Intervention program, which funds services for children age 3 and younger who have disabilities or developmental delays, by 6%.

After back-and-forth over whether the state should continue a tax credit scholarship program called Invest in Kids — an earlier proposal from the governor cut the program considerably, down to 40% — legislators agreed to keep the program intact in the final deal they passed. Under the plan, taxpayers will continue to receive an income tax credit for 75% of a qualified donation as in previous years. Republican House leader Jim Durkin called that a victory on Tuesday even as he criticized the last-minute nature of the process.

“Even in what was promised as a new day, we saw a 1,000-page budget drop at the 11th hour — literally. I think it was 11:30 p.m.,” said Durkin, who said that the late hour and size of the bill threatened transparency and prohibited vigorous debate. Still, he said, House Republicans managed “to save scholarships for low-income students.”

After initially proposing no increase in school funding due to the economic toll from the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker reversed course and recommended that the general assembly move forward with boosting the state’s almost $9 billion education budget by $350 million.

That keeps with a bipartisan pledge to put at least $350 million into the state’s evidence-based funding formula each year. However, education advocates and the state board of education urged the state to add more into the budget beyond the minimum. The board requested $412 million in December to make up for gaps.

Earlier in the year, Pritzker had proposed a flat education budget due to concerns about lingering debt and declining revenues. At the time, he said he believed that the almost $8 billion coming in federal stimulus money would be enough to support schools. Advocates questioned that assertion, arguing that the federal funding is set to expire by 2024, and school districts could not plan for long-term investments, such as additional salaries, with those funds.

Keeping the school funding flat another year, advocates argued, would penalize the state’s poorest districts, which rely most on state funding to make up for gaps in local property taxes.

Chicago is stepping up its preschool advertising. Will families return?

2021-04-26T12:03:03+00:00

Chicago kicked off its preschool application process with much fanfare last week as the city aims to bounce back from a steep drop in prekindergarten enrollment during the pandemic.

The school district lost a third of its preschool enrollment last fall, with a 44% decline among Black 3- and 4-year-olds — a data point that has raised concerns about long-term academic fallout for young children.

Increased advertising might not be enough to recruit Chicago families back to in-person preschool. The timeline to make vaccines widely available for children younger than age 12 is unclear, and some families remain wary of in-person learning.

Some other cities, such as New York, have used the pandemic to reimagine their programs or expand eligibility, but Chicago isn’t yet doing that. The school district is still focused on opening more classrooms — it plans to add 62 classrooms next fall at a cost of $16 million as it forges ahead with universal pre-K — but there are questions about whether it can fill them, despite research that underscores the effectiveness of pre-K on closing the achievement gap and the critical role programs play in child wellness, such as developmental screenings for disabilities.

Beyond advertising, some parents contend that the city could do more to reshape the application process — for example, by expanding full-day eligibility to younger children, opening it up to families earlier in the year, and guaranteeing neighborhood residents some seats at their zoned schools. Chicago currently prioritizes full-day, free preschool seats in schools for 4-year-olds and some 3-year-olds with disabilities, steering many 3-year-olds to half-day programs that can be inconvenient for working families. It also offers seats in its community programs that are subsidized for families who qualify.

All applications go through a central portal with some students prioritized depending on their age, whether they have a disability, or fall into certain high-priority categories such as homelessness or foster care.

The result in prior years: Thousands of 3-year-olds end up on waitlists, while classrooms have open seats.

A deluge of federal dollars and concerns about enrollment have prompted other cities to rethink who’s eligible for preschool. Flush with federal cash, New York City, for example, will make preschool available for 3-year-olds citywide, the mayor said in March.

For now, Chicago said it plans to focus on recruiting and not restructuring, though Mayor Lori Lightfoot has convened a working group to study early learning and make recommendations on unifying a fragmented system. Chicago Public Schools has said that it will offer just over 16,000 full-day free seats this fall, an increase of 1,200 from the previous year. Community-based programs will offer another 8,000 to families that qualify for tuition-based subsidies for working families, and federal Head Start plans to enroll about 5,000 children, bringing the citywide total of free or largely subsidized seats to just under 30,000. (According to the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall, which has compiled some early childhood data, Chicago is home to about 61,500 3- and 4-year-olds.)

In a written statement, Brandie Knazze, acting commissioner of the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, said the focus will be “continuity and stability.” Chicago plans to increase its social media presence and send teams to canvass in neighborhoods in an effort to share that message, a spokesman for the department said.

But those who’ve gone through the application and the enrollment process say more could be done.

“Chicago’s system is confusing,” said Alison Clark, a pediatric nurse practitioner who applied last spring when her son was 3. Her son was waitlisted, then offered a half-day seat later in the fall. By then, she’d already enrolled him in a daycare.

Clark said the stakes are high for the children she treats via a community health center: When children miss out on preschool, they often miss out on critical foundational learning — but also on screenings for developmental delays and disabilities.

“I have concerns for my own child, but I also have concerns for my patients,” she said. “There are a lot of hurdles that make it difficult to get evaluations for children who need an (Individualized Education Program, or plan for educating a child with disabilities) and to get them those services, but also to get them enrolled in preschool.”

Clark plans to reapply for a seat this year, now that her son is 4 and supposedly gets dibs on a full-day seat, though she has a slew of unknowns: when she’ll be notified, whether she’ll get her first-choice school nearby, and just how she and her husband will handle the tricky afternoon hours of 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. if they do get a seat. (Many school programs don’t offer aftercare for preschoolers.)

Some parents have also raised questions about automatic enrollment. Families are not guaranteed seats in neighborhood schools. Instead, every parent must list up to two choices on an application that covers both public schools and community programs (that some middle-income families will have to pay tuition at the community programs is not entirely clear on the application).

Karin Gutierrez, a mother of three, has been through the preschool process three times. After paying for preschool for her first child, she’s thankful for the expansion of free, full-day seats, and understands why the district prioritizes placing highest-need students first. But as an active parent at her school, she also craves the consistency that would come with a guaranteed spot in her neighborhood school.

“We’re a bilingual household and the dual language program is really important to me,” she said. But she also acknowledges the complications underneath the policy. “There are kids with all different abilities and different needs, and if there is a kid outside our neighborhood who is high-need and needs a spot, I’m happy to relinquish that.”

Enter into the complexities of preschool enrollment another wild card: Just how the pandemic will affect enrollment in the neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19. Even as more adults have access to a vaccine, the timeline for children under age 16 remains unclear, and some families — particularly those in some neighborhoods on the South and West sides that saw positivity rates crest past 20% in winter months — may be reluctant to send their children into group settings.

“It’s difficult to say how these schools and programs will bounce back,” said Marquinta Thomas, the director of referrals and outreach for Illinois Action for Children, the nonprofit that fields parent phone calls for the city’s Early Learning application and hotline. “There’s a lot of support for that to happen, but trust has to be there for these communities for people to return.”

Thomas said her team has fielded the typical questions about preschool enrollment and a new layer of pandemic-related ones. Will programs offer remote learning options? (The public school district has said that it will continue to offer remote learning more broadly, even while it pledged a full five-day return for students in fall just this week. It’s not clear yet what community providers will do.) Will all teachers be vaccinated? (The district has offered vaccinations to all teachers, but hasn’t been able to fully track how many have taken them.) When will vaccines be available for young children? (Public health experts have said early 2022, but the timeline isn’t quite clear.)

Even nationally, the full arc of preschool enrollment is still obscured in the moment of the pandemic, said GG Weisenfeld, assistant research professor at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. What’s more, programs likely will face added challenges in the fall as students come in with broader needs.

But she stressed that there are also lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 year, such as the success of delivering materials to homes of families and engaging parents more closely in everything from instruction to charting child development milestones.

If educators can adopt better ways to reach parents, maybe, too, can cities.

“This year parents are more involved in that preschool experience,” Weisenfeld said. “Hopefully there is still that role for them moving forward — and that appreciation for what a parent can offer.”

Illinois will spend another $140 million to stabilize its daycares

2021-04-16T20:51:29+00:00

After setting aside nearly $300 million last year for direct grants for child care centers, Illinois will spend another $140 million to help stabilize a sector shaken by the coronavirus pandemic.

Child care centers across the state are eligible to apply for the business recovery grants to help shore up operations as the sector tries to claw back from enrollment declines, mounting safety costs, and payment delays from overburdened families.

Illinois stands to receive an estimated $1.6 billion in federal emergency dollars for early childhood education on top of more than $8 billion for K-12 school districts across three stimulus packages. As for how it will be spent, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office did not offer additional details Friday even as he broadly unveiled more changes forthcoming to early education in the state.

As had been expected, Illinois will consolidate oversight of early childhood services into one agency beginning July 1.

The new Division of Early Childhood will be housed under the state Department of Human Services. Currently, oversight of critical early childhood programs, such as a stipend that helps low-income families pay for child care and oversight of prekindergarten and home visiting programs, are functions split among agencies. Advocates have long described the landscape as fragmented and said that would prevent the state from embarking on such ambitious projects as rolling out universal pre-K.

In 2019, Pritzker established a 29-person funding commission and charged it with trying to solve a billion-dollar problem: How to strengthen an early childhood system that is considered a national innovator but enrolls too few children from birth to 5 in any sort of programming. The commission’s work took on a critical new dynamic once the pandemic began to have roiling effects on the economy and on child care programs, many of which struggled to continue operations.

The governor’s child care grant program that debuted last summer — believed to be the largest such investment in the country in the sector — ultimately granted $290 million to 5,000 providers, Pritzker’s office said.

In addition to the new child care agency, the Pritzker administration will launch a network of early childhood planning councils modeled after a program up and running in Aurora. The councils will bring together nonprofits, school districts, governments, and providers to assess what’s available to families, what’s needed, and how to boost enrollment in programs.

Asked by Chalkbeat for more details on how it plans to spend the rest of the federal emergency dollars for children under age 5, the governor’s office did not immediately respond.

Illinois advocates rally around early ed bill that would create more bachelor’s degree programs

2021-04-07T23:35:34+00:00

Momentum is building behind a senate bill that would allow community colleges to create bachelor’s degree programs for child care workers.

Illinois advocates and state legislators are rallying support for Senate Bill 1832. The bill could potentially address multiple problems facing the state: high turnover and low wages in the early education workforce and sagging enrollment at community colleges across the state. It is currently headed to the Senate’s higher education committee.

Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, chief sponsor of the bill, spoke during a press conference Wednesday morning about the potential for the bill to address racial, gender and economic inequities in the child care workforce.

“These individuals happen to be majority women and women of color — Black, brown, immigrants and refugees. They have very little pay, anywhere between $10 to $13 an hour with very few benefits. Forty-six percent of them are eligible for public assistance,” she said.

In 2019, the median hourly wage for a child care worker in the state was $11.19 — over $20,000 yearly — and that was a decrease from the previous year, according to a 2020 Center for the Study of Child Care Employment report. Child care workers are predominantly Black and Latino, and they often are unable to obtain higher paying jobs in the field because most of them do not have a bachelor’s degree or a Professional Educator License.

Pacione-Zayas said creating more bachelor’s degree programs could help expand the workforce at a time when there is a growing need for child care.

“We have a vacancy problem of about 2,200 classrooms that do not have appropriately qualified individuals to be able to support child development. We only produce, as a state, 342 bachelor’s degrees in child development. That gap is gaping,” said Pacione-Zayas.

Community colleges could be one of the solutions. They’re more affordable, offer flexible scheduling, and give providers the option of staying in their communities to obtain a degree. The bill also could benefit community colleges, which have struggled with low enrollment.

Toya Redmond, an early childhood provider in Chicago, was a student at Truman Community College in Chicago and then transferred to a four-year institution that did not place her in the right program. She took off a year from school to figure out credits or if she wanted to transfer to a different university, but she eventually returned to school.

“I believe if Truman had the bachelor’s program, the transition would have been seamless. A lot of people wouldn’t be discouraged to go back to school, because I had so much support from Truman, I was determined to complete this bachelor’s degree,” said Redmond.

April Janney, CEO of Illinois Action for Children, a nonprofit organization that is focused on early childhood education, said 23 other states have a similar program.

“The data shows that the [Community College Baccalaureate] program serves a different population than those that traditionally get bachelor’s degree programs. The population that would not otherwise seek out or complete their bachelor’s degree programs,” said Janney.

Juan Salgado, chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago, said that community colleges are able to help women and women of color who are, “Full-time workers by and large, who need flexible schedules, convenient locations, affordable tuition and wraparound supports in order to further their careers.”

If the bill becomes a law, it would be the first bachelor’s degree program for City Colleges of Chicago, the largest community college system in the state.

SB 1832 has to clear the higher education committee before it can go to the Senate floor for debate.

How this Chicago pre-K teacher created a typical day for her students in an atypical year

2020-12-21T15:42:43+00:00

Chicago prekindergarten teacher Margi Bhansali approached the first day of school this year with apprehension. Even with National Board Certification and a decade of classroom experience, she faced the daunting task of getting to know her 15 4-year-olds virtually.

Margi Bhansali

But through weeks, and then months, of virtual learning, Bhansali prioritized welcoming parents and grandparents as well as her Brunson Elementary students — holding individual virtual meetings with families, creating monthly at-home learning packets, and even volunteering to troubleshoot technical issues with parents so they could upload their children’s work. She also focused on building bonds among the children on her screen, with games, show-and-tell, and songs that involve the children and their lives.

When one of her students invited her to a birthday party this fall, Bhansali knew she had succeeded in connecting with her class despite the distance.

Now she faces another transition, as Chicago plans to bring back prekindergartners and some special education students in January in its first reopening wave. Chalkbeat Chicago asked Bhansali what she has learned from this most unusual year, her favorite lesson to teach remotely, and her plans to give her physical classroom a COVID-era makeover.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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

I didn’t start college with the intention of becoming a teacher, I was actually a journalism major. My freshman year, I joined an AmeriCorps program called Jumpstart, where I worked in a Title 1 classroom, providing one-on-one instruction and supporting the classroom teacher for several hours a week.

I was paired with a bright-eyed 4-year-old girl, and we formed an instant connection. As the school year went on, I saw her academic skills skyrocket. The relationship I built with her and her family, as well as the impact I was able to make in her educational path, changed the course of my career and my life. From then on, I became an advocate for the underserved young children in our community. I believe that a high-quality prekindergarten experience can begin to bridge the educational gap, and that is why I became a teacher.

What does a typical day look like for you now?

Currently my district is fully remote, so a typical day is very different than in the past. I start the day by posting a “Question of the Day” on Google Classroom that is related to our current topic of study. Some examples include “What do you do with clothes you do not wear anymore?” and “How many trees can you see from your window?” Students then participate in a total of an hour of synchronous instruction during the day in both whole-group and small-group formats.

I also post a “Challenge of the Day,” which are activities that families complete at home during the day, such as making an instrument with materials from around their home, listening to the social-emotional podcast “Imagine Neighborhood,” and responding to the prompts, or reading a paired fiction and non-fiction text on the Scholastic Bookflix website and completing the games that go along with them. I am also available during the day to meet with individual families or students if they need extra support.

What challenges do you face teaching pre-kindergarten this year?

The biggest challenge I am facing is attendance. While I work hard to make our daily meetings fun and engaging, I understand that it can be difficult for the children to be on the screen for an hour. Every time a student misses class, I call home and/or send an email to follow-up with families. I also understand that my students are often being supervised by older siblings who are doing their own remote learning, and grandparents, who are unfamiliar with using the technology, so logging in on a daily basis is tough. I know many other educators offer incentives to children for attendance, but at the Pre-K level, attendance is more on the family and less on the child. I don’t want a child to feel left out or discouraged when they see classmates getting a “prize” when I know they could have done nothing differently to get themselves logged in more often.

The other big challenge is assessing students. At this age, many of my assessments take place in authentic, play-based settings. This is nearly impossible through the screen.

The other barrier I am coming across is families answering for their child. I understand that they want their child to “get it right” but this makes it difficult for me to know what their child can really do.

What has been your favorite lesson to teach remotely — and what about it works well?

My favorite teaching strategy during remote learning has been the “scavenger hunt.” I use it all the time across all content areas. I can tell the students to find something in their house that begins with the same letter as their name, that is shaped like a square, or comes in a pair. I’ve also incorporated this into our study topics. During our study of clothing, we looked for clothing with different types of closures, such as buttons, zippers, or buckles. We even did a Thanksgiving scavenger hunt, where the students found things the color of pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. I really enjoy scavenger hunts because they get the kids up and moving around. It gives me a glimpse into their lives and helps to build relationships with the families because I get to know them better!

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

School was always a place I enjoyed and looked forward to. I was the kid who was excited when summer break was over! I loved learning and socializing with peers — two things I am still passionate about. This means that even in my work today, I am always looking for opportunities to develop as a teacher and be in community with other educators. That is why several years ago I became a Nationally Board Certified Teacher through the Chicago Teachers Union’s Nurturing Teacher Leadership program, and I am currently a Teach Plus Illinois Early Childhood Education Policy Fellow.

This has been a challenging year. What do you hope school will look like at this time next year?

This time next year I hope to be teaching my students in person. I really miss seeing my students everyday and interacting with them! Remote teaching is just not the same, but right now I’m more concerned about everyone’s health and safety. By this time next year, I hope there is a widely available vaccine so that we can return to school without fear.

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

The best advice I’ve received was to make the classroom environment the “third teacher,” with the adults being the first and children being the second. I spend a lot of time intentionally setting up my physical environment to encourage communication and relationships. The classroom should invite children to explore, experiment, and make mistakes, with plenty of opportunities for open-ended play. I also make sure that children can have ownership of their classroom. They know where all the materials are and have autonomy to use them.

With CPS slated to return to in-person learning in January and the new requirements to keep socially distant, my classroom will look very different this year. My plan is to create “cubicles” with low shelves and individual materials at each student’s developmental level. The low shelves will allow for the children to talk to each other, but maintain proper distance.

Setting up classrooms with functional design and pleasing aesthetics that bring peace into a classroom is my secret passion. My dream job would be to be the designer on a “Classroom Makeover” show like the home makeover shows on HGTV!

Commission calls for Illinois to create state agency to oversee early learning

2020-12-11T21:30:32+00:00

Illinois should create a state agency to oversee early education instead of relying on multiple agencies steering different programs with little accountability or transparency, according to a draft recommendation from a statewide commission.

It should also spend almost seven times the amount it does on early childhood education, the group said, an ambitious goal in a budget year marked by a pandemic, rising unemployment, and the defeat of a graduated income tax proposal aimed at easing Illinois’ chronic budget crunch.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker convened the panel last year to help streamline funding and drive improvements. The 29-person commission is expected to deliver multiple recommendations to the governor by March 2021, including a set of ambitious funding goals.

Two of the commission’s co-chairs, state Senator Andy Manar and advocate George Davis, previewed the recommendations Thursday night in a town hall for providers, advocates and policymakers. Currently, Illinois spends about $1.9 billion on early education programs, including state-funded preschool, child care subsidies for low-income working parents, and initiatives for infants and toddlers. Chicago also has fueled its universal prekindergarten expansion with a chunk of those dollars.

After studying the issue for a year, the commission — made up of legislators, policymakers, and government officials — estimated that Illinois should be spending about $13 billion on early childhood education, which is closer to what it spends on its K-12 schools. (Illinois has twice the number of children enrolled in K-12 schools as early learners, but it spends $5 on K-12 for about every $1 on children under age 5.)

Members of the commission agree a centralized system would allow policymakers and state leaders to send money to where it is most needed and provide for greater predictability and stability for child care providers. Currently, different early learning programs are steered by a mishmash of agencies, chiefly the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Human Services, and the Department of Family and Children Services.

At the virtual town hall Thursday night, providers asked commissioners how a new agency would help solve chronic workforce problems. The state’s child care workers are often women of color who earn significantly less than their counterparts in public school districts.

As cities like Chicago have expanded pre-kindergarten in public schools, one unintended consequence has been a bifurcated system in which some teachers are paid on a union pay scale, while teachers in community centers and private preschools are paid substantially less.

Addressing workforce concerns has been a charge of the commission.

One commenter on Thursday said that COVID-19 had helped magnify that issue. “We hear so much talk about public school teachers’ concerns on social distancing — what about our social distancing? Is there any consideration about direct compensation to child care staff — especially those that have worked through peak pandemic for essential workers? Child care will never be considered an honorable position if they are not compensated accordingly.”

Other questions from providers and participants included how private child care centers would benefit from changes at the state level; where special education programs and early intervention might fall in line for budget increases and support; and whether child care workers could have priority for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Some also asked how state-level changes might impact Chicago, which also is making moves to reorganize its fractured early learning system.

“One thing we hope to see is a system that is streamlined from the state to the local level,” said Davis, the former executive director of the Rockford Human Services Department.

Asked by Chalkbeat how realistic the commission’s funding goals are given the state’s budget woes, Manar likened the early education campaign to one years earlier that resulted in a more equitable rewrite of the state’s K-12 funding formula.

“We obviously can’t ignore the budget challenges we face today,” he said at Thursday’s town hall. “Are we going to be able to plunk down the money and make the system the way we want it? No. That’s not being a defeatist. That’s recognizing the reality.”

But, he added, “having a map, and charting it out, understanding the costs and knowing where the gaps are, and streamlining things so that providers have a less difficult time accessing funds, those will be valuable (steps) to creating the system we want in the state.”

The funding commission plans to hold three more virtual town halls, on Dec. 16, Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 14, 2021. Click here for more information.

Indices de inmunización infantil en Chicago están disminuyendo. Los funcionarios de salud están preocupados

2020-10-30T19:55:15+00:00

Este artículo está disponible en español gracias al proyecto “Traduciendo las noticias de Chicago”, del Instituto de Noticias Sin Fines de Lucro (INN).

Al crecer indocumentada en una familia que emigró a Chicago desde México, Rosalía no iba al médico con la misma frecuencia que sus hermanos nacidos en Estados Unidos. Sus padres temían que una visita de rutina al doctor generaría preguntas incómodas o costaría más de lo que podían pagar.

“Incluso si hubiesen tenido los recursos, no se habrían sentido cómodos al consultar por miedo. Temían meterse en problemas”, dijo. (Chalkbeat omitió su apellido para proteger su identidad).

Rosalía, quien reside en el lado noroeste de la ciudad y es madre de dos niñas, es responsable en estar al día con las visitas regulares de sus hijas al pediatra. Pero este año se siente frustrada ya que después de seis meses de estar llamando a la clínica de salud donde se atienden sus hijas le dicen que no hay hora disponible y que llame otro día.

“Al principio, dijeron: ‘No podemos recibir a sus hijas debido a la pandemia’. Eso era comprensible. Luego pedí una estimación de cuándo podrían volver a la consulta. No pude conseguir una cita hasta esta semana”.

Hay varias razones de por qué las tasas de vacunación infantil, típicamente altas en Chicago, han disminuido entre los niños, incluyendo problemas de acceso a la salud; miedo a estar expuestos al COVID-19; y desconfianza de las vacunas, la cual ha resurgido últimamente.

Los datos actuales son difíciles de obtener, pero los registros obtenidos por Chalkbeat ofrecen una idea de la severidad del problema: una cuarta parte de los niños de escasos recursos que asisten a los centros de cuidado infantil financiados con fondos públicos de Chicago están atrasados en las vacunas críticas para enfermedades tan graves como el sarampión o el polio. Eso es una disminución de 12 puntos porcentuales en comparación al año pasado.

En algunos vecindarios, hasta la mitad de los niños en recintos de cuidado infantil no están siendo vacunados como se requiere, según un análisis de datos proporcionados por el departamento de servicios familiares de la ciudad por medio de La Ley de Información Pública.

Si la inmunización no es controlada, la ciudad podría sufrir un segunda crisis de salud pública, como el brote de sarampión que Illinois enfrentó el año pasado o un aumento de casos de tos ferina, identificando vacíos preocupantes en la salud pública pediátrica debido a la pandemia del coronavirus.

Los expertos advierten que esta disminución podría estar relacionada con la desconfianza en algunos vecindarios frente a las vacunas, lo que presagiaría un camino complicado para una futura vacuna del COVID-19.

“Creo que cualquiera que haya trabajado en el área de las vacunas tiene motivos para estar preocupado”, dijo la Dra. Marielle Fricchione, directora del programa de inmunización en el Departamento de Salud Pública de Chicago y profesora adjunta de pediatría en el Hospital Infantil de la Universidad Rush.

Con muchas escuelas cerradas y guarderías infantiles con pocos niños, el mecanismo que la ciudad usa para asegurar el cumplimiento de las normas, como enviar a los niños de vuelta a sus casas hasta que los requisitos de inmunización sean cumplidos, suena inverosímil. La semana pasada, la junta escolar estatal relajó su propia medida de fecha límite al 15 de octubre para asegurar la vacunación de los estudiantes que están tomando clases en línea, diciendo que pueden continuar con sus clases sin sanción. “La amenaza de no volver a la escuela es diferente. Así que eso cambia nuestros incentivos habituales para que las familias se vacunen a tiempo”, dijo Fricchione.

Si los niños no están yendo al médico para recibir vacunas, también se están perdiendo exámenes de detección de problemas de salud mental o retrasos en el desarrollo y señales de advertencia de autismo, envenenamiento por plomo, incluso abuso infantil, negligencia o desnutrición.

“Hay un efecto COVID relacionado con el acceso a la atención médica”, dijo Jennie Pinkwater, directora ejecutiva de la Asociación Estadounidense de Pediatría en Illinois. “Estamos preocupados por los índices de inmunización, pero hasta cierto punto este es un problema menos complejo de resolver que la falta de acceso a la atención de salud pública”.

A principios de octubre, el director interino del Departamento de Servicios para Niños y Familias del estado envió un aviso a empresas y proveedores de atención médica mencionando una estadística preocupante: las llamadas para denunciar el abuso y la negligencia infantil disminuyeron un 57% en comparación al mismo período del año pasado. Cuando los establecimientos escolares cerraron, los maestros, entrenadores y otros funcionarios que monitoreaban casos de posibles abusos infantiles ya no podían observar las vidas de los niños a quienes ayudaban a mantenerse seguros.

Para algunos niños, la única conexión con el exterior son las visitas al pediatra.

Temor y dudas

En los últimos años, Chicago ha tenido índices de inmunización superiores al promedio. La ciudad se estaba acercando, por ejemplo, a tasas de cobertura del 95% para la vacuna contra el sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola, según datos de los Centros para el Control de Enfermedades, que tiende a retrasarse algunos años.

La situación actual se está recién empezando a conocer, pero aun así, los registros al 31 de julio solo entregan un panorama incompleto. Los números obtenidos por Chalkbeat muestran lo que está sucediendo entre 12,000 niños, que es solo una fracción de los residentes más jóvenes de la ciudad. Pero esos niños son los más vulnerables, ya que califican para programas públicos de cuidado infantil y subsidios para familias de bajos ingresos.

Un análisis más detallado muestra diferencias entre lugares y vecindarios, cifras que no se correlacionan directamente con la pobreza o cuántos residentes en el área tienen seguro médico. Una serie de vecindarios en el lado suroeste de la ciudad —Auburn Gresham, Ashburn, Gage Park, y Brighton Park— tenía centros que reportaron índices más bajos que el 76% promedio de toda la ciudad al igual que Edgewater y Uptown en el lado norte de la ciudad.

“Definitivamente deberíamos estar haciendo sonar la alarma en este momento”, dijo Carmen Vergara, directora de operaciones de Los Centros de Salud Esperanza, que opera cuatro clínicas de atención médica en el lado suroeste de Chicago. “Estamos a ocho meses de la pandemia, es decir, más del 25% de la vida de un niño de 2 años”.

En los barrios con una alta tasa de COVID-19, un viaje en autobús o unos minutos en una sala de espera puede verse como un peligro de contagio. “Los padres tienen dudas de venir a la clínica ya que la ven como un lugar donde podrían estar expuestos al virus”, dijo Vergara. “En general, la gente se siente como, bueno, si están atrasados [con los chequeos], prefieren arriesgarse antes que asistir al doctor y posiblemente exponerse”.

Mientras hay familias que están preocupadas de la exposición al virus, hay otras que enfrentan problemas de acceso, de retrasos con las citas médicas hasta cierres de clínicas públicas. La ciudad frecuentemente usaba una estrategia multifacética para proveer inmunización: conectando a cientos de médicos para vacunar de forma gratuita a niños de bajos recursos, llevando un autobús a diversos lugares para vacunarlos de forma rápida y segura, y a la vez cubriendo los vacíos en clínicas públicas para las personas sin seguro médico o subaseguradas e indocumentadas.

Pero debido a la pandemia, esas clínicas cerraron durante meses a partir de mediados de marzo y dejaron de contar con el autobús que viajaba a escuelas, guarderías, refugios para personas sin hogar e iglesias.

“Teníamos un programa sólido en términos de equilibrar las barreras de acceso a la salud”, dijo Fricchione, director de inmunizaciones de la ciudad. “Nos rompió el corazón cuando tuvimos que cerrar las clínicas cuando la pandemia alcanzó su punto máximo”.

En agosto, la ciudad volvió a contar con el autobús, y en septiembre, reabrió dos de las cinco clínicas. Pero con muchos establecimientos escolares cerrados, el bajo uso de las guarderías infantiles, y los programas de parques y las ferias de regreso a la escuela que son básicamente un recuerdo pre-pandémico, ¿A dónde se supone que irán los autobuses?

Meses de retrasos continuos podrían tener consecuencias. “Esto va a ser mucho más grave cuando las escuelas tengan clases presenciales. Ahora tienes niños que se están mezclando con otros niños, y esto aumenta el riesgo de que los niños que no han completado sus vacunas estén expuestos a enfermedades que son prevenibles”, dijo la Dra. Tina Tan, especialista en enfermedades infecciosas pediátricas en el Hospital Infantil Lurie de Chicago y profesora de pediatría en la Escuela de Medicina Feinberg de la Universidad Northwestern.

Entrevistas en terreno

El programa de vacunaciones infantiles de Chicago suele entregar 700,000 dosis de vacunas anualmente a 400 centros médicos. Es una tarea titánica que colapsó en primavera cuando los proveedores se enfrentaron a sus propios desafíos, incluyendo la escasez de suministro de equipos de protección personal, el cambio abrupto a citas por telemedicina y los desafíos de reembolso que tal vez desincentivaron a los médicos de priorizar las vacunas.

Históricamente, un ingrediente clave de la campaña de la ciudad en torno a la vacunación ha sido también reclutar grupos comunitarios para promover información en diferentes barrios minoritarios. Los trabajadores en terreno hicieron preguntas y abordaron preocupaciones sobre las vacunas infantiles requeridas, así como también las inmunizaciones opcionales como la influenza.

La pandemia frenó algunos de esos programas, pero Chicago planea reactivarlos. El alcance comunitario es crítico ya que los expertos sacaron a relucir una preocupación sobre que la disminución de las tasas de inmunización también podría estar relacionada con la desconfianza hacia el establecimiento médico a raíz del COVID-19.

Los estadounidenses afroamericanos, en particular, tienen razones de sobre para desconfiar del sistema de salud, que deriva de un doloroso historial de discriminación y una brecha constante en la atención médica en comparación a los estadounidenses blancos. Una nueva encuesta nacional que analizó opiniones por raza revela que siete de cada 10 afroamericanos piensan que han sido tratados injustamente durante la pandemia por algún establecimiento médico; la mitad afirmó que rechazarían una vacuna contra el coronavirus.

“Algunas personas de color le temen a las vacunas, y en general también le temen a los médicos y a la atención médica, en particular por la manera en que el COVID-19 está siendo manejado, y especialmente con la retórica política que estamos viviendo antes de las elecciones presidenciales”, dijo Jamal Malone, director ejecutivo de Ada S. McKinley Community Services, una agencia coordinadora de 14 centros de cuidado infantil que acogen a alrededor de 750 niños. Malone dijo que hay otros factores a considerar que podrían estar causando la disminución de inmunización.

Algunas familias están volviendo a llevar a sus niños a guarderías después de meses de encierro, y además, las estrategias que los centros están usando para reforzar la inmunización han cambiado. Antes de la pandemia, los educadores se concentraban en intentar conversar con los padres de forma casual mientras se iban y recogían a los niños. Esas conversaciones eran una oportunidad para recordarles a los padres sobre los exámenes de salud e inmunizaciones, o para identificar a las familias que necesitaban ayuda para acceder a centros médicos. Sin embargo, las nuevas restricciones establecidas donde los padres ya no pueden ingresan a los establecimientos durante la pandemia han limitado esas importantes interacciones.

“Ahora la comunicación tiene que ser por medio de llamadas telefónicas o mensajes de texto”, dijo Malone. “Estamos buscando diferentes formas creativas de mantener la comunicación con los padres”.

Fricchione está de acuerdo en que las conversaciones en persona son más eficaces que carteles publicitarios, una táctica que la ciudad aplicará a la divulgación de la vacuna COVID-19 cuando esté disponible. “Hay un trauma generalizado que se desencadena por esta conversación acerca de la vacunación COVID. Somos sensibles a esos temas. Nada reemplaza las conversaciones reales con seres humanos reales”, dijo Malone.

El que Chicago aborde esta disminución de las vacunas en los más jóvenes podría resultar en un escenario favorable para los adultos, siempre y cuando esté disponible una vacuna contra el COVID-19. Los ensayos de las vacunas están en marcha para los adultos, y en ciudades como Chicago ya se está planificando su distribución. Sin embargo, todavía no hay ensayos para probar la inocuidad de una vacuna de tal forma que sea comparable con una para los niños, lo que presenta otra preocupación en la salud pública.

“En pediatría siempre tenemos esta conversación sobre las vacunas y la desconfianza en torno a ellas y hay mucha capacitación e información sobre ese tema”, dijo Pinkwater, agregando que la asociación estatal de pediatras le ha solicitado a la Legislatura de Illinois que establezca y financie una coalición estatal de vacunación.

“Si vamos a extender ese tema hacia la medicina para adultos, los internistas no están capacitados para convencer a un adulto de vacunarse. ¿Cómo abordamos estas conversaciones que estamos teniendo en torno al sarampión y a la vacuna contra la gripe desde la visión de los niños y extrapolamos eso a nuestros colegas de medicina adulta?”

“El tiempo es ahora una prioridad”.

Traducido por Marcela Cartagena

Chicago’s childhood vaccination rates are slipping. Health officials are worried.

2020-10-19T14:54:55+00:00

Growing up undocumented in a family that immigrated to Chicago from Mexico, Rosalia didn’t go to the doctor as often as her U.S.-born siblings. Her parents were afraid that even a routine visit would draw uncomfortable questions or cost more than they could afford.

“Even if the resources were out there, they didn’t feel comfortable asking out of fear. They were afraid of getting in trouble,” she said. (Chalkbeat withheld her last name to protect her identity.)

Rosalia, now a mother of two who lives on the Northwest Side, is diligent about keeping up with her daughters’ regular pediatrician visits. But she has gotten discouraged this year, after six months of calling her health clinic and being told to call back.

“At first, they said, ‘We can’t allow your children to come in because of the pandemic.’ I was understanding. They are great. Then I asked for an estimate for when children can go back. I couldn’t get an appointment until this week.”

There’s a constellation of reasons why Chicago’s typically high vaccination rates have started to slide among children who reside here, including access issues, fear of being exposed to COVID-19, and resurging distrust of vaccines. Current numbers are hard to come by, but data obtained by Chalkbeat offer a window: A quarter of low-income children who attend Chicago’s publicly funded child care sites are behind on critical immunizations for such serious illnesses as measles or polio. That’s a decline of 12 percentage points compared to last year.

In some neighborhoods, up to half of the children in child care are missing required vaccinations, according to an analysis of data provided by the city’s family services department through an open records request.

Left unchecked, the city’s slide in routine childhood immunizations could usher in a second health care crisis — a measles outbreak like the state confronted last year or a surge in whooping cough — and it points to troubling holes torn in the fabric of pediatric public health by the coronavirus pandemic.

Experts worry that the slip also suggests a resurgence of vaccine hesitancy in some neighborhoods that could foreshadow a bumpy road ahead for any future COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think anyone who has worked in the vaccine space has reason to be concerned,” said Dr. Marielle Fricchione, the immunization program director at the Chicago Department of Public Health and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Rush University Children’s Hospital.

With many schools closed and day care centers below capacity, Chicago’s typical enforcement mechanism — sending children home until they are in compliance — rings hollow. Last week, the state school board relaxed its own Oct. 15 deadline for proof of immunizations for e-learners, saying they may continue to attend virtual classes without penalty. “The threat of not going back to school is different. So that changes our usual incentives for families to get vaccinated on time,” Fricchione said.

If children aren’t visiting the doctor for vaccinations, they’re also missing out on screenings for such issues as mental health problems or developmental delays and warning signs for autism, lead poisoning, even child abuse, neglect, or malnutrition.

“There’s a COVID effect in relation to access to care,” said Jennie Pinkwater, the executive director of the Illinois Chapter of the American Association of Pediatrics. “We’re concerned about immunization rates, but almost to some degree that is a more solvable problem than a general lack of accessing primary care.”

In early October, the acting director of the state’s Department of Children and Family Services sent a notice to businesses and health care providers that flagged a troubling statistic — calls to report child abuse and neglect were down 57% compared to the same time last year. When school buildings closed, teachers, coaches, and other mandatory reporters lost critical sightlines into the lives of children whom they helped keep safe.

Pediatricians are now, for some children, the rare connection to the outside.

Hesitance and fear

In recent years, Chicago has had higher-than-average immunization rates. The city was closing in, for example, on 95% coverage rates for the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control, which tends to lag a few years.

The current picture is just starting to come into focus, and even then, existing data as of July 31 offer only a partial view. The numbers obtained by Chalkbeat show what’s happening among 12,000 children, which is a fraction of the city’s youngest residents. But they are among the city’s most vulnerable, as they qualify for public child care programs and subsidies for low income families.

Closer analysis shows variance by sites and by neighborhoods, numbers that don’t directly correlate with poverty or how many residents in the area have health insurance. A string of neighborhoods on the Southwest Side of the city — Auburn Gresham, Ashburn, Gage Park, Brighton Park — had centers report rates that were lower than the citywide average of 76%, as did Edgewater and Uptown on the city’s North Side.

“We should definitely be sounding the alarm right now,” said Carmen Vergara, the chief operations officer at Esperanza Health Centers, which operates four health care clinics on the Southwest Side of Chicago. “We’re eight months into the pandemic — that is more than 25% of the lifespan of a 2 year old.”

In neighborhoods with higher rates of COVID-19, a bus ride or a few minutes in a waiting room can feel like a gamble. “Parents are hesitant to come into the clinic — they view it as a place where they could be exposed to COVID,” Vergara said. “In general, folks feel like, well, if they are a little bit delayed, they’d rather risk that than coming in and possibly be exposed.”

While some families are concerned about exposure, others report access issues, from appointment delays to closures of free clinics. The city typically took a multi-faceted approach to immunizations: connecting hundreds of physicians with free vaccines for children who qualify, operating a mobile bus that could give vaccinations on the go, and filling in gaps with free clinics for the uninsured, underinsured, and undocumented.

But the pandemic closed those clinics for months starting in mid-March and halted the bus that traveled to schools, daycares, homeless shelters, and churches.

“We had such a strong program and such great momentum in terms of evening out barriers to access in this city,” said Fricchione, the city’s immunizations director. “It broke all of our hearts when we had to close the walk-in clinics at the peak of the pandemic.”

In August, the city restarted the van, and in September, it reopened two of the five clinics. But with many school buildings closed, day care enrollments down, and park programs and back-to-school fairs basically a pre-pandemic memory, where’s the van to park?

Months of continued delays could have consequences. “This is going to become much more important if and when the schools go back in person. Now you have kids that are mixing with other kids, and this increases the risk for kids who have not completed vaccination series to be exposed to preventable diseases,” said Dr. Tina Tan, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and a professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

On-the-ground conversations

Chicago’s childhood vaccinations program typically supplies 700,000 doses of vaccines annually to 400 health care practices. It’s a herculean undertaking that sputtered in the spring as providers faced their own challenges, including supply shortages of personal protective equipment, the abrupt shift to telemedicine appointments, and reimbursement challenges that perhaps disincentivized doctors from prioritizing vaccinations.

Historically, a key ingredient of the city’s campaign around vaccinations was also enlisting grassroots groups in outreach for different neighborhoods and racial and ethnic groups. Field workers addressed questions and concerns about standard required childhood vaccinations, as well as optional immunizations, such as for the flu.

The pandemic ground some of those efforts, too, and Chicago plans to restart them. Community outreach is particularly critical now, as experts raise concerns that a decline in rates might also be connected to a general distrust of the medical establishment in the wake of COVID-19. Black Americans, in particular, have longstanding reasons to distrust the healthcare system, which stem from a painful history of discrimination and a continuing gap in care compared to white Americans. A new nationwide poll that captured pandemic era attitudes by race reveals that seven out of 10 Black Americans believe they are treated unfairly by the medical establishment; half said they would refuse a coronavirus vaccine.

“Some people of color are just more fearful now of vaccines, and in general of doctors and healthcare, especially with the way COVID-19 is being grappled with, and especially with the political rhetoric going on right now ahead of the presidential election,” said Jamal Malone, the chief executive officer of Ada S. McKinley Community Services, an umbrella agency for 14 child care sites that together enroll about 750 children.

Malone said that there are other factors to consider that might be causing a slide. Some families are just coming back to child care after months at home, and how centers take on the job of enforcing immunization requirements has changed, too. Before the pandemic, educators made a point of engaging parents in casual conversations as they dropped off and picked up children. Those conversations offered a window for gentle nudges and reminders to parents about health screenings and immunizations — or to identify families who needed help connecting to doctors’ practices or clinics. New restrictions on parents entering buildings during the pandemic have limited those critical interactions.

“Now the communication has to be more phone calls or text messaging,” Malone said. “We’re looking at different creative ways of communicating and reaching our parents.”

Fricchione agrees that on-the-ground conversations are more effective than billboards — a philosophy the city will apply to outreach around the COVID-19 vaccine, when it becomes available. “There is an institutional trauma that gets triggered by this COVID vaccination conversation. We are sensitive to those issues. Nothing replaces actual conversations with actual human beings.”

In some ways, how Chicago tackles the vaccination slide facing its youngest residents could tip the scales toward success for its adult residents, if and when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available. Advanced trials are underway for adults now, and cities including Chicago are drafting plans for rollouts. But there are no trials yet to test safety of a comparable vaccine for children, which is another worry among the public health establishment.

“In pediatrics we have this conversation all day long about vaccine and vaccine hesitancy and there is gobs of training and information around it,” said Pinkwater, adding that the state pediatricians association has called for the Illinois Legislature to establish and fund a statewide vaccinations coalition. “If you are going to extend that conversation to adult medicine, internists aren’t trained in how to convince an adult to take a vaccine. How do we take all of these conversations we are having around measles and the flu vaccine on the children’s side and extrapolate that to our adult medicine colleagues?”

“Time is of the essence.”

After pandemic slowed progress, Mayor Lightfoot creates group to improve Chicago’s early education system

2020-10-08T22:36:11+00:00

Eighteen months after taking office, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is making a move to unify the city’s fragmented early childhood system, which has been pummeled by funding changes, leadership departures, and the pandemic.

On Thursday, the mayor’s office said it is taking the first steps toward developing a broader plan that could be a hallmark of her administration. The plan could lead to improved access to child care and public health resources for Chicago’s 160,000 infants, toddlers, and children under age 5, something Lightfoot had pledged to do during her campaign.

Early education advocates have been wondering since Lightfoot took office how and when she would deliver on that pledge. A plan was expected earlier this year but delayed because of COVID-19.

“What we have heard through our engagement with stakeholders over this past year is that people want to know: What is the vision?” said Sybil Madison, Chicago’s deputy mayor of education. “Our hope is to build a very coordinated system that will help support the health and development of children from prenatal and birth across and into formal education.”

The mayor’s office announced a new working group and charged it with drafting a plan by spring. The goal is to broaden access to programs and improve outcomes in a city where just 28% of children — and only 1 in 5 Latino children — show up to kindergarten with the reading, math, and social skills to start school.

Calling the effort “Every Child Ready Chicago,” the city promised more equity and accountability, a nod to concerns that too much decision-making has been made secretly at City Hall.

“Our hope is that this process is going to build trust. We also plan for this to be a transparent process,” said Madison.

City Hall is working with Start Early, the early childhood advocacy organization formerly known as Ounce of Prevention. Former Illinois First Lady Diana Rauner, who runs the organization, said in a statement Thursday that the goal is a more “unified, equitable, and accountable early childhood system.”

Rauner will serve on the group’s eight-person steering committee, along with Madison; Lightfoot’s early education director, Jennifer Alexander; and the second-in-command at Chicago Public Schools, LaTanya McDade, among others. The 33-person working group includes educators, parents, and early childhood advocates.

Asked by Chalkbeat whether the working group will meet publicly, a spokeswoman for Start Early and a spokeswoman for the mayor both said a decision hasn’t been made.

Unlike the public school system, which has a school board appointed by the mayor that meets publicly, there is not one governing body that oversees early education and few venues for public accountability.

Under the city’s previous mayor, Rahm Emanuel, Chicago embarked on a four-year universal prekindergarten rollout that was supposed to serve as a North star for strengthening early childhood programs. But the architects of the plan left City Hall after Lightfoot was elected, while Chicago pressed ahead with the overhaul of a $200 million grant program that funds the bulk of programs for young children. In the end, several longtime providers lost grant money, sowing distrust among community providers.

After a string of safety problems at centers, the federal government is now reconsidering how much money it gives Chicago to operate Head Start programs, a key funding source.

“We have had a history in Chicago of leaders making this a priority in the city and in the philanthropic sector, but we still suffer from this disconnection,” said Kristin Bernhard, senior vice president for policy and advocacy at Start Early and a task force steering committee member. “We recognize that our resources are not being used to the greatest benefit, and that too many children don’t have access to early childhood programs. It’s a good time for all of us to come together.”

Lightfoot campaigned on creating birth-to-five “zones” that would link programming for infants and toddlers to those for preschool-age children, and she said she’d stay the course on her predecessor’s universal pre-k goals despite some criticism during her campaign. In her tenure, Chicago schools have opened more preschool classrooms, albeit at a slower pace due to the pandemic, and convened a citywide early education hearing.

It’s not yet clear how COVID-19 will affect the city’s early childhood system, as the pandemic has squeezed centers around the state and the country. It’s also unclear how many children under 5 are enrolled in child care across private centers, community organizations, and schools, and how many families are struggling with access. One of the working group goals is to spur better data collection.

When a child’s first teacher is onscreen: In Chicago, questions about the payoff of virtual preschool

2020-09-17T00:38:57+00:00

Zachary Trail always wanted to teach preschool. Before the coronavirus pandemic, he welcomed 4 year olds each fall into a bright and cozy classroom full of books, with bulletin boards in English and Spanish and shelves organized in bright rainbows of color.

Once Chicago decided to start the school year virtually, Trail pondered how to translate the wonder of an eye-popping preschool classroom onto a screen. He settled on designing a vividly colored bitmoji classroom complete with avatars of himself and his assistant teacher.

“The classroom itself is such a powerful place, and it’s packed with so much emotion,” Trail said. “This year, one struggle I’ve had is how to give my new students an understanding of school, even though they are attending it from their living room or their grandma’s kitchen.”

Early education advocates have warned of serious learning losses among young children in the wake of the pandemic, since many preschool programs and child care centers were slow to move online or didn’t offer virtual options at all. In Chicago, school district leaders acknowledged the challenge of teaching 4 year olds online and initially intended to offer in-person preschool full time this fall, but plans were scuttled in favor of an all-virtual start after a late summer spike in coronavirus cases.

That meant teachers had to move quickly to shift play-based lessons online and figure out how to two-dimensionally dazzle new classroom recruits — most of whom are having their first real experience with school.

A week in, Chicago educators say they are encountering a fresh set of challenges compared to the spring, when they already knew their students and the district offered few rules about screen time. Now with 150 minutes to fill each day — 60 minutes of which must be live instruction — preschool teachers must build new relationships with children and their families from a distance, capture the attention of wiggly 4 year olds enough to introduce letters and numbers, and teach an evolving set of classroom rules that includes frequent reminders about the mute button.

They’re doing it all with little evidence on best practices for virtual early learning.

And anecdotally, they’re encountering fewer students — another trend early education advocates are watching closely.

It’s too early to say whether Chicago’s overall preschool enrollment will drop as it has in other cities, such as Los Angeles, where officials have sounded an alarm bell over fewer children ages 4, 5, and 6 enrolling in school. (Chicago typically doesn’t release full attendance figures until after the 20th day of enrollment.) If true, it could have financial implications and slow Chicago’s efforts to expand preschool to all eligible families.

“Right now our roster is seven children,” said Liz Carrick, a preschool teacher at a public school near Little Village, who expected twice that number. She said she thinks often about the struggles that are keeping children from signing up for preschool and whether a surge of families will show up when schools reopen. “I don’t know what these kids have experienced. I don’t know what their story is. Where are they?”

It’s not just public schools documenting fewer students. Bonnie Ho, the principal of Pui Tak Christian School near Chicago’s Chinatown, said her enrollment for in-person preschool is down from about 84 students to around 30.

“We are not doing e-learning because for young children the best approach is face-to-face,” said Ho, who attributes declines to fear about the virus and employment instability among parents. In the spring, when the school shifted online, it placed a huge burden on families. “After the whole thing is done, preschool parents say, ‘It is like being a full-time teaching assistant at home.’”

For those who do log on, teachers say they’re doing their best to make the critical first days of school stick. All the while, they are wondering what impact this unusual school year will have on Chicago’s youngest children.

“For these kids, this is school to them,” said Carrick. “They get on a computer, they talk to a friend they don’t know, they talk to teachers they don’t know either, then they go back to their lives. How is this going to stay with them?”

It’s too soon to answer that. Research has shown that quality preschool education can have positive ripple effects on the lives of disadvantaged children through adulthood — studies show it influences academic performance, health, and even earning power. But those studies took place in real-life classrooms. When the classroom is digital, do potential benefits erode? And what about concerns that screen time is detrimental to a young child’s brain development?

“I don’t think anybody believes that remote learning is a perfect substitute for going to school,” said Ariel Kalil, a developmental psychologist and professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy where she co-directs the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab.

But something virtually is better than nothing, she adds.

“As long as the content is good — and there is no reason to think there isn’t good content out there — I think a digital tool can be extremely effective,” she said. “Of course, it can’t replace the real in-person class experience, but I would never write it off.”

Kalil said that digital applications may actually reduce some stress for families, caregivers, and even older siblings who are suddenly thrust into the role of educator. All the problems with technology and access have been well documented, but some use of devices appears to reduce some adults’ anxieties about helping children with subjects like math, she said.

“We have a lot more to learn about the most efficient and effective ways to support parents to support their kids’ learning at home, and the role that preschools play in that process,” she said.

One critical support she advocates for in this moment: schools sending home supplies and learning materials, and giving parents attainable, daily goals for helping their children — think regular read-alouds for 10 minutes.

For now, Chicago preschool teachers must seize the virtual moment. So they are forging ahead with equal measures enthusiasm, instinct, and a spirit of experimentation. Margi Bhansali, a preschool teacher at Milton Brunson Math & Science Specialty Elementary School in Austin, is taking the age-old concept of activity centers and creating the virtual equivalent. She reimagined a classroom table piled with building blocks with a virtual “block” game that preschoolers manipulate on a screen. Children draw and paint on the screen in the online art center.

Bhansali confesses the transition has been hard, and the two-dimensional screen doesn’t give her much of a window into assessing her young learners’ skills and needs. “There’s only so much a kid will tell you when you are staring with them at a screen. Kids open up and you get to know them with their play, when they are interacting in the dramatic play center, when they are pretending,” she said.

Still, she said she’s been encouraged by the enthusiasm she sees in the smiling faces that fill her screen daily. “I was expecting them to check out, to run around, to run away, to leave screen and do whatever else they want to do. They are actually staying, we do a lot of brain breaks — we stop and dance — but I’m actually pleasantly surprised at how engaged they are.”

Carrick said she, too, has felt buoyed by responses from her students. “On one hand, I can tell they are having fun and they are engaged and they are liking it, but after 15 minutes I can see they are tired,” she said.

She already made changes to a suggested district schedule, which called for a 20-minute block of reading, followed by a 2 minute movement break. Carrick found that it worked better to incorporate dance breaks and jumping jacks throughout the lessons. While practicing counting, for example, she calls out numbers and her students stand up and do the corresponding number of jumping jacks.

There are complications, however, that even the most creative teachers can’t solve for that could impact how much children absorb. Some students have an adult hovering in the background to help them log on or off, find their crayons, or help with activities that the schools send home, while others appear to be alone, with parents off-screen working or tending to siblings. Some children log on from day care centers or crowded relatives’ homes, struggling to communicate amid the noise in the background.

One teacher said it’s jarring to read online about groups of parents hiring tutors and organizing pods, when she can see one of her students sitting beside multiple siblings in a garage.

What about those who are missing entirely? Teachers wonder if their rosters will swell if and when school buildings reopen, or if families will sit out the entire year, and how they will assess what their students need. Despite pushes by legislators to lower the required age to start school, children are not required to attend pre-kindergarten or kindergarten in Illinois.

“Families are working and participating in their child’s learning and they are somehow supposed to be doing it all at once. It’s a strain for everyone,” said Carrick. “We have to acknowledge that this is a huge responsibility for them.”

Teachers like Carrick are already thinking about their next wave of challenges if and when school buildings reopen. In addition to the slate of safety considerations that can be tough to implement with groups of small children — masks and social distancing — they will have to make up for missed months of socialization and critical early learning skill building. Says Carrick: “We’re all in totally uncharted territory.”

After string of safety problems at Chicago early childhood centers, feds take notice

2020-08-20T17:25:44+00:00

Left alone on a bus somewhere on Chicago’s South Side last January, a 4 year old contracted frostbite on a foot. The weather was “very cold,” a report would later read, and the child was “unattended on the bus for an undetermined period of time.”

At a different child care center on the West Side, a master teacher slapped a child, leaving a red mark. Elsewhere in the city, a preschool teacher hit a toddler and pulled the child’s hair.

The federal government says Chicago has not done enough to correct health and safety problems in the child care programs it oversees for some 11,000 children. That has sparked a chain of events that could curtail Chicago’s early learning powers and threaten its universal prekindergarten expansion, Chalkbeat has learned.

After parents and teachers reported seven serious incidents across the past 16 months in Chicago’s child care facilities, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notified the city that it will rebid $176 million in grants that previously went straight to City Hall. The grant posting says the government will open up competition in September.

At stake is the city’s largest chunk of early childhood dollars — money that currently funds programs for low-income children, mostly on the South and West sides. The amount could end up getting divided among up to 29 grantees, the agency says.

“These are pretty serious issues,” said Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, the executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, a membership organization of providers statewide. “The city based its new structure on Head Start funding and now they are going to lose some of those dollars and some of those children. It now throws a wrench in their planning.”

The federal government’s move could potentially carve up Chicago’s largest early education funding source. If that happens, it would be just the latest disruption to the city’s early childhood system, which has been poised for broad expansion under an ambitious universal prekindergarten plan. Under the original plan, developed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, the city intended to create a program that would provide every 4-year-old in the city a free, full-day spot in a prekindergarten classroom by 2021.

Community providers were a core part of the strategy. Predicting many would lose 4-year-olds to schools, the city said it would help fund more seats in community day cares for children 3 and under, effectively creating a high-quality education pipeline for thousands more families.

That didn’t exactly happen. The architects of the original plan departed City Hall after Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office, a funding shake up sowed distrust between providers and the new administration, schools and community providers did not coalesce around a single path forward, and now two lawsuits take aim at how the city decided whom to fund and for how much.

A spokeswoman for the city Department of Family and Support Services, which oversees community-based early programs, said that Chicago “takes very seriously its role in supporting community-based organizations to provide high-quality services and care.”

It is primed to respond and implement corrective action, if needed, she said.

“Upon learning of any infractions, (the agency) immediately responds and partners with (the federal Head Start administration) to implement the best possible corrective action,” she wrote, adding that Chicago provides supplemental training and technical assistance for the organization when incidents occur.

Chicago says it will rebid for the grant. It’s possible it could edge out potential competitors and receive the full amount.

The power flickers

Cities like New York and Los Angeles used to have more control over early learning, but in recent years, the federal government similarly carved up Head Start funds, spreading the grants among multiple agencies.

Head Start programs are among the most respected in the child care world. They are regularly monitored for quality, require teachers to have certain classroom credentials, and must involve parents in the program.

By cutting out cities as the sole middlemen, some argued, more dollars went directly to agencies that operate programs for children and families, instead of bureaucracies. But there were downsides: By losing a monopoly over early learning money, cities also lost valuable leverage that they used to set high-quality benchmarks and to steer ambitious initiatives such as universal pre-kindergarten, which can require buy-in from both community providers and school districts.

In New York, the carve-up affected “what level of planning the city can do,” said Gregory Brender, the director of children and youth services at United Neighborhood Houses in New York City. “Because there’s no guarantee that any neighborhood that has high need has a high quality provider. There are organizations that have developed excellent programs but there’s not a system behind it that ensures that every low income neighborhood would have it.”

While each city is still responsible for the care of thousands of children, more agencies now share that role, which means they can determine how many seats they offer — and where — by deciding which centers receive funding and how much.

The impact of the grant shakeup on Chicago’s universal pre-kindergarten rollout remains to be seen. If agencies are able to contract directly with the federal government to provide services, they may have less incentive to serve younger children, as the plan originally intended, and continue to compete with schools.

Last school year, Chicago had about 1,800 preschool openings in school-based programs but more than 6,000 children on waitlists, a mismatch that can partly be explained by geographic demand in some neighborhoods exceeding that of others and by a high demand for seats for 3-year-olds who technically only qualify for limited seats.

In all, about 23,000 children were enrolled in programs across community centers and school prekindergarten classrooms — but experts have said that’s only a fraction of those who qualify. And if the system faced challenges before the pandemic, coronavirus has made it doubly hard by threatening the livelihoods of child care centers and school district budgets. The CEOs of 14 Chicago child care organization recently wrote a letter to the mayor asking for a financial injection as they battled rising costs and declining enrollment.

The school district, meanwhile, is moving ahead with a scaled-back preschool expansion. Chicago’s $8.4 billion school budget proposal, which will go before the Board of Education for a vote Aug. 26, says the district will invest $100 million in opening new classrooms and that 43 additional rooms are on the docket for the coming year.

Lightfoot has so far said she’s still moving ahead with universal pre-kindergarten. As for concerns that the city’s reshuffling of early money has been characterized by delays, technical glitches, poor communication, and a lack of transparency, City Hall earlier this summer released the results of an audit by a prominent law firm that concluded the city’s last funding process was “appropriate, fair, and unbiased.”

Parents at some centers that lost money in the shake-up, meanwhile, have had to face classroom closures and educator layoffs. In June, a few hundred parents gathered at City Hall to protest the city’s decision making.

Asucena Gaona marched with her three children, ages 10, 3, and 1, and said she was worried about finding an alternative day care center as hers faced closure. “Without them, how do I find education for my kids?”

Fallout from ‘deficiencies’

The federal government, however, appears to be using a different lens to re-evaluate Chicago’s ability to steer early childhood funding. The question, simply, is whether Chicago can sufficiently oversee a program that spans many sites and thousands of children.

“The City of Chicago is currently forecasted to need to compete for continued funding, because of the deficiencies identified,” according to a federal administration spokesman.

According to federal Head Start records, the program flagged at least 7 major infractions at city-funded agencies dating back to January 2019. The most egregious — accounting for 5 of the cases — were leveled at an All About Kids center in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood on the city’s South Side. A child there was left on a bus “in very cold weather” in January 2019, according to reports, and a pediatrician subsequently diagnosed frostbite.

A few months later, the same child was injured in a bus accident, and center staff did not immediately administer medical treatment or notify the mother.

The reports say no one followed proper protocols for reporting the incidents to the authorities — not the center, nor a delegate organization overseeing the center, nor the city itself, which was supposed to alert the federal Head Start agency.

“The grantee did not report, as appropriate, to the responsible Health and Human Services official immediately or as soon as practicable, any significant incidents affecting the health and safety of program participants,” the report reads. “Therefore, it was not in compliance with the regulation.”

If Chicago loses any part of its federal grant, it would change the landscape of early learning in the city, said Morrison-Frichtl, of the Illinois Head Start Association.

“Things have been turned upside down,” she said.

What happens next remains to be seen. Dana Garner, a Chicago child care advocate, said that whatever happens next, children need to be at the center of the conversation.

“At this moment, our children deserve everything we can give,” said Garner. “These children have been traumatized enough in the City of Chicago. We need a stable early childhood system that our families can trust and where our children can grow.”

This story was published as part of a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are the BGA, Block Club Chicago, Chalkbeat Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE.

As child care centers reopen, Chicago parents ask: How safe is it?

2020-06-25T13:08:52+00:00

Questions from families lit up the chat box at a recent virtual town hall for the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a nonprofit with campuses in Little Village and North Lawndale.

“My son has a rough time with transitions and this is a really big one,” one parent typed. “Will there be support staff to help him through it?”

“I work in a hospital,” another typed, expressing concern that the new hours were too short.

What precautions were staff taking to keep children safe? How often did the center deep clean? Could parents still bring a child who had a cold?

Despite reassurances, “the decision didn’t come easy,” said Janessa Exkano, a parent of a 1- year-old boy, Aairyon, and a 4-year-old girl, Amiyrah, at the center. Two things ultimately tipped the scales. One was her recall of educators’ pre-pandemic vigilance for handwashing and sending sick children home. The other was her need to juggle her own schooling and part-time job as an Instacart driver, with her husband’s job at a moving company.

“We live in an economy that is not the best, we needed that second income,” she said.

Preschools and child care centers are rushing to reassure parents and anxious staff as children return to child care in Chicago and throughout Illinois. All but an estimated 15% of the state’s child care centers closed during the state’s emergency stay-at-home order. Now the remaining campuses have the green light to reopen — with tight restrictions on class sizes, staffing, and safety precautions — and many are treading cautiously, often with long lists of rules and shorter hours. They are hosting virtual town halls, posting video tours on Facebook explaining why teachers are wearing face shields and rearranging classrooms, and calling and surveying parents to see who’s coming back and when.

At Carole Robertson Center, among the city’s largest early learning organizations, the first 140 students returned Monday to campuses in North Lawndale and Little Village, with another wave expected in early July. As health officials have learned more about the coronavirus and guidelines have shifted, the center has had to write and rewrite its list of new protocols, said Bela Mote, the chief executive officer of the organization.

Previewing the latest safety measures for parents at the recent virtual town hall, Mote reassured parents. “Please remember one thing,” she said, “your child’s safety is No. 1 for us.”

She’s had to reassure staff, too, even though 80% of her teachers said they were sure about coming back to work in a late May survey — and all but 2% returned this week. The center held two weeks of simulations to help teachers learn the new rules and figure out new classroom layouts and routines.

There’d been deep discussions about how to help young children through the stress of a pandemic, protests, and long interruptions of routine. And not just the children — the staff too.

“Teachers are excited to get back to the classroom, but there’s some anxiety about how the first day will go,” said David Walker, the center’s senior director of mental health, who has been meeting with staff weekly on Zoom calls. He’s gearing up to offer his services to families. “We’ve been talking about how we have to fill our own cups up so we can fill up the cups of our students.”

Walking through the North Lawndale campus last week, Sonja Crum Knight, the organization’s vice president, explained the myriad changes interrupting the typical rites of preschool and child care. Instead of group circle time, teachers will facilitate more small groups and play centers for children. One problem the staff had to tackle before reopening was how to set up classrooms to create distance between children.

For now, children must wear masks to enter and exit the building. Staff wear them at all times.

Shared family-style meals, a hallmark of the center’s emphasis on building independent skills, are also scrapped — students will get pre-packaged lunches. Soft costumes in dramatic play areas have been swapped for easier-to-clean items, such as hats and shoes.

In training sessions, early educators talked about balancing a long list of safety precautions with the well-being of children.

“Whatever fear we’ve had in the last three months, we don’t want to create an environment of fear for our families,” Crum Knight said.

Still, families noticed the changes right away. On Monday, instead of walking their children to classrooms, parents stopped at one of three check-in kiosks near the door, where both adult and child were scanned with a digital thermometer and asked to wash hands. Once the temperatures were logged, a teacher whisked the youngster down the hallway.

For Exkano, the biggest adjustments are the shorter hours and rules that limit pickup and dropoff to one parent, which minimizes the number of people coming and going. Factor in the commute with an 8:30 a.m. dropoff and a pickup by 4:30 p.m., and you don’t get a full workday. She hopes that’s just temporary. “Things will change, things will lessen,” she said. “As a parent right now, we just have to be calm and work with what we can.”

Meanwhile, her children appeared to be taking changes in stride. Aairyon was a little skeptical at dropoff, she said, but Amiyrah barely noticed the new routines. “She was ready to go back to school months ago,” Exkano said. “She was happy to be there.”

Juice boxes, strollers, and the South Side Cowboy: Why Chicago preschool parents protested at City Hall

2020-06-16T20:35:57+00:00

Some parents hauled red and blue wagons filled with sandwiches and juice boxes, while others pushed strollers and carried bejeweled signs and drooling babies. The cry of the preschool-parent protesters who wrapped around Chicago’s City Hall Tuesday was: “Restore the cuts now!”

Parents and child care providers from centers across the city, who numbered in the low hundreds, called upon Mayor Lori Lightfoot to restore funding that was cut to about two dozen centers last year when Chicago changed the way it funds early learning. Some called for the removal of Lisa Morrison Butler, the city’s commissioner of family support services, with chants of “Hey, ho, she’s got to go!”

Joined by the South Side Cowboy, a local horseback rider whose videos have gone viral, they also demanded more transparency about who gets funded, who doesn’t, and why.

Asucena Gaona protested Tuesday with her three children, ages 10, 3, and 1. Her children attend Kiddie Kare, a center in Brighton Park, which will lose funding.

She said she is worried about finding an alternative she trusts that is near her house. “I was planning on sending them back (next week),” she said. “Without them, how do I find education for my kids?”

Shae Harris, a teacher and parent at Eyes on the Future in Rogers Park, wore her toddler strapped to her back as she walked and chanted. “It’s not easy to pull your kids out of one place and stick them somewhere else,” she said, referring to the city’s offer to help parents find other child care. “My center is walking distance from my house and we are happy there.”

She said that in this moment, after the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, and protests citywide, it was frustrating to hear city leaders talking about violence but not education.

“Who’s going to help our children if we don’t? They can’t talk,” she said.

The South Side Cowboy, a horseback riders whose videos have gone viral, joined preschool parents as they protested outside Chicago’s City Hall.

The parents are worried about the impact of centers losing funding, which could mean staff layoffs, classroom closures, and enrollment cuts.

Last year, Chicago steered more state and federal money to early learning overall, but some long-time agencies and small businesses took cuts, while others received more money. Ultimately, the mayor extended some short-term grants, but that stop-gap funding is set to expire June 30.

The city has not provided many details or score sheets to explain why some long-time centers lost funding. One organization had just received a city grant for a new building.

At least one provider, Tamera Fair, the owner of West Austin Development Center on the city’s West Side, has called the process unfair. She helped organize the rally Tuesday and has filed a lawsuit alleging flaws in the grant process.

Her lawyer said a judge will hear arguments this week for why the case should or should not be expedited.

Chicago’s situation is increasingly unusual among large cities. The city acts as a super grantee that has the authority to steer the bulk of state and federal funding — about $1 billion across five years — for early education. It revamped its grant process last year in the wake of a push to expand preschool in public schools. Providers have been upset ever since.

Illinois will invest $270 million into child care rescue, as operators report tough times ahead

2020-06-10T19:59:40+00:00

Illinois will shore up the state’s child care centers with an additional $270 million, as operators and national advocates warn of a pending crisis in the sector.

The money comes from a business interruption grant program that uses federal coronavirus relief funds. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday that Illinois is the first state to earmark such a sizable chunk of restoration grants specifically for care for children ages 5 and under.

“We are really the only state to do what we have done — to invest (these funds) in early childhood,” said Pritzker, a billionaire philanthropist who had deep ties to early education before he was elected in 2018. “But let’s face it, the industry has been harmed by coronavirus.”

As Illinois reopens child care centers, it has set stringent guidelines that increase costs for providers to operate. New rules require smaller class sizes, temperature screenings, deep cleanings, and other health and safety measures.

Only about 15% of the state’s centers remained open during the pandemic to care for the children of emergency workers.

When the pandemic hit, the state offered some short-term relief to closed centers, but that aid generally went to organizations that typically received public funding to care for children of low-income families. Many centers rely on private tuition and didn’t qualify.

Illinois and Chicago have both said child care centers can reopen now, but many providers have delayed by a few weeks as they scramble to comply with health and safety guidelines.

In Chicago, the child care sector has been roiled not just by coronavirus but by an overhaul in the way the city steers grant funds. At least 15 centers are set to lose significant dollars on June 30 and have warned of closures if the mayor doesn’t intervene.

Both the state government and the city are facing significant budget cuts due to the coronavirus and the resulting squeeze on revenues from stay-at-home orders.

Pritzker pledged at the end of last year to make Illinois the best state in the country to raise young children and said he hoped to lay groundwork for universal prekindergarten in his first term. Then coronavirus hit, battering state finances and the broader economy.

Acknowledging his pledge and the subsequent events, “the path forward has certainly become more complicated,” Pritzker said Wednesday.

State early education leaders have said fortifying child care is a critical step toward reopening the economy. In Illinois, more mothers are in the workforce than the national average, underscoring the need.

The state opened a survey on Wednesday to poll child care providers about their needs and solicit advice on how best to administer the grants, which will open in July.

Educators across the state are watching closely how the state reopens its child care centers, as it is likely some guidelines will inform rules for K-12 schools.

Pritzker said Wednesday that he is “determined” to reopen schools in the fall, but will look to health experts before making a final call. He said a decision is expected soon.

Advocates and lawsuit warn of ‘devastating’ impact on child care if Chicago doesn’t act

2020-06-08T21:39:56+00:00

A group of child care advocates are warning of “devastating” impacts on nonprofit and community-based centers and say some organizations could be on the verge of closing.

Fifteen centers that care for low-income children are set to lose all of their city-granted public funding and at least another 10 will see substantial funding reductions on June 30. The city set that date after reshuffling funds for early learning as it moved toward universal prekindergarten.

Now one of those organizations, the West Austin Development Center, has filed suit against the city in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging flaws in the grant process Chicago used to reshape early learning. The suit, expected to go before a judge mid-month, demands that the city redo the award, which affects nearly every publicly funded early education center in Chicago and is worth about $1 billion across five years.

Separately, the heads of 135 organizations in Chicago have written increasingly urgent letters to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her top early education deputies demanding funding to be restored to the centers and warning of potential closures if it isn’t.

A public affairs spokeswoman from the city’s law department said City Hall would not comment on pending litigation.

West Austin serves 200 children up to age 5 on the city’s West Side. Owner Tamera Fair, who owns several other centers, said she filed suit after the city refused to provide her the scoring sheet or the actual scores from the grant competition.

Her suit, which names the commissioner in charge of the city’s department of family services, Lisa Morrison Butler, in addition to the city of Chicago, describes a litany of errors, including chronic delays in the grant, poor communication, and software glitches in the application portal— resulting in Fair’s application getting improperly routed to a grant pool with less money available, according to the suit.

The complaint appends eight error messages on the day that applications were accepted.

At least one other Chicago provider told Chalkbeat they experienced the same thing last fall and also were moved to a second funding round, then told less money was available.

“We saw how flawed the (grant) process was and it was so hard to get the scoring rubric, or find out how we were scored,” said Fair. “Why can’t we get this information? Isn’t this a public entity?”

Chalkbeat also filed a public information request for the grant scores last fall. The city denied the request.

Fair’s suit also claims the city has a conflict of interest in overseeing the early learning grant-making as it is expanding universal pre-K in its schools. Expanding preschool draws students and staff from child care centers, providers have said.

Any early learning organization seeking funding from four of the largest state and federal funding streams for young children must submit an application through Chicago, which administers those grants — an increasingly unusual situation among large urban centers.

“The city writes the rules, runs the process, makes the awards, but at the same time competes with those it administers,” the suit reads. “And to make matters worse, the city mandates that [community-run organizations, such as Fair’s] must participate in this system without any alternative or means for appeal. It’s a conflict of interest.”

Fair’s lawyer, James Taylor, said court delays due to COVID-19 have impacted the case, but he is hoping to get his request for a temporary restraining order heard before the June 30 deadline. The way the case is structured, the restraining order would apply to any center in a similar position as Fair’s.

Fair said the argument for extending investments in child care centers cannot be decoupled from the protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and calls for more investment in Chicago neighborhoods in the wake of data that shows the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on black and brown residents.

“Education is the best avenue to climb out of poverty,” said Fair. “At a time when economic and cultural disparities are at their highest peak, we definitely don’t need to be retracting those dollars (from our early education centers).”

Chicago’s family services department and the mayor are also the targets of a letter-writing campaign, signed by 135 organizations under the umbrella of Child Care Advocates United, a Chicago association.

In the latest letter, advocates say they have reached out to the city three times without response in recent weeks. “While we can appreciate that there is a litany of pressing agenda items to attend, this is very atypical of your office to be non-responsive,” said the latest letter, sent Wednesday.

The stakes are high, said Beata Skorusa, the owner of Montessori Foundations of Chicago, a center on the city’s South Side, who helped draft the letter.

“There are a few programs that will literally close doors,” she said. The pressure is higher because COVID-19 closed the vast majority of child care centers, and state guidelines for reopening set strict caps on capacity — meaning centers must re-enroll fewer children.

Nationally, child care advocates have warned of a looming crisis in child care, since only a small percentage stayed open during the pandemic to care for emergency workers and new reopening guidelines have proven costly. Estimates from a national child care advocacy group warned that roughly one-third of Illinois’ child care centers were at the risk of closing before the state stepped in with some short-term relief.

Skorusa will stay open but she said the impact of losing city funding could be higher co-pays for her families, including low-income ones. “Some families will be priced out.”

Chicago says child care centers may reopen June 3; many likely to delay until later

2020-05-28T21:31:20+00:00

Chicago will reopen its child care centers on June 3 and parks and libraries on June 8, as the first steps in a cautious move toward reopening the city, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday.

Still, the mayor warned that COVID-19 is far from gone. Even as parks will reopen, summer camp programs will not open until July 6 and will run for a limited time.

“Our kids can start using libraries and park facilities west of Lake Shore Drive,” Lightfoot said in her announcement of the city’s move toward Phase 3 of the city’s reopening next week. But, she warned, “we are still living with COVID-19.”

Child care centers and day care programs must comply with additional strict health and safety measures and submit a reopening plan ahead of the first day. Many center operators say they will wait to open later in June or early July so they can train staff, purchase protective equipment and cleaning supplies, rearrange classrooms to accommodate fewer children, and set up new protocols.

Once they move to reopen, providers say they likely will start with only a few classrooms.

“We’re not going to rush to bring in all 700 kids on the first day,” said Rey Gonzalez, the CEO of El Valor, which is among the city’s largest community-based child care organizations. “It’s going to be a step-by-step process and phased in.”

Gonzalez said one of the factors determining a reopening date will be how much protective equipment his agency can secure; right now, he only has enough for about a week of operations. He’s also waiting for more information from the city, such as whether Chicago will make available coronavirus tests for children, staff, and parents.

How to reduce risk is top of mind. Providers must protect children as well as employees, who tend to mostly be women of color. COVID-19 has caused deaths among Chicago’s African-American and Latino residents at significantly higher percentages than its white population.

“Our employees live in communities that have been hardest hit,” said Bela Mote, CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, another stalwart community child care provider in Chicago with 1,000 children enrolled pre-pandemic. Mote, who served on a city task force that worked on the reopening guidelines, said she will delay opening to families by at least two weeks so that her center can hold in-person staff days first.

“We can develop a lot of policy manuals, and we can do a lot of internet trainings, but you actually have to be in the building to see how it is going to be brought back to life,” she said.

Among Chicago guidelines: Teachers must wear masks or face shields inside and outside the classroom. Children over age 2 likely will be required to wear masks to enter and exit the buildings, in hallways, and on playgrounds. Children 5 and older are encouraged, but not required, to wear face masks in classrooms.

Providers have worried how children will react to teachers in masks.

Similar to the state, the city will limit the number of children per classroom to eight infants or 10 toddlers and older children.

The city guidelines also require providers to conduct health checks at the door that screen children for temperature and illness symptoms.

The guidelines limit outdoor play on equipment owned by care facilities, and only then in small groups. Centers may not use shared equipment, such as those in public parks.

Smaller class sizes and strict building capacity limits will mean centers won’t be able return to full enrollment for the foreseeable future — meaning fewer spots for children and possible tuition increases for centers that take private payments.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s phased economic reopening plan has been on a faster timeline than Chicago’s. Pritzker said last week that health officials had deemed that reopening child care was a necessary step to return parents to work and that the health risks of operating centers with small numbers of children were low.

COVID-19 infections have been reported at lower rates among children, but a mysterious related illness has surfaced that affects small numbers of children, raising some concerns among parents.

According to WBEZ, health and government officials don’t have definitive data on what types of jobs put workers most at risk of infection. The state has clear employment data for about 20% of cases so far. Of those, at least nine reported cases were connected to day care centers in Illinois. During the stay-at-home orders, about 15% of the state’s child care centers remained open on emergency licenses.

Still, child care is a critical ingredient in economic reopening plans. Gonzalez, of El Valor, said that his staff was in discussions daily about how to reopen as carefully as possible. They’d just purchased portable hand-washing stations to place by the doors, purged soft toys that might retain germs, put stickers on the floor to signal safe social distancing, and started rethinking classroom layouts.

There’s a lot to consider, he said.

“What do you say to a family that’s really struggling to put food on the table? It’s a godsend to them that we’re opening again,” said Gonzalez. “Those are tough decisions, and we’re looking for more guidance to the city. We’re going to do our best.”

Illinois, Chicago move to reopen child care centers. Parents should expect changes.

2020-05-22T21:28:34+00:00

Chicago plans to reopen child care centers in early June, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday, while the governor announced that other cities may reopen their centers even sooner.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s phased economic reopening plan has been on a faster timeline than Chicago’s. He has said that some restaurants and businesses could resume operations next Friday.

Throughout the state, providers and parents should expect changes in the way their centers operate, from the number of children in a class to hygiene precautions and possible tuition increases, though many details remain unsettled.

Only 15% of the state’s child care centers are currently running, all on emergency licenses, and those centers may immediately expand the number of children served, according to new capacity guidelines.

But for most centers in the state, class sizes must remain at 10 or fewer children in the first four weeks of opening so that providers can establish safe social distancing and sanitation routines and guidelines. After four weeks, providers may increase capacity, but there will be tighter restrictions on class sizes than before the pandemic.

Children ages 2 and younger will not be required to wear masks, Pritzker said, but older children will.

Class size caps mean centers will re-enroll fewer children. The governor acknowledged Friday that limits on numbers of children in child care centers will be roughly 30% lower than their pre-pandemic levels.

How that will impact enrollment depends on the center. Bela Mote, CEO of the long-running Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago, said only 40% of her families signaled they’d bring children back right away.

Centers will have to conduct new health and safety routines. Some providers said they were preparing to implement temperature checks and new pickup and drop-off procedures and to put limits on who can enter a building.

Some center owners have also warned of possible tuition increases, as the costs of additional precautions and staff put stress on already thin margins.

Both the governor and mayor underscored on Friday that they were working to provide businesses with relief funding. Nationally, child care advocates have warned that a wave of child care centers could close.

The state has continued to pay providers who previously received public monies, through its Child Care Assistance Program, and it has offered emergency licensees one-time stipends. But the closures have cost many centers private tuition payments that helped sustain them.

Some providers have warned that the current assistance may not be enough.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the state had 2,758 more confirmed cases of COVID-10 on Friday to total 105,444 coronavirus cases so far. About 40% were in Chicago.

Speaking Friday, Lightfoot said that she would issue more guidelines next week and that other activities for children would resume later in Phase 3. Parks offering activities for youth and private summer camps may open later in June.

Lightfoot did not offer a specific reopening date. Pressed by a reporter, she said the city would move into Phase 3 by June 10.

Under the city’s timeline, schools would not reopen until Phase 4. Reaching that milestone depends on the rate of the virus’ spread and other health metrics. Chicago Public Schools has already said it plans to host summer school virtually.

Despite broader concerns about small numbers of children who contract a mysterious inflammatory illness linked to COVID-19, the governor said Illinois had not seen significant transmission of the coronavirus in child care settings. He called that encouraging evidence that child care can be provided safely.

Pre-K for all: COVID-19 battle slows pace of Chicago preschool expansion

2020-05-18T20:31:02+00:00

This story is part of the Lens on Lightfoot series, a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining the first year of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are Chalkbeat Chicago, the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE. It is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Interrupted partly by the battle against COVID-19, Chicago will slow the pace of its free preschool expansion, spokespeople for the mayor’s office and Chicago Public Schools confirm.

But Mayor Lori Lightfoot is not abandoning her predecessor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to ultimately offer free preschool to every 4-year-old. “We are on track for full universal pre-K implementation by 2022,” school district spokeswoman Emily Bolton said.

Chicago Public Schools said it will spend $18 million to add new classrooms next year — 44 more across 27 schools — but that is fewer than what the city’s original plans envisioned and what leaders had forecast.

The investment could add 900 preschoolers at most, far short of the 5,000 new students anticipated this year across public schools and community centers, according to the city’s universal pre-kindergarten road map. It’s not clear how many seats community centers will add in the coming year: It’s still early to tell how the city’s most recent grant competition has changed the landscape, since funding extensions run through the end of June.

Parents now face a delayed preschool application, and questions about shifting rules for half-day and full-day programs, what age children can enroll, and their odds of getting into programs. The city does not guarantee preschool admissions at neighborhood schools.

“Before (the coronavirus pandemic), I was worried, would my daughter even get in? Would she get into a half-day program or a full-day program?,” said Danielle Antosz, a mother of two who lives in Rogers Park. “Now I don’t know that they are going to send kids back in the fall.”

Families have taken to Facebook groups for information, as they also weigh whether schools will reopen in the fall for in-person learning and what safety and sanitation precautions the school district will put in place to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.

And they share worries. Try telling a group of 3- and 4-year-olds to practice social distancing or avoid touching each other, said Jenny Ludwig, another parent of two. “For a lot of preschoolers, it’s their first time in a classroom, and that feels to me like an extra challenge because they are smaller and not socialized yet,” she said.

So far, Lightfoot has said she aims to reopen pre-K-12 schools in fall, and that the city was looking at several different options for doing so safely, including rotating days. The state’s school superintendent has said to prepare for intermittent closures until there’s a vaccine.

Schools chief Janice Jackson has said that Chicago will follow the advice of health officials but that she hopes that schools will “open on time and at full capacity.”

Preschool plans disrupted

The 44 new classrooms will go to 27 schools, including seven that are getting full-day preschool classrooms for the first time: Hampton Fine & Performing Arts School in Ashburn, Lyon Elementary in Belmont Cragin, Skinner West in the West Loop, South Loop Elementary, Sawyer Elementary in Gage Park, Suder Montessori on the Near West Side, and Wildwood Elementary in Edgebrook.

The list of schools, which spans the city and includes wealthy areas near downtown and on the far Northwest Side, suggests the school district did not employ the same neighborhood-by-neighborhood expansion strategy as in the past. The list also includes two magnet schools.

Families at Hampton have long clamored for a pre-kindergarten classroom, Principal Zaneta Abdul-Ahad said. About half of the school’s population is black and the other half is Latino, with a sizable contingent of English learners and several classrooms for students with autism and other special needs. More than 90% of Hampton’s 480 students qualify for subsidized meals, a measure of poverty.

“We’ve been hearing from families about pre-K for years,” Abdul-Ahad said.

The school offered a half-day early childhood program. But amid lackluster participation, Abdul-Ahad made the tough decision in 2013 to close it as she juggled competing needs, such as addressing large class sizes in some grades. Today, she calls that decision “a rookie mistake.”

More recently, as awareness grew of the importance of early learning, parents pushed for launching a full-day program. Starting in fall, Hampton will have two full-day classes.

To make up for its scaled-back plans next school year, Bolton, the spokeswoman for Chicago Public Schools, said that the district will double up on its expansion in the fall of 2021 and that the more than 50 classrooms delayed this year will open then.

In all, the city projects it needs 370 more classrooms, she said. It’s not certain which neighborhoods will get those added preschool seats.

Where to put those classrooms and how many each neighborhood needs has been an ongoing question in Chicago’s early education community. In the city, preschool services are split between the public school district and a city department that oversees programs for families and handles the bulk of the grantmaking for community providers and nonprofits.

The split roles have complicated the universal pre-K rollout.

The district recently announced it has hired a new early education chief, Bryan Stokes, formerly of Illinois Action for Children and the governor’s office, to replace the former chief, Michael Abello, who departed at the end of 2019. Stokes is supposed to start this month.

Mila Koumpilova contributed reporting.

Chicago to delay preschool applications, kindergarten admissions

2020-04-22T18:19:23+00:00

Chicago will delay the start of its preschool application process, which was supposed to launch online Tuesday for families seeking seats in the fall for 3- and 4-year-olds in many public school programs and community-run early learning sites.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, which oversees the application portal chicagoearlylearning.org, said the city was working to set a new date to kick off the application process. The city said earlier that delays could happen as officials focus on the response to the coronavirus.

Guardians of 3- and 4-year-olds may register on the site to receive an email when the portal opens. Most of the public school seats will go this year to 4-year-olds, the school district said earlier this year. Families can search for options at school campuses, community sites, or both.

Currently, a message on the site says registration is “coming soon” and offers links for essential workers to find emergency care if they need it during the state’s stay-at-home order, which has closed all school buildings to students and most, but not all, of the city’s child care centers.

Even before coronavirus shut down normal operations for businesses and governments and disrupted education, parents complained that navigating the preschool application process in Chicago is confusing. Unlike in K-12, Chicago does not guarantee preschool admission at neighborhood schools, so families must apply for a seat.

There are also multiple application routes parents can take, depending on the school. A handful of high-demand public school programs still draw students through a separate lottery. A few places offer tuition-based programs, though those options are dwindling as Chicago works toward offering free universal pre-K program to every child in the city.

Before coronavirus disrupted the school year, Chicago had enrolled more than 12,000 4-year-olds in preschools at its public school campuses, and publicly funded community providers enrolled another 3,900 — together, that’s about 70% of what the city’s 2019 preschool plan predicted should be reached at this point in the rollout.

The expanded options are popular with parents, but community providers have charged that the city has not been transparent about the rollout of universal pre-K and that expanding options in schools could hurt community centers, which also care for infants and toddlers.

Chicago Public Schools last week notified families that it will delay notifications for lottery-based kindergarten programs and selective enrollment for the city’s gifted and classical elementary programs.

Parents who applied for kindergarten seats outside their attendance zone were supposed to find out by Friday whether their child secured a seat; the district has said the new notification date will be May 8 and that parents will have until May 22 to accept offers.

“We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding during these unprecedented times,” the e-mail to parents said.

Adrift in the coronavirus pandemic: Families with children under age 5

2020-04-07T15:31:40+00:00

Patricia Guzman sounds tired. She’s juggling a 2-month-old infant and a rambunctious 4-year-old who doesn’t understand why he’s been stuck inside so long.

The panic buying in Chicago began in mid-March around the time that Guzman’s husband was sent home on mandatory leave from his job as a forklift operator. Worried about money, the couple quickly discovered nearby stores were sold out of baby formula. Guzman recalls sending her husband out to buy distilled water to mix what she had, and him coming up short.

“Everybody was buying everything,” she said, “My husband had to go to five different stores to get me two gallons (of distilled water), you can’t just use tap water in baby formula.”

As the coronavirus pandemic stretches into multiple weeks, it has had cascading effects on families, from stay-at-home orders and school closures, to layoffs, hospitalizations, and deaths.

While public school districts throughout the country have quickly pivoted to provide meals, tech devices, and learning materials for K-12 children, low-income families with infants and toddlers have found no equivalent safety net.

As a result, they’ve been largely left to figure it out on their own. But as hardship and limits on daily life grow, so do their needs, outpacing the existing ad-hoc efforts led by community groups, nonprofits, and churches.

“This has been very hard,” said Guzman, who lives on Chicago’s Southwest Side in the Brighton Park neighborhood.

Families with very young children can be fearful to venture out, even to the store, since they perceive their children as more vulnerable or harder to keep from touching everything in sight. That’s the case for Guzman.

It’s also the situation for Orzella Denton, a mother of two who lives in Englewood, and whose 5-year-old suffers from asthma as she does.

Denton hasn’t been outside since schools closed. Her food supply is nearly gone. She didn’t know that Chicago Public Schools offered food delivery.

A relative drops off groceries when she can. Denton said she has tried to stave off anxiety by emulating her daughters’ school schedules down to recess breaks, where they do stretches and jump up and down in the apartment. She doesn’t have a laptop or iPad, so they read books and work on sight words.

Rent and utilities are immediate concerns, said Denton, who was hospitalized earlier this school year. “I let my light bill get up high and I let my gas get up high, ’cause I’ve been sick. I’m just trying to keep up.”

The rapid onset and unprecedented nature of the coronavirus pandemic left everyone scrambling: families, to be sure, but also governments and the patchwork of social service agencies overseeing health care networks and child care. Before coronavirus, the picture of support for young families was fragmented. To some, it now feels nonexistent.

“People are numb or taking their time to figure it out,” said Maricela Garcia, the CEO of Gads Hill Center, which runs day care and family resource centers on the city’s South Side. “But there’s not time.” Even the city, she said, “is still trying to figure out its role.”

Used to keeping track of all the data that early childhood centers must keep to comply with state and federal funding requirements, Garcia said her staff quickly started to track the needs of families with a simple phone survey the week Illinois schools closed. Her organization decided to make the survey weekly and she said has been blown away by comparing the results each week among 550-plus families.

“The first week, it was baby formulas, wipes, diapers, and food,” she said, “but by the next week, it was, ‘We have to pay rent and we’ve lost jobs.’ We were not aware how much of that was happening in the communities,” she said, because some losses — among undocumented families or parents who are street food vendors, just to give two examples — do not show up in unemployment numbers.

“Maybe they made food and delivered it to a business, or they made tamales and sold them — that’s how they supplemented family income, and that’s gone. I looked at the numbers and I thought, this is really very rapidly going into a different set of needs.”

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic will be studied by economists and researchers for decades, but one of the formal studies happening in real time is run by Anna Gassman-Pines of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Elizabeth O. Ananat, an economist of Barnard College at Columbia University.

Gassman-Pines said that the pair was already studying the family lives of hourly service workers in an unnamed city and re-surveyed them as the pandemic gripped the United States. The team collected 14 straight days of data about work hours, emotional well-being of both parents and children, and household needs in late February, as the crisis was starting to unfurl in some places. Then the team reached out to the families again in late March.

She, too, has been surprised by the dramatic changes in what the families reported.

“You could really see almost in real time just how sudden the drastic reduction in work hours was,” said Gassman-Pines. “What we really saw is that mental health really takes a hit once work hours drop and restrictions are put in place.”

Children weren’t immune to the stress and anxiety their parents felt. When researchers asked the parents how much of the day their child was “uncooperative” — that is, acting out or having behavior problems — they saw immediate changes.

“Before the crisis, it was 6% of parents saying ‘some or all the time’ and that jumped to 10%. Those are pretty big shifts to happen over the course of a few weeks.”

One of the striking findings of the research was how few of the families were taking advantage of support available to them.

Some of the options — such as grab-and-go meals at public schools or emergency child care — are so new that perhaps families do not know about them, researchers suggested. For some other benefits, such as food stamps or unemployment benefits, administrative barriers and qualification rules have prevented families from seeing immediate relief. Anecdotally, some advocates who work with families say undocumented immigrants fear applying for benefits could endanger their safety and future.

So what could make the difference? Gassman-Pines said she’s encouraged by reports from Europe that show when governments step in and help supplement wages for workers whose hours are curtailed, families report more stability and well-being.

“This is not the kind of approach the U.S. has considered, but our results suggest that would be a really effective path for continuing to provide support for these vulnerable families,” she said.

Currently, Gads Hill offers a donation box pick-up twice a week for families who need help with food and other necessities, including diapers. But to assist with rent and utility needs, some families simply need cash, and Garcia is trying to figure out how to raise it, either through philanthropic donations or fundraising.

“The state is encouraging landlords to not evict families, but that doesn’t mean they are not going to,” she said. “There are no enforcement measures.”

Cherelle Bilal, a Bronzeville single mother of four, said that the Chicago Housing Authority’s message has been that residents may delay rent payments until after the stay-at-home orders are lifted, but it won’t be easier to pay the bill when it is double or triple later.

“If I don’t pay this bill now, it’s going to hurt even worse,” she said.

Guzman and her young family found a lifeline through the Gads Hill organization, which runs a home-visiting program for her 4-year-old. Before school closures, a teacher from the center would visit her son weekly through a publicly funded home-based education program. Then, when a stay-at-home-order prevented visits, the teacher started a weekly virtual check-ins. Through that she arranged for delivery of formula and diapers.

“We were so, so grateful,” Guzman said.

But non-profit community-based organizations have limited reach. Illinois spends about $1 on early education programs for every $5 it spends on K-12, and, as a result, according to a 2019 report from Advance Illinois, only about half of the state’s low-income children 4 or under participate in any sort of government-funded program. That potentially leaves thousands of families without any connection to a community organization or school district at all.

Fresh fruit and milk have been hard for Guzman to come by. She filled out a form to request food delivery from Chicago Public Schools’ meal distribution program. But no one ever called her, she said.

She wonders if it’s because she doesn’t have children in the school district — her children are too young to attend public school.

She said a steady supply of food and formula would help her. She also would love Internet access. Her son has an i-Pad but they don’t have Internet so she uses the data plan from her phone.

After securing help with food and a respite from her utility bills, Denton, the mother in Englewood, also described digital needs — her daughters are both enrolled in Chicago Public Schools, which is distributing 100,000 machines across the next few weeks.

Instead of dwelling on what her family lacks, she prefers to “keep her spirits up,” so her two daughters will do likewise. She said they’ve been planning the girls’ upcoming birthday celebrations together in hope that the stay-at-home orders will end before May. When it comes to her 5-year-old, “All she is talking about is how she wants to jump in a bouncy house and have her face painted and ice cream.”

The mother fears what happens next. “It hurts and it bothers me,” she said. But, she’s quick to add: “I don’t show it.”

Illinois will charge ‘essential’ workers $1 for child care during coronavirus emergency

2020-04-06T02:58:47+00:00

Illinois will pick up all but $1 of the tab for health care workers, grocery clerks, and other “essential” workers who place their children in state-licensed child care centers or homes, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Sunday.

The governor also said the state will boost reimbursements rates by 30% for the qualifying centers and homes that operate under emergency waivers during the coronavirus pandemic. To date, Illinois has granted about 550 child care centers the waivers, and another 1,500 home-based operators also qualify.

All other child care centers are closed by emergency order, though the state was slower to close day cares than restaurants or K-12 schools. Schools are closed at least through April 30.

The state has said it will not cut off public funding for child care centers that have closed. But to encourage some centers to seek the emergency waiver, it is offering a one-time bonus that starts at $750 depending on the setting, in addition to the boost in reimbursement.

Many child care centers operate on precarious margins, and their owners have warned that if state governments turn off the funding tap during the pandemic, they might not be able to reopen. Illinois, which spends about $1.5 billion on early childhood education, mostly uses those dollars to supplement the cost of care for low-income children.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases continues to rise in Illinois, and health officials have said the state has yet to reach its peak in cases. In response, officials have issued a call for additional health care workers.

The state has a dedicated help line to connect first responders and emergency workers with child care. The number is 1-888-228-1146.

Chicago plans to open preschool applications April 21

2020-03-24T21:34:07+00:00

Chicago plans to open its preschool application period on April 21, a spokeswoman for the city’s family services department told Chalkbeat, but the launch date could get revised depending on the evolving emergency response to coronavirus.

The two agencies that oversee early learning in Chicago — the public school district and the city family services department — have had to focus on responding to the new coronavirus outbreak.

Preschools based in Chicago schools are closed at least through April 20 due to the outbreak. The city originally kept its community-run preschools open but last week closed many of them. Since then, the state has issued emergency licenses to allow some centers that care for the children of first responders to remain open.

First responders and health care workers seeking assistance with child care during the outbreak may call the city’s early learning hotline at 312-229-1690, the city has said. But the hotline, which is managed by a third party, is not staffed around the clock and callers must leave a message. A recorded greeting says that phone calls will be returned within a business day.

The city has also set up an online form for people who have questions about early learning or who are seeking emergency child care. Over the weekend, Chicago announced a new partnership with the website Sittercity to help connect health care workers and other essential frontline staff with care in their homes or small group settings.

Chicago has said it is expanding preschool options and will eventually offer enough seats for every 4-year-old in the city to attend a full-day class for free. The goal was to open enough seats by the 2021-22 school year.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration has encountered several hurdles to expanding child care, chiefly in awarding $200 million in grants last summer that critics say was not executed transparently, and could ultimately force highly rated early learning centers to close classrooms.

The city retained a law firm to audit the grant process, but has not released the results.

The city department that also oversees early learning in community settings has also been coordinating services for seniors. The school district is managing hundreds of food pickup sites for students that allow families to pick up three days of meals at once.

To control coronavirus, Illinois closes restaurants, but not day cares. Providers are in a tough spot.

2020-03-15T23:03:37+00:00

Update: Illinois said Monday it will extend public funding for day cares and child care centers even if attendance drops or if closures occur. Read more in our live blog.

After closing K-12 schools, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ordered restaurants and bars to close from Monday evening.

But so far, he’s leaving open state-funded day care and child care. Officials say that’s because first responders, nurses and hospital workers, and other emergency personnel need childcare so they can go to work.

But center directors say they are in a predicament. To stay safe from the highly contagious new coronavirus, they need basic supplies like bleach and sanitation wipes that now are hard to find. Many of them care for children of health care workers, cleaning crews, restaurant and personal-care workers — all potentially encountering the virus in their jobs.

Providers also want reassurance that the state will extend their funding even if they stay open and attendance drops, stressing the precarious situation of running an early learning business amid broad shifts in funding in Chicago.

“Nobody is mentioning us,” said Beata Skorusa, the founder and principal of the Montessori Foundation of Chicago, a center in the McKinley Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side. Meanwhile, she said, providers are borrowing basic cleaning supplies from each other since items have flown off shelves, and Amazon has delayed previously scheduled deliveries of some such items.

On Monday, nearly 150 providers across the state plan to deliver a letter to officials calling for funding extensions and other supports.

“Since the early childhood education and care industry is made up of mostly small to mid-size non-for-profit organizations and privately owned businesses, some of us are already beginning to feel the social and financial impact of the coronavirus,” the letter to the governor, mayor, and several other city and state officials reads. “In order to remain proactive, we are appealing to you, our government officials, to help ensure the health and safety of the children and families of Illinois and the solvency of the early childhood education and care industry during this crisis.”

The government isn’t providing enough information to make informed decisions, said Dana Garner, the director of the Chicago Commission of Site Administered Child Care Programs.

“It’s showing we are the foundation of the workforce,” Garner said of her member organizations. “But we need some clarity on some key issues so we can make informed decisions about whether we can stay open, or not.”

It also spotlights the tough position for officials who are balancing the need for tighter quarantines against keeping basic services open so that essential personnel can go to work.

The decision whether to stay open or not is excruciating, Skorusa said. “I have parents who are both police and they work the same shift. I have one who works at a nursing home, and the only person who can watch (the children) is grandma.” The possibility of endangering an older family member who would be most at risk of serious complications to COVID-19 weighs on her. So do other choices families might feel forced to make if day cares close and the only other option is one of the 18 open park district centers for emergency child care — a setting that is not ideal for a preschooler.

But it’s tough to balance the urge to protect staff with the strain of paying them if the state cuts funding. “How can I pay them and pay my mortgage?” Skorusa asked.

Lawmakers press Chicago City Council to hold hearings into early learning grant ‘disaster’

2020-03-06T22:15:32+00:00

Last fall, two Chicago aldermen called for hearings into how the city parceled out a $200 million grant to early learning providers that could total as much as $1 billion across the next five years.

Those hearings didn’t happen.

Now, calling the way the city has scrambled child care funding a “disaster” that has destabilized education and care for Chicago‘s youngest residents, three state legislators have proposed a forceful resolution that could prod the City Council to hold hearings. The resolution, however, is non-binding.

The lawmakers want to examine how the city last year redistributed the bulk of its early learning money intended for low-income families and their children. Some longtime agencies lost funding and seats for children 5 and under; other centers with less of a track record picked up funding and seats.

The lawmakers joined early childhood advocates and providers who want to know how Chicago scored grant applications from early learning providers — and why some highly rated agencies lost funding.

The resultant losses could close classrooms and reduce options for families, the resolution says. The administration of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has twice extended a portion of current-year funding to help carry organizations through June, but it’s not clear what will happen after that.

“If this disaster is not immediately rectified, the entire early childhood ecosystem will be destabilized and dismantled throughout the City of Chicago,” reads the resolution filed by Rep. Andre Thapedi, whose district includes parts of the South Side and nearby suburbs, and co-sponsored by State Rep. Theresa Mah, whose district includes Chinatown, Pilsen, and nearby city neighborhoods, and State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who represents parts of the North Side.

The closure of three Southwest Side centers last fall run by Catholic Charities was a “devastating occurrence,” said Mah, who is still hearing from families in her district who are struggling to find child care as a result. She said the experience prompted her to also introduce a bill that would require providers to give families 90 days notice before they close centers.

When the centers closed abruptly in November, “these families were left without child care and after-school programming right before the holidays,” she said, “so not only did they not have enough time to explore other options and get kids enrolled, their only other nearby options were a lot of programs that don’t have space or aren’t accessible — they can’t get there.”

Many families in her district are undocumented and don’t have transportation, so openings in far-flung neighborhoods didn’t address the problem, she added. Some families are still searching.

The resolution calls on the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations, chaired by Ald. Roderick Sawyer, who represents Englewood and Greater Grand Crossing, to “expeditiously convene a public hearing” and use it to solicit public testimony from Lisa Morrison-Butler, the commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services. That is the city department that steered the grant competition and, according to the resolution, assigned graduate student volunteers to score the proposals.

Sawyer’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did a spokeswoman for the city’s family services department.

Most of the state and federal money earmarked for early learning programs and particularly for the low-income children attending them flows through the city of Chicago, an increasingly unusual arrangement among large cities. The city determines which non-profits and for-profit providers get the money.

The grant distribution coincided with sweeping changes in the city’s early learning system. Chicago Public Schools is expanding free preschool for 4-year-olds and some providers report losing children and staff as a result.

The city has retained a law firm, Baker McKenzie, to conduct an independent evaluation.

Nashone Greer-Adams runs Little Angels, a small, for-profit center in Englewood that lost funding — despite the fact that she won an earlier grant for a new preschool building under the city’s previous mayor, Rahm Emanuel.

She said she was relieved to hear that legislators are supporting a resolution. Her funding runs out in June. She said she has traveled from City Hall to Springfield and back again trying to get politicians to understand her center’s plight.

“I’ve been told it’s a city issue, it’s not a state issue, and then (city representatives) will tell me the situation will get addressed and nothing happens,” she said. “You hear someone promise one thing, and then the politicians do another. We need some answers and some transparency.”

Schools get only brief spotlight in Illinois governor’s State of the State speech

2020-01-29T20:40:23+00:00

In a State of the State speech Wednesday focused on rooting out corruption and rebuilding a tattered state government, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker underscored his promise to make Illinois “the best state in the nation to raise a young family” but offered few hints about how much he would invest to help do that.

“Putting our state back on the side of working families is important,” said the first-term governor, who touted what he accomplished in his first year but not what he planned to do going forward. He called out the expansion of a child care assistance program for working families and investments in college scholarships and other efforts to boost enrollment in state universities.

The governor delivers his budget address in three weeks and that’s when more specifics about his spending plans will materialize. Wednesday’s remarks did not offer any hints of whether he will commit significantly more in the way of K-12 dollars, increases that public education advocates are eager to see happen.

Illinois still falls among the middle of the pack in public school spending for its 2 million K-12 students, and less than 40% of elementary schoolers meet state reading and math testing standards. The state school board has asked the governor for 8.6% more in K-12 spending this year, including $510 million more for the state’s funding formula that largely funds school districts. But the governor has told state agency heads to pare down spending, given Illinois’ bill backlogs and massive pension debt.

“It’s a tough spot,” said Robin Steans, president of the policy organization Advance Illinois. “The governor, like most of us, recognizes there are much more significant investments needed if we really want to be the best state in the nation for young families, but at the same time there are budget realities that make that difficult.”

Dan Montgomery, who heads the statewide Illinois Federation of Teachers union, said he expects full funding to come through for the K-12 formula and for the state-funded teachers pension system, even if it didn’t surface in Wednesday’s speech. “Making the full funding payment will be important to us,” he said.

One mention Wednesday that gave Montgomery and others reason for optimism: Pritzker’s recognition that the state must do more to alleviate a painful teacher shortage.

“It’s inspiring to have a governor who has faith in the people of the state,” said Montgomery, who sees a progressive income tax proposal as a critical way to boost long-term funding.

Last year Illinois passed a minimum wage requirement for teachers and eased rules on licensing for out-of-state teachers — something Pritzker mentioned in his speech. He didn’t bring up the state’s decision to eliminate the basic skills test for teachers — a controversial move welcomed by some educators and panned by others — and legislation to tackle a shortage of bilingual and special education teachers, including raising the wage floor for student teachers.

Pritzker’s address Wednesday was more evidence that early education will be a key item in his first-term agenda. His speech singled out a child care provider in downstate Marion whose top-rated center had suffered years of funding instability and staff cuts and was on the brink of closure, a familiar reality in several counties. Through boosts in state reimbursements, the center can now rebuild enrollment and invest in hiring and training, he said. “Thanks to our bipartisan investments, dozens more parents in Marion can go to work.”

As a candidate, Pritzker said he hoped to pave a path to universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, an endeavor gaining steam in other states. But he has acknowledged some substantial roadblocks, namely a budget shortfall.

That helps explain why he has prioritized foundation building and convened a new early education finance commission. He announced last week expanded home visiting programs for families with infants and said his administration will work toward improving pay for early childhood workers.

Four things to know about Chicago Public Schools’ new early childhood committee

2020-01-14T04:34:31+00:00

Since Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed a new seven-person school board last June, its members have launched a handful of new committees tasked with addressing key education issues facing the city.

So far, the board has tackled workforce diversity (read more here), and it has scheduled meetings at the end of January and into February on the issue of equitable school budgeting.

On Tuesday, the group will wade into the topic of early childhood education and the school system’s role in the city’s broader universal pre-K rollout. The meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. at Mariano Azuela Elementary School near Midway Airport.

The conversation will be facilitated by school board member Luisiana Melendez, a faculty member and researcher at Erikson Institute, a prominent early education training center. Chalkbeat spoke with Melendez in advance of the event.

Here are four things we learned about the role of the committee.

The committee signals greater prominence for early childhood education, one area of enrollment growth in an otherwise declining district.

It was a notable nod to the early childhood education world when Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed a faculty member from Erikson to the school board — and it’s one of the first times in recent memory that a school board member has brought the group deep expertise on the topic.

Melendez is a former kindergarten teacher who immigrated to the United States 30 years ago. She has studied emerging bilingualism in children ages 0 to 3, as well as how teachers recognize cultural and linguistic diversity. She said she’s not approaching the meeting with that particular focus in mind but will be curious what people say.

Luisiana Melendez

“When we think about early childhood, the availability of linguistic and culturally responsive services is one of my main interests. I also want to hear from families and stakeholders and teachers about (universal pre-K). I was an early childhood teacher for many, many years. I hope to get input from all of those constituencies.”

She said she plans to work closely with the other members of the board heading up other committees, such as diversifying the city’s education workforce — an issue facing early education as well as K-12. “I hope that the work we do will make the board more informed about these issues and address how they overlap,” she said. “None of these things exist in isolation.”

The committee’s scope will include educating the public about universal preschool in Chicago and getting feedback about how it is going so far.

This year, Chicago Public Schools credited an increase in younger students as one factor that partially offset its chronic enrollment declines. A closer look at the numbers shows that the district enrolled 1,400 more 4-year-olds in its schools than it did the previous year, primarily through full-day programs, to total a pre-K enrollment of 14,300. However, the addition of 4-year-olds offset a drop in 3-year-olds as it phases out some of those classrooms.

Each year, the city plans to open more preschool classrooms to reach more children, ultimately for a goal of closer to 23,000 between schools and community providers.

The school system has touted its long waitlist as a sign of demand and said the expansion will continue into more neighborhoods this year.

“There are things that are working well, and things that people are welcoming, and then there are things that need to be reconsidered and recalibrated,” Melendez said. “That’s what this particular meeting is meant to do: elicit more information.”

Expect the pre-K application system to get criticized.

A few years ago, Chicago Public Schools streamlined its application system for K-12 through the GoCPS universal application. But the multiple paths into preschool continue to make gaining acceptance confusing.

Parents use GoCPS to apply to three competitive magnet programs and a separate, city-run “early learning” portal for application to most other schools for 3- and 4-year-old seats. Confusing matters, some tuition-based programs still take school-level applications, and the rules that govern kindergarten acceptance — that is, that every city resident has a spot in a designated neighborhood school — don’t apply to preschool. (Worth noting, too, is that fraud in preschool applications and lax tuition collection recently surfaced among other issues in a recent annual report from the city’s inspector general.)

What’s more, the city’s early learning application — which is where the bulk of the applications are supposed to go — can be unwieldy, particularly for families for whom English is not a first language or who don’t have internet access at home. Some community groups offer sign-up help to families.

“(The application process) is something I’m aware of anecdotally as part of my professional work,” Melendez said.

Tuesday’s meeting will focus on school-level expansion, not the broader universal pre-K rollout.

Chicago’s decision to open more preschool classrooms within Chicago Public Schools is part of a broader universal pre-K rollout that is also intended to boost capacity among private and non-profit community providers. Some providers have lost seats due to a massive reshuffling in the way the city funds those programs, sparking criticism about the city’s broader plans.

Representatives from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, which oversees community preschool programs, are not expected to attend Tuesday’s meeting to address issues identified with the larger rollout. But Melendez said to expect the city’s broader universal pre-K push to come up in future meetings.

“These are very complex issues,” she said. “This first meeting is just a dipstick to get a reading on a particular moment. We are not anticipating that this is going to address, or even be able to incorporate every single topic that deserves attention around early childhood.”

Here’s who will try to solve the billion-dollar funding question in Illinois early education

2019-12-16T18:48:11+00:00

After spending much of his first year in office trying to stamp out Illinois’ chronic budget fires, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is moving toward rebuilding the state’s fragmented early education system.

On Monday, the governor named a 29-person commission tasked with tackling the billion-dollar question in state education: How to have the biggest impact with limited funds. Illinois spends an estimated $1.5 billion in state and federal money on children under 5, but those dollars are not spent evenly around the state and reach only a fraction of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Introducing the commission at the Carole Robertson Learning Center, the governor said he had set an audacious goal: “Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children.”

Pritzker also said he plans to raise reimbursement rates by 5% for a child care program used by low-income working families to subsidize the cost of infant care, day care, and some extended after-school programs for older children. The program lost providers and children during the administration of his predecessor, Bruce Rauner.

Pritzker plans to direct even more dollars — to total a 20% rate increase — to providers downstate who’ve been hit with a staffing crisis and have closed classrooms.

The financing commission has its work cut out for it. The issue of early childhood financing will likely prove a tough question to answer in a state that spends $1 on infants, toddlers, and preschoolers for every $5 it spends on K-12. How to streamline the disbursement of state and federal dollars to reach more children — and, more important, to ramp up child care spending in a state grasping for revenue — is the central question facing the group.

Dominated by state senators and representatives whose buy-in would ultimately be needed to legislate significant changes, the commission also includes providers, advocates, district superintendents, and policymakers. The four co-chairs are Barbara Flynn Currie, the former state House Democratic majority leader; George Davis, the former executive director of Rockford Human Services Department; Andy Manar, a state senator who helped lead the charge to revamp the state’s funding formula for K-12 in 2017; and Jesse Ruiz, the deputy governor for education and a former vice-president of Chicago’s school board.

Pritzker told Chalkbeat in March that, despite encountering a significant structural deficit when taking office, he still planned to pave a path to statewide universal pre-K in his first term, a pledge he made during his campaign.

Illinois has long been recognized for its emphasis on quality early education. But it has struggled to build a system that reaches enough low-income children and even backslid in recent years with how many families it serves. A report released in October from the policy group Advance Illinois showed that only about half of low-income children under age 5 in Illinois were enrolled in any sort of publicly funded early education program, and some pockets of the state had no programs at all.

A similar sobering statistic has become a cri de coeur among early childhood advocates since Illinois began tracking kindergarten readiness. Only 1 in 4 children showed up in 2019 for kindergarten prepared for school, based on three critical benchmarks.

In announcing the commission, Pritzker said Monday that it largely would not address Chicago’s universal pre-K rollout.

“The commission won’t directly involve itself, I don’t think, in the matters of Chicago, although no doubt some of its members will opine on how the funds were distributed,” he said in response to a question. He said the city already had responded to some criticism — presumably referring to a funding extension through next June for some providers who lost funding after the city changed how it distributes state dollars.

In addition to the co-chairs, here are the other commission members named Monday.

Emma Ahiable, prekindergarten teacher, Springfield District 186
Carmen Ayala, superintendent, Illinois State Board of Education
Christopher Belt, Illinois state senator, D-Centreville
Thomas Bennett, Illinois state representative, R-Gibson City
Kristin Bernhard, senior vice president, Ounce of Prevention Fund
Patricia Chamberlain, retired educator
Will Davis, Illinois state representative, D-Homewood
Donald DeWitte, Illinois state senator, R-St. Charles
Shauna Ejeh, senior vice president for programs, Illinois Action for Children
Craig Esko, senior vice president, PNC Bank
Phyllis Glink, executive director, Irving Harris Foundation
Rochelle Golliday, executive director, Cuddle Care
Rey Gonzalez, president and CEO, El Valor
Christina Hachikian, executive director, Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Grace Hou, secretary, Illinois Department of Human Services
Lori Longueville, director, Child Care Resource and Referral, John A Logan College
Cathy Mannen, union professional issues director, Illinois Federation of Teachers
Bela Mote, Chief Executive Officer, Carole Robertson Center
Evelyn Osorio, Child Care Field Coordinator, SEIU Healthcare
Aaron Ortiz, Illinois State Representative, D-Chicago
Elliot Regenstein, Partner, Foresight Law + Policy
Trish Rooney, Director of Early Childhood Initiatives, Fox Valley United Way
Jodi Scott, Regional Superintendent of Schools
Robin Steans, Executive Director, Advance Illinois
Jim Stelter, Superintendent, Bensenville School District 2

Chicago schools’ preschool chief steps down

2019-11-26T22:52:11+00:00

Four months after Chicago’s early learning chief stepped down, another top administrator is leaving, amid the city’s critical rollout of universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds.

Michael Abello, the chief of early childhood education for Chicago Public Schools, is leaving this week for a new role outside of Illinois that will have a national focus, the school district confirmed to Chalkbeat.

The second-in-command of the department, Leslie McKinily, will oversee efforts to expand pre-K while Chicago Public Schools searches for a replacement.

The department chief heads a team of about 50 and serves as a liaison between the school system and City Hall. The school district and the city’s Department of Family and Support Services split early learning governance and the state and federal funds that largely undergird programs.

Chicago is in the second year of an ambitious effort to extend free pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, initiated by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as he was leaving office. At the same time, the city has redistributed funding among child care and preschools, pulling some funding from longstanding community-based preschool and child care programs.

Under the city’s plan, Chicago Public Schools is supposed to offer preschool for most 4-year-olds by 2021. Community providers, nonprofits, and small businesses — all overseen by the city — would run day care and preschool for children ages 3 and under.

But the city’s expansion into preschool has been messy on the ground, with parents expressing confusion about their options, community providers clinging to 4-year-old programs, and some public schools still offering half-day options for 3-year-olds — something the district has said it will all but phase out.

Thousands of families are also still enrolling their 4-year-olds in community programs, which typically offer extended hours that are more convenient for working families. Many non-profits that have been running programs for decades also offer established programs that are a draw, such as English classes, citizenship support, and job training.

Chicago Public Schools is rolling out its universal pre-K program in waves, targeting neighborhoods with the highest need first, it has said. This fall, new classrooms opened in Austin, Avondale, Logan Square, and South Lawndale, among other neighborhoods. In all, the district enrolled 1,421 more 4-year-olds to total 14,300, offsetting a similar-sized drop in the number of 3-year-olds.

You can find the district’s pre-K “roadmap” here.

Chicago parents have expressed confusion and consternation about applying to preschool, since early learning applications are split between two portals: the city’s early learning portal and GoCPS, which is run by Chicago Public Schools. The school district also still oversees several tuition-based programs at popular North Side schools, which it may begin to phase out as more universal pre-K classrooms come online. (Find some answers to common questions here.)

The district also operates four highly competitive magnet preschools that are free but accept families by lottery. Applications are due Dec. 13 through the school district’s GoCPS online portal for Suder, Inter-American, Mayer, and Drummond, all on the North Side.

Abello, a Teach for America alum who was formerly a principal at Piccolo Elementary on the city’s South Side, was promoted to run Chicago Public Schools’ early learning department in 2018.

Chicago Public Schools also announced last week it has hired a new chief portfolio officer to oversee enrollment and openings and closings. Prior to joining Chicago schools, Bing Howell managed school improvement efforts in both the Tennessee and New Jersey Departments of Education. Howell also served as chief external affairs officer for the Washington State Charter Schools Association and for Citizen Schools, where he focused on policy, advocacy, and community engagement efforts.

Should Illinois rewrite the way it funds early learning? The case starts to build.

2019-11-12T19:20:04+00:00

Chicago’s Catholic Charities is shuttering three longtime early childhood centers at the end of this month, leaving 450 Southwest Side children and their families searching for care. Nearly 100 staffers soon will be out of jobs.

The closures in neighborhoods rich with immigrants and their families are another disruption to the city’s fragile network of early education centers. And they spotlight how difficult it can be for organizations — even experienced ones — to cobble together enough funding to sustain full-day care for young children from various private and government pipelines.

A spokeswoman from Catholic Charities said the organization typically made up for funding shortfalls with private dollars — but this year, a structural deficit meant it couldn’t make ends meet, prompting a difficult decision.

“This is so very hard on our families,” said Brigid Murphy, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, who said the centers relied on federal Head Start funding, state preschool funding, and a state program that supplements the cost of child care for low-income working families.

But the three streams didn’t cover all of the complex costs of caring for children, a familiar scenario in both the for-profit and non-profit world of early education. How Illinois can fortify its system, which is recognized nationally for its high quality but only reimburses centers between $24 and $32 a day to care for preschoolers, is one of the questions facing the administration of Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Pritzker, a longtime early education philanthropist before running for office, has said he would like to roll out a statewide universal pre-K system during his first term. Creating a new funding formula for early childhood education would be an important first step — and one that has the support of a growing number of policy makers.

To that end, the governor is expected to name a finance commission to study the issue by the end of the year. The group will comprise about 20 people, likely to include early education experts as well as legislators, Deputy Governor Jesse Ruiz told the executive committee of the state’s Early Learning Council last month. The commission would be tasked with making recommendations for action by the state legislature.

And it would have a loose blueprint to follow, policy makers say: a successful effort two years ago that led to an overhaul of Illinois’ system for funding K-12 schools. Even though many school districts, including Chicago, remain underfunded, the formula helped galvanize a movement to bridge the revenue gap between property tax-rich districts, such as on Chicago’s North Shore, and tax-starved districts.

Early educators have started laying the groundwork for a similar push. Their case is bolstered by a new report from Advance Illinois, which found that the state has backslid in the past decade in providing early education and higher education. Only one in four children under 4 is in any sort of publicly subsidized early childhood program, the Advance report showed.

“The theme from the report is that even when we’re seeing progress, that progress is not happening evenly. We are leaving behind too many kids who are low income or of color, and we’re seeing those gaps show up very early,” said Robin Steans, the executive director of Advance Illinois, which helped build a bipartisan case to revamp the K-12 funding formula in 2017.

“If we could solve the K-12 funding problem, we could solve anything,” Steans said. “Getting the funding and programming right in early childhood is a critical hurdle.”

Currently only one in four Illinois children shows up to kindergarten prepared, according to results of a state kindergarten readiness assessment. One reason: While the state has invested in quality programs, they reach too few children. A September analysis by the group Illinois Action for Children illustrated vast inequities in how preschool seats are distributed. Some communities have no seats for children from low-income families, while others have an overabundance. In a third of the communities studied, a child from a low-income household had less than a 50-50 chance of attending a publicly funded preschool.

A trove of research supports the value of increasing access to preschool programs. Findings released earlier this year from a seminal study showed that benefits from high-quality preschool extended not just to the students themselves, but correspond to higher earnings and stronger long-term achievement among their offspring — making a case that early childhood investments can pay multi-generational dividends.

But how to pay for quality programs, and expand them, is a question weighing on many states and municipalities, according to Harriet Dichter, a former secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, who co-authored a new report on early childhood funding for the Build Initiative, a public-private partnership that guides states in policy creation, and several other groups.

She cites examples such as a sugary beverage tax in Philadelphia and a corporate activity tax in Oregon. In each place that successfully tapped into new tax-based revenue streams for early education, researchers observed that the “early learning agenda was sufficiently prioritized” and included a dedicated effort to make the case to voters.

Early education funding is complicated. In Illinois, money comes from the federal government and multiple state departments and funds a range of programs, obscuring a full picture.

Rough estimates put spending on early childhood care and education at around $1.5 billion statewide. Of that, Illinois spends $1.1 billion through a combination of the state education department, which funds preschool, and its human services department, which oversees a child care program that funds infant and toddler care for low-income working parents. The federal government spends $360 million on Head Start programs across the state.

Illinois is home to nearly 934,000 children under age 5, according to U.S. Census estimates.

In contrast, the state spends about five times that — some $7.2 billion — to educate the 2 million children in its public elementary and high schools.

The state funding conversation is starting to unfold as advocates in Chicago scrutinize the results of an August grant redistribution that has caused seismic shifts in the city’s own early learning system. Catholic Charities said the three Southwest Side closures were not impacted by the city’s grant reallocations. But many longtime Chicago providers with state quality ratings said they lost funding and are consolidating classrooms as a result, while newer for-profit providers that are licensed but do not have quality ratings picked up seats.

Class size in Chicago: Why teachers say adding aides doesn’t resolve the challenge of too-large classes

2019-10-18T21:21:40+00:00

With 45 sixth grade students in her science classroom at Grissom Elementary, Melissa Ramirez doesn’t have a moment — or an inch of physical space — to waste.

She tries to follow the district’s science curriculum standards, which call for small group discussion. But students can’t hear over each other in the jam-packed classroom. Chairs crash into each other with the slightest movement, leading to bickering, while Ramirez attempts to translate complex science terms to the handful of children not yet fluent in English.

“My sixth graders can’t learn like that,” she said Friday, as she joined her fellow teachers picketing in front of the Far South Side school in Hegewisch. “At my last school, they were able to learn at a much higher level because there were fewer kids.”

Grissom, long plagued with overcrowding that shows little sign of abating (its kindergarten has 36 students), shows how cram-packed classrooms affect learning, its educators said during the second day of the Chicago Public Schools teachers strike.

The problem is so widespread and acute — and thus costly to resolve — that rank-and-file picketers acknowledge that the likely contract solution, which is to provide more money to schools to hire more classroom aides, will generally fall short.

Class size has emerged as a central issue at the bargaining table, and both sides acknowledged progress in talks. The union wants Chicago Public Schools to lower its caps to 20 in kindergarten, 24 in first to fifth grades, and 28 to middle and high school. And it wants to compensate teachers whose classes that exceed those counts — not an uncommon provision in union contracts elsewhere.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson said in an interview Friday morning with WGN-TV that the city’s latest proposal would give schools “additional resources, such as teaching assistants,” and that its proposal would “start with the classrooms with most need.” The proposal also reportedly includes $9 million in discretionary funds for a committee charged with enforcing measures to lower class size.

Jackson also spoke to the complexity of the issue. For instance, the district can’t control how many kindergarteners enroll at a school in a given year, she said. “You can’t predict how many children show up in kindergarten or first grade.”

She said her team has pledged to work with school administrators to “make sure they are not overenrolling in a way that contributes to outsized class sizes.” Schools receive money for each student enrolled, and thus larger class bring in more dollars to a school.

So far, a final contract solution remains elusive.

On the picket line, teachers hope bargainers consider their concerns. For instance, aides may lower the ratio of adults to children, but some schools borrow aides to oversee recess or lunchrooms. Other schools rotate aides, making consistency and planning a struggle.

Teachers interviewed by Chalkbeat also said that the district doesn’t provide collaborative planning time, so classroom strategy is determined in quick conversations here and there.

Ramirez has a teacher’s assistant and a shared special education classroom assistant. But the latter is sometimes only available for half the class period.

Across town, Ted Wanberg, a longtime kindergarten teacher at Peirce Elementary in Edgewater, said he gets some help from a recess aide for his class of 30, but it’s not all day.

“What I value in a smaller class is being able to sit with each child, look them in the eyes. It’s important with young children—and it’s hard to do with 30-plus in a classroom,” he said Thursday outside of his school while walking the picket line.

Wanberg knows the difference smaller classes make. A decade ago, he had only 22 or 23 in a class. Adding an aide, he said, still means “more bodies in the class. We need fewer.”

While a committee oversees Chicago’s nominal class-size cap — 28 in kindergarten through fifth grades,, 31 in higher levels — it doesn’t have any authority. Some 1,000 classrooms exceeded the caps last year, according to data obtained in December by the group Parents 4 Teachers.

Prior to the strike, teachers whose classes exceed the caps file a union grievance.

Molly Mehl and Meghan Residon at Ravenswood Elementary both did that last year. Each teacher had 34 students in a kindergarten class at Ravenswood — one of the highest averages across the district, according to data obtained in December by the group Parents 4 Teachers.

Each waited two months for the district to agree to give them an aide. But the year ended, and so did the relief. This year, Mehl again has 34 students in kindergarten. She’s had to start the process again.

Residon got moved to second grade. This year, her class has 28 students.

After refusals, Chicago extends funding for longtime child care agencies that saw cuts

2019-09-25T22:31:40+00:00

After digging in its heels over its award of $200 million for child care and preschool providers, Chicago late Wednesday reversed course and said it will reinstate funds for some longtime agencies that had received dramatic cuts.

Some 25 nonprofits and community organizations — including the University of Chicago’s charter schools and the Montessori Network — will see some funding extensions through June 2020, the mayor’s office said Wednesday.

A small for-profit Englewood center, Little Angels, that was promised a new building by the then-outgoing mayor, Rahm Emanuel, will also get additional funding to continue operations through the spring. Find the full list of agencies that will should receive additional funding below.

The extension will cost the city $6 million, according to a news release. The city did not explain where that money would come from.

“We are deeply aware of the impact that a loss of funding has had on our valuable community partners, particularly around the timing of the decisions,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement. “That’s why we are making this investment to ensure all families can remain in current programming for the duration of the school year, and to continue working with all current providers in transitioning to a new funding model.”

According to the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, which oversees community-based early learning programs, the funding extension will apply to 25 organizations that saw cuts in excess of 20% to their budgets, starting later this year, to care for young children. When the new grant cycle kicks in this December, those 25 providers will get 80% of their current contract.

After that, the city’s proposed cuts to those agencies will go into effect for the duration of the five-year grant.

“The city is deeply aware that this change in the early childhood landscape has been challenging and the timing of this change (with the impact coming midway through the school year) is particularly difficult for families,” read an FAQ posted on the DFSS website Wednesday afternoon. “Through this funding extension, the city ensures children and families can stay in their programs through the remainder of the program year.”

The FAQ states that the extension is not “rescinding or invalidating” the grant process that awarded $200 million in early learning grants, but that it would evaluate the process.

The grant awards were a key part of the city’s effort to expand child care and preschool for children from birth through 5, including offering free pre-kindergarten to every 4-year-old in the city by 2021 — a pledge that Emanuel made before he left office.

The city overhauled the way it funds programs and called for applications for $200 million in grants. The city encouraged community-based organizations to care for infants and toddlers, while many older children would presumably attend preschools run by the school district.

But when the awards came out and many longtime centers saw funding cuts, while newer for-profit centers picked up seats, the questions began. Advocates, center directors, and aldermen raised concerns about the grant process and about how the city determined winners and losers. Aldermen asked for a hearing.

The concern is that, by funding fewer seats for the youngest children, the city could deprive hundreds of them of quality child care options.

At least one provider said the matter is not resolved.

“We are heading right now to the mayor’s town hall meeting,” said Nashone Adams-Greer, who runs Little Angels in Englewood. “It’s a start, but we can’t stop there. What do I do with a 20% loss? It still doesn’t make my program whole.”
And, she said, she’s perplexed that a program like hers that the state has rated as the highest quality has suffered a funding cut.

The list of early learning centers that will receive the funding extension is below.

ABC PRESCHOOL LTD

CHANCE AFTER CHANCE MINISTRY NFP

HAPPY HOLIDAY NURSERY & KINDERGARTEN INC

IMANI CHILDREN’S ACADEMY INC

LITTLE ANGELS FAMILY DAYCARE II INC

LITTLE FOLKS DAYCARE INC

LITTLE KIDS VILLAGE INC

MOSAIC EARLY CHILDHOOD ACADEMY INC

THE CATHOLIC BISHOP OF CHICAGO

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHARTER SCHOOL CORPORATION

WEE CARE NURSERY SCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN INC

BLACK RHINO, INC. DBA BUILDING BLOCKS LEARNING ACADEMY

EYES ON THE FUTURE, INC.

WEST AUSTIN DEVELOPMENT CENTER

PATHWAYS TO LEARNING CHILD CARE CENTER INCORPORATED

HOWARD AREA COMMUNITY CENTER

MOTHER’S TOUCH INC II

KIDDY KARE PRE SCHOOL INC

SOUTH-EAST ASIA CENTER

CHILDREN’S CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEARNING INC

ONE HOPE UNITED – NORTHERN REGION

THE MONTESSORI NETWORK

KENYATTA DAY CARE CENTER

MARILLAC ST. VINCENT FAMILY SERVICES INC DBA ST. VINCENT DEPAUL CENTER

EARLY CHILD CARE SERVICES INC

Chicago aldermen demand more details about $200 million early learning ‘imbroglio’

2019-09-18T19:52:23+00:00

Calling the city’s recent award of subsidies for preschool and child care an “imbroglio” and a “disaster,” two Chicago aldermen are demanding hearings into how the city chose the winners and losers of a $200 million grant.

“If this disaster is not immediately ameliorated, the entire early childhood ecosystem will be destabilized and dismantled throughout this city,” the aldermen wrote in a resolution introduced at a City Council meeting Wednesday.

The resolution says 100 classrooms serving children under 5 could be closed and more than 300 staffers could lose their jobs because of the way the city redirected grant money that goes toward educating children from low-income families.

The call by Roderick Sawyer and Maria Hadden is unlikely to reverse the awards. The city previously said there is no appeals process.

The council members are asking for a public hearing with Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Lisa Morrison Butler, who reportedly has been meeting privately with small groups of aldermen to hear concerns. Sawyer represents a portion of Englewood on the city’s South Side, and Hadden represents Rogers Park on the city’s Far North Side.

After Wednesday’s council meeting, when asked if she was concerned that some operators could be forced to close their doors, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said “that’s not going to happen.”

“We have been actively engaged with people who got money, people who got less and the people who received nothing. We are working to try and make sure that every child has a spot, period. We will do what it takes to make sure that happens.”

Lightfoot said the main issue was that her administration demanded that the workers be paid fairly. In the grant application, the city spelled out salary minimums for workers — many of whom are underpaid — and gave providers five years to reach the goals.

“These workers who are so critically important to the nurturing of our children, they deserve fair pay,” Lightfoot said. “Most people understood that and agreed that they were going to provide additional resources to compensate these workers. Some didn’t. And the ones that flat out said, ‘We’re not doing it,’ they are some of the people that didn’t get funded. Nevertheless, the conversation continues. My staff has devoted a significant amount of time to make sure that we get this right.”

The long-awaited grant awards represent a key part of the city’s effort to expand early learning. In all, 150 agencies applied to run 250 programs, Butler said. An analysis of results showed that several established non-profits that the state has rated as high quality lost seats, while newer, unrated for-profit centers picked up seats and funding.

Butler told Chalkbeat earlier this month that the city didn’t receive as much state funding as it had anticipated, and that her agency sought to spread seats among more agencies to offer parents more choice.

Some providers who lost seats have complained that the city had refused to reveal how it scored the proposals. They also complained that the city encouraged them to shift focus to infants and toddlers but did not award them those slots as promised.

Of the roughly 21,300 slots, 37% went for children 3 and under. The remainder went to seats for 4- and 5-year-olds — a demographic that the city previously said it wanted to primarily shift to public schools.

The aldermen want to know how the city scored the applications and weighed program quality. They also are asking about the qualifications of local graduate students who reportedly scored the applications and about any technical difficulties that might have disadvantaged applicants.

The changes are supposed to take effect Dec. 1. Several providers have told Chalkbeat they may have to close classrooms or cut staff.

The resolution warns of the impact to neighborhoods such as Englewood, Austin, and Back of the Yards, where providers saw cuts. The areas are “already some of the most vulnerable, highest-need communities in this city,” the resolution reads.

“The initial loss seems to hit low-income black and brown communities really hard,” said Hadden, one of several council members who have openly questioned the process since the grant awardees were notified in August.

Heather Cherone of the Daily Line contributed reporting to this story.

In area beset by violence and deportations, Chicago opens a mental health clinic for infants and toddlers

2019-09-10T22:42:55+00:00

Inside Chicago’s first stand-alone mental health center for young children, new therapy rooms come stuffed with play kitchens, toy police stations, and cuddly plush toys.

While the children play — sometimes in view of a two-way mirror that lets therapists observe how they interact with parents or caregivers — the youngsters might act out the stress of detainments and deportations or anguish over family members being shot or abused.

A free-standing mental health clinic for infants and toddlers is believed to be unique in Chicago, and it’s likely a rare find even nationally.

Erikson Institute, a Chicago-based early education policy and teacher training institute, raised money for the clinic here in a Little Village strip mall for a reason. The clinic, which has quietly been in operation this summer but had a grand opening Tuesday, sits in a neighborhood that boasts one of the highest concentrations of young children in Chicago.

The area is also impacted by many issues that cause young children stress: from deportations and crime to high poverty.

One of five therapy rooms inside the new Little Village clinic.

“We’ve struggled to find appropriate mental health services for young children in Little Village,” said Katya Nuques, the executive director of Enlace Chicago, a community organization with deep ties in the area. Her group, she said, recognized the critical need for such services when it started convening women and caregivers for group sessions years ago but then puzzled over finding expertise to help them.

For Erikson and the who’s who of Chicago early learning advocates who toured the clinic Tuesday, the site marks an important milestone: a growing recognition that Chicago can’t expand its early education system without combating some of the chronic issues that afflict families. Researchers have shown the impact of “toxic stress” — a term in early education for what happens during stressful events — on young brains.

Erikson released a report in July that showed 60 percent of Chicago children under 5 live in neighborhoods that have experienced multiple homicides.

“Toxic stress” can stunt brain development and lead to aggression, anxiety and depression in children. It can also stunt a child’s ability to learn.

A 2017 report from the policy group Zero to Three said barriers to services were “particularly pronounced” among young children, whose behaviors are often dismissed, even though more than 1 in 10 children under 5 undergo a trauma-related disturbance.

Chicago is undergoing a four-year expansion of its early learning system, but the road so far has been bumpy as city leaders split a limited pool of money between community groups and a public school pre-K expansion. But something practically everyone agrees on: The city needs better supports for children and families all-around.

“When there is a trauma in a community, or a home, it affects a child and their caretaker, but a child deals with it differently than an adult,” said Geoffrey Nagle, the CEO of Erikson. “Left unaddressed and unsupported, that trauma is never processed, and it affects a child’s development, it affects educational outcomes and their progression in school. We now have an opportunity to deal with it upfront.”

But, he said, the reality is that, nationwide as well as in Illinois, too few providers specialize in working with the youngest children.

“You can’t sit down and say, ‘tell me about this, or how did this made you feel?’” he said about working with young children, some of whom don’t yet speak. “The way a child under 5 experiences the world is through the relationships in their lives,” which is why the center’s approach involves adult-only sessions as well as observational sessions with parents and children together.

While research underscores the need, early educators in Illinois, and Chicago, have long struggled with how to make the case for more mental health services for the youngest children.

Beyond the dearth of qualified providers stressed by Nagle, there are other reasons why: from a lack of funding for early education overall, to a lack of understanding about the need, to poor communication between policymakers and providers about identifying problems in the classroom and knowing who to call for help.

Some agencies have reported calling practitioners and hearing they won’t venture into the neighborhoods with critical masses of families that need their services most.

“Parents come to us for many reasons, but before they take that step, they have usually tried everything,” said the clinic’s director, Marcy Safyer, a developmental psychologist who oversees clinical and community services for Erikson.

Lynette De Dios, one of two full-time bilingual clinicians there, said that referrals have so far come from schools, day cares, and doctors. Families can walk in or receive visits at home. All of the staff can speak Spanish and is credentialed in working with youngsters.

“For children, play is a bridge,” she said.

Erikson built and funded the clinic with philanthropic grants but hopes to soon begin underwriting some costs with Medicaid, based off a similar center in operation at its River North headquarters. It serves hundreds of families a year and runs a waitlist.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Geoffrey Nagle’s credentials.

‘Something has gone wrong’: Providers sound alarm over Chicago’s $200 million award for early learning

2019-09-05T20:32:43+00:00

After months of speculation about how Chicago would redistribute nearly $200 million it spends on educating low-income children under age 5, the city has released the list of winners and losers.

But in redistributing its early learning funds, the city will impose dramatic cuts that will threaten the reach of several high-quality programs run by established non-profits. Some community organizations may cut back classrooms, close sites, and lay off staff. Meanwhile, newer for-profit centers have picked up slots and funding.

Advocates and center directors are raising questions about the grant process and about how the city determined winners and losers. They also worry that by scaling back its promise to fund more seats for the youngest children, the city could deprive hundreds of children and some neighborhoods of quality child care options.

The long-awaited grant awards represent a key part of the city’s effort to expand early learning.

Another part has been opening pre-kindergarten classes for all 4-year-olds — essentially adding whole new grade level to public schools.

Last spring it announced a two-tier system: At the end of a four-year rollout, schools likely would educate the bulk of the city’s 4-year-olds, and community-run programs would expand to care for more substantial numbers of younger children. The city pledged to send millions more to help community-run preschool and early childhood programs offset the financial loss of that shift, since younger children cost more to educate.

“They kept telling us that we should focus on building our infrastructure and workforce and buildings to mostly serve children aged zero to 3. So reluctantly we all had to think about that, and what was going to be our future,” said Maricela Garcia, the CEO of the nonprofit Gads Hill, which operates two centers in Chicago and is opening a third. It applied to serve more kids in that age group, she said, but instead the city cut back its grants to Gads Hill centers for the youngest children.

“In general, we now have a $700,000 hole in this year’s budget that we have to work around,” said Mario Perez, the executive director of El Hogar Del Nino, a center in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood that serves 410 children through site-based care, home visits, and group homes. His organization’s child care center, which opened two new infant classrooms this week and is running a waitlist of families for those spots, also lost funding for programs for infants and toddlers.

“The idea of more preschool for more kids is noble, and it’s the right thing, but somewhere between the concept and the rollout, something has gone wrong,” he said.

The city has hired a transition agency to help centers that have to close classrooms find alternative arrangements for families. The new contracts start Dec. 1.

In all, 150 agencies applied to run 250 programs, the administrator in charge of the grant said. Her department is sticking with its 101 winners, while acknowledging that the process was imperfect.

“We are right now very aware that lots of folks are unhappy,” said Lisa Morrison Butler, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, one of two agencies stewarding Chicago’s universal pre-K rollout (the other is Chicago Public Schools).

In short, she said, that’s because the city didn’t get as much money as it had anticipated from the state, and as a result it could not fully fund many proposals.

“Everyone asked for significant increases,” Butler said. “We would have needed $48 million more than we had to give everyone 100% of what they wanted. And we didn’t have that. And so in almost every case, we pulled back a little bit from the ultimate proposal.”

Butler said many applicants submitted ambitious plans, as the city had encouraged them to do. And she stressed that a wider disbursement of seats among more agencies — including some for-profit businesses led by a diverse group of operators — offers parents more choice.

“We think choice is a good thing. But at the same time, we recognize that we need to try to help transition folks and we know that that is going to be challenging,” she added.

Using a scoring system it has yet to make public, the city divided the money — a mix of federal, state, and local dollars intended for low-income families — among the 101 winning agencies.

Chicago Public Schools manages its preschool programs out of its own $7.7 billion budget, but because of the way early education money is distributed, some federal dollars are granted to the school district and then reallocated to the city’s family support services department, which oversees preschool programs and child care centers that operate outside of schools. Asked if the money intended for Chicago’s community programs didn’t get rerouted from Chicago Public Schools, Butler emphatically said no.

“We’ve heard that folks wonder whether or not CPS held back (money) and they did not,” she said.

Of the roughly 21,300 slot allocations, 37% went for children 3 and under.

Broken down by neighborhood, the most center-based preschool slots were granted to providers in Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Austin, and Greater Grand Crossing, according to a Chalkbeat preliminary analysis. All four neighborhoods are also getting new preschool classrooms in public schools this year, according to a list released in the spring.

Fewest seats went to the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, as intended, since the median household income there would render most families ineligible for publicly funded programs in community centers.

Advocates said they would like the city to be more transparent about how it determined which sites would receive funding and why some cuts were made to high-quality organizations that are among the state’s highest rated.

“We are all working on assumptions,” said Jose Marco-Paredes of the Latino Policy Forum, which convened a working group on early childhood issues after the city announced last year that it would offer pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds in the city. “We don’t know where the slots did go, how the decisions were made, or how quality played a role in them.”

Garcia, of Gads Hill, said she was surprised to learn her organization lost slots intended for older children in a new facility it is building in Brighton Park — an area of the city that has seen growth in Latino residents and new immigrants.

She was disappointed to learn of cuts, too, in a program that funds a weekly home visit by a teacher and a social worker to 290 at-risk families with young children. The visits help build parenting skills and connect families with doctors, schools, and other programs. This year, about 50 fewer families will receive visits as a result.

“You cannot just decide to cut those slots for those families when that is the only program they feel they can be safe and have kids still learning,” Garcia said.

Like Garcia, Perez of El Hogar also saw cuts in his home visiting program.

One Englewood center, Little Angels, hosted one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s early press conferences trumpeting his universal pre-K initiative. The founder, Nashone Greer-Adams, had been told the city would pick up the tab for a new $3.4 million child care center and community hub.

Illustrating the complicated way that funding for programs and buildings gets distributed, the Chicago Board of Education signed off on the building contract — then, several weeks later, the city cut back Greer-Adams’ early learning grant.

As of Thursday, a petition she started on the website Change.org titled “Save our school!” had garnered 160 signatures.

Chicago promised her a new preschool building — then cut funding for the children

2019-08-27T10:30:55+00:00

For 15 years, Nashone Greer-Adams has run a thriving preschool and infant center in the fellowship hall of an Englewood church. But in recent weeks, the city has targeted her business, Little Angels, for deep cuts.

It is among several community child care centers suddenly and inexplicably losing funding, despite a pledge by two successive Chicago mayors to invest more in early learning.

Greer-Adams said she was devastated to receive a letter earlier this month from Chicago Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Lisa Morrison-Butler that the city would cut off her funding, worth about 35% of her annual budget. The letter said the city would help her families find other centers for their child care.

The cut is particularly odd and surprising given that a year ago, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools chief Janice Jackson crowded into Greer’s school to announce that the city would transform a nearby vacant lot into a $3.4 million new early learning center. The plan was part of a four-year effort to expand access to universal pre-K to every 4-year-old in the city by 2021.

“You used us as your poster child,” Greer-Adams said on Monday, sitting in front of a stack of signs she plans to use for a visit to City Hall later this week. “And you do this to your poster child?”

The 42 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in her program face an uncertain few months, as her current contract ends Nov. 30. Scores of other children who currently are in the care of other Chicago community agencies also facing cuts, also could lose their day care.

According to a letter sent Monday to the Department of Family and Support Services from Dana Garner, the director of the Chicago Commission of Site Administered Child Care Programs, at least 30 early learning centers that serve more than 1,000 children across Chicago face deep cuts, according to a survey from her commission.

Cuts appeared to be concentrated in Englewood, Austin, and Back of the Yards, she said, and agencies reported losing seats for infants and toddlers as well as older children.

“How did this happen?” Garner asked on Monday. “There wasn’t any clear definition as to why this happened.”

As for who gained or lost seats, that’s not yet clear. NBC-5 reported Monday that the Archdiocese of Chicago, which operates several preschool sites, could lose some funding. The city’s Department of Family and Support Services told Chalkbeat that 101 early learning sites were funded through a combination of two back-to-back grant competitions. The department could not immediately provide Chalkbeat with a list of sites that were funded or cut.

In e-mail responses to questions from Chalkbeat, Morrison-Butler acknowledged that some communities lost funding in the grant competition, but others saw an increase.

“The movement up and down is due to many factors, including who was funded, where they wanted to serve, as well as who was not funded and how the loss of that agency impacted the community,” she wrote. “The reasons that organizations were unsuccessful are as unique as the organizations that applied.”

The determinations are not yet final, either. “Once the [Chicago Public Schools] final enrollment picture is clear, we will be able to see where true gaps exist. We will then work with our delegate agencies and with our partners [at Chicago Public Schools] to develop a strategy for addressing those gaps.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office directed queries back to the family services department.

$42 million more for early learning

Last spring, Chicago’s then-early learning chief said that the city planned to invest an additional $42 million into community-based care to help offset the loss of children as the city added preschool seats in its schools. The money was intended to help centers raise salaries to a $47,000 minimum across five years, invest in upgrades, and expand the number of seats for infants and toddlers, as more 4-year-olds headed off to preschool in area schools.

Both the Emanuel administration and Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised that Chicago’s universal pre-K expansion would not undercut community programs, which offer infant and toddler care in addition to preschool courses, often open early and offer later pickup than schools, and also provide critical wraparound classes and training for parents, many of whom are low-income.

The city was on track to launch its grant recompetition — which happens every few years — before Emanuel left office, part of a larger $200 million investment in universal pre-K that will guarantee every 4-year-old in Chicago a full-day education by 2021.

Then Lightfoot took office and the city’s early learning chief departed. Now, with the latest results of grant awards delivered in the past few weeks, several nonprofit groups have found themselves facing cuts.

Scott Perkins, an early childhood advocate familiar with the grant program, said that Lightfoot inherited a complex rollout.

“We all support the vision” of universal pre-K, he said. But by relying on a grant program to map out how and where to offer services, the city oversimplified a complicated task. “There were blind spots.”

“The slot allocations that were awarded to (community providers) through the (grant) has left most agencies in a state of crisis,” Garner wrote to the mayor on Monday, “and with no other option than to close centers and classrooms in high-need community areas, such as Englewood and Austin, within the next two weeks.”

While some caregivers received funding, she wrote, cutting off grants to others “would not only impact the city of Chicago financially, but more importantly, it will result in the lack of access for children and families to a 10-hour full day of high-quality, comprehensive early learning opportunities in the highest-need communities that are already in crisis.”

Back in Englewood

Asked how her department determined which programs were funded and which were cut, Morrison-Butler said in her e-mail to Chalkbeat that the family services department prioritized best practices in early learning, including kindergarten readiness, curriculum, teacher salary increases, and programs that blended federal and state funding.

“Proposals were reviewed with these criteria for quality, and with consideration of maintaining a broad community footprint, maximizing funding streams and child eligibility, program options, density-capacity, improved quality standards as well as embracing policy goals.”

As for Greer-Adams, she wants specific answers for why Little Angels lost funding. Particularly bizarre to her: That the city’s communications team invited her to attend a recent announcement that Lightfoot planned to invest $820 million more in school facility upgrades, including more than $100 million in early learning sites like hers.

“When we first got the notice that we were defunded, I thought it was an error,” she said. So she called the city and even met with Deputy Mayor Sybil Madison. She has other meetings lined up this week.

She’s armed with data: Her center has been certified gold by ExceleRate Illinois — the early learning rating program’s highest rating — for five consecutive years, and her record of student retention rate tops 95%. The official document that the school board must approve to fund construction of her future school described the facility as “an integral part of the city’s and CPS’ universal full day pre-school” programs.

Greer-Adams doesn’t know what will happen to her future 11,000-square foot center, which was intended to have a community space, too. The renderings for the yellow multi-tiered building with observation portals for parents wouldn’t look out of place in an architectural magazine. She could more than double her capacity, to more than 100 children.

“I don’t know if they have full working knowledge of everything we do here,” she said, describing a parent volunteer program that provides small stipends that help low-income families get on their feet, a family advocacy group that traveled to Springfield to argue for early learning funding during state budget cuts in 2015, a mental health counselor, and 14 full-time employees cultivated from among her parents.

“Why are we going to build a new school without the children for it?” she asked. “If we are looked at as a high-quality program — how are you going to take that away?”

Today we're in Englewood at the Little Angels Learning Center, an early childhood education site which serves children from birth through 6 years old. The Center is expanding through @ChicagoDPD’s Large Lots program. #PreK4Chicago pic.twitter.com/n3BahMDjH1
— Archive: Mayor Rahm Emanuel (@MayorRahm) July 17, 2018

A lovely song from the parents, children and staff of Little Angels Learning Center in Englewood on #ThanksgivingEve. 🎶👏🏽 #ChicagoEarlyLearning pic.twitter.com/hdhlcpTkTf
— Archive: Mayor Rahm Emanuel (@MayorRahm) November 21, 2018

With 8,000 vacancies across city pre-Ks, Lightfoot urges Chicago families to apply

2019-08-09T21:37:34+00:00

With the start of school three weeks away and 8,000 vacancies reported in programs for 3- and 4-year-olds across the city, Mayor Lori Lightfoot took the podium Friday to urge more families to apply.

The event, at a press conference at the Chicago Commons Nia Learning Center in West Humboldt Park, was notable not just for flagging the thousands of open seats. In a sign of unity, Lightfoot stood with top administrators of two governmental departments that manage preschool and that haven’t always coordinated their work.

“We’re trying to play a role in bringing the two sides together,” said Lightfoot, who earlier in the morning had read a children’s book by Toni Morrison, in a nod to the iconic writer who died this week, to a class of eager 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. “CPS cannot, and will not, do this alone. Community providers are critically important to the infrastructure.”

It’s been an open question in the city’s early learning community about how the city’s mayor will steer the future of universal pre-K for the city’s 4-year-olds.

Her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, announced the plan last spring, but then stepped down in the first year of the rollout, leaving an uncertain future for a program that has the potential to impact as many as 45,000 children.

The program remains without critical point person in the mayor’s office since the former chief left Chicago for a job in Massachusetts.

Lightfoot has pledged to create birth-to-5 zones with wraparound services but has offered few details. On Friday she made clear that she wants to bridge the divide between community-based preschool providers and school-based pre-Ks, who’ve been competing for students and qualified teachers.

One potential starting point could be helping community providers increase salaries for their teachers — a step that cities like New York have taken under pressure from strapped nonprofit directors and business owners.

Asked specifically about salary parity, Lightfoot said, “we have started steps in that direction,” and underscored an additional $42 million that Chicago said it is making available to community providers as part of a grant renewal. “(That renewal) has to be a process (we use) to fairly compensate the teachers who are taking care of our most vulnerable and youngest children. I don’t want the teachers in the early childhood learning space to be living hand to mouth and living paycheck to paycheck.”

In the past year community providers have complained that they were losing students and teachers to schools, and also that the city had created an uneven playing field by offering free seats in schools while community programs often charge some families.

The city’s response was to encourage community programs to open up more seats for younger children — but strict caps on the number of babies per classroom still make it a challenge for providers to make ends meet.

Some warned they could go out of business. Parents also reported confusion over the various options, which programs cost money and which are free, and what services are available for children with special needs or who need after-school care.

“I know this is a change from past practices. In the past, city officials did not engage communities (on the issue), leaving far too many parents unheard and too many children left behind,” Lightfoot said. “That’s why my administration is having a listening session with community partners.”

Dottie Johnson, the chief financial officer of Chicago Commons, said she had participated in a recent session and that she felt a tone shift on the issue.

“The mayor was very receptive to our concerns and the challenges we’ve been facing and was willing to hear about some of the solutions we’re proposing,” Johnson said. “We see more money coming through to support our efforts, including raising our teacher salaries.”

Johnson said providers offered the mayor several recommendations, including pushing to eliminate the co-pay that some working families pay for day care and after-school care through the state’s child care assistance program. That could potentially require a change to state policy, since the program is administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Chicago is adding 3,000 more pre-K seats this school year across community centers and schools. Most of those seats are in schools on the city’s South and West sides.

Even though the slots are not full, preschool applications are up more than 20% from the previous year, according to City Hall. Last school year, about 21,000 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in Chicago preschool programs across schools and community centers, according to data obtained midyear by Chalkbeat.

Educators trusted with babies and toddlers don’t make a living wage — Illinois wants to change this

2019-08-06T02:19:01+00:00

More than three years after Illinois policy makers began wrestling with the question of how much to pay early childhood educators, the governor’s office is proposing an answer: $40,000 for new teachers with college degrees.

The proposal, which members of an influential council of early education advocates reviewed on Monday, is far from changing the way educators in Illinois are paid. Still, it suggests that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration is taking advantage of the state’s relatively stable finances and national momentum around early childhood education to accelerate a conversation about raising pay for teachers working with the state’s youngest students.

Across Illinois, early childhood educators are paid far less than their counterparts in K-12 schools. In 2015, a full-time early childhood teacher made about $25,000 a year, according to state data, and in Chicago, teachers often leave jobs at community centers for higher wages and benefits in district-run schools.

The wages are so low that half of the state’s early childhood teachers receive public benefits for low-income families, according to a report that the early childhood council reviewed. The low wages are considered a main driver of the teacher shortage in early childhood classrooms — which is likely to grow as the state seeks to expand access to early learning.

Under the proposal, teachers assistants would start at about $30,000, while site directors whose positions are funded under the state’s early childhood block grant, which funds programs from birth to age 3, would have a base pay of $60,000 a year.

“Compensation parity is the foundation of a quality workforce,” said Bethany Patten, workforce policy director for the governor’s office. “We’re thinking about who is working with our children.”

The proposal addresses one crucial question — how much early childhood educators should be paid — but not another, more pressing one: where the money would come from. Here, Patten told the council, the answers are less clear, beyond the idea that additional costs should not be borne by cash-strapped providers or the families that use them.

“We didn’t want to see proposals that would create an increased burden for providers as well as an increased burden for families,” she said. Instead, she said, the state needs to invest more in early learning as a whole.

Last week in New York City, members of a union that includes many early childhood educators approved a contract that narrows the pay gap between educators in community-run programs and those in public school classrooms. There, funding is coming from the city — and the deal still does not extend to make early childhood educators.

Council member Dan Harris emphasized that raising wages is only part of what needs to happen to improve early childhood education across the state.

“I want to emphasize all the work that’s going to be necessary to make the compensation stuff happen,” Harris. “That takes resources. I don’t want us to think those numbers up there, as significant as they are, are enough because there’s a lot of labor-intensive work that needs to be funded to get where we need to go.”

Chicago’s early learning chief stepping down as universal pre-K plan enters second year

2019-07-15T11:37:04+00:00

One of the key architects of Chicago’s universal pre-K rollout has accepted the top early learning job in Massachusetts, leaving Mayor Lori Lightfoot a vacancy to fill at a critical juncture in the program.

The 4-year rollout was launched last year and became a signature education effort of Rahm Emanuel’s second term. But in a surprise move before it could be fully implemented, the former mayor decided not to run for a third term. Now Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, who helped design and steer the plan for Emanuel’s administration, is leaving to serve as Massachusetts’ statewide commissioner for early childhood. Her last day was Friday.

“I have been honored to lead the city’s vision for early childhood education over the last four years, and I am excited to see Mayor Lightfoot’s administration continue the innovative work of improving access and quality of early learning opportunities for all of Chicago’s families,” Aigner-Treworgy said in a statement.

A Lightfoot spokeswoman told Chalkbeat that the mayor is “committed to developing a sustainable, universal pre-K system.” Her education team, led by deputy mayor Sybil Madison, is working to identify a leader for the effort.

The new hire will report to Madison.

Whoever steps in to steer universal pre-K encounters a program divided. Universal pre-K is a popular idea among parents and early childhood advocates, but as schools have expanded the number of classrooms, the city has struggled to manage the disruption experienced by community centers and for-profit small businesses who also run preschools. Community programs have lost students and staff to Chicago Public Schools, which offers union-level pay and summer breaks.

The rollout has laid bare a complicated issue bedeviling many cities and states: in a business with thin margins, how to pay community providers enough without asking parents, who are often cash-strapped, to pay more.

Illinois is one of the least-affordable states for child care, a cost that often eclipses rent here, according to a report released earlier in the year.

A similar pay disparity in New York has led early childhood educators in private centers to inch toward a strike. A deal announced last week will raise the pay of community preschool workers, who are not public employees, and serve as a step toward salary parity between community settings and those in schools.

Chicago’s new chief also must confront a constellation of supply and demand issues across the city, with some schools logging unfilled seats while others have frustratingly long waitlists. Despite a universal application for most programs, the lack of clear information about options has confused parents about the different choices, which programs are free and which aren’t, and why they aren’t automatically guaranteed seats at their zoned neighborhood schools as they are in kindergarten.

To complicate things, different agencies oversee the two types of providers: The city’s Department of Family & Support Services works with community providers, and an early learning department within Chicago Public Schools runs school programs.

City Hall oversees the spending strategy for about $350 million in federal, state, and local funding for universal pre-K and other programs for young children.

Despite universal pre-K’s bumpy path, 21,000 Chicago 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in some sort of program during the 2018-19 school year. That’s about half of the 45,000 who qualify.

Chicago plans to open 100 additional pre-K classrooms in schools this fall.

Lightfoot said during her campaign that her vision for universal pre-K would prioritize the city’s highest-need areas first and include “birth-to-5” zones with more services for younger children. But it is not clear how much her team will adhere to Emanuel’s rollout plan, which strives to create a pre-K seat for every 4-year-old in Chicago by 2021-22.

How to get more English learners prepared to enter kindergarten? Illinois wrestles with answer.

2019-07-09T19:38:43+00:00

With data showing particularly low rates of kindergarten readiness among Illinois’ English language learners, some advocates are zeroing in on a particular problem: They say that too many schools lack the linguistic capacity to measure their incoming students and thus may miss signs of children’s capabilities.

Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro, manager of education policy and research at the Latino Policy Forum, highlighted a potential explanation: a lack of bilingual teachers.

“You might have kids that are expressing something in their home language or in both the home language and English, and it might be difficult for a lot of teachers who don’t speak that language to capture that information,” she said. “I really think [the data] speaks more to our bilingual teacher shortage.”

The state found that only 26% of students statewide met requirements to be considered “on track” to enter kindergarten. For English learners, that proportion dropped to 17%.

In response, the state school board has said it will prioritize improving the assessment of English learners and will work more closely with teachers on training in the next school year. The state uses a tool called the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS), which is an observational assessment where teachers record developmental behaviors in the first 40 days of kindergarten.

Spokeswoman Jackie Matthews of the Illinois State Board of Education, which administers the tool, said the KIDS assessment offers educators the option to administer an alternative language portion for English learners. Teachers receive training that includes video and audio examples of children demonstrating developmental behaviors in languages other than English.

From sharing with others to recognizing words and numbers, KIDS looks at behaviors in three categories: social and emotional development, language and literacy development, and math. In order to be considered kindergarten ready, students must meet expectations across all three.

Though the assessment focuses on behaviors teachers can observe in languages other than English, Luisiana Melendez, a professor at the Erikson Institute who also sits on the new Chicago Public Schools Board of Education, suggested that the concept of kindergarten readiness in an assessment like KIDS simply cannot address diverse students in early childhood programs.

“I have an issue with the idea of kindergarten readiness as something that is held within the child,” she said. “I think schools should be ready for kindergarten children…and be more thoughtful in how they try to use the experiences that these children bring from home.”

Melendez said without the ability to understand the many languages represented in early childhood classrooms, teachers may miss how students are developing.

The statewide Preschool for All Initiative, which started in 2006, requires each early childhood program to provide instruction in a child’s home language if it enrolls more than 20 students with the same home language.

However, bilingual educators are scarce, especially amid the teacher shortage in Illinois. According to a survey from the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, only 57% of bilingual educator positions were filled for the 2017-18 school year in K-12.

Vonderlack-Navarro said bilingual teachers are essential to addressing the needs of Hispanic children in a kindergarten setting. She also suggested that all early childhood educators receive training to assist English learners.

Only 15% of Hispanic students met the benchmarks for kindergarten readiness for KIDS — lower than the 17% of English learners, including students from all linguistic backgrounds, considered ready for school.

Vonderlack-Navarro emphasized that Latino parents need more programs designed for their communities.

Melendez also said the misconception that Hispanic families aren’t interested in early education comes from a real fear that their children might lose their culture and language.

To address this concern, Melendez envisions more culturally responsive early childhood education: “Be more aware of why there may be differences, acknowledge the cultural values that Latinx families bring to the game, and work with them to find ways in which the children can learn what is important in school for their school success without necessarily devaluing the cultural values that the family has.”

Advocates said the abysmal rates also reflect a spate of issues, from a shortage of preschool seats statewide, to cultural differences, to communication gaps between instructors and their bilingual students.

Updated: This article was updated to reflect that teachers have the option to administer alternative measures for the language portion of the assessment for English learners.

In the second year of statewide assessment, three out of four Illinois children still aren’t kindergarten ready

2019-06-25T10:07:56+00:00

More than three-quarters of Illinois children are still falling short on kindergarten readiness, according to data released Tuesday and collected statewide last fall.

This is the second year Illinois has implemented the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS) — an observational assessment by teachers who log developmental behaviors to gauge kindergarten readiness. Most of the data points saw slight increases of 1 to 5 percentage points from the previous year.

“On the face of it, not much has changed,” said Geoffrey Nagle, CEO of the Erikson Institute, a Chicago organization studying childhood development. “For this kind of data to change statewide, you would have to do a statewide intervention … if you want these numbers to change, we’re going to have to do something — invest in children, invest in supports for children and families.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker pledged $100 million to early childhood education in his first budget, for 2019-20. However, Nagle said, given how comparatively little Illinois spends on preschoolers at the moment, it will take a more substantial investment to see results in an assessment like KIDS.

In 2017, Illinois spent an average of $15,337 per student in K-12 but only $3,306 for every Illinois child under age 6, according to the Risk and Reach Report from Nagle’s Erikson Institute; however, young children often cost more to educate because they need more adults in the room, Nagle said.

Teresa Ramos, vice president of policy and advocacy at Illinois Action for Children, an advocacy group connecting families and providers with funding, emphasized that KIDS is meant as a tool to illuminate the quality of early childhood more broadly, not judge kindergarten teachers or their districts.

“This is shining a flashlight on what is happening in the years before kindergarten,” Ramos said. “As we frame it in that way, it allows for teachers to see different things coming out of kids [in kindergarten] and be OK with that.”

Rather than an exam, KIDS records teachers’ observations when students perform tasks such as sharing materials, sorting objects, recognizing words, and raising a hand before speaking. Students were measured in three categories: social and emotional development, language and literacy development, and math. In order to be considered kindergarten ready, students had to demonstrate proficiency in all three, said Carisa Hurley, director of early childhood at the Illinois State Board of Education.

“Teachers are observing students, and they’re documenting their interactions and behaviors during the first 40 days of instruction,” Hurley said. “As children are going about their regular, everyday routines, they’re playing, they’re interacting with their peers, they’re doing schoolwork, and following directions. So they’re actually observing children in that environment so they can document what children’s abilities are.”

Hurley said the tool remained the same from last year to this year, but the state has provided more professional development and training for teachers to ensure accurate measurement.

Though Hurley cautioned against making year-to-year comparisons, she said districts can use KIDS data to recognize which communities need more support.

Low-income students receiving subsidized lunch were 16 percentage points behind their more affluent peers, demonstrating well-documented income disparities in access to early childhood education.

By race, only 19% of black students and 15% of Latinx students demonstrated kindergarten readiness, compared with 32% of their white peers. However, Nagle emphasized that all students need support at this point with such low numbers in all groups.

Across the state, 39% of kindergartners failed to demonstrate readiness in any category. Only 26% of students displayed behaviors across all three, considered kindergarten ready. More than half of students met the benchmarks in social and emotional learning, but in math, only one in three students were prepared, struggling to identify numbers, shapes and patterns.

“A large percentage of our kids are not ready for school,” Nagle said. “That should be completely unacceptable to everyone from any parent to every leader in the state… because this is an indicator of what the future of Illinois is, and right now the future is not looking bright.”

Almost 125,000 Illinois kindergartners, 89% of those enrolled in state kindergarten programs, were observed for the survey, developed by San Francisco-based WestEd, up from 81% last year. Nagle said both of these figures suggest the data provides a good snapshot of early learning in Illinois.

Still, only 30% of students are enrolled in state-funded preschool programs. In order to change access, Hurley said, the state needs to invest more funding in those programs.

For Ramos, the data highlights a lot of information she and other early childhood advocates already know — “We know there’s a lot of support that needs to happen in the earliest years of life… We know we need to focus on access to high-quality early childhood services from birth, and we know that we’re not investing enough as a state in those services.”

Ramos suggested districts connect with an array of early learning centers and childcare providers in their communities to help ease the transition to kindergarten, sharing KIDS data and doing joint training for early childhood educators and kindergarten teachers. Statewide, Nagle emphasized investing in home visiting, increased pay for child care workers, and paid parental leave.

But where these investments will come from is still unclear.

After yearlong delay, Chicago’s plan for gifted children heads to new school board

2019-06-24T15:00:54+00:00

Advocates for gifted and talented children have been clamoring for Chicago to comply with a state law that requires districts to have a formal acceleration plan that would allow early entrance to kindergarten and grade skipping.

In one of its first big decisions on Wednesday, Chicago’s new school board will decide whether the district’s proposal is enough.

After soliciting feedback from parents at two meetings in April — a more public step than it sometimes takes in policymaking — district leaders are pitching a proposal that would allow early admittance to kindergarten for children who turn 5 before Dec. 31.

To qualify, students would have to score a 91 percent or higher on a cognitive evaluation.

Currently, prospective kindergarteners must turn 5 by Sept. 1 to attend a public school in Chicago. The first draft of the plan only extended the window to Oct. 31, but parents said in the meetings that would only apply to a very narrow subset of children.

LaTanya McDade, Chicago’s chief academic officer, said her team listened.

“It was refreshing to hear from families, and I am looking forward to them seeing that, in this new proposal, we did listen,” she said. “Not only did we listen, but their voice made a difference in the way we shape policy in the district.”

The new policy would also allow older elementary-aged students to either skip grades or advance in a single subject: reading or math.

The latest version relaxes a few of the strict guidelines for kindergarten entry and grade skipping. In earlier drafts, prospective kindergarteners would have to score in the 98th percentile or higher on a cognitive test administered by a psychologist. Under the new policy, they’d have to score in the 91st percentile or higher.

For grade skipping, under the original policy, students had to earn a 4.0 GPA in core classes, score at least in the 95th percentile on the NWEA/MAP standardized test, and pass an assessment by a school team determining developmental and social readiness to make the jump. Under the new policy, students need only have a GPA of 3.75.

Gifted advocates criticized the first draft of the plan because it relied solely on parental initiative to seek out testing and apply for consideration. Some school districts are experimenting with “universal screens” that would assess all children.

Black and brown children are vastly underrepresented in gifted programs compared with their white peers.

The revised policy does not include a universal screen.

McDade said that screening a child for accelerated placement is a “personal decision a family makes for their child” and that the cost of a universal screen would also be “fiscally irresponsible.”

Not everything that advocates sought made it into the final proposal, she said, but the process of getting a review from a cross-departmental team of educators and parents was still considered a success. “Everything doesn’t always shake out the way every individual person may want it to, but there’s something to be said about building public trust.”

Here’s the proposed board policy in full:

lllinois weighs how to rebuild child care program that saw exodus of children, caregivers

2019-06-18T11:00:44+00:00

One of the tasks facing Gov. J.B. Pritzker is how to rebuild a state program that helps pay for child care so that low-income parents and college students can work or attend school.

The program saw a dramatic drop in the number of participating children and providers under the administration of Pritzker’s predecessor, Gov. Bruce Rauner. On Monday, an influential council of early learning policymakers got a glimpse of how the new governor’s team plans to build it back.

Illinois’ efforts will be watched, since the child care assistance program supports a fragile segment of families that early education sometimes fails to reach: Those who earn too much for Head Start or other free public programs, but who can’t afford the full cost of quality care.

These families often live on a precarious margin, with their children staying with aging relatives or neighbors, or in the care of siblings, or sometimes alone, while their parents work. Or, a parent quits a much-needed job and stays home, plunging the family back into poverty.

Even though the program has winnowed, Pritzker this spring pledged an extra $28.8 million for it in his first budget, a 7% boost over the current year.

The move is intended to help recruit more families and also stabilize a workforce that experiences high churn.

As detailed by Nakisha Hobbs, who oversees the program through the Illinois Department of Human Services, Illinois is raising the income eligibility so more families qualify. It has raised compensation levels for providers, and it will also use some $2 million of the money to double a scholarships program that encourages caregivers to pursue additional credentialing or coursework.

She told the state’s Early Learning Council on Monday that her department will start setting limits on how much families pay in co-pays (which are determined by household income, so that families that earn more, pay more). This next program year, families will pay no more than 9% of their income on care, with an eventual goal to cap that amount at 7%.

Illinois also plans to embark on a vast marketing campaign to woo more families — and, in some cases, lure back providers who dropped out.

“We’re going to expand our outreach efforts, working with larger employers, partnering with school districts and park districts to spread the word,” she said. And the state will streamline the application for families, even creating a smartphone-friendly option.

From 2015 to the fall of 2018, the child care assistance program lost one-third of participating children, to slightly more than 122,000 being served on a monthly basis. In a similar timeframe, it lost half of eligible providers, which can include family, friends, and neighbors of participating families.

The steep declines can be traced back, in part, to the state lowering income eligibility in 2015 to half of the federal poverty level, shutting out many working families. The Rauner administration ultimately reversed that decision, but by that time, thousands were gone.

To comply with federal law, Illinois also strengthened requirements for protocols that were supposed to raise the quality of care and increase safety measures. But it fumbled the communication, and some of the requirements were costly, many providers said. Thousands dropped out.

Hobbs said Monday that one of the goals of the marketing campaign to “change the image of the program.”

Dan Harris, who runs a state network of referral agencies responsible for credentialing and training, stressed the “need to rebuild trust” among both families and providers and said he was optimistic about the changes. The next step, he said, would be drawing a more clear line to the issue of workforce compensation.

“It’s often women of color who are doing this work, and the pay is low. It’s an example of these systems of structural racism that we’re working to address,” he said.

There are still many questions surrounding the child care assistance program: How to lure back providers is but one. What Illinois plans to do about the required health and safety trainings is another.

Early education leaders are also wrestling with how to improve the quality of state child care programs. Only about 20 percent of children who receive the subsidy for working families attend the highest-rated centers in the state, raising questions about the type of care the majority receive.

Rebuilding the state’s child care assistance program is but one of tasks in front of the state’s governor before he can pave a path to universal pre-K. Budget cuts and years of uncertainty have taken a toll on organizations that serve the state’s youngest learners. What’s more, in Illinois, as in many states, the early childhood system involves myriad agencies that use local, state, and federal dollars, which can make efforts fragmented.

The state’s learning council also heard Monday from Jesse Ruiz, the state’s deputy governor for education, that his boss plans to convene a statewide commission on the subject of streamlining early childhood funding later this summer.

A law made it harder to expel Illinois preschoolers. But it’s been slow to catch on.

2019-06-12T15:34:27+00:00

More than a third of Illinois preschools in a study expelled a young child in the past year, and nearly half sent children home early as a form of discipline, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This comes despite a state law designed to make the practice a last resort — a law that, at the time of its passing in 2017, was considered one of the most progressive pieces of expulsion legislation in the nation. National researchers have said that expelling youngsters as early as preschool is a troubling first step in the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Across the United States, an estimated 17,000 children ages 3 and 4 are expelled from preschools each year and that can set off a domino effect of negative interactions between schools and families, said Kate Zinsser, an assistant professor of psychology at UIC who led the study team.

“Early childhood classrooms are often a family’s first interaction with the education system,” she said. “If your child has been treated as less than, or not welcome, how is that going to impact the relationship you are able to form with a future kindergarten teacher?”

Illinois’ law has yet to curb the practice for several reasons, which surfaced in Zinsser’s research. When her team surveyed and interviewed providers who run programs licensed by the state to serve 3- and 4-year-olds, one-third reported inaccurate information about the law. Nearly 20% told researchers they didn’t know the law existed until they were contacted for the study.

In practice, the legislation lacks teeth until 2021, when providers will be required to report expulsion data to the state. What’s more, the State Board of Education has not yet given providers deeper guidance on what to do when things go wrong in the classroom.

In the report, Zinsser connects her new findings with her prior research that highlights fissures in the early childhood system statewide, as teachers report high stress levels and a lack of availability of mental health consultants to step in and help when children act out at school.

Those who requested expulsions were more likely to report high levels of stress and depression and less likely to lean on existing behavioral supports.

Other findings in the report:

Participants consistently called for more high-quality, free mental health consultants.
Programs in Chicago expelled on average almost 4% of their enrollment, a rate almost triple that of programs outside of the city, dispelling any myth that the practice was just happening outside of urban areas.
Diverse programs with no racial or ethnic majority expelled on average more children than programs with a majority racial or ethnic group. Nationally, black boys are expelled at significantly higher rates than are children of other races, but there’s not Illinois-specific data on race yet for expulsions from child care centers and other early education settings outside of public schools.
Researchers identified a trend between programs that rate high on a state quality scale and frequency of expulsions. That is, programs rated “gold” — the highest rating — tended to expel children less frequently.
More than a quarter of administrators surveyed reported that they would “probably or definitely change” their admissions practices in response to the law — an unintended consequence that concerns researchers like Zinsser.

“Some programs were increasing their documentation practices, but none mentioned qualitatively changing their approach to managing challenging behavior, the services they’ll use, or the ways they’ll interact with families,” Zinsser said. But, she acknowledged, change at individual centers can’t happen without a systemic shift.

“Changing practice inside a child care center is dependent on an investment in resources statewide, like increasing access to mental health consultants and changing teacher training programs,” Zinsser said.

She said that it’s important to ensure that teachers “go into the field knowing how to work through challenges in the classroom in collaboration with families and specialists while also maintaining their own emotional health.”

‘I don’t understand how it works’: Parents voice frustration during decision week for Chicago preschool

2019-06-01T02:14:26+00:00

Jennifer Kwong, a Logan Square mother, has been struggling to find information about preschool in Chicago. She brought her questions to a meet-up of parents and early childhood teachers Thursday night hosted by the city’s teachers’ union — but left with too few answers and even more questions.

“I still don’t understand the applications,” she said, her voice rising in frustration. “I don’t understand why some programs are tuition-based, and some are half-day, and some are full-day. I don’t understand how it works.”

Kwong, who has a 2½-year-old, wasn’t the only parent at the informal meet-up armed with questions and ideas for improving the city’s preschool system. A “universal” pre-kindergarten plan set in motion by the city’s former mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is in year one of a four-year rollout, and much remains in flux. Several parents and teachers said they had come to the union-sponsored event to see if others shared their concerns.

“I’m here to advocate for our babies,” said Susie McNeal, a longtime pre-K teacher at Mahalia Jackson Elementary School in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, describing a school day packed with too many expectations and not enough play. “If pre-K is the kindergarten, and kindergarten is the new first grade, where’s the balance for our kids? They’re still little people.”

Chicago’s teachers union is pushing for its next contract to include language specifically related to early childhood education for the first time. A spokeswoman later told Chalkbeat that a current proposal would establish a naptime in pre-K and kindergarten; protections that would keep teacher’s assistants from leaving classrooms to fill-in other vacancies; and adequate facilities and supplies for diapering and toilet training.

The union is also asking the city to do away with its online early learning application and restore a provision that would allow families to enroll for pre-K seats at neighborhood schools.

A union spokeswoman said the group declined an offer from the city to send a representative to the meeting to hear parents’ concerns but would invite them to future meetings.

A spokesman for the City of Chicago, Patrick Mullane, said that the city had established a hotline and an email address where parents could ask questions or voice comments. “To ensure all parents are supported with the information they need to navigate the city’s high-quality early learning programs, Chicago Early Learning will continue to update its website and FAQ based on the parent questions received through the hotline, email and social media accounts.”

Over the course of a 1½-hour meeting Thursday, emotions ran high as parents described frustration at the system, particularly the central application.

They voiced uncertainty about whom they should ask critical questions about such things as special education services and available seats for 3-year-olds. Since the preschool rollout applies to both public schools and community-based programs, two different city departments share oversight. And they lamented both the complex menu of options and applications — from tuition-based programs to magnet Montessoris to neighborhood pre-Ks — and reports of waitlists already in their neighborhoods.

Current teachers from both Chicago Public Schools and community-based daycares came with their own grievances. Chief among them: why the families they serve had to deal with a centralized application system in lieu of simply signing up at their neighborhood school.

Jennifer Jones, a pre-K teacher at Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary who is on the union’s early childhood committee, said the multi-screen online application “implied a certain level of literacy,” and only offered a Spanish translation version, so her school had had to create a separate date for parents to come in and get help navigating the software. “They are trying to navigate a system with absolutely no instructions.”

As the sun faded outside Thursday’s meeting, the group agreed they’d meet again and invite representatives from Chicago Public Schools and the City of Chicago to speak.

But even that decision highlighted a quandary: Because two departments manage the system, nobody was exactly sure whom to ask.

One obvious name came up: Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Maybe she’d come to the next meeting? They could hope.

Speaking after the meeting, McNeal said she had a message for Lightfoot, who has pledged to continue the universal pre-K rollout but has not signaled whether she’d make changes. “I need you to not do the Rahm plan. I need you to have your own vision.”

Here are 12 things Chicago parents want to know about universal pre-K

2019-05-30T22:21:53+00:00

Chicago will spend the next three years building out a “universal” preschool system. But what does that mean for families who are trying to make decisions now?

With the first round of preschool decisions coming down this week through the city’s online application and a new mayor charting the program’s future, Chalkbeat rounded up answers to common questions — including several that parents submitted to us in a survey. We based our responses on our own reporting, queries to Chicago Public Schools and the City of Chicago, and publicly available websites and FAQs.

Have a question that’s not on this list? Ask us: chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

What’s universal pre-K, and at what age will my child qualify?

Chicago seeks to create a universal pre-K system where any 4-year-old living in the city, regardless of family income, has the option to attend a high-quality full-day program for free.

But we’re not quite there yet: Chicago is rolling out its program across four years, which means some neighborhoods will have enough free seats for children in the fall and others won’t. By 2021-22, every neighborhood in the city should have enough seats for all of the children who live there — that is, if everything goes according to the city’s plan.

Chicago’s rollout targets children who turn 4 by Sept. 1 of the school year they’d start. For children under 4, that’s where it gets complicated. Three-year-olds can apply to attend some half-day programs in Chicago schools; schools may also accept 3-year-olds to fill full-day programs if not enough 4-year-olds sign up.

The city’s online application for early learning also lists programs at community child care centers and preschools, some of which take children as young as infancy. Many of these programs offer extended hours and family programming in addition to preschool curriculum. But those seats are only free for families who qualify for public assistance. Otherwise, families must pay tuition.

So when will universal pre-K come to my neighborhood?

The rollout spans three years, with neighborhoods on the South and West sides of Chicago getting priority this fall and wealthier areas, like Lincoln Park, not seeing expansions at some schools until 2021-22. However, some schools may end up opening preschool seats earlier. The full timeline is available in a city report here.

How were priority neighborhoods chosen for the universal pre-K rollout?

According to a spokeswoman, Chicago Public Schools prioritized offering universal pre-K for the 2019-20 school year in the South and West sides that had the highest levels of need and where schools had room to open additional pre-K classrooms.

Will Chicago still offer tuition-based pre-K at some schools or will eventually all spots be free?

For the foreseeable future, Chicago will continue to offer tuition-based pre-K seats for 3- and 4-year-olds at a handful of schools. It just added a new campus, Oscar Mayer Magnet School, to the list after a critical report from the inspector general for schools found that the program’s admissions process provided what amounted to a free “perk” to families living within its attendance boundaries that other magnet programs didn’t provide.

As for the long-term prognosis, a district spokeswoman said that universal pre-K will ultimately make those tuition-based programs less viable: “Tuition-based pre-k programs are not part of the universal pre-K initiative, but eventually, the city will have free full-day pre-K options for all 4-year-olds, which will limit demand for tuition-based programs from those families with children who will be eligible for universal pre-K.”

2019-20 tuition for remaining paid programs is $14,617. Families must pay a $700 non-refundable deposit to hold a child’s spot in the class.

Why is tuition-based pre-K so expensive?

The programs, which are completely funded by parent fees, are offered at principal discretion, the spokeswoman said, and meet specific demands of the community outside of publicly funded options. “Parent fees are used to cover the complete cost of the program, including extended hours of programming.”

I’m looking forward to enrolling my daughter, and I submitted an application through the Early Learning Portal. When will I hear back about my options?

Decisions are expected to start being announced this week.

Do all schools use the same universal pre-K curriculum? If so, where I can find out more about what my child will learn?

Whether in schools or community centers, all publicly funded Chicago preschools have adopted Creative Curriculum, a “whole-child” centered program that relies on hands-on projects and teacher-led group activities. Developed by a Bethesda, Maryland-company, the program is widely used in Head Start programs and differs from curricula built around core academic instruction in math and reading.

The research on what pre-K curriculum works best in widespread rollouts like Chicago’s is still pretty thin. This study, from 2018, found that “whole-child” curricula had positive impacts on classroom culture but did not overall improve children’s school readiness in math and literacy.

Will my child take a nap? I heard children at some schools didn’t have a nap time this year.

According to the district, naps are not a requirement — however, both CPS and community-based programs “offer children the opportunity to have quiet time, which includes resting, if needed.”

I think my child may need additional speech services. Will every child be screened for speech or for other disabilities?

All Chicago early learning programs screen children within 45 days of enrollment for potential developmental delays and help identify children who may benefit from social and emotional support, speech assistance, or other help. Teacher observations also prompt educators to make referrals, if needed, to the office within Chicago Public Schools that oversees evaluations for children who may have special needs.

Are there any dual-language pre-K classrooms?

Yes. The district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education lists options online. Some additional screening may be required to assess eligibility for dual-language programs, according to the district.

Which schools are still offering half-days? And are half-days only for 3-year-olds?

In 2019-20, the district will offer about 145 half-day classrooms citywide. Nearly all of these half-day classrooms will be targeted at 3-year-olds and have seats reserved for children students who qualify for special education programming. The city’s early learning website includes a function that lets families search for half-day programs at both schools and community centers.

I live in Norwood Park, and it’s not on the list for universal pre-K yet. What options are available for the 2019-20 school year?

The city’s early learning website has a search tool that families in any ZIP code in the city can use to find options at both schools and community centers. As for applications to schools outside of the 28 communities targeted for the first-round expansion in 2019-20, a district spokeswoman said admissions to those schools will be prioritized by need and availability.

Chicago will start taking universal pre-K applications on April 30

2019-04-22T20:20:04+00:00

Chicago will start taking applications for public preschool on April 30, and it will offer 2,250 more seats than are available in the current school year.

Those seats, offered for free and concentrated in public schools across 28 South and West side neighborhoods, are the first wave of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s universal pre-K expansion. The bulk of the new seats are intended for families whose children will turn 4 by Sept. 1. Among the neighborhoods that will see the most new seats next year are Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Avondale, and Lawndale.

The city’s early learning portal, where families go to submit applications, offers a menu of preschool options at both schools and at community-based providers. The universal pre-K rollout is intended to expand seats at both; however, community providers have complained that the universal pre-K rollout has caused their enrollment to dwindle, as families defect for seats at schools.

Chicago will continue to offer half-day programs for 3-year-olds, but there will be fewer available in schools. The idea is that, while schools bulk up programs for 4-year-olds, community centers can enroll more 3-year-olds in full-day programs, which will help offset their enrollment losses to schools.

The city is also steering a new wave of grants toward community providers to help open up more seats for even younger children — infants and toddlers — with emphasis on low-income families who currently aren’t enrolled in formal care.

Chicago will spend $24.4 million to open 135 new pre-kindergarten classrooms next year, part of outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to make pre-K available and free for all 4-year-olds across the city by 2021. The $175 million rollout will span four years, with 28 neighborhoods offering the program next school year, followed by 35 more in 2020-21, until every community in the city offers free pre-K options by 2021-22.

Chicago intends to hire more than 1,000 more preschool teachers by 2021.

Even as universal pre-K expands the number of free seats, families still encounter a complex menu of options depending on where they live, the age of their children, and their household income.

While the universal pre-K wave will offer free seats in some schools, others will continue to charge tuition for 3- and 4-year-olds. Eleven popular elementary schools on the North Side will continue to operate tuition-based programs. The school district also operates four high-demand magnet preschools on the North Side that are free but accept families by lottery. Applications were due in December through the school district’s GoCPS online portal for acceptance to Suder, Inter-American, Mayer, and Drummond, all on the North Side. Families are to be notified with those offers on Monday.

Click here to see which neighborhoods are part of the first expansion wave. Have questions? Submit them in the form below.

Illinois is doing better by its youngest learners — but it’s reaching too few of them

2019-04-17T13:36:34+00:00

After losing ground for many years in early education compared with other states, Illinois has started to play catch-up by boosting funding for young learners and building new tools to assess whether children are learning, according to a report released Wednesday by a prominent research group.

But the state still lags behind most of its neighbors — and the national average — in the percentage of children it enrolls in preschool programs: Even with last year’s funding boost under then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois still only reached 27 percent of its 4-year-olds, compared with 33 percent nationally, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, which authored the report.

In comparison, Wisconsin and Iowa each enrolled more than half of their 4-year-olds. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Indiana, which has been slow to sign up children and has left federal money on the table intended to get a program off the ground.

The inconsistency of approaches among neighboring states isn’t a quirk of the Midwest. Nationally, progress in expanding early learning has largely stalled, despite research that consistently shows economic benefits and bipartisan support among voters. Ten states enroll more than half of their eligible children and are considered leaders in the field; six have no program to speak of.

The report highlighted Illinois’ strengths, such as smaller class sizes for young learners, a robust system of health screenings in preschools, and workforce rules that have been tied to quality, such as requiring lead teachers in preschools to hold bachelor’s degrees. It also singled out the debut of a new assessment, the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey, or KIDS, that last year provided district-level data for the first time on how few children show up to kindergarten prepared.

But the report also stressed some threats to Illinois’ turnabout. Amid a national teacher shortage among early education providers — a problem that has hit Illinois hard — the researchers found that Illinois lacked some critical teacher support systems, such as paid professional development time, mentoring, and loan forgiveness for preschool teachers. Unlike some other states, Illinois did not report solid data on salary comparisons between private providers and school-based programs — advocates have flagged significant pay gaps as an issue statewide and in Chicago.

One of the co-authors, Steven Barnett, who is the founder and co-director of NIEER, said Illinois’ strategy diverges from that of some other states. Instead of concentrating its funding on opening more spots for 4-year-olds, the state has diverted some of its dollars to reach even younger children who live in poverty.

“That’s a reasonable choice,” said Barnett, who has tracked states’ progress on the issue for years. “But at the same time, you have to recognize that, unless you get a much higher level of service, you aren’t really going to saturate the low-income kids.”

Big day for preschool: Illinois governor says state universal pre-K coming in 4 years; Chicago invests $77 million in early learning

2019-03-22T11:30:31+00:00

Despite a “significant” state structural budget deficit, Illinois and Chicago will continue investing in early childhood education, leaders made clear on Friday.

In line with his vision of expanding early education, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Chicago will add more than 100 pre-kindergarten classrooms in 28 communities next school year, an initiative that will cost $27 million. The city also will steer $50 million to community preschool and day care providers to help them expand their clientele to infants, toddlers and 3-year-olds.

And statewide, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said for the first time that he expects that universal preschool for 4-year-olds would become a reality within four years.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Pritzker said investments in early childhood would start with an additional $100 million in his first budget cycle.

“If you really want to save money in a state budget, [early childhood education] is actually one of the best places you put your money.”

The governor appeared with Emanuel and schools chief Janice Jackson Friday at John T. Pirie Fine Arts and Academic Center.

Emanuel was rolling out the second year of his preschool initiative: Most of the new classrooms will be in Chicago’s South and West sides, with one on the North side. The $27 million investment he announced includes mostly state funds, and the $50 million for community care — intended to address providers’ concerns about losing children to city-run centers — draws from federal Head Start, state and a small amount of local funds.

Friday’s city announcement confirms a preschool expansion Chalkbeat previously had reported.

Next fall, Chicago will open additional public school classrooms concentrated in two dozen low-income neighborhoods, but it will offer fewer options in the schools for 3-year-olds, whose access will be restricted to half-day programs. The move is intended to help shift some younger customers who need full-day care back to community centers.

About 21,000 3- and 4-year-olds are currently enrolled between public schools and a mix of community-run and for-profit programs.

As it announced earlier, the city will also invest $6 million in a scholarship program to help address an early childhood workforce shortage that has hit community providers particularly hard. The city said several institutions have signed on to expand coursework and credentialing options, including City Colleges, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Erikson Institute.

Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, the mayor’s early learning chief, said the additional money should ensure that, as Chicago Public Schools opens additional full-day classrooms for 4-year-olds, community providers also enjoy “continued growth and sustainability.”

“We are working to ensure (community providers) have funding and support,” she said.

The $50 million boost consists of federal funds tied to the Head Start program and a portion of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed $100 million early childhood spending boost, of which Chicago is guaranteed a fixed percentage by state law.

“There are so many ways of using that money to strengthen the field,” said Maricela Garcia, the CEO of Gads Hill, which operates two early childhood centers in Lawndale and Chicago Lawn and is building a third. She said she hoped some money will be set aside to help nonprofits like hers increase teacher salaries and compete with the salary schedule at the schools.

“By creating parity between community organizations and Chicago Public Schools, that’s the only way we are going to be able to compete on a more level field,” Garcia said.

Starting next month, families can apply through the online early-learning portal; there will be changes there, too. New disclosure questions will appear on the form in response to a recent report from the Office of the Inspector General for Chicago’s Board of Education that revealed an alleged $2 million preschool tuition fraud due to mismanagement of billing systems.

Only 11 schools now offer tuition-based programs.

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced last May that Chicago would offer full-day universal pre-K for every 4-year-old by 2021-22, the city has been in an aggressive expansion mode. The hurried rollout has frustrated some community providers who operate on thin margins and say that the city’s plan has been clumsy, poorly communicated, and a threat to their businesses.

Both of the candidates vying to replace Emanuel as the city’s mayor, former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, have pledged to continue on the path of universal pre-K.

The new wave of city grants is intended to help operators counter the loss and hire more staff or help existing staff obtain the necessary credentials to work with younger children. The city plans to announce a grant competition soon, and all non-school programs that take public funding will be encouraged to apply.

Chicago also is chipping in on construction of at least two early learning centers, one to be run by Gads Hill in Brighton Park and another operated by Asian Human Services out of Passages Charter School in Edgewater. Those investments — totaling $2.7 million — were announced last summer as part of the $1 billion capital plan for schools.

Garcia, the CEO of Gads Hill, stressed the need for capital funding for more centers. She also called on the city to prioritize a marketing campaign to inform families of the value of high-quality preschool and educate them on how to apply.

“If parents were better educated about the difference between child care and a child care development center,” she said, “I think they would make different decisions.”